This site is still HEAVILLY wip!

March 28: An Upgrade, Plus a Bunch of Other Stuff.

It's been a while, huh? Finally got all the parts for my new computer, and have been using it for a little under a month now. I've also been doing a bunch of other things, too, so I'll give a somewhat-short update.

Website Updates

I'll likely start actually trying to flesh out this site more soon. I might even completely overhaul this site, as I had a few ideas for the site's design and layout, and I kind of want to design the layout myself instead of relying on a layout generator for it. I also had an idea to give each section of the site it's own design while likely keeping the same basic layout. I don't know what I'll decide to do yet.

As for the Review Section, I did actually decide to semi-scrap it and incorperate it into this blog instead. That way, I'll have more things to talk about here. Each review will likely be given a dedicated blog entry, too. The "Reviews" section WILL still exist, but it will just contain links to each review's relevant blog entry. I may or may not use images, too, but I kind of want to conserve file space so I can add images for the Computercraft tutorials.

Errorgrove Isle Updates

I don't really have much to say here yet, actually. The only real work I did was working on a lore document for the game's setting that I decided to make a couple of weeks before I put the new computer together. I decided to make it mainly to help flesh out the game's lore and help with writing dialogue. I also decided to try out a different program for writing it than the one I used for the game's Game Design Document. The GDD was written using Google Docs, while I decided to try out Obsidian for the Lore Document. After using Obsidian, however, I decided to would make a better fit for the GDD over Google Docs, and I've also been working on moving over all of the GDD over to a seperate Obsidian project, which has honestly been a pain in the butt.

After that, I need to add all of the ideas I've had for the game that I haven't added to the GDD yet, mostly item ideas, NPC characterization ideas, as well as some ideas for tool/ore progression. I also expanded on my ideas for the game's cooking system, which is slightly complex, and came up with a bunch of new foods.

Updates on Learning Game Development

This one's going to be rather short. Basically, I AM going to start learning game development again, but I kind of want to wait until at least a week or two from now mainly to have some more time to get used to the new computer and to help benchmark it more. I also want a bit more time to hopefully troubleshoot a (currently, seemingly small) issue I've been having with it (more on that later). In the meantime, while I was waiting on the parts for my new computer, I stumbled across some game devlopment-related videos, so I might give some of those a watch in the meantime and take some notes if there's anything useful in them.

Semi-related, but for editing this website from now on, I've decided to switch from Brackets to VS Code. So far, It actually seems a bit better, but it was a bit annoying that you need to install an extension in order to get a live preview for your edits. I'm mentioning it now because I'm debating using VS Code for editing GDScript files for game development. Using Godot's built-in editor is more convenient, but VS Code (with the Godot Tools Extension) may have more features. I'll probably try using both before I decide which to use full-time.

New Computer Update

As I said before, I finally put together my new computer a few weeks ago, and holy crap does it blow my previous one out of the water! Just swapping from a HDD to a SSD seems to have made loading literally anything way snappier on it's own, but coupled with a much better CPU and Graphics Card, it's basically night and day.

I have been having a really weird issue with the Graphics Card, though, and have been having trouble actually finding the cause or even looking it up online. Rarely, about 2 to 4 times a day, a single frame of what can only be described as a "glitchy static" seems to flash on my monitor. The weird part is that it seems to never happen when the Graphics Card is under any real load, and only seems to happen when certain programs are on-screen. I highly doubt it's the cable or monitor, as they both worked fine with my old computer. My only real guesses as to what's causing this are either:

  • The Graphics Card is defective,
  • It's some kind of weird issue with SignalRGB (as it first stared happening after installing SignalRGB), or
  • There's somehow an issue with the Graphics Card's drivers, which I doubt since I also manually updated the driver and the issue's been happening both before and after updating.

To hopefully narrow the cause further, the times I've noticed it happen are:

  • When SignalRGB's or Wallpaper Engine's menus are open. (In SignalRGB's case, it's actually when I first noticed the issue.)
  • When specific wallpapers that I have installed in Wallpaper Engine are displayed (exclusively ones that don't involve any 3D rendering or complex shaders).
  • When watching certain Youtube videos, under certain conditions:
    • Sometimes when speeding the video up by holding the space bar (a feature I just kind of stumbled across recently).
    • Sometimes a jumpcut or other thing suddenly appearing can trigger it, but it's extremely rare (I've only noticed it happen one or twice from a jumpcut).
  • Rarely in Google Docs.
  • It happens somewhat often in Discord of all things, even if there aren't any messages with video, GIFs, or images of any kind on screen, which is especially weird.
  • It also happened a few times in modded Minecraft, exclusively in the inventory, and regardless of whether or not I'm using shaders.
  • Weirdly, if the computer doesn't turn off properly (like if the power goes out briefly), it makes the issues noticably more likely the next time I turn the computer on and also makes it get triggerred by more things, but it actually goes back to "normal" when I turn the computer off and back on again.
    • This one actually caused me to delay this update for a week, as we had a brief power cut due to a windstorm a week ago (the power grid on our street is a bit unstable), and that's when I first noticed this specific part. I had to delay it to try to see if a few things I noticed from the "post-power-cut" session would even still apply and if the things that triggerred the issue still did so.

As I said, I've never seen it happen when the Card is under any meaningful load. So far, I tested it with shaders in Minecraft, and I also played Slime Rancher 2 to test the Graphics Card and it's never happened in that game either. I have also noticed a general "theme" of when it happens, though, usually in places with a repeating "grid" or other pattern, sudden changes, and/or occasionally with looping animations.

The good news about this is, if the Graphics Card does end up being defective and it dies on me, at least my CPU has integrated graphics so I'll still be able to use the computer. I just won't get as good performance. For anyone curious, and for anyone who wants to try helping me pinpoint the issue, card is actually from a brand I've never heard of before that I decided to take a chance with due to being relatively cheap, a Surallow RX 580 8GB. From what little I could find about the brand online, mainly just the listing for the card on Amazon, the brand at least SEEMS ok. Maybe it's possible that I just got a bad card? I'm going to do a bit more troubleshooting on my end to try to get to the bottom of this. So far, I've really only tried updating my Graphics Card's drivers, which DID fix a seperate issue where AMD's Adrenaline software wouldn't open for some reason despite somehow having been automatically installed.


Anyway, as I said, I'm going to try to figure out more about this Graphics Card issue on my end, and I'll probably start updating this site a bit more often from now on, likely starting with the About page.