#kieuecaprie rambles

[kieuecaprie]

chat, i think my copy of Deltarune Chapter 3 is bugged, it's all ogre.

No, you can't skip the video, believe me I tried.

It's the Steam Deck boot video issue all over again, lmao.

[kieuecaprie]

A retooling of one of my OCs, mostly comes from me fretting over her pattern that I've just decided to simplify her look. Her ears still have the spots on them, they're just not visible in the front angle.

In any case, my excuse is that she's older and her fur's grown to look more like her mother's rather than the odd patterning she had for the longest time.

I have a faint idea of why there is an adventurer ranking system on there. You can hear my ramblings in the read more if you'd like, or not. It's whatever.

Also, to explain the Adventurer thing, I imagine that, in her time period, which would be close to our own, the adventurer's guild only issues D-Rank licenses to those looking to do odd jobs and maybe get paid since, well, it's the modern era, adventures are far and few in between and technology has kind of trivialized many aspects of life, including magic.

D-Ranks back in the day used to be those adventurers who would go and "kill the rats in the basement" or "find the village idiot's seven pages". Nowadays, it's just a fancy way of saying "this person will do any sort of odd job you may have in exchange for money".

Amelia was kind of urged to sign up (maybe pressured by the fact that her mother and father were accomplished adventurers) to get herself out of her little hidey hole and maybe make something of herself. Maybe.

[kieuecaprie]

Rejected from the whitelist for WizDen's Salamander for not having enough time/visibility. Asked for clarification and I got it (albeit it's more of a "it's really just what it says") so I don't really have a reason to be mad about that (the admins (yes, plural) were quick enough to answer me so I appreciate it, it kind of stemmed the tide a bit).

Am I upset? Well, yes, it's hard not to be. I thought I had everything planned out but turns out it wasn't enough.

So I guess I'm just gonna have to get more time in; More time, more experience, might actually be helpful in the end, SS14 is not an easy game by any means if your heart is set on anything other than graytiding.

My only concern now is that my time on Hopper is fast approaching its end:

I'll carefully manage this time from here on, gotta pick more trainee roles and learn as much as I can before I inevitably get thrown out of the babyjail. The thought of joining the other WizDen servers is daunting after I've just gotten comfortable with Hopper's denizens, it's not easy for me to join in a community, despite my apparent mannerisms.

And maybe once I'm more experienced and when the time is right, I'll try again, 'cause that's how it is, right?

[kieuecaprie]

They've finally revealed the prices literally the day before it releases.

600 NeoCash ($6's worth) for a random style of a specific pet species.

1,400 NeoCash ($14's worth) for a style of your choice.

That's... well, it's not terrible. It's actually way cheaper than I imagined it (I was expecting it to be high 1000's to low 2000's worth of Neocash).

The way you apply it looks like it's gonna be *kinda* annoying if there's no easy way to flip between customization and styling studio.

Also, can we please talk about how the new Lutari NPC they've made for said NC shop is canonically non-binary and looks like this?

Part of me wishes they would allow people to set pronouns for themselves and their pets (even if it would make the "gender" thing rather vestigial outside of the royalboy/royalgirl and elderboy/eldergirl colors) but that might be a bit of an ask with the, what, 25 year old spaghetti code?

[kieuecaprie]

For some reason, I wanted to make a bash script that lets me swap between the original Arzette and the Farcette mod for Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore on my Steam Deck.

An hour of stealing, I mean, writing a bash script later, I was able to cobble together a shitty mess of code that somehow manages to do what I wanted it to do in the least-efficient way possible

Costs 2GB because it backs up Arzette and Farcette's video files in a separate folder that's kept in the main directory and it only works when the game is installed on the internal drive but now I can sorta swap between Arzette and Farcette at my leisure without any pesky file-swapping.

I'm not gonna distribute the script, though, it's a fucking nightmarish abomination and missing things that I'd feel would be necessary (a way to look for alternative directories, for one...) and I don't feel like it's clean and efficient enough. Plus I would need to figure out why the terminal keeps screaming at me about the gameoverlay...

At least it was a good learning experience though, learned a lot about zenity and how if statements worked in bash and learned there's no goto by default so I have a fucking nightmare on my hands.

[kieuecaprie]

just abandoned twitter. sure, this place isn't much better but there aren't many other places i could go. yes, i have a bluesky but i don't use it enough as something other than me being in "spectator mode", and cohost is... cohost, a little too quiet.

from here on out, the only active socmed accounts i have is on here and cohost. i have one on bluesky but don't expect me to post there unless things get dire.

[kieuecaprie]

It's been nearly half a year now since I pledged to play almost exclusively on Steam Deck when it comes to PC gaming out of spite of my Steam Year in Review.

So far, it's been quite exciting fiddling with the proverbial knobs and doodads to try and get games running and feeling a sense of rush when I got a game to run at a stable framerate.

Hell, I know I might end up as that guy in the pictures with all the swords pointing at him with the smug look on his face but I've begun to appreciate 30 FPS again. Is it ideal? Not particularly, 60 will always feel better but in some situations, playing at 30 is no big deal. I mean, I did play HELLDIVERS 2 for a while averaging 23-30 FPS per mission before I, well, burned out.

Most of my usual haunt games ran well which is a plus and while it could handle most of the bigger hitting games such as the aforementioned HD2, Dragon's Dogma 2 proved to be quite the insurmountable obstacle.

What I mean is that the framerate isn't stable enough to be worth trying. Now, saying that, the FPS for that game is getting better, I just hope Capcom could, you know, finish up the performance optimizations so I can know for sure if it'll work. I just want the framerate to remain steady, I'll take 20-25 if I have to!

Docked experience is semi-decent, it's not perfect, but it's getting there, and it does work with my capture card which is a huge plus even though it does sometimes freeze up or stop sending sound for inexplicable reasons.

I still wish I could play certain games on my Deck that I've been walled off of but I'll take what I can get. I'm having a good time with the stuff I got already and the library of games I have is pretty big.

I wonder what my Steam in Review will look like at the end of all this? I'm looking forward to seeing that giant pie slice labelled "Steam Deck"!

[kieuecaprie]

Played Lethal Company last night. I think a piece of art I saw earlier summed it up best. To paraphrase: "Looks like a Phasmophobia + SCP game but is actuallly Pikmin 2 + SCP", which absolutely makes sense.

Now I'm just waiting for a Waterwraith-like entity to be put into the game just to make everyone collectively shit themselves (and die)

[kieuecaprie]

[kieuecaprie]

I checked out the Preview update of SteamOS 3.5 now that it's free from the clutches of the Main channel (which is mostly just dev builds, I believe?).

So far, I have not run into any serious issues from the get-go, Decky Loader worked perfectly fine, even though VibrantDeck and the Steam Deck update's vibrancy functions made sure that my retinas are burned by the colors, so I turned the former off.

Tested out SD card mounting by playing an emulated game and it seems to work, guess they actually did add a symlink after all, which is great news for all of us.

I also got real puzzled by the inclusion of NIS before I was told, after searching, that it was Nvidia Image Sharpening. Apparently it upscales if you set the display lower than 720p? Sounds neat but apparently it doesn't net any extra frames over FSR.

Another cool thing is that they updated the Gamescope too, so now it shows Throttling which, for me, is showing as "Power". I have no idea what that means in the grand scheme of things but maybe it's a profile or something? I'll have to take a better look at it.

Maybe I should go back and test out a few games to ensure it works but so far the SteamOS update hasn't done anything bad to me SO FAR. I'll keep ya'll posted.

[kieuecaprie]

Slowly beginning to set up my neocities again. It's going to be a place to put all my sock-meds as well as other miscellaneous stuff like OC character profiles and shit.

I'll probably put a post on here whenever I have a new OC profile up for those who decide to care about it. Right now, I plan to have two OCs with their profiles written up with their own page on there.

[kieuecaprie]

So far, computing on my Steam Deck isn't that bad actually. Being in desktop mode with a mouse and keyboard doesn't feel that much different from my desktop, although it seems to have a hard time using Steam Input for non-steam games which is only an issue for FFXIV since I use a custom layout for that game (easy enough to just play in Game Mode for that one).

It's not THE best experience but it's definitely serviceable, and the lower power usage means I'm not cooking myself in whatever room I find myself in, a bonus.

[kieuecaprie]

There are days that I'm honestly glad to own a handheld PC, this is one of them.

Not because my PC is out of commission or playing on-the-go or anything, no, it's because it's too FUCKING WARM.

[kieuecaprie]

Making a cross-hotbar for melee DPS that works for me in FFXIV feels like I'm playing the inventory management game from RE4. Trying to find space to fit in the shotgun that is the melee combo while shoving the fish labelled "oGCD" somewhere while ensuring I can still fit in the RPG (a high-damage ability with a long cooldown) somewhere.

Sure, it's not a perfect 1:1 metaphor but it honestly feels that trying to find something that works for me is definitely like jostling things around and hoping they fit perfectly.

[kieuecaprie]

Y'know, I find it quite funny that Sony has cocked up their PSVR2 PC Adapter launch this badly.

There's been no pre-orders, listings are being upped ON THE DAY at what seems like a glacial pace, no announcements about what retailers will be carrying it outside of Amazon and their official store doesn't even mention it despite the fact that there's apparently a page for it already.

It's almost comical lmao.

[kieuecaprie]

Kartrider Drift shutting down in global is giving me flashbacks to when MapleStory 2 was shutting down in global for much of the same reasons as now: not enough players, probably not worth the risk of attempting pay-to-win while they still had a western audience, etcetera etcetera etc.

Man, I should really just stop trusting Nexon with these, huh? I mean, at least this time I didn't waste money on a bunch of founders packs only for them to turn around and say "Welp, this isn't an instant hit, time to go." but while this time they are saying they'll come back, I have my doubts.

After all, MapleStory 2 never came back (albeit there was no promise to come back), so who's to say that Kartrider Drift will even come back to global audiences?

Sigh. Welp, at least I have Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers to play if I want my Kart Racing itch scratched (Mario Kart notwithstanding).