Chris’ system from December 2014 had — performance-wise — been un-upgraded for its life, and after a full eight year service life, the sales around Black Friday were a good time to do a full rebuild.
Chris’ “Gaming+” Build v2
Michael’s Gaming PC v2
In December of 2016 I helped Michael put together a build I dubbed The Silent Whisper: a high-end gaming PC that had SPCR-level acoustics.
Towards the end of 2022, Michael was looking to upgrade the entire system, so I put on my PC building hat once more and gave him a hand.
Bonus: A Quick Look at Next-gen Image Formats (JPEG XL etc)
Checking these out seemed like a natural extension of reviewing my video/audio settings, so I figured I’d do a quick write-up on what I learnt.
Continue reading “Bonus: A Quick Look at Next-gen Image Formats (JPEG XL etc)”
PC/NAS Upgrade: Re-Evaluating Video and Audio Encoding in OBS and Vegas
Phase 1 of my big upgrade/migration project was a good chance to reevaluate my recording/rendering settings, so as here’s an extra write-up relating to that.
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PC/NAS Upgrade: OS Reinstall, 71TB of Storage, and Setting up an Unraid NAS
Also known as the part where we fix all of the storage and storage-related things.
- Primary storage: 1TB SATA SSD -> 2TB NVMe SSD
- Secondary storage (data): 2x3TB -> 4+1x4TB parity array
- Secondary storage (backup): 2x3TB -> NAS
- NAS: doesn’t -> exists
- OS: fucked -> not
Continue reading “PC/NAS Upgrade: OS Reinstall, 71TB of Storage, and Setting up an Unraid NAS”
The Big 2022 PC and NAS Upgrade
Over time, my main PC has been increasingly struggling to meet my needs, largely relating to dated CPU/GPU, lack of storage space, and low data resilience.
This very extended project aims to fix most of that while also including the broad outlines for future upgrade plans.
A New Paradigm for Age V Combat
I previously posted about fight control in Rise of Nations, and briefly mentioned how the conventional wisdom regarding Age V combat (which I had also subscribed to until briefly before writing that article) was misguided. Age V combat is not “Age IV combat but with more guns” — it’s actually fundamentally different.
Giving Up: Challenger Balance Patch
The Community Balance/Bugfix Patch has failed every evaluation category.
Also this starts off quite salty, because I think that there’s no honest explanation of why I’ve done this that doesn’t involve some level of disdain and disappointment.
CBP Alpha 9 Patch Notes
This is a small bugfix patch, basically “Alpha 8c”. However, because these changes are not multiplayer-compatible with Alpha 8, they’re being released as Alpha 9.
Patch contents
- Balance changes: very low
- Bugfixes: low
- Enhancements: low
CBP Documentation: Fixed City Sprites
This is just to ensure that this information is fully documented somewhere publicly – unless you’re a modder or just deeply curious about RoN quirks I’m not expecting you to bother reading this. It’s boring, poorly formated, has no images, and I basically haven’t posted it anywhere.