AxcaliBlog

A while ago, I discovered a great tower (actually the surface of a rogue-like dungeon... which now that I think of it, are not rogue-like in any way whatsoever), It was a better tower than the one I currently inhabited, so I went with my tower envy and moved in. Goodbye, old and busted... Hello, new hotness! Mekanism Cardboard boxes are the best for moving. Ground floor after unpacking. Second level - Ars Magica Lab. Third floor living quarters. Botania re-retup. The dang movers broke the mana pool without using the mana first. Pissed. I still need to move over the blood altar and either pack up the Ars Magica spell altar structure or build a new one out of better stuff. Oh, and aside from Minecraft, I played a bit of The Lone Dark yesterday. Found a key that apparently gives you a flash of your coordinates. So I spamily abused it, trying to find myself on maps I found online... it didn't help. After exiting the game I found that it had filled my des...

Our phone woes have been remedied by a little box called a OBIhai (reminds me of Obad Hai, Grayhawk's nature deity) which was $50 to allow us phone calls through Google Voice.... for free. So we reconnected the internet, dropped the landline, and are looking into saying sayonara to AT&T entirely with alternate DSL providers. It's what they get for lacking grace. You don't value a customer and stick with them in hard times, you lose them. Something that annoyed me about seeing my adventure maps played on Youtube was the crappy attitude exhibited by some players. They cheated with abandon, complained about the requirement of reading to know where to go or to solve quests, and were generally ungrateful. It's as if being challenged or taking risks offended them. The coherent and thought-out story elements were dismissed as unnecessary dressing. Why do these people play? I really wonder. Is it just the Minecraft aesthetic that appeals to them? To be doing something ...

This year has been too adventuresome so far. Stop it, 2016! Trouble with vehicles and bills. We are currently without internet at home. I researched a bunch of companies for alternate ISPs and phone providers, but the choices are AT&T or some form of satellite internet (which is not ideal for gaming) since we live in the boonies. Still, we can play on our home network, and the kids can do without Skywars and TF2 for a few weeks. Actually, the modded minecraft map we were playing on met with a terrible accident on account of a misfire with a Flan's mod explosive weapon. Lost several chests... and I did not have a recent backup, so I was unhappy. I think I may port the map into Axpack 4 using Worldedit. The custom pack we were using for that is experimental anyway, trying out Ancient Warfare, Immersive Engineering, Witchery, and various others. I've been considering adding Mariculture into Axpack 4, which requires Enchiridion, and is divided into a bunch of modules. I thi...

According to Steam's recently played list on my profile you can get an idea about what my apparently favorite games are... perhaps the wrong idea in some cases. I present here my top 20 but not necessarily... with caveats. Also note, this is just what Steam has tracked. Fallout 3 No joke, and this doesn't even include all the hours I logged prior to owning it on Steam, which was probably another 200 hours to estimate conservatively. Also does not account for my children's play time. Plants vs. Zombies This one is a shared effort. At one time, the whole family was obsessed with this game. However, we haven't touched it in perhaps years. It'll take a long while before it's eclipsed. Garry's Mod Another family effort, I play it with the kids, and the kids play it on my account. Bethesda's Action/RPG Hits More Fallout and Elder Scrolls... I must like those. True. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance It was my obsession at the beginning of the yea...

It should go without saying this is my subjective opinion based on what I have played in 2015 (not necessarily released in 2015), so don't go saying "you're wrong!", because I can't be wrong about what entertained me. Take that mythical reader! Oh, and since I'm coming up with these on the spot, they are in no particular order. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain I can say hands down that this is my game of the year. It just did everything right in terms of gameplay and story (despite the missing mission 51). The number of hours I've poured into it eclipses even minecraft at this point (at least for this year). It is a testament to Kojima's masterful storytelling that he was able to evoke real emotional responses to characters in this game. You form a bond with your soldiers on Mother Base and with your support buddies. I'd say how, but that'd be spoilers, you really must see for yourself... and experience the guilt (mission 43) and grief ...

I've made some decent progress in Botania... having created the Terrasteel Agglomeration plate, I believe that surpasses what I've done before. It set up a wheat farm on my hill for the seeds required, automated by MF Reloaded Planter and Harvester. To make things more interesting and to pursue a few mods I was acquainted with, I decided to add in Ars Magica 2, Dragon Mounts, and Mo' Creatures. Ars Magica is a magic system I dabbled in before but did not make much progress in. It seemed more interesting than Thaumcraft and more intuitive as well. I have the basics set up on my second floor. Dragon mounts allows you to create eggs that the titular flying lizards bring into being. There are several types possible, IIRC based on the environment the egg is hatched in. Mo' Creatures is a mod that adds a bunch more things that want to kill you, but from what I've seen it's not unbalanced. The hp on the monsters are reasonable at least. As a result, the lan...

I have tested what I'm calling AxPack 4 for about a week now. A major snag with getting the mods to play nice was biomes o plenty having a tiff with Erebus over biome IDs, so I had to muck about in the config files. Something was borked, so I had to erase the configs folder, then uninstall both and add back Biomes O Plenty.  I don't know if Erebus will play nice now, but I don't feel like letting it back into the fold yet. Turns out Railcraft operates independently of Buildcraft now, so that's tidy. Actually, I didn't strictly need RC for the stated reason, Steel, because Mekanism's method works just fine. I've gotten into Botania but am dismayed that passive generation flowers decay and it can no longer be disabled in the config. The creator says it's to motivate upgrading to better flowers... fair enough. I am currently holed up in an Artifacts tower that I cleared. Troublesome clay golems in the basement. I actually ended up throwi...