[CHALLENGE] (v4.3-ish 6/7/18) Refugee to Regent Kingdom Building Challenge

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Thank you. Tragically, a number of our kitties died from smoke inhalation. The others are being housed at my in-laws' place, much to my MIL's chagrin. I've been making endless calls to apartments and complexes around town trying to find a place to go. It's exhausting.

I'm, however, trying very hard to stay positive about this and find the bright side. I'm trying to think of it as a completely blank and clear slate. We can start over. From the beginning. Build better lives than the ones we were living. We are salvaging a lot of items from the fire, but, that, too, is a lot of work. There's work to be done in every direction and aspect of our lives right now. Once we find somewhere to settle, it'll be easier. For now my brain is still holding on to the old place as "home" though I know it isn't anymore. I'm hoping that I'll be back and ready to go in about a month or so.

In the meantime, I hope you guys have had happy holidays and are looking forward to the new year ahead.

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Wow. It's been a little more than a month since I was last here. Happy to say we did find somewhere for my mom, twin, and the cats to stay (rather, my twin found it). Unfortunately, the cats that didn't survive the fire had to be disposed of. We did not have the luxury of choosing a burial or cremation since this all happened in the middle of the largest holiday Americans celebrate.

So, we are settling in, and trying to move forward. I started therapy today for suspected PTSD (insomnia, intrusive thoughts, constant worry over fire hazards and fire safety, etc. etc.) which seems to have interestingly reversed previous symptoms I was suffering from depression.

Brains are weird.

In any case, I have been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. The copy of RoC I have is incredibly old (had it since I was 12!) and I'm amazed it still works. Given that disks are plastic, they all smell like burning plastic (since, like many people, a number of items we had in the living room were plastic) if you, well, smell them, but it doesn't radiate from them or consume the room so I'm keeping them. I've been enjoying making art and recently made a Tik Tok (same username). I've moved in with my fiance and my in-laws are bringing the last of my belongings (that I could salvage) over from storage when they visit this weekend. I'm debating whether or not to film a tour of the apartment and/or a fun "unboxing" video to show what survived and what I've replaced.

Anyway, once again I hope you guys are having a fantastic year so far and I hope to hear more about your fantastic cities!

 

[Senseidragon]

[...]Happy to say we did find somewhere for my mom, twin, and the cats to stay (rather, my twin found it)

I'm glad to hear you were able to find accommodations after that tragedy! It sucks about the kitties though.

[...]So, we are settling in, and trying to move forward. I started therapy today for suspected PTSD (insomnia, intrusive thoughts, constant worry over fire hazards and fire safety, etc. etc.) which seems to have interestingly reversed previous symptoms I was suffering from depression.

Brains are weird.

Brains are indeed wierd. After the stroke I suffered back in 2012 that put me out of my prior career for good, my brain was understandably frazzled. I've lost the ability to feel temperature (hot/cold) on the left side of my body, literally right down the center. I can feel temperature just fine on the right side. However, I found that I had a massive increase in my olfactory sense, to the point that I could smell things that were so faint, no one else around me could notice them without really trying hard to detect the smells. I've also not slept more than 4 hours a night for the last 8 years, with very few exceptions. It all originates from my brain getting scrambled.

I hope the therapy helps you through the issues you are facing.

[...]Anyway, once again I hope you guys are having a fantastic year so far and I hope to hear more about your fantastic cities!

I took a break from Minecraft for a while, pursuing other random interests. I would occasionally pop in to see if the FTB folks ever put anything new up, since (most) of what they put together is pretty neat. I did hoist my pickaxe once again about a month ago, and I'm rediscovering a lot of the motivation I used to have playing the game.

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Hearing you've suffered a stroke in the past hits close to home for me. My mom suffered an aneurysm on her birthday in 2015. The aneurysm didn't really scramble her too much, thankfully. Other health problems she suffered later took a toll, though (UTIs somehow scramble your mental state if you're near or past 60, apparently). After all of this I hear she's doing better and getting back on track. The smell thing is weird. It sounds like your brain realized it was lacking something so it tried to overcompensate by trying to smell temperature or something so you can smell if you're getting burnt or frozen?? IDK. I'm not gonna pretend I understand anything about the way brains work anymore lol.

I will say, though, given your superhuman sense of smell, you'd probably hate most of my stuff now since 80% of it has non-reversible damage that I've just decided to be okay with since it isn't making the apartment stink.

I hope the therapy helps you through the issues you are facing.

Thanks. It was helping with the depression, so I have high hopes that therapy and meds will help with this, too. I am in a different city, now, though, so I had to find a new therapist. On the one hand I'm experienced with this and know how all this works, but, on the other, it takes about a month to really get a solid diagnosis going (you need more proof than "Yeah that sounds about right") so you can get into the system and start working on better coping mechanisms. It's a pain, but it's worth it in the long run. This therapist could go the easy route and re-diagnose me with depression since I brought my intake papers with me from the previous therapist, but they don't want to. They'd rather give me an appropriate diagnosis for what I have now instead of what I had last year (and for years prior).

I'm rambling.

Moving on, I have decided to go ahead with the unboxing video, but I no longer have a good mic (smoke damage > <) so the sound will, unfortunately, suck. When I get it put together and uploaded I'll let you guys know!

Oooooh. Now I wanna do a sketchbook/archive tour, too!

Okay, it's really late and I do wanna campaign a little bit before bed (and finish my leftover coffee from this morning). Have fun and I'll see you guys soon!

 

[Senseidragon]

Moving on, I have decided to go ahead with the unboxing video, but I no longer have a good mic (smoke damage > <) so the sound will, unfortunately, suck. When I get it put together and uploaded I'll let you guys know!

Hmm.

About it month ago, I updated my microphone and I have a perfectly good Blue Yeti mic just sitting on the desk next to me. You would need to pick up a cheap boom arm to mount it to, but if you're interested, you can have it for free. I've been completely happy with it's performance the whole time I've used it. When I get back to my desk I'll take a picture of it and let you see what I'm talking about.

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Hmm.

About it month ago, I updated my microphone and I have a perfectly good Blue Yeti mic just sitting on the desk next to me. You would need to pick up a cheap boom arm to mount it to, but if you're interested, you can have it for free. I've been completely happy with it's performance the whole time I've used it. When I get back to my desk I'll take a picture of it and let you see what I'm talking about.

I've heard good things about the Yeti. If I remember, it's a more capsule-shaped one, right? Mine was the Snowball, so I'm sure you can imagine why I couldn't keep it (how would I even clean it?). I'd had it for about six years and the thing was still going strong. Probably still worked, but with that stench I just couldn't do it. I'd be happy to have it!

 

[Senseidragon]

Let's see if this works...

Spoiler: Front

Spoiler: Back

Spoiler: Bottom

Spoiler: Top

Eh, they aren't too horrible. I had to actually resize them DOWN, because my phone likes to take huge honkin 4k pics.

Just send me a PM with an address to send it, and I'll get it out to you probably Monday. I don't think the UPS place is open today.

 

[Senseidragon]

Just in case you were wondering, I switched to an XLR microphone because I wanted to experiment with XLR.
It has a totally different feel to it. Not as feature-packed as the Yeti, but I like the warm vocals this one puts out. The Yeti is much more effective with a shock mount installed. Otherwise it picks up nearly EVERYTHING -- Keystrokes, mouse clicks, you name it.

Samsun Q2U USB/XLR Microphone

That's a link to a blog post about the mic I use now.

 

[Inaeo]

A quick thank you to this thread for introducing me to TekTopia. This is the fruit of my lurking. I'll go back to being the Mad Mayor now...

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Hello guys! I've finally come back around to wanting to do some challenges in Minecraft. I have a few ideas for what I want to do and am excited to see how it goes.

I've been sort of bouncing around between symptoms and ideas. PTSD is sort of like if depression, anxiety, and ADHD all got together and had one monstrous baby with symptoms from each. So a person with PTSD may find themselves obsessed over the details of their trauma, anxious that it could happen again, in a depressed mood because of it all, but also too wired to go to sleep at night.

It's kinda weird.

And since my hobby is collecting hobbies I've been kinda bouncing around from one hobby to the next, one idea or project to another. Let's do the color challenge (where you take all your supplies of one color and make art)! Ooh let's make a knapsack (since I dont have any anymore)! Etc, etc.

So, hopefully I'll be back with updates soon!

Edit: This computer's non-existent graphics card and crappy processor are apparently too low-spec for even vanilla Minecraft, so my adventures will have to wait for an upgrade.

 

[Senseidragon]

[...]This computer's non-existent graphics card and crappy processor are apparently too low-spec for even vanilla Minecraft, so my adventures will have to wait for an upgrade.

Oh no! Sorry to hear that, @Monarch_of_Gold. I wish I could do more, but I don't have any spare computers or graphics cards. Mine generally get handed down to my mom or my son whenever I do a tech refresh on my systems.

I hope you're able to get back up and recording videos soon.

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

Hello again! Update on a few things.

1) Minecraft Forums have changed their hosting so I can no longer access my original forums account. This means I can no longer update the challenge and will need to host it elsewhere. Maybe a subreddit?

2) Because Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is written with C+ and not Java, I can actually play that version of Minecraft without murdering this potato.

3) We have ordered the parts we need to start getting a new system up and running. We have some old parts from when my fiance built his first computer (about 9 or 10 years ago, so at least more recent than the potato) that we're going to use until we can afford to replace them. It will at least run better than the potato, which will be repurposed as a coding machine eventually. For now we've ordered a case, graphics card, PSU and external optical drive (no opening for one in the case we chose since it's an entirely mesh front) and are re-using his old motherboard, processor, fans (if necessary -- case comes with 2) and RAM. I've already chosen a MoB, processor, and ram that are compatible with each other (and the other parts) to replace them with when we can afford it. Those parts should be here in a week or so (Case is purported to be coming Wednesday). I obviously already have a hard drive that's a little older but is still working well. At some point we'll install an SSD to boot from but, again, the hard drive is still working well (which is impressive considering it was literally in a burning building at one point) so there's no immediate need to replace it. It isn't going to like all this body-switching again but it will be worth it. The graphics card will take the longest to get here, but Intel chips almost always include integrated graphics support, so I can have the system up and running while we wait.

So, while I wait on the parts to get here, I'm going to play some Bedrock Edition to help calm my nerves and satiate my need. I'll come here and post updates when I can. Getting screenshots in BE is a bit of a pain.

 

[Senseidragon]

@Senseidragon steps into a deserted forum thread, wondering if all of the old regulars have moved on to other things.

 

[sykefu]

Hey, i was wondering if someone still had archives of the classic R2R challenge with formating.

 

[Senseidragon]

Hey, i was wondering if someone still had archives of the classic R2R challenge with formating.

Yep, I still have the original zip file I created.

Here's a link to the zipfile, if it doesn't get moderated out of existance.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s5z0zfy4196sq2a/r2r-backup.zip?dl=1

 

[sykefu]

Thanks

 

[Monarch_of_Gold]

@Senseidragon steps into a deserted forum thread, wondering if all of the old regulars have moved on to other things.

I have not completely deserted challenging. I'm trying to get a pack put together to work on my challenge. At some point I'll get a new account set up and repost my challenge to it. I lost access to my old Minecraft Forums account.

The mic you sent me works great, btw. I'll try to record some episodes when I start my thing.

How have you been?

 

[Loki61089]

Has there been any progress on this challenge in the last two years? I kinda wanted to use it for my 1.12.2 server, but the wiki is.... honestly a mess, and confusing to read at times. I tried the r2rbackup folder, but my computer says the file is corrupted, and can't be opened.

 

[Senseidragon]

Has there been any progress on this challenge in the last two years? I kinda wanted to use it for my 1.12.2 server, but the wiki is.... honestly a mess, and confusing to read at times. I tried the r2rbackup folder, but my computer says the file is corrupted, and can't be opened.

Pretty much the last activity this thread has seen was almost two years ago, by me. I'd say this thread is highly necrotic at the moment. The owner of the thread, despite best intentions, kinda made it difficult for anyone else to take up the maintenance of this project as he became less and less visible. Although the concept is definitely a great one, and many mods have since come out that would integrate well with the concept, I think this material is, short of cherry-picking a few ideas here and there, pretty much obsolete and, without evidence to the contrary, unsupported by the thread owner.

I'd love to see it picked up by someone with a definite commitment and enthusiasm for a reboot, but alas, after two years, I am not holding my breath.


Senseidragon

 

[TomeWyrm]

@Senseidragon @The Mobius Archives @Maul_Junior @Monarch_of_Gold @VaalDeth
Hello all!

I'm not dead, just took a very long (3+ years) unintended vacation from my normal life. I'm planning on getting back into gaming, and I thought about R2R quite a few times over the years. I just need to get a working computer once more. Borrowing someone else's tablet to do some catching up is nice, but not a long-term solution!

5 years, 7½ months since I last posted on this thread... Yikes.

---

We could migrate the content to another wiki host (not a fan of Fandom for all sorts of reasons).

Run it as a small team, that way if one or more members get burned out or drift away, we can always invite new blood.