Well Happy Birthday To Me

Good afternoon everybody,

I have leveled up today, as its my birthday... I am now 39 Years Old. Most would say I'm just wasting my life... they are probably right, but hell, to each their own.

Anyway, last night's stream certainly had no plan as I didn't want to start up anything major or risk finishing a game, so we revisited some old favorites and checked out something I'm considering as a game to feature in 2022.

First up, was the return of The Grand Tour Game, which involved a delay in me doing any gaming during the stream because I had to wait for it to finish installing. It was a great revisit to just doing the first episode. Took me a while to remember how to do things correctly, as I did earned gold medals on every event back in 2020. But something funny happened when I was porting over last night's stream, apparently Amazon doesn't want any footage of the game to exist, and thus blocked the entire stream... so the segment of The Grand Tour Game will be edited out.

Next was Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, this was mostly just trying the score attack. Trying to earn an S Rank in this is not easy, as tracking the ghosts when we get the power pellet is a major weakness. Still managed to get a clutch 'A' Rank, so that's something.

We checked out Battletoads, which game out last year as an X-Box exclusive... and boy the all important aspect of online co-op not being a thing is a major downer. Still it is a game that looks great, is pretty easy to learn the basics of and has some nice humor to it. This is a game we will stream in 2022, which means the save file I've started will be deleted.Still we earned about eight achievements, so that was cool

Finally we jumped back into Jump Force, and I was hoping to get some S-Ranks on Hard Missions to get another achievement and get a step closer to 100% completion, but things did no shake out the way I was hoping in terms of finishing with Awaken Abilities. I did dive back into Jump Force after the stream and was able to knock out the two achievements I want to do... one part thanks to an 'character' event where using One Piece and Yu-gi-Oh character lead to a multiple of two to various mission rewards.

Big thanks as always to Kalenal for the raid during the stream. Last night they were featuring Final Fantasy XIV over on twitch.tv/kalenal!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Sw33ts_gaming who was playing Super People over on twitch.tv/sw33ts_gaming. From what I can tell Super People is just your typical battle royal game.

Battletoads Achievements

1. Dodgebrawl Champion: Finished a fight without taking damage.
2. Brawling… With Style!: Earned your first 'S' Rank from an encounter.
3. Toads in a Hole: Escaped from the simulation bunker.
4. It Begins…: Got your first collectable.
5. Road Rash: Went in search of the evil Dark Queen.
6. Into the Third Dimension: Used your tongue to reach the background.
7. Battlemaniacs: Defeated 100 enemies.
8. Parks & Recreational Violence: Battled through a creepy amusement park.

Jump Force Achievements

1. Reliable Companions: Raised ten support characters above level 70 through battle.
2. A Master Warrior: Got S rank 10 or more times on Hard Free Missions.
   

Twitch Clip Links

• More Power!!!!
• There's a Finish! 
• Brawlin... With Style!
• Just Kick It Up A Notch! 
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Hook Combo #2, Front-Back Step Combo and Beginner Combo #1 for a duration of 28 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 454 kcal.

I can safely say that the rest of this week will feature different games on Friday and Saturday, I might go back to Rise of the Tomb Raider to work on some achievements associated with that on Friday. Would be rather interesting if I go that route. This would mean both Fist of the North Star and Pokemon Shining Pearl being saved for next week.

Managed to finish a fan fic commission based around the WWE in 2010... and got paid for it promptly. Always nice when that happens. Might consider doing another one for the same client. .

For my birthday stream, I will be playing Final Fantasy XIV, and my focus will mostly be with the Eden side quests that were apart of Shadowbringers. We might do other trials and dungeons and stuff as well.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

#ADayOffTwitch, Discord Streams And Other High-Jinks

Good morning everybody,

So we did not do a stream on Twitch last night because of the #ADayOffTwitch campaign, and I figured why not go through the tool that Twitch provides to make folks aware of how they can secure their channel chat rooms. I learned about these tools last year when I had a few runs ins with knuckleheads back during a weekend that involved Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Twitch Sings. 

So first here's what you do to find these tools: Go to your Dashboard, then settings and then moderation. From there you can see a number of tools to help secure your chat. 

First is AutoMod Rulesets, which Automatically hold risky messages for Moderators to review.  You can set this up to provide a variety strength of filters from Less to Some to More to Maximum on a variety of different things such as.

• Hostility
  
  • Aggression (Threatening, inciting or promoting violence or harm) 
  • Bullying (Name-calling, insults and antagonization),

• Discrimination & Slurs
  
  • Disability: Demonstrating hatred and prejudice based on perceived or actual mental or physical abilities
  • Sexuality, sex or gender: Demonstrating hatred and prejudice based on sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression
  • Misogyny: Demonstrating hatred and prejudice against women, including sexual objectification
  • Race, ethnicity or religion: Demonstrating hatred and prejudice based on race, ethnicity or religion

• Sexual Content
  
  • Sex-based terms (sexual acts, anatomy)

• Profanity
  
  • Swearing (Swear words)
    

Personality, I have the maximum filtering setting set on everything related to to Hostility, Discrimination & Slurs and Sexual Content, and only some filtering when it comes to Swearing, because I don't really have an issue with people swearing in my chat since it rarely if ever happens. So basically I have a chance to review anything and everything that comes through that gets caught by the filters, thus giving me an opportunity to deny something from being posted or to allow it.

Next, we have Blocked Terms and phrases, which are is a list of terms anyone can set so that messages containing those terms or phrases will be blocked from the chat. The list is automatically added when a mod denies a caught message in the filters, but you can manually add terms to it if, thus if you notice something being spammed as part of a hate raid, you can added those terms and phrase to the Blocked Terms and Phrases list to protect your chat in advance

Now, there is also Permitted terms and phrases, which if messages contain these terms, and no other blocked terms, will not be caught by AutoMod . So say you have the Profanity filter set to 'More Filtering', but you're cool with the term fuck being said in the chat, you can added that word to the Permitted terms and phrases list and as long as it's not used in combination with anything else that could be flagged, it will appear in the chat.

Next we'll look at Chat Options, and the first is Block Hyperlinks which automatically deletes posted URLS except those posted by the streamer, moderators, admins and VIPs, then their is Non-Mod Chat Delay, which can be set up to six-seconds, which adds a short delay before any non-mods sees messages, so again a preventive strike can be made to time out or ban someone who breaks your channel's rules.

Moving on, to Channel Privileges, and and Email Verification. If this is turned on, anyone that would like to send a message to your chat room must first verify their email address. This cuts down on bots spamming the chat, and thus you know that anyone who causes trouble in your chat has had their account verified.

Chat Rules is where you can set your own rules for your channel and first time viewers of your channel must agree to those rules before saying anything. Here is what mine say, .

 Welcome, all are welcome here however, I do have my rules, they are simple and basic

- English only
- 18+ ONLY STREAM
- Respect the moderators, the other viewers and the streamer
- No links in chat unless approved by myself
- No harassing the mods, the other viewers or the streamer
- No trolling the mods, the other viewers or the streamer
- Be aware there is a time and place for discussion of social and political issues, my channel / chat is does not fit either of those criteria.
- No Follow For Follow Requests

If you prove yourself to be a problem, you will be banned.

It's straight to the point on the conduct that is not allowed on my channel. Most people get the message straight away.

Followers-Only Mode, if  enabled, viewers must follow you for a specific amount of time from  10 minutes to 3 months before they can say anything. You can only set it to allow any follower to chant instantly. Also there is the even more strict Subscriber-only Chat only allows those who are subscribers and moderators to chat

So hopefully this break down makes it easier for folks to get use to what tools they have to make use of to secure their chats.

And Now The Usual Stuff

Found a copy of Chaos Legion for the PlayStation 2 hidden with some DVDs, which does make me wonder whatever happened to my copy of Legends of Wrestling... I may have traded it in, but I'm almost positive I didn't. Maybe it accidentally got junked!

Sat down and watched the 2-Part Top Gear Africa Special, where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May took three estate cars on a journey to find the source of the Nile. This is why I don't mind The Grand Tour shifting towards doing big specials instead of doing a weekly car show. It's on the adventures when the trio really shine in my opinion.

Now just because there was no stream on Twitch, there was one in my Discord, first did six Overwatch Mayhem Matches... winning five and getting three plays of the game, all as D.va. Now Since I set OBS to have replay buffer that means I have one clip from the stream to be on the Highlight Reel for the week.

Overwatch Discord Mayhem Matches

1. D.va - Win - Play of The Game
   
2. D.va - Win - Play of The Game
3. D.va - Win
4. D.va - Win - Play of The Game
   
5. D.va - Loss
6. D.va - Win 
   

Unfortunately the same could not be said about some ranked matches I did last night, and both losses came at a result of no help from those who queue up to play Damage. If I'm playing D.va and I am consistently the last one standing while having gold on Eliminations Objective Kills and Objective Time while being often in Silver or Bronze for damage dealing, then something is wrong with how other people play ranked

Overwatch Ranked Matches (Tank)

1. D.va - 07:28 - Win - 2-0
2. D.va - 26:38 - Loss - 5-6
3. D.va - 16:33 - Loss - 2-3
   

  

But that's not all, I then switched things over for their to be a watch along in my Discord of the movie Willow starring Val Kilmer. I can't remember the last time I watched it, but it's been a long while. Was fun to sit down and watch it. Maybe I should consider doing some 'Reaction' videos over on YouTube again. It's a thought to be considered. Amyway, big thanks to Iceman and PandaSweet for being apart of the Watch-Along.

A topic that came up during it was the strong possibility that Val Kilmer probably can't reprise his role as Madmartigan on the Disney+ series. Now that I have a thought considering the ages of three of the known cast members, probably one is the daughter of Madmartigan and Sorscha... so maybe a guest appearance by Kilmer would be do-able if that is the case.

So how did I spend my day off of streaming, well for one I put a lot spare cables and parts into a trunk to stick in the bottom of a closet, so that took a good hour to do. I went back and forth on taking down the green screen, but since it blocks those from seeing what's behind me, I figured I'd leave it up.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 513 kcal. The exercises for today were Intermediate Combo #1, Triple Combo #2 and the Biceps Shape Focus Combo. As you can see with the wrap up of Lin's Champion achievement yesterday, we have switched back to Hiro.

For tonight's stream, we'll play Life is Strange Episode 3 and maybe, Episode 4, or we'll pair up Episode 3 with some other thing. But we will be streaming tonight!

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Highlights From The Week Of March 3 to 9 2020

This video highlights from my Twitch stream covering the week of March 3 to 9 2020, which featured Overwatch (on PC and Xbox One), Final Fantasy XV, The Grand Tour Game, Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Remix, Star Trek Online, Batman The Enemy Within and Twitch Sings!

Completionist Notes: The Grand Tour Game

On April 17, 2020 I began playing The Grand Tour Game which of course is based on the Amazon Prime show of the same name and features Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. My intent was to basically just add to my gamer score, you know get as many achievements as I could with my rather limited gaming skills. Now I have played racing games before, most people know I've streamed Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, and that there was a limit to how quickly I could adjust to all the variables that could throw at me. So in short, my goal was not to unlock everything, but to do the best I could. Now a good portion of the achievements in the game are tied to episodes that gradually were added to the game over the course of season three of the show, and while some are basic of just get a gold medal on every challenge, I did find some to be harder than others.

One that stands out a real pain in the neck is called 'Scotch Mist' which involving Drifting 1050 meters using a car that had Front Wheel Drive (this is done during Well-Aged Scotch, and you're using James May), which basically negated the 'trick' one could use to Drift easily with virtually every other vehicle in the game (which is to basically tap X and do a bunch of small drifts from side to side). Because the track this has to be done is so short in comparison to the others, even with being allotted two laps, it forces the player to get the most out of every inch. Now to get this done, is to basically drift for as long as possible around every corner and hope you close to 100 meters every time. It certainly seems simple but with the car you have to use, this was clearly one achievement I didn't think I'd get because of my approach to playing The Grand Tour, in that it's an arcade racer, so real world physics don't always apply to how the cars handle.

Most people will probably find the four "Win 50 Times With..." Achievements to be a grind if you try and do them all at one time, but the positive is you can set the conditions to where you can just do seven races at a time, turn off gadgets and change other variables to negate the A.I., and of course there are the 'Use the power up items X number of times' that can be done in conjunction with the races. Some of the items only appear if you're trailing behind so you might end up intentionally losing some races in the pursuit of getting the achievements for things like Nuisance Calls and Musical Idiots (good news is that when doing the episodes any power ups you use in those count towards the achievement goal for each item!) .

This being a racer there are time based achievements as well where you have to be as precise as possible to obtain or be observant of the course layout, for example, a gold medal might be say finish an episode segment in under 1 minute 10 seconds.... but an achievement for that segment says to do do it  1 minute 2 seconds. So that's hitting every turn perfect, not a single crash or bump along the way. I certainly got very familiar with some courses that have massive drop offs around corners meaning if you didn't go around the corner perfectly, you were losing valuable time. Some of these van be out right frustrating when you see that you're a second off and wonder where can you tighten things up a bit, doubt will settle in slightly, but all I can say is persistence and having nothing else to do will pay off.

Anyway, on that disappointing note, I'll shut up here.

Highlights April 26 to May 2, 2020

This week's highlights are from the week of April 26 to May 2, 2020, where I streamed Overwatch, Final Fantasy XV, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Star Trek Online, The Grand Tour Game and Twitch Sings! Be sure to swing over to twitch.tv/fredcasden to see things live!

Highlights April 19 to 25, 2020

This week's Highlights include Overwatch, Final Fantasy XV, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, The Grand Tour Game, The Blackwell Epiphany and Twitch Sings!