Cybershaman

It's more of a reminder that the games we "own" on a digital distribution platform can go away without warning. Yes, this was an unusual case. Again, it's just a reminder that the games we've paid for will basically disappear if the service ever goes down in the future. We already have seen instances where older games have been removed from download. It's a point in favor of buying an actual physical copy. But, even that is becoming harder to do. Many "physical" game copies still download the entire game from places like Steam. We're heading for a day of reckoning. Sure, it might not be tomorrow or even within a few years. But, mark my words, within a decade or so, we're going to see a major snafu happen with a large digital distribution platform.

It sounds like they are restoring everything he had recorded transactions for. Still, this is a cautionary tale for what will likely happen in the future. :/

SidAlpha just posted an interesting video concerning an individual who discovered that his EA/Origin account was deleted along with all of his purchased games. At first, he couldn't get any help because, even though his profile page still partially came up, they saw no account details on their end and then just kind of dropped him, even deleting his support ticket. Long story short, he kind of got everything resolved eventually, but he was lucky that a moderator on Reddit caught wind of the fiasco and got in touch with a "real" (not just a generic level 1 customer support rep) person who could dive into things further. It appears that they had him create a new account and were in the process of manually adding back his games (sans microtransaction purchases and achievements) by having him provide transaction details for each one. This is just a taste of what's to come with regard to so-called "live services". You do NOT own the games you "purchase" through any of these services. I hope you guys find this as interesting (and chilling) as I do. Linkage: "EA deleted an Origin Account And All Of A Person's Games" by SidAlpha on 08/12/2018

Maybe someone joked about it when they almost got flooded out in 2008? :/ (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-06-14/business/0806130463_1_chicago-based-quaker-oatmeal-cedar-river) Or maybe some other time? That was all I was able to find. Urban legend, maybe? :/

I may have made an error in assuming that the number of mega-miners would scale with the usage of Bitcoin. But...did I really? If Bitcoin got that huge, there would certainly be more mega-miners. Considering that one Chinese mega-miner (from the video in question) spent $80k a month on electricity but was turning a 1.5 MILLION a month income from mining, I would think that even more miners would want to get in on the action. So, while the number of mega-miners wouldn't scale linearly with more usage, it would certainly increase. BTW, I sure am glad I bought my Asus GTX 1080 Ti Poseidon video card before all of the insanity happened this last year. Did anybody here get screwed out of getting a new video card by this? I have a couple of friends that did. I also posted a comment under the video about what's going to happen when mega-miners start dumping their cards onto the market. Or will they just use them until they burn out? I know from experience that if a component lasts more than a year or two, it will probably last a long time. But, then again, I wouldn't want to buy a card that, say, had been running 3DMark Extreme benchmark tests for over 2 years. I would be interested if anyone had some comments or thoughts about that. Should "caveat emptor" be even more of an issue when buying used video cards in the future? Hmmm... Food for thought!

Real Engineering (A YT channel run by a guy from the Netherlands w/ just shy of a million subs) just posted an interesting video about why Bitcoin is not working. Very interesting if anybody is interested in that sort of thing. Basically, (if I understood the material correctly) between the mega-miners (which will probably drop out of the game when the last new "coin" injected into the system is mined because their income will come solely from the transaction fee) and those involved solely from an investment standpoint (they don't really "use" the currency and are causing the value to be extremely unstable), Bitcoin will likely fail. The video also touches on how much of a resource hog Bitcoin is. (With the exception of possibly those located in Iceland where they use geothermal energy and the naturally cold air to cool the racks of equipment.) It's staggering to see how much energy Bitcoin actually uses overall. Currently, Bitcoin mega-miners require a staggering 30.1 TERAwatt hours per year to function. Put in perspective, that's the same amount the country of Serbia uses per year or 0.8% of what the entire United States uses*. Then, when you take into account that Visa which uses 0.19 terawatt hours per year, this is where it really starts to boggle the mind, especially when you compare the number of transactions that Visa does each year (111.2 billion) to Bitcoins (100 MILLION or, for decimal point's sake, 0.1 billion). If I'm doing my math correctly, that means that Bitcoin uses 15842% more power than Visa does to do 0.09% of the amount of transactions. That's just...insane. Am I doing my math right here? :/ That means that the amount of power that would be required to process Visa's number of transactions alone would be (as of 2014) %150 more than all of the countries of the planet combined. (Holy crap. Again, am I doing my math right???) I guess that's assuming if the mega-miners were still running. Would bitcoin even work without them now? I think it would, it would just take much longer to process transactions. My mind has already melted so I do not want to go there just yet. We'd have to get numbers for how many "normal" individual computers it would take and what their average power consumption was and... Sorry! That's it. My mind just blew up. Anyway, I hope this video is really as interesting as I thought it was! Take care, everybody! *I don't know where Real Engineering got their power usage figures from, but I used Wikipedia to find out the worldwide figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption.

Ross! See if this German word fits for your situation! I asked some friends of mine from Germany what word would best describe what you were talking about in your video. The recommended: 1) "Rosinenpickerei" which means "cherry picking" or literally "picking out the raisins". 2) "Haarspalterei" basically "hair splitting" That's all I could come up with. :/ I don't know, though. I think both of those don't quite mean what you want. There might be more to it than meets the eye. You know how sometimes one thing means something in one culture, but much much more in another? But, anyway... Maybe here's something that even German can't describe in one word! At least now you know a couple more German words!

Hey, guys! I just rediscovered a handful of small videos that I downloaded a LONG time ago that showcase various models for a, at the time, possible upcoming Wolfenstein or Quake game? (That's my best guess.) For the life of me, I can't remember when I actually downloaded them. I think it was in the late 90s, but the last modified date on the files is from 2003. (I think it was during a major system overhaul and any files I had backed up were just copied anew. ) ANYWAY, if someone could check them out and see if they could figure out what they were for it would be nice to clear up the mystery. I uploaded them to my Dropbox here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hubcqao4ouv2ku8/AAC4auLIQaa4cgl6BQIf-lTra?dl=0

Oh, man! I'm SO sorry, guys! I did a cursory search using my Mark 1 EB ("eyeball" ) and didn't see one. I guess I get an "E" for "effort"! Take care and happy new year!

This might be something Ross might want to take a look at. https://www.techspot.com/news/72437-renewed-proposal-seeks-dmca-exemption-abandoned-online-games.html

Sometimes Ross will zoom in on the main action. Especially if the HUD doesn't really change/add to the experience. Happens a lot when he reviews older games.

After rewatching this episode of Ross's Game Dungeon, I thought I would share one of my fondest memories of the game... One of my favorite aspects of DS1 was how its classless system worked. You would just work on using a particular weapon or type of spell and the game would come up with a name for your class based on your skill level in a particular area. Got a guy who's good with Melee and Nature Magic? You're a Paladin! So, one day around 2003, I got a bright idea... I would play the game all the way through and train ALL of my guys in EVERY area of expertise: Melee, Ranged, Nature Magic, and Combat Magic. What I did was pretty cool (at least I thought so). With a party of 8 (eventually), I would arrange them in a 2 wide x4 deep formation. The 2 guys in the front used the Melee skill, the next 2 used Ranged attacks, the next 2 Combat Magic, and, finally, the last 2 would alternate between using attack and healing Nature Magic in the form of lightning spells or individual healing before finally getting the group heal spell. When someone would level up a particular skill, I would rotate them back through the ranks and switch them to the next skill that I wanted them to improve. After a while, I began to see the results of my efforts when the game informed me that one of my guys was...a Master! Eventually, I finally ended up with what I was looking for: EVERY member of my group attained the level of...GRANDMASTER! Now, I have to mention one thing to any would be Grandmasters out there: this was one heck of a SLOG. I consider this approach to the game to be the equivalent of those who try to beat Fallout 4 without directly killing anyone. (Yes, it can be done! Please see http://kotaku.com/guy-beats-fallout-4-without-killing-anyone-nearly-brea-1749882569 for more info. It's a pretty crazy story!) It. Was. HARD! Creep and save is the order of the day when approaching the game in this fashion. Sometimes I would have to park my guys in an unreachable spot and have everybody who was able throw magic bombs or grenades (I think it was the Goblins that drop a grenade launcher) until it was safe enough to proceed or engage directly with my entire group. There were some areas of the game where I would have one guy sitting in a particular spot repeatedly chucking area effect stuff on a particular spot in the hope that the splash damage would eventually take out a target(s). On top of that, what does attaining the level of Grandmaster get you? Mostly just bragging rights. I know that certain weapons and spells will increase your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, but I always had the feeling that higher stats in those areas just simply allowed you to use better weapons and armors. I did a quick search and it looks like those attributes actually DO affect your character's performance (http://dungeonsiege.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Attributes_and_Skills) but I was never really able to scientifically demonstrate the benefits. In short, I really enjoyed playing the game in that fashion. Yes, at times it was mind numbingly grindy and torturous, but, hey... My guys were freaking GRANDMASTERS! After rewatching Ross's take on the game, I think I'm going to have to replay the game now. At least the first one. And I never did play the expansion to the first game so now I think I simply MUST play it again! Sadly, if I took any screenshots from the time I leveled my guys to Grandmaster, they apparently didn't survive to this day. At any rate, I really enjoyed this game and, yes, to my knowledge NO ONE has done anything similar to the approach they used in DS. If I ever make good on my promise to retrain a group of Grandmasters, I'll be sure to let you guys know and maybe I'll even document my progress. I still have a couple of favorite mods, one of which improved the enemy's A.I. and even sometimes allowed the enemies to have health potions themselves! (The other allowed your guys to automatically drink potions to replenish their health and mana.) I also went and downloaded the Ultima 5 and 6 mods because after hearing Ross say that the links were slowly going dead, I didn't want to miss an opportunity to try out what sounded like pretty awesome mods. Anyhoo, if you made it this far, I want to thank you for reading my giant Wall O' Text. Apparently, hanging out in Discord is where all the cool people go, so maybe someday I will join you guys for some delightful chat. Until then, Dungeon Siegers, stay frosty!

Thank you! Indeed, I did shleep well! Peace!

PS: believe it or not, right now I'm watching a couple of my favorite old Game Dungeon reviews to cheer me up before heading to bed. The channel really helped me through some tough times this last year and I return from time to time just to remind myself how to laugh. Nity nite!

Why, thank you kindly, Jeb! I'll keep it in mind as I get comfortable. I'm naturally a pretty easy going person, but I have to get over my apprehension of eventually "telling my sad story" (of my disability), which will happen at some point. I don't know. I've got it down to practically a science, now. I can tell it pretty quickly. But, it's still hard to get through. Oh, well. Carpe diem, right? Take 'er easy, buddy!