Essence_of_Meh

I’d love to be able to approach the topic from a more neutral or even positive stance (I really like the idea of AI on a conceptual level) but I simply hate how it came to be and how it functions nowadays. Existence of open source models does help but it’s not easy to change my mind on this with all the other stuff surrounding the tech. Well, that and I don’t have the hardware to run local models anyway.

Yeah, it’s mostly a mix of “I don’t trust them to act I as I want” and “I don’t like feeling responsible for AI”. It’s not really a Stalker thing either, I just like wandering on my own in games. I’ll most likely give them a shot here just to test things out but that’s about as far as my plans go for companionship at the moment.

I’m always wary when it comes to gen-AI powered NPCs. On one hand I can appreciate the idea and the dream of having truly unique virtual characters, on the other I have rather… strong feelings towards gen-AI (for multiple reasons) and don’t really want to interact with it or support it in any way. At least TALKER has Ollama support so that’s something.

Yeah, by collection I meant all of the modules, including Alife+. According to the description it’s more of an extension to the vanilla system rather than an override so it should be compatible with at least some of the stuff you mentioned (probably, we’ll see). Thanks for the links, as always.

I don’t really care for playing with companions to be honest, not at the moment anyway. The only reason I downloaded “He Is With Me” was to test it with a specific situation during a rescue quest. That said, I’ll keep those mods in mind if I start longing for a party.

The video you sent me pushed me into another marathon of mod browsing so thanks for that… Nah, seriously - thanks! I found another 5 or so mods to try out already, though most of them are gameplay related rather than graphical ones.

I was actually planning to try out the Alife collection for AI changes as they seem like a promising set of improvements. Have you tried them? Are they any good or are there others you’d recommend over (or in addition to) those?

Oh, I totally get that. My own preferences lean heavily towards style of gameplay that most people would call tedious and annoying, I’m just not into “1 hit death, enemies spot and attack you from the other side of the map and you dehydrate in minutes” type of thing. That’s why I usually start with medium difficulty settings and bump up from there as I get the feel for how things are balanced.

Punishment IS fun, over tuning on the other hand can be less so. Since everyone has their own preferences, that sentence is purely subjective for every player and what they see as too much.

Still playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly. Before anything else, I’d like to get one thing out of the way: I’m an idiot. Descriptions for (most?) Anomaly mods aren’t as bad as I thought they were, it’s just that ModDB has no indicators there’s anything beyond the initial sentence or two if you browse the site with JavaScript disabled. So yeah, that was a fumble on my part but also why the heck does ModDB show all of the text on normal mod pages but doesn’t for Anomaly addons?!

I was expecting to write something like “I didn’t do too many changes since last week, mostly just started using modded exes and made some further gameplay options tweaking” today but… yeah, no. While my mod list is far from the behemoths I tend to play with in something like Bethesda titles, my Anomaly collection grew way faster than anticipated. Here’s my current mods list if anyone’s interested:

I’m sure this list will grow as I spend more time with the game but even these additions make for a fun return to the zone. I’d like to once again thank @Coelacanth@feddit.nu for their help with figuring out a good starting point with modding Anomaly. I still need to check your base list and your alternative LASS population addon but I’ll get there.

As for the game itself, once I got my bearings it turned out to be somewhat easier than I initially thought it would be. I’m currently playing on medium difficulty and progression settings (with previously mentioned custom tweaks) so I might have to play around with those a bit more. I don’t mind though, it’s suppose to be fun not feel like a punishment.

Besides that, I decided to give The Elder Scrolls Online another go. Its latest update included difficulty setting, a feature intended to tackle one of my main issues with the game (everything being a cakewalk).
I quickly started to regret my decision thanks to a launcher issue which prevented me from downloading files with speeds above 5MB/s. Anything higher would leave it in a perpetual cycle of downloading at max speed for a few seconds followed by freezing for a couple minutes. Thanks to that I got the “pleasure” of experiencing internet speeds I didn’t have to deal with in years. Can’t say I missed that.

Thankfully, things were better once I finally got into the game proper though I can’t say much yet as I only played for 2 or so hours last night. There are 3 new difficulties available and bumping it even by 1 makes a noticeable difference in combat. I’m not sure yet if I’ll stick with that (I didn’t want to go too crazy before checking out the new balancing and remembering how to play) but it’s a good sign.

One thing I’m not fond of is the fact that one of the skills I use with my Nightblade adds permanent passive movement speed increase as long as it’s equipped. I’m sure it’s cool for people who like to sprint everywhere but for me, someone who likes to act like part of the world, seeing my character move like I’m watching a video at 1.5x speed is a little jarring. Looks like I’ll have to keep (un)equipping it if I want my experience to feel right. Oh well…

As I continue my search for the perfect villainess story I got plenty of time to think about this… genre? Theme? Whatever it is I got some thoughts, with the main being: these stories are kind of sad. Not in the meaning of “plot starts with a poor kid having terrible childhood” or plot progression, although that’s true, but rather because of the resolution of these stories - specifically: characters who make child’s life living hell don’t really change their way, not towards the original kid.

Whether it’s a time travel story or someone transmigrating into a different world, those behavioural changes don’t happen because characters realise their mistakes, they happen because characters interact with the “new and improved” MC and think to themselves “man, this kid is actually cool, why did I act bad towards them?”. Without that change kid would still be bullied, disregarded and treated like dirt.
The original kid doesn’t get to experience these improvements. At best, it’s something that their older version can indulge in after going through all the terrible stuff in their previous life. At worst, it’s something offered to a different soul yoinked from another world and with no real attachment to anything that happened before their involvement.
In the end, the original kid dies/gets replaced knowing nothing but suffering. It sucks.

The only story I’ve read that does deal with this plot point is The One Within the Villainess, every other series completely avoids this topic. They also tend to avoid or quickly skip over the long lasting psychological damage one would acquire while going through such experiences but I can’t expect too much at this point.

Anyway, some shower thoughts for today since I don’t have much I’d like to write about in regards to specific titles.

Can’t say I’m a huge fan of this development but it’s resolved so whatever. I feel like seeing Tomo have a flaw, even if it’s something that happened in the past and was improved upon since then, would make for a more interesting plot point at least.

Fluff works too, I guess.

I’ve seen couple mentions of modded exes but didn’t pay much attention to them (mostly due to no info beyond “they exist” when I saw them). Now that I checked the repo it makes more sense. You’d think technical improvements like this would be included in the base package but I guess they have their reasons for not doing it.

One thing I’ve noticed about Anomaly mods is: their mod descriptions suck. There might be a sentence or two about what a mod does but most of the ones I checked have no specific details about features and lack any info about requirements. I thinks some of it has to do with ModDB treating Anomaly addons differently than “normal” mods, giving them less space to work with but regardless of the reason, searching through mods is much more of a guess work than I’m used to. Looks like previous modding experience spoiled me quite a bit in that regards.

I actually checked the weather mods you mentioned but decided to skip them exactly because of the limited descriptions. Like, I don’t know if Atmospherics is a replacement or an addition to existing weather types and I don’t want to replace the vanilla weather if it’s the former (it’s too early for that). Seems like I’ll have to dig deeper to figure out what I’m interested in.

Once again thanks for tips and recommendations, they are extremely useful.

Appreciate the links, I’ll check them out once I’m ready to for more changes. I will most likely stick to a fully customised mod list as I tend have rather particular (dis)likes and going with packs can be more annoying than helpful (still find them useful as a reference point though).

Thanks for the pointers, looks like my journey is about the get started for real.

That does sounds cool. While multiple points of view are present in the manga, they aren’t as explicit as what you’re describing (probably) - it sounds like they were expanded on in the adaptation. I’m curious if it’s an intentional story choice or just something decided due to difference of medium.

I’ll have to give the anime a shot some day.

Mostly vanilla, just some custom settings and basic mods (LASS, UI bars to see hunger & thirst, additional quest templates). It’s my first time trying it so I don’t want to go too deep into modding until I work out a solid baseline for what does or doesn’t work for me. I’m sure I’ll create a customised monstrosity soon enough.

Is there anything in particular you’d suggest to check out? Can be anything as I’ll pick and choose anyway but it would be nice to know something that’s tried and tested to start with.

I’ve been having a hard time committing to playing anything recently. After a lot of staring at my library I decided to give S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly a shot. It’s a game I wanted to try for a long time now so this seemed like a perfect time to do that.

Long story short, it’s been a pretty enjoyable experience so far. Slow methodical pace, disempowerment and not having to care about saving the world is right up my alley and something I wish more games focused on.

Initially, the game felt somewhat clunky (and still does to some extent) but I was able get used to the flow, new additions and changes pretty quickly. It’s a modded Stalker experience, not like I expected a flawless and perfectly polished product.

There are only two issues that really stood out to me for now. First: player status UI could use some work. Information about bleeding, how hungry or thirsty I am etc. should be provided in clear an straightforward manner instead of leaving me guessing based on vague bars, icons or audio/visual effects. I understand that some of it is intended as part of the experience but it makes no sense to have players guess about some stuff then provide food descriptions with exact numerical values for satiety or radioactive pollution changes.
Second: lack of a proper manual, in game or otherwise. I shouldn’t have to scour the web to find out that I need to have and use the compression thingy to pick up a sleeping bag off the floor or how to set/pick up your personal stash. Again, I get that figuring stuff out is part of the experience but some of these things are not intuitive.

I’m still early into the game (about 10 hours) so I’m sure there will be other things I’ll have to get used to, most of the new stuff however was easy enough to figure out on my own. None of the issues are experience ruining, game work well (as long as I don’t screw up mod installs) and gameplay is good old Stalker with changes I’d like to see in more games. I like it.

I’ve got another new (to me) series to talk about today, this time a Japanese web manga rather than manhwa. The Ramparts of Ice is a story about a schoolgirl who’s bad at dealing with people (partially due to her character, partially due to her past experiences) making, joining a new group of friends and learning how to overcome those problems.

I really like this one as it’s not interested in making fun of MC’s situation but rather provides an empathetic and serious insight into why she (and other characters) is the way she is and acts in a way that prevents her from getting close to others. It shows how everyone has their own baggage and makes a point of showing how easy it is to misunderstand people and situations when acting on your own assumptions instead of talking things through with others. It’s a really sweet story full of lessons worth learning even in real life.
I know there are other series with similar premise but I haven’t read any of them so I can’t provide any comparison.

Apparently there’s an anime adaptation as well so it seems like it was big enough for that too. I somehow never heard about it until last week, go figure.

Since we’re on the topic of Japan, lets get back to some of the manga series I tend to post here. I haven’t really written anything about manga recently but I am still reading it - my days aren’t filled exclusively with villainess manhwa!

• The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All is still trudging along. I’d be lying if I said my interest in this story is anywhere close to where it was in the early days but I’m keeping up with it for now. At least things seem to be building up for… something, I think?
• A Cool Girl and a 12cm Promise is definitely in a better place than the title above, even if it had its own dips here and there. It’s still early days into main characters’ dating life so we’ll see how things evolve, recent parent meeting mini-arc was pretty cute.
• Unexciting Date keeps going at its own pace and it’s great. Watching those two goobers trying their best despite their weirdo personalities and lack of confidence makes for a very enjoyable story, especially since it’s avoiding all of the usual romance tropes. Still my favourite manga series in a while.
• Maid Skater - I’ve been following the author long before this series was even announced and their passion for skating maids is truly remarkable, I love it. Each of their illustrations, each chapter of this series makes me want to give skating a go, even in super basic form. I wish it updated more often, both for the trivia and the beautiful art.

There are a few other titles I keep up with but most of the stuff I read is pretty slow to update these days. Most of it has to do with translations catching up to raws so it’s understandable but it’s no less disappointing. Reading fresh is suffering.