Drunken Pub Stuff

What posesses us to step out and express ourselves!?

Alcohol... that's what.

Pokemon GO in the pub... yet again...

More of the little buggers invading my space... can't have a pint in peace these days!

Pokemon GO in the pub... again

Skillz dude... :)

No Man's Sky - Entry #001

Well, it's been a week now since I delved in Hello Games' universe and I'm pleased to say that, out of 18 quintillion star systems I have managed to travel through... 3.

Yes, 3 whole star systems! However my good friend who started playing when I did hasn't left his starting planet yet, so, compared to him, I've made some progress! But, fair play to him, he's playing it properly in terms of trying to discover everything.

Anyway, I when I started I decided to forgo redeeming my free spaceship awarded to me for pre-ordering the game and set out into the purple and red bushes of my starting planet to figure out how the hell I should repair my damaged starter spaceship... after some fudging and fiddling I got it repaired and launched off into the ether.

Along the way, so far at least, I've had my trials and tribulations... I've met a couple of alien species and learned some of their words and when it came to deciding what I wanted to do for my play style I chose to follow the path of the Atlas (the other option was open, free play)... it's a path that I hope will be an interesting and fruitful one, in gaming terms at least!

Anyway, here's a picture log of my progress so far... first up, the AI's skills at landing are quite impressive:

Wow... just wow!

I found a planet, loaded with gold... great mounds of gold! Needless to say I mined the shit out of it and after several trips to trade stations became, as Dell Trotter once said "A millionaire!"

Ooh1 Shiney!

From gold... to cold! The next planet I was on was so cold that when it got dark AND a storm came in I faced temperatures in the -200 degrees ranges, which kicked the arse out of my thermal protection... however, despite the harsh environment I managed to catalogue every species of creature and a shitload of plants and waypoints, it was not without it's scary moments though:

That thing scared the shit out of me...

...and it seems that Hello Games have their work cutout with the bugs, this alien was doing a jerky handstand dance:

A cow-like thing doing a dance... very bizarre.

After that I found my first Atlas waypoint (a large diamond-like space station) which set me on the path... along which I came across a system which some 'tard, who had gotten there before me, had named it "John Cena" ... what a twat. Anyway, there, I found an 'anomaly' which turned out to be a large spherical space station, in it I found an alien which gave me three choices: 1. Help me with finding resources so I could bugger off and explore, 2. Give me help with the Atlas path... or 3. Show me how to find Black Holes so I could skip millions of light years in my quest towards the centre of the galaxy.

Naturally I chose the Black Holes... I mean, who doesn't want to fly through Black Holes? They're frikin' awesome!

That's it for this first entry... next up, hopefully my first jaunt through an event horizon!

Footy Season - 2016/17 Welcome!

Ahhhh, spent the past five hours celebrating the start of the footy season, plenty of beer consumed... and plenty more to come!

To Man City and Pep Guardiola I was going to say:

BAAAHAHAHA!!!

Up until the point City spawned a goal, so I'll shut up.

No Man's Sky

I took the day off today with the intention of spending it playing No Man's Sky, however I didn't read the release date 'fine print' in that, here in the UK, it's 'unlocked' via Steam at 5pm!

Oh dear, a bit of a wasted day off then.

Still, it's not entirely wasted... I'm going to go Pokemon hunting via the Gym, go in the sauna, relax for a bit, do some shopping then be back for the great 'unlocking' event on Steam!!

w00t, bring on the space adventure baby!!

A Rusty Sunrise

Rust really has nice graphics... here's a nice sunrise:

Rust Server Header

Here's my new server header image... produced in precisely 3 minutes ;)

Rust

You know, since I've been playing Rust I've discovered one thing: The Rust playing community is an evil, paranoid bunch.

I realise that on most sandbox MMORGs you get players who tear through the landscape with their fingers permanently on the trigger but in Rust it's a full-on epidemic. So much so, that, rather than the usual 'Do we have PVP on this server?' approach in other games, in Rust it's PVP by default and people ask 'anyone PVE-ing?'!

If you're a n00b in Rust, forget any kind of help, if you approach anyone you're shot on sight, regardless of whether you have any loot in your inventory or not! Or if you've just started a building and it only consists of a wood foundation, door and four wood walls, it get's wrecked regardless.

Rust simply does not take any prisoners, you're killed, stripped and probably cooked just for the fun of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Governments weren't using it as a 'what if' scenario on human behaviour during a holocaust!

I'm running my own server and there's been a lot of discussion about where everyone stands when it comes to PVP, and despite assurance from my admins that there's no KOS unless airdrops are happening or when the chopper is out... there just seems to be an air of... unease about the server, like they're all waiting for something bad to happen and then all hell breaks loose. I think that's inherent in Rust, it's clearly a game like no other... even DayZ comes second when it's down to paranoid shoot-on-sight gaming behaviour!

Admins seem to be generally vilified by normal players and that's because in the past Rust's 'behavioural modification' has caused many other admin players to abuse their privileges and go around rampantly killing anyone who get's in their way (I've even experienced this whilst playing on another server).

An example of this was the other evening on my server, I was flying around checking resource nodes because I'd heard of a bug related to them in the developer community. Whilst flying I 'gave' myself some items - clothes, food etc - just to tide myself over for the duration I was on. The other players on the server saw what I was doing and were instantly on the defensive, stating stuff like "admin power abuse' etc. when I had absolutely no intention of bothering them, I just wanted to check things out as an owner/admin and I used the tools available to me to do that. Admin are just not trusted!

Ah well, I guess that's the sacrifice for running your own server...

The Bolti House - Rules

Server info:

The server has capacity for 100 slots.
The map is currently 4k in size.

There server is wiped every month, including blueprints.

Rules as follows:

1. Raiding should not be possible, I have a plugin that supposedly prevents this... hopefully it works! No-one in the Rust community likes raiding, despite Facepunch's best efforts to promote such toxic behaviour.

2. PVE is encouraged although PVP is allowed, after all Rust's underlying theme is one of desparate survival against impossible odds.

3. It is each player's responsibility to make their base as secure as possible to make any opportunist raiders' attempts as difficult as possible. So even though it's not possible for a potential raider to bash through your walls (see Rule 1.), it's NOT my fault if you forget to lock your doors!

4. Please use English in chat, this is a UK-based server.

5. Keep your language clean and respectful, any racist comments, cyberbullying or any threatening behaviour will result in an immediate kick and ban.

I don't play on this server much myself as I think it's important to allow players their freedom and not have them think they're constantly under the gaze of an admin that is in-game. Equally I believe that players should feel safe in the knowledge that a server admin isn't far away so I do monitor the server as much as I can.

Have Fun!

A Historical Boozer

When I worked in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter as a graphic designer through the Nineties, I spent a great deal of time in a pub called The Bown Lion.

We used to go there every Friday lunchtime and, most often than not, never made it back to work... or, occasionally, got back to work but we were too bloody drunk to be of any use. If we went back to work we'd still end up going back at 5pm then pub crawl our way to the train station. Ahh, good times, we'd have their uniquely strangely fish-flavour burgers and chips washed down with cold bottles of Budweiser Ice, then as the afternoon wore on switching to Bottles of Special Brew... well, at least I switched to the Special Brew, my colleagues tended to do K Cider.

I'm pretty sure that stunted by career development and, with a better 'go to' attitude could have a stellar career instead of pissing it up the wall. However, that said, I had so much fun back then that if I had the chance to 're-do' the early years of my career, I'd do it again!!

This morning I had a nostalgic trip around the Jewellery Quarter and took this picture of one of my favourite watering holes!

The Brown Lion, a real ale pub in the

 Jewellery Quarter, I had some great times there

On a side note, if anyone playing Pokemon GO is interested in catching Drowzees, go to St Paul's Square, it's fucking infested with them!

A New Record

I suddenly realised today (whilst out for a walk in the sun) that I may have reached a new personal best for the length of time I've owned a pair of sunglasses... in the past I've either broken or lost them, usually whilst drunk.

I've owned my current pair for a year and a half, I know this because I bought them whilst on holiday at Centre Parc, bloody expensive they were too.

Well done me.