Seta Plays Cities: Skylines

In 2020, I bought Cities: Skylines. However, for a long time, I didn’t play the game much. At first, I tried it, but I felt a little intimidated by the game. The only other city builder I had played was SimCity 2000. So C:S was much different. Every once in a while I’d launch the game, play a little, and not play again for months.

My interest reignited at the beginning of 2022 when I started watching Twitch streamers (and a few Youtube videos) play the game. My favorite Cities streamer is ToadieZzz (formerly ToadieYPQ).

Now that Cities: Skylines 2 has been announced, with a release planned for later this year, I am determined to play the game, and learn how to use as much of the DLC as I can. I am streaming my journey whenever possible. I will explore various parts of the official content gradually, over the course of several cities, carrying over what I learn to the next city.

Now, a bit about my playstyle. I love to build slowly. I enjoy watching the growth, and the time passing by. I can easily sit and watch an area for long periods of time. It’s satisfying watching the people go about their lives, the cars passing by, the buildings as they’re built, or upgraded, just… everything. I also have this little quirk, which may be strange. With minor exceptions, I don’t zone during night time or during rain. I like to give my builders time off so they don’t have to build during those times. The main exception is at the beginning of the game, where I want to get out of the initial negative profit cycle.

This playstyle also allows me to get up and do minor offline tasks so I’m not constantly sitting in front of the computer. It’s also useful for chatting in Twitch.

One additional idea I’m planning, hopefully in the near future, is giving anyone watching the ability to switch radio stations using channel points. I enjoy listening to the various “radio” stations in the game, and I think it could be fun to let others decide what’s playing.

I will copy most of this information onto a separate page, which will be updated from time to time, at some point.

If you’re interested in watching me play Cities: Skylines, or any other game I feel like playing, my Twitch link is on the right side of the page. I hope you enjoy watching. Thank you.

A few thoughts on the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard

After watching this week’s episode of Star Trek: Picard (season 3. episode 5, “Imposters”), I started thinking about one scene near the end of the episode. So I decided to share some random thoughts I started having. I’m putting them under a cut to avoid anyone becoming accidentally spoiled.

Continue reading…

My gaming plans for 2023

I got a few games from the Steam Winter Sale. Mostly city-building/management type games, plus The Oregon Trail.

Some of the new games, in addition to a few I currently have, I need to do a bit of learning how to play them.

A few of the games I’d like to play/stream this year are:

City builders: In addition to City Skylines, I’ll play Banished, Endzone, Anno 1800, and a few others. There are more games I haven’t gotten yet, but I want. Some have a historical setting, others have a scifi/futuristic setting or a post-disaster setting. Since a few games I need to learn, there may be many game restarts as I learn new things about them. I’ve been flipflopping whether or not I want to get Surviving Mars, since several of the DLC have mixed/negative reviews. But I may at least get that game plus the Green Planet DLC because I find the idea of terraforming Mars fascinating.

The Sims 2 and 3: I have a few things I need to set up for these games, and then I want to stream them. I’m thinking of playing various households, switching around, sort of like a soap opera. I also plan to create sims of regular viewers and friends.

Persona 4 Golden/Persona 5: I never finished my first playthrough of 4, but I intend to start again from the beginning. I love this game. Hopefully later this year, after I finish 4, I’ll get 5.

Forza Horizon 4/5: Normally, racing games haven’t interested me, but Forza is actually fun.

Planet Coaster/Planet Zoo: I need to learn more how to play these, and get more DLC, but these look fun.

Red Dead Redemption 2: When I started earlier last year, I had difficulty with the controls and kept dying. I’m more interested in the online portion because I can create a custom character. But I worry about playing it because I’ve read stories about hackers. So I’m not yet sure about playing this.

Tropico 4 and 6: I love Tropico 4 and want to try 6 more as well.

Switch games: Mostly Animal Crossing, Pokemon Shield, and Pokemon Scarlet.

Other games: The Wandering Village, Two Point Campus and Two Point Hospital, Stray, The Stanley Parable, Star Trek Online, various scifi games, Jackbox Games, Civilization VI, The Oregon Trail, Evil Genius 2, various retro games, and maybe others.

One of my goals for 2023 is to clean up the ID3 tags of my old time radio shows, particularly the shows I stream. What I usually do is the following:

 

  • Artist: The series title
  • Track: The episode title (if I have it. Otherwise, I’ll just use “Untitled” or the episode date if available)
  • Album: Episode date (when available)

99% of my tracks have the artist and tracks filled correctly. For the album field, I’ve been lax on filling those fields. My goal for this year is to get everything filled correctly. This may not seem important, but it looks nicer to me.

I’ve been transitioning the schedule, moving certain shows around. This is my eventual schedule goal, which may change again later. All times are Central US time zone, which is currently GMT -6.

  • 5:00am Breakfast shows
  • 5:30am-7:00am Educational, information, and any other shows that don’t fit in the main genres I play
  • 7:00am-8:00am Comedy
  • 8:00am-9:00am Comedy and/or Drama
  • 9:00am-8:00pm Drama, Adventure, Detective, and a bit of horror at the end of the schedule
  • 8:00pm-10:00pm Variety and Music shows
  • 10:00pm-5:00am Music

I’m not quite there yet, and some things may change. We’ll see how things go over time. I also may add Jean Shepherd broadcasts late at night also. It’s not exactly old time radio, but it may be some interesting listening for some.

It’s the end of 2022. I didn’t accomplish everything I planned for this year, but I managed a little.

I had intended on regular streaming, but I did stream a little. There were real life distractions among other things (which I won’t go into.)

I did get a good gaming laptop a few months ago, and I will have an external GPU in the next few days. I’m hoping this will motivate me to stream more games in 2023. My goal for 2023 is to have a regular weekly streaming schedule, hopefully by the latter half of the year.

As far as gaming, I’ve been looking at quite a few city building games, and that’s making me want to focus on that genre of games. There are a few games outside this genre that I like as well.

I’d like to start using my Youtube account for clips from my Twitch gaming. I plan to investigate video editing software soon. Something not too expensive. Mostly I want to be able to clip sections of videos, and add text when necessary.

After recent shenanigans on the bird app, I’m planning to focus my content on my website. I’ll probably use Twitter much less over time, and Mastodon more. I’m still learning how to use Mastodon, so eventually I’ll figure what I want to do with it.

I’m going to transition my model posting from Twitter to Instagram (temporarily). At some point, I’d like to have a section of the website for my pics. I’m thinking Coppermine if it’s good software. I used it many years ago for my Atsuko Inaba photocard scans and liked it.