adventuredog The dog and I are buying days until winter covers all this up with snow and cold, and we’re grabbing a few last #autumn walks while we still can. Or adventure on Friday afternoon gave us a bit of perfect weather, a gentle and calm river to admire and a few remaining leaves to crunch under our feet.

It’s been a while since Cricket wanted to make a video, but it was such a beautiful day in the dog park that she just could not help posing and climbing and watching all the birds playing in the leaves.

gamerdad I got a string of annoyed comments from the Kid who wanted to watch something on our main television last night that wasn’t me playing an obtuse card game.

The problem with #roguelike games (in this particular context, at least) is that, no, I cannot give you an estimation of when I will be done and we can turn off the playstation so you can watch netflix, sorry.

To make matters worse I was having a great run, had made it further than I had to date, and kept pulling great hands to match my collection of multiplier-joker cards.

“I thought you said you were almost done.”

No, in fact I specifically said I couldn’t tell when I would be done, only that I had never made it this far before and there was no way this lucky streak could last. Which—it didn’t, and soon enough I had put down the controller and we had got on with family-tv-watching night.

Now, usually I wake up in the morning, make a coffee, feed the dog and thumb though the news on my ipad. This morning I made my coffee, fed the dog, and booted the playstation back up making sure to mute the television in the quiet house while everyone was still sleeping. I didn’t quite recreate my lost lucky streak, but—hey—the day is still young.

gamerdad A confluence of events and stuff meant that I cashed in my Playstation Stars and bought a reward points copy of this #roguelike card game. I had been listening to one of my favourite video game casts a couple weeks ago and they had mentioned this with enough enthusiasm that it made its way onto my #wishlist and’s spoiled my curiosity. Who doesn’t need a chill sit on the couch and play a low stakes card game game? Huh?

I’ll report more when I come up for air again?

gamerdad I actually wanted to play Tropico on my console, it was that kind of afternoon, but alas the video game sale gods thwarted my ambitions and that title was not on sale. What is the next best thing, and doesn’t involve buying another copy of a game I already own on Steam? How about Anno 1800? I vaguely recall hearing something about that previously.

They all start to blur together tho don’t they?

The real blur after playing all these top down, #realtimestrategy #citybuilder type of games is that in my forty years of gamer experience I’ve honestly lost track, and playing a game like this should be like riding a bike—but with a control pad, blah blah blah, you get my point. I don’t want to put too many black marks on my initial two hours with Anno 1800 but this was not exactly the case. In fact, I lost my first 30 minutes of play because the game not only let me paint myself into a resource corner, it egged me on while I did so. That’s to say, it gave me two goals for which I only had the resources to do one, and when I did the first and obvious one I couldn’t make the resources for the second because the outcome of the second was a building that manufactured those resources. I restarted rather than trying to puzzle it out—which i’m not even sure puzzling it out was possible.

In the end I played a lot further, fought a few more control and interface puzzles that really should have been better (read: more conventionally) designed and will probably start this whole level/campaign over next time just because I’ve actually learned a bunch more about what’s going on with that first couple hours: a common complaint online which usually was hit with the caveat that is a good game after the learning curve.

But again, um Ubisoft, why are you reinventing the wheel here, huh?

8r4d Spectacles, used books and #coffee on a Saturday #downtown adventure.

gamerdad I’ve been playing this game in a very specific way, and I’m not one hundred percent sure it is the most standard way of approaching the game.

See, I’m really into contract work.The game has this aspect where rather than spending energy and time planting and waiting and harvesting and selling, you can instead jump into the guts of the farming on land that you own in-game and do one off contracts for other farmers. You rent the right equipment right there in the contract screen and then, wham-o, you are off and cultivating. My wife was watching me play and after making fun of me (lightly teasing, really) for playing at all she asked about the mechanics of the play system…and I explained contracts to her.

And as I worked thru it that not only that it is simpler to jump into and harvest someone else’s crop but that you make a buttload more cash doing it that way, too. So win-win, right? Right?

Right?!?

8r4d #running this evening felt very #autumn and once again we were back to needing headlamps and jackets—tho I managed to forget my jacket. Brr!

gamerdad I’ve stumbled into this sim again.

No, I haven’t previously written about my forays into virtual farming with the Farming Simulator series, but occasionally I do find some quiet time to pick away at a contract and harvest some wheat or bale some hay and sit quietly doing something that seems deeply productive while being absolutely video-game-style pointless.

Don’t judge.

No, but seriously, the truth of it is that in the vast world of simulator-style games, Farming Simulator has found an interesting enough niche that piggybacks off a long history of mobile and freemium games like Farmville, and steps one step closer to realism than a lifestyle sim like Stardew Valley, for example.

I have dabbled in three or four generations of this franchise now, and I do find a bit of a flow state now that I’ve figured out how to just work away at the fun bits and not fret the deeper end of the business sim stuff.

I did some writing earlier this evening and so kicked back with the Playstation opting to dive into something that didn’t require much brain power.

gamerdad Don’t ask me why I never bought this book when I saw it on the discount rack at Chapters, but I didn’t and so ultimately (after it stuck in my craw for long enough) I bought the audiobook version and have been diving into the strange parallel reality of this little science fiction meets dramatic character story.

I honestly don’t have a great sense of where this story is going yet. While it is technically a science fiction novel, the sci fi aspect is light in favour of the deep dive character drama that tells the story of this odd fellow named Belt who is either deeply troubled by mental illness or has some unique talent that is unappreciated enough by the world that he comes across so. The construct of the world is that there are these little fuzzy hamster-like robots that are as ubiquitous as an iPhone might be in our world, and people carry them around and perform all manner or complex ritual that is alike a metaphor for social media and technology addiction.

I will read on and try to decipher the puzzle, though, before I proclaim to understand more.

8r4d Sights from this mornings #autumn #trails #running

8r4d In mid October the temperatures are starting to fall as fast as the leaves from the trees, but the trails are just clear enough to tease out one last pre-winter run. #running #runcrew #autumn

8r4d Our regular Thursday #runcrew #running adventure was diverted from our usual Mill Creek routine and instead we did a chilly six through Blackmud Creek as the #autumn #sunset hit some groovy vibes.

gamerdad I finished book five about a week ago and I’m already onto another read, but I figured I should at least give Bob and his clones a proper send off.

These are decent books and I do like them, but I will say that book five was a bit more scattered than the previous four. There was a solid plot, yeah, and the story progressed in a long arc sort of way, but the whole thing seemed a bit more like there were a half dozen short stories shuffled together like a deck of cards into a single novel-sized package. The series had already been about a guy who (spoiler alert) digitally clones himself and propagates across the galaxy, so there are increasingly more stories to tell as the bob-iverse expands and branches and subdivides infinitely onwards.

So I guess if the author really is aiming for a teen book series as he claims in his blog, he’d better figure out how to focus the story—at least in my opinion.

8r4d Just a quiet video of some autumn colours. They fade so quickly each year, don’t they? Just take a few minutes to enjoy them.

pixelazy Another few splashes of #autumn colour for you.

adventuredog Posing pretty in the #autumn colours. She was not as excited to be out here as normal. Maybe it was the odd construction noise in the distance, or maybe she’s more of a summer dog?

8r4d It kinda seems like there is some #construction shenanigans afoot at the dog park this week. I can’t tell if they’re doing some seriously hard core trail maintenance or if they are putting down a foundation to actually pave the whole four kilometre loop after twenty years. These guys were just hauling gravel crush from one place to the work site, but there were about a dozen workers hanging about. #dogpark

8r4d The autumn colours were in full force this week, and it’s only a matter of days before the snow falls. Enjoy this rare view of a sunny orange run thru the Edmonton suburbs

8r4d Our #autumn #runclub night was an orange delight and we tackled about 8k of asphalt #running as the sun set and blew up the colours. Oh, and it’s getting chilly out there folks!

gamerdad It kinda strikes me that at some point someone was bound to get a little tired of the graphics are king style of game design and look back fondly on those days of simple blocky games with an easy-to-understand premise. Like SimCity. Remember SimCity? The classic SimCity? Remember? The one where you just built the three zones and connected roads together and made a giant zen-state city that had a few simple metrics to follow.

I mean, oh sure, SimCity got big and then Cities Skylines took over and now with the second edition getting mixed reviews all over the place the PS5 version is seemingly delayed indefinitely or something. AWOL at best, I guess. What do I know? But whatever, those games got immensely complex and crazy and you were juggling so many things it just seemed like work. Like, if they could just put in a little slider-knob at the start that says something like “make it play like in 1993” and I’d actually use that on occasion. Those old versions were simple and fun, and I do like the complexity, but sometimes I like the simple stuff too.

Little Cities seems like someone got my vibe check and was like, yeah, let’s make the old SimCity but—since someone already made it—let’s build it in VR so that we have a gimmick to sell it under and—yeah. Old school SimCity. I’ll be back.

8r4d If you’re not a #violin player chances are you’ve never really payed any attention to the intricacies of the parts of the instrument itself.

I’ve been in #orchestra for about five years now and playing for over eight, and it was in about my second year that I upgraded from my student violin to a fancier model. The student model came fully equipped with all the little bits to make it easier to play, including a full set of fine tuners. But when I upgraded, the luthier from whom I bought it said something like “this one doesn’t have them and we can always add them if you want to later…” and I bought it and have been mucking around tuning my violin with the pegs for years.

Which is fine.

But I was sitting there struggling the other day for the thousandth time and it occurred to me that I should probably price out what it would cost me to put on some fine tuners… which of course turned out to be about fifteen bucks via a next day shipping order from Amazon. In other words, I’ve been struggling for years thinking this was a complex problem when it was about as complex sitting in the dark for five years before just ordering fresh light bulbs for a burnt out lamp.

In other other words, my violin now has fine tuners and my tuning is immensely finer.

pixelazy The #autumn colours are on full display this week, even tho the #rain is making it harder to explore

8r4dsfeets #autumn is in momentary colours