Horizon Zero Dawn: Text Datapoint (Quests) 34

 This datapoint is a little bit glitchy. The map changes after your first visit.

It's in here. You'll enter the facility automatically during the Deep Secrets of the Earth story mission, or you can re-enter it from this entrance later.

Text Datapoint (Quests) 34 is in the office. The area it's sitting on is damaged after the mission, which makes this one glitchy.

If it's not here, reload and run back. If you're lucky, it will spawn. If not, try shutting the entire game down and restarting. It's annoying, but it should load in eventually.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Audio Datapoint 40

 

I had trouble finding this one, so here you go.

Audio Datapoints 34-46 (if I recall correctly) are in this facility. You'll enter it automatically during the Deep Secrets of the Earth story mission, or you can re-enter it from this entrance later.

Datapoint 40 is easy to miss because it's on an upper level, unlike the others. To reach it, you'll need to find a ladder. If you stand at the entrance to the next room and look back and to the right, you'll be able to see it.

Climb up, jump around the three pins to the right, and let Aloy drop onto the upper level. Turn around and you should see it at the end of the path.

Boyfriend Dungeon

There was a lot about this game that I liked. It was, overall, a cute, quirky, fun game that was quite quick to finish. But, there was also something about it that bothered me, and it took me a while to put my finger on what it was.

First, I need to describe the game. You - a player-insert character with a fully customisable name and appearance - are spending the summer in Verona, California, with your cousin. Yes, this is a Romeo + Juliet reference. You haven't had much dating experience, so this is going to be your hot girl/guy/enby summer. Also, some humans in this world can turn into weapons and you can date them.

Basically, this is a romantic visual novel/dungeon crawler. Like I said, it's quite fun to play. But...none of the datable characters really appealed to me. They were all very 'meh.' I don't care about them, I don't particularly want my character to date them, I don't think they're cute. This is entirely a matter of taste, and someone else might feel very differently.

This does, however, lead me to the other problem which is, this game doesn't really care what you, the player, thinks. Despite positing the main character as being a self-insert, the game assigns them opinions and character traits. Don't want the dagger to kiss you? Tough, she's going to, and your characters reactions will range from 'happy' to 'super happy.' Don't particularly care if the talwar breaks up with you? No, you're wrong, you're heartbroken and your only dialogue choices will reflect that. Want a platonic relationship with the estoc? You don't have to agree to sleep with him, but the game still insists on treating him as a potential romantic partner which is, quite frankly, incredibly surreal placed next to the plot regarding an unwanted admirer. Oh that guy's creepy persistence is a problem but this guy is fine?

Now, I don't have a problem with playing a character who is an actual character. Tbh, I kind of miss it. Most of the games I've been playing recently are self-inserts. But if you're going to give me an actual character to play, don't pretend they're me. Let them just be who they are. Otherwise, I'm just going to feel the incongruity of having words put in my mouth when none of the dialogue choices are things I'd actually want to say.

As far as I can tell, nothing in this game requires that your character be a sweet ingenue, so stop forcing me to be one. If you want to specifically tell a story about a sweet ingenue, fine, but be open that that's what you're doing and that the character is a specific character and not whoever the player wants them to be.

I got this game in the Pride Humble Bundle, along with several others, so it worked out as costing £1.67. I played it for 13.8 hours, and I can't say I wouldn't recommend it, especially at that price. What you get out of it will depend on how closely your opinions align with the developers. Someone who's taste or personality is more similar to the lead character probably won't feel the dissonance that I felt.

I Built a New PC!

 Any regular readers - do I have those? Or just people who google for specific guides? - will know that I bought my PC in 2013 and that's why The Sims 3 looks like that. I've now built a new one. Well, almost new. 

It all started with The Forgotten City, a time-travel adventure a la Sexy Brutale, Elsinore, and Groundhog Day. Your character gets transported almost 2000 years back in time to a Roman city which lives under the threat of The Golden Rule.

Not that one.

The Golden Rule is thou must not cause harm to others, including stealing, injuring, or threatening to kill them. If anyone breaks the rule, everyone in the city will be turned into golden statues. This has happened at least once before, since the city is full of said statues already. Your job - should you choose to accept it rather than continue in infinite loops - is to figure out who will break the rule and stop them, so the day you keep repeating doesn't end with everyone dying.

It was a great game and I was obsessed with it for about a fortnight. After that, I was still obsessed with it, but I'd completed it several times - just to see if I could do it any faster, or with no deaths at all, or in a shorter time - and had all the achievements. It was then that I remembered that The Forgotten City began life as a Skyrim mod, an extra questline/area added by a member of the community. So, if I wanted to play the game again but the first time, that was the way to do it.

I wasn't sure if I was going to like Skyrim. I'm not generally into action games and first person games make me motion sick. So I bought it for the cheapest possible price, by buying an old CD code (since the original version is disabled on Steam). 

Turns out, I love Skyrim. It's like The Sims 3 but with one person and they kill dragons. It has all the roleplaying that I like and it didn't even make me motion sick. When it went on sale, I bought the special edition with all the DLC, since that was cheaper than buying the DLC for the old version and I've now been playing it for a few months. I've reached the point of Skyrim where half the game is adding mods then trouble-shooting the mods you just added to see if your save will still load.

Skyrim was originally released in 2011, so my PC could handle it, but mods were pushing it. I'm starting a graduate scheme in September, which will mean more money coming in. Those things together made now seem like a good time to upgrade, since I'll have two months with nothing to do but play.

I started by using UserBenchMark to see how my PC was doing. It turns out, my little integrated graphics card was performing better than 99% of its sisters, that is, the same graphics card installed in different machines. Unfortunately, that card was only getting about 3% of the performance of newer cards, and it wasn't the best since it's just the one that's installed in my i5-4440, that is the CPU that came installed in my PC. That was the obvious upgrade. I also wanted to get a solid state drive, or SSD, which is faster than my old hard-drive, and some new RAM.

I used PCPartPicker to pick out some pieces that would match. I ended up needing a new pc case - did you know graphics cards are huge? - and a new motherboard. I first got a second-hand Nvidia GTE 1060 which was £125 second-hand. I starting writing this post about 9 months ago and that one kept breaking down, so I've since replaced it with an AMD RX 580 which is working a lot better. That was £100 second-hand.

I first upgraded the RAM to 8gb of Patriot Viper DDR3, then to 16gb. Since the 16gb is also Patriot Viper DDR3, after installing it, I put the 8gb into the other two slots, and they all seem to be working together. It's probably not working as well as if I'd somehow bought one pack of 24gb RAM, but it's working better than 16gb by itself, so I'll take it. The 16gb cost around £40, and the 8GB was £25. For context, you're ideally supposed to buy all your ram sticks in one package, because then all the sticks will have been tested to make sure they work smoothly together. If you don't do that, using the same brand increases your chances of them being compatible. Or so I've read. Go on and correct me if I'm wrong.

I can't remember what my old motherboard was, but now it's a second-hand Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H which is working great. That was £30 on eBay. I don't remember if I strictly needed to replace it, or if I just wanted to. The case was also about £30. I also needed a new power supply, which was £25.

That's about as far as I can go with that, since I didn't want to buy a new CPU. At some point, I'll need to buy a new CPU, which will mean buying a new motherboard, which will mean buying new RAM. That's because, a few generations after the i5, the way the core connects to the motherboard changed. The i5-4440 has an 1150 socket, so it can only be attached to motherboards with that same connector. The RAM connectors also changed. Upgraded motherboards tend to accept DDR4 RAM, not DDR3.

I upgraded my hard drive to a Crucial MX500 1TB solid state drive, which cost just shy of £80. I did also need a new SATA cable, which was about £12. I still have my old hard drive in there. I use it to store Steam games that don't suffer from being on the slower drive. In theory, I can still plug in the CD drive from my original PC, but it won't fit into the case, so I need to leave the cables sticking out through one of the air holes if I want to do that and kind of balance the CD drive next to it.

Anyway, this whole thing was much, much easier and cheaper than I expected it to be. The first round of upgrades came to around £330, which is about what I paid for the PC back in 2013, and the second round was another £140. There were some tricky moments, but nothing I couldn't get past with a YouTube tutorial. 

When wiring the thing together, make sure it's switched off and look out for static electricity. Don't wear anything fluffy, don't work on a carpet, and remember to earth yourself by touching something metal before touching your PC. The trickiest bit was resetting the motherboard by purposefully connected two pins with a metal screwdriver, and that was mostly because I'd read so many warnings about static electricity that purposefully causing electricity to arc through the motherboard seemed daunting. It worked though. Don't do that unless your specific motherboard needs it. Mine did because it was second-hand and the previous owner had set a password on it.

Skyrim is now running smoothly with 300+ mods, so that's what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future.

Switch Pro Controller Shoulder Buttons Won't Work for Death Stranding on Steam

 Death Stranding has some finicky controls, and it's impossible to play unless you're able to use the trigger buttons to steady yourself. Unfortunately, there's an issue with trigger buttons being completely unrecognised if you're playing with a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller via Steam.

To fix it, right click on the game in your library and go to manage controller. It should be using the official layout, as shown below.

Click on edit layout, and then on 'triggers' in the list on the left.

Here's the problem. The game knows the left and right shoulder buttons are supposed to be the left and right triggers, but this layout isn't telling it how to do that. Click on 'add command' and then on 'mouse' along the top.

Set both the 'right trigger' options to right mouse click, and both the 'left trigger' options to left mouse click. You're telling the controller that, when you press those shoulder buttons, the game should do whatever it would do if you clicked the left and right mouse buttons. Which is what you want, since those are set to the trigger buttons.

Voila. Go ahead and transport those corpses to incinerators. It's a lot less unpleasant when you're not falling over at every step.

Edit: Unfortunately, I have so far not found a solution for vehicles, so I'm having to reluctantly switch to using the keyboard when driving.

Skyrim Invisible NPC Body

I've just had an issue with Skyrim that google didn't know the answer to. One of my NPCs - Rumarin from interesting NPCs - had an invisible body. Usually, this issue is due to an armour mesh being broken, so the solution would be to reinstall any armour mods and verify the game files in Steam. That wasn't the problem I had. Rumarin was invisible in both the thieves armour, which showed fine for other characters, and in no armour.

The problem I had, it turned out, was that somehow, the NPC had been set to "invisible race." The fix was to open the console (tilde key,~, below the esc key), highlight the NPC - either click on them or type "prid <ref ID>" - then type "setrace <race>", in this case, "HighElf."

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 5, The Dragon(s)

 

Hialeah has been working on her ice sculptures. This is Richard in werewolf form.

Bunny is a very proud mother. And grandmother.

Remy finally achieves his lifetime goal of mastering the bass guitar, drums, guitar, and keyboards! Annoyingly, it was only when I was literally halfway through the final skill point that I realised I'd never bought him the faster skills learning thing.

Alarmed by hearing that a change may have affected his descendant, Remy heads to the future.

Fortunately, Tory is fine. Remy swears he will protect him and make sure he exists. Especially when he finds out that Tory inherited his skill with music.

Tory believes he is Hialeah's descendant. That has been bothering Remy, but now he thinks he knows what it means. So he goes to see Lola Belle, Hialeah's on-again, off-again girlfriend. They've been struggling because Lola Belle refuses to publicly commit to Hialeah or acknowledge her as a girlfriend...so how about if she and Remy have a baby together? It will be a Locklear, almost like having Hialeah's child. And Remy will have a descendant, who can be Tory's ancestor.

Lola is enthusiastic. She explains she can't marry Hialeah, since her fans would never accept her as a lesbian. But a baby...

Since they have incompatible orientations (i.e., they are both gay) they use artificial insemination, by which I mean, I used pregnancy cheats.

Back home, Remy starts by telling Hialeah about Tory.

"...and, much like a conductor, I have arranged events."

"I mean, you know how important it is to protect family, right?"

"I knew you'd understand! Lola Belle and I are having a baby."

Hialeah does not agree that this is brilliant plan.

The argument goes on for a while. Since they are siblings, they do refrain from calling each other's mother a llama, but Remy does bring up the vampire thing. "YOU got your immortality by sucking blood! I just want to keep Tory alive!"

"You've always thought you were smarter than me, but what ideas did you have?"

"Well, I hope you're happy."

"Yes! I AM happy that Tory will be healthy!"

Hialeah declares Remy her nemesis and storms off. She's going to move to another city and start a new life, because that's what she does when traumatic things happen. Only, this time, she's not taking her brothers.

Remember that I'm combining two zodiac challenges to guide my generations here. The guidelines for the dragon for this challenge are:

Your home life was too perfect! You now feel the need to act out and explore all your options.

• Have Hot Headed trait
• Have at least one good friend and one enemy (can be siblings)
• Date two people before falling in love
• Have one child

For Hialeah, her enemy is Remy. Her good friend is Richard.

She's dated Lola Belle and also her university girlfriend.

She doesn't have a child.

Richard is also a dragon, since he's 12 years younger than Hialeah, and because dragon is my own sign, so I decided to have two. 

His enemy is his ex, Hannah. His good friend is his sister, Hialeah.

He has two children so far, Guilherme and Sakura, but he's not the heir, so having twins isn't a problem.

He's accomplished his lifetime wish of earning three degrees.

So, Hialeah needs to fall in love and have a child. She also needs to accomplish her lifetime wish. It's currently to get good ratings on 100 architecture jobs, but I knew from the beginning that that would change. She just hasn't yet discovered what it will change to.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 5, The Dragon(s)

I do still think of this as an ongoing project, I just haven't been playing for a while. 

Richard is enjoying being both a father and a werewolf. I haven't interacted much with his werewolfness. I'm not really sure what you can do with it in this game.

Chelsea takes a trip to the future, presumably to catch up on some old friends.

Presumably, the famous author is Richard, who is currently working on a novel. I guess whatever he's looking at right now is "research."

The ancient junkbot must be RJ-73, who, along with Hialeah, is currently taking care of Chelsea and Richard's babies.

Remy was at the subway station, practicing bass guitar and occasionally hopping in the magic mood car for recovery. Him gaining his lifetime wish is still the sticking point for the storyline I have in mind.

Paradise Killer - Accelerated Justice

 The achievements for Paradise Killer now include a speed run, Accelerated Justice. The goal is to finish the game within ten minutes.

If you've played the game, most of this is obvious. 

• Click through every conversation as fast as you can. 
• After the opening cut scenes, run to the door.
• Click through Shinji,.
• Run to Starlight.
• Use the nightmare computer on the gate, jump off the platform.
• Run to Lydia.
• Click through the judge.
• Go to the entrance of the court house
• Open the door, then immediately return to the judge. 
• Grab your gun, return to judge. 
• Click through the first trial. Don't save afterwards (I tried and I don't think you can get the speed run from a save, plus the save itself uses up some time, but do tell me if I'm wrong). This is the only time you need to change the default choice in a conversation.
• Click through the second trial, the execution, and the bar cutscene.
• Make a beeline for Lydia (70 seconds). 
• Then all you have to do is click fast (about 30 seconds of talking).

This was my route to Lydia.

Jump over the railing at the first corner.

Aim for the grass.

Aim for Lady Love Dies tower, then aim for the gap between the two buildings when you can see it.

Run between the buildings and hop the fence at the end.

Keep running forwards and hop another fence. Angle towards the ladder as you fall.

What ladder? This ladder. Climb up, go through the door to the left.

Weave through the tunnels, past Crimson and out.

Over another fence.

Aim for the left side of the big rock so you can weave your way around the corner.

Strafe up this ramp and carry on forwards, towards Lydia.

Turn for this one so you're facing Lydia at the top.

Here she is!

...and the achievement should pop here.