RimWorld is pretty close; you would need to set the AI storyteller at “peaceful” and maybe turn off opposing factions for a sandbox experience.
Hmm, also a fair bit of modding. There are mods that expand farming, electricity, add sewage, etc. But it’s never going to feel like a homesteading simulator. Everything is still abstracted for vidja gaming and balanced around external pressures like raids. Building a self-sustaining ‘homestead’ would be trivially easy.
Building, maybe, but sustaining through heatwaves, cold snaps, illness, etc.? Especially if your settlement’s only doctor is the one gravely ill. And, without a mod for it, your colonists won’t reproduce so you’d need outside help to keep your population up.
You could probably do the same with ARK. Play single-player, fiddle with the settings for plant growth, etc then go to town clearing land and farming and all that. You’ll still be on your own for things like collecting resources (versus real life where you can order stuff) but eventually you’ll be making solar panels and whatnot. But you’re still basically playing a survival game and you’ll have a long haul to reach modern-style homesteading. Also I think it’d be trivial to get into a sustainable loop of growing enough food to keep yourself alive and, without something to kick your sandcastles, you’d get bored.
I know this isn’t what was request: A modern-era farming/homesteading sim sandbox. Just kicking around thoughts in case it inspires someone else to better answers.
Yes, still trivially easy. Maybe not for a new player, but the game just isn’t balanced around sandbox mode. 90% of what a doctor does is heal combat wounds, and events like heatwaves are really just roadblocks to keep you stumbling between raids.
Don’t get me wrong, Rimworld is one of the greatest games of all time. I just don’t think it would satisfy that particular itch very well. YMMV.
Come to think of it, Sims 4 recently added a livestock expansion and an off-grid expansion has been around for a while now. Not very conducive to having variety, though.
There’s Stardew Valley, of course. Another absolutely fantastic game but probably still not exactly what EllisDee is after.
I’ve been playing a lot of Forza Horizon 5 since it came out last week. It is included in the $9.99 a month PC/Xbox Game Pass, which I was already paying for anyway.
Forza Horizon scratches many itches:
-Racing, it’s arcadish but there are point-to-point races, circuits, and special event/story races. There are street, road, dirt, and cross country races.
-Winning/buying hundreds of cars such as classics, muscle cars, trucks, hot hatches, and many super/hypercars. BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari, it’s all there. Cars can be tuned and customized yourself or easily download tunes and paintjobs others have made.
-Exploration, a large diverse map that takes ~1 hour to drive all the way around the outside, with tons of paved, gravel, and dirt roads all over. Different landscapes from jungle to desert to coastal to ruins and villages.
-Searching for collectible signs to smash that give you XP or other bonuses, I think there are several hundred of those all over the map. Some of them you have to perform a tricky jump or other maneuver to obtain.
-Playing solo or with friends. You see some other players driving around but they can’t grief you and you don’t have to play against them unless you choose to.
-Completionist mentality, there is an achievement for driving every road in the game, I think there are 570 or so.
-Stunt jumps, drift zones, speed zones, etc. These are little challenges around the map that you try to get 1, 2, or 3-star scores on depending on the distance/score/speed you obtain. If you have friends that play it shows you their scores for comparison.
There is a lot more but for anyone that likes cars and big detailed maps, the Forza Horizon games are a lot of fun.
Yep. I’ve been playing Horizon games much more than any other Forza titles. I own (non-Horizon) Forza 6 & 7 but have yet to play 'em.
In honor of our @Ed_Zotti, Horizon 5 now has Garaje del Eduardo (sdmb). I assume XBox players can join as well.
The club is private so entrance is via invitation only. Gamer tag is Skywatcher668.
So I was thinking about this some more and did some googling. There are a number of posts in various video game fora asking for suggestions for just this sort of game. And it doesn’t seem to exist at the single homestead scale.
The interest exists and the game doesn’t. If ever there was an opportunity for a runaway indy gaming success, this could be it.
I got a couple mildly interesting tidbits from some of this week’s Gamers Nexus videos.
DDR5 RAM right now is around a 2 to 4% FPS gain despite its much higher clock speeds. It’s essentially the same difference as if you upgraded to higher clock speed or lower latency DDR4 RAM. Any/all of those upgrades are good for around 3% FPS each. So if you’re running at 100 FPS, and you upgrade to nicer DDR4 RAM with higher clock speed and lower latency, you might see 106 FPS. Or if you instead switch to DDR5, you might see 103 FPS. And the older the game the more likely DDR4 is to outperform DDR5 straight up.
One assumes that at some point, DDR5 will surpass DDR4 in a meaningful way for gaming. But today is not that day, especially with DDR5 being double or triple the price.
Also the new 12th generation Intel integrated graphics are out, the UHD 770. Unsurprisingly, it continues the tradition of being trash. The 5700G’s APU utterly crushes the 12900’s iGPU; half again or even double the FPS. And the 12900 has the flagship version of Intel’s integrated graphics, running at the highest frequency.
For perspective, keep in mind that a 1050 TI utterly crushes the 5700G’s APU – closer to double the FPS, or at least half again – so there still isn’t a real integrated graphics solution that makes complete sense yet.
Corrections welcome if I interpreted any of this incorrectly.
EDIT: One concrete example from the video if I have time before the edit window closes:
GTA V 1080p very high / ultra
58.9 fps 1050 TI
32.6 fps 5700G
18.8 fps 12900
Intel’s actual “flagship” graphics are their Xe chips which I think are currently only in mobile processors and are likely the basis for their upcoming discrete GPUs. The 12th gen chips might have the best UHD graphics but those have always been little more than a display option that can run Youtube and Windows Solitaire. I’d absolutely recommend someone go AMD if integrated graphics were important to them because it’s just not a feature on Intel desktop chips. I should clarify that I don’t think the Xe chips really hold up against the Ryzen ones either, just that they’re better than UHD graphics.
Nvidia plans to release a refresh of their older RTX 2060 cards now with 12GB VRAM. The idea being that (a) the architecture isn’t desired by miners and (b) manufacturing the 12nm chips won’t compete with manufacturing the 3000 series chips. These won’t get anyone current gen cutting edge ray-traced yadda yadda but they could hopefully give entry level PC builders something to work with instead of buying used 1070s off Craigslist for $500. It’s a perfectly good card for 1080p gaming with high(ish) graphic options.
Couple game sales to be aware of, though neither is a deep enough discount for me personally to pull the trigger yet:
Red Dead Redemption 2 is 55% off ($27+tax) at greenmangaming. Link. It says it comes with “Epic Games” DRM, which I think means you’re buying an Epic Games key as opposed to a Steam key.
Also Madden NFL 22 is currently 50% off on Steam proper, but I’m waiting until a bare minimum of 80% off before considering it.
I am not sure, but I think in the end Red Dead 2 always requires the Rockstar launcher. It did when I got it. It’s not a bad launcher, but was just another launcher on top of Epic, Steam, and a few others.
This is cool, for people who have played both games:
Doom Eternal is 75% off ($15) for the next two weeks at humble bundle. Link.
It says:
I need another launcher like I need a hole in the head, so I’m going to wait for a Steam key. Still, 75% off is nice.
Looks like I have another project in the works. I’d like to set up a secondary workstation in a different part of the house. I still have my old computer, so I’ll start with that. My question is, how do I connect that old computer to the internet? It was only ever plugged directly into the modem with an ethernet cable or whatever that’s called, which is how the new computer is plugged in now.
I don’t think the old computer has an open PCIe slot. In fact I’m pretty sure it does not. So I guess the only choice is USB.
Is there a USB wireless device I can plug into the back of it to connect to my router’s wifi just like a phone? Under $50 preferred. I don’t want the secondary computer to create a Wi-Fi network, just connect to an existing one. If it matters, this second location is almost directly underneath the router one floor down so signal strength shouldn’t be an issue. Hopefully.
Search for USB wifi dongle. You can get them on Amazon for about $15.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the question, this is your answer. Cheap USB Wifi antenna and it’s all easy.