Mike Zornek

New Gaming PC

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 09:22:54 -0500

In the closing days of summer this past year, I started to get an itch about building a new gaming PC. In this post, I’ll share what I built and some notes on its assembly.

Assembled computer powered off.

Assembled computer powered on.

Inspiration

I had been playing a few games on my Mac laptop over the summer, including Civilization VI and Stardew Valley. Civilization VII was formally announced in June, triggering an interest in a new gaming PC. While I could technically play Civ7 on a Mac, it would likely play much better on a proper gaming PC.

It had been 8 years or so since I last built a gaming PC (a top-end of its time 1080 Nvidia-based tower). The main games I played on it back then were MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. I also enjoyed many hours of City Skylines and Portal 2.

In recent years, I shelved the gaming PC and have, instead, enjoyed my game time via other outlets, such as my PlayStation and Switch. The idea of a new gaming PC for Civ7 and a space to tinker with those MMOs again was intriguing.

Components

PC Parts list.

Various PC parts laid out for assembly.

For this build, I wanted to lean more toward a visual presentation. My last build was very economical, a traditional black tower with no real frills. It would be fun to give this some personality. It’s a white build with some limited RGB lighting that would lean towards a purple hue.

I chose the Lian Li O11 DYNAMIC EVO RGB case. I have seen this tower a few times on various YouTube videos. I really enjoyed the spacious interior, the glass sides, and the sleek lines. As I started working with this case, I was impressed with the build quality and layout. I love having the motherboard on one half with a hidden chamber for all the various wires and fan controllers.

I chose the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor for CPU, my first AMD processor ever.

For graphics, I debating a lot of options. Ultimately, I chose a more expensive choice than I originally planned, picking the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. I picked this for the extra video RAM (16 GB), which I hope will help in the future. We will see how well games like Civ7 (and a possible Red Dead 2 with mods) actually utilize all this horsepower. For now, it sits there, almost bored with my current gaming choices and their simple needs.

For the monitor, I went with the Asus ROG Swift OLED, a 31.5-inch screen running at 240 Hz. This thing is gorgeous. Since getting an OLED TV in 2020 and my iPad Pro earlier this year, I have found it hard to consider other display options. I love the rich colors and the deep blacks. I like the glossy finish too; it makes colors pop.

I went with various Lian Li RGB options for cooling fans, including three of the LCD-display variety. I currently use the temperature and load metrics, but I might use some GIF memes in the future. Getting the right mix of white color, reverse airflow, and sizes was actually harder than I expected. I compromised on sizes (I wanted 140mm but had to get 120mm) and normal direction (mounting in reverse to get the airflow I needed).

The final meaningly decision was CPU cooling. I went with an air-cooled solution, a Thermalright Peerless Assassin. Water-cooled all-in-ones are popular and can squeeze out extra performance, but I dislike the complexity and the motor noise moving the fluid around. I prefer the simplicity of airflow, and considering the space my case provides, I expect it to be more than enough for my needs.

Assembly

It has been a bit since I last built my last gaming PC, so I took my time and watched a lot of YouTube videos to help me get comfortable with an approach and answer some questions.

I have big hands, so work like socketing the CPU and applying thermal paste can be daunting, but I took my time, and it worked out.

Handling the graphic card is similarly stressful since it is so large and expensive. You need to put pressure on it to get it into the PCI slot, BUT NOT TOO MUCH PRESSURE! (Aside: I broke a small tab of my old 1080 graphics card before, and happily, it did not cause an issue – but the memory and worry persist.)

The other stressful thing about the graphic card is the power. I’ve seen Steve’s coverage of these 12VHPWR plugs, and this design is an absolute shit show. Again, I approached this carefully, ensuring everything was secure and not overly stressed in the cord bend (another advantage of having such a large case interior).

When I first attempted to power-on the computer, I did not get it to POST.

POST, short for power-on self-test, is a series of tests and procedures your PC runs through before loading the operating system.

I saw red lights on my motherboard and was very nervous. I assembled everything inside the tower, so disassembling and debugging what was causing the computer to not POST was very intimidating. Luckily, I worked on simpler debug steps first, which meant reseating the RAM. This required removing one of the CPU fans, but it was a low-impact first thing to try – and lucky for me, that resolved the issue. The RAM seems fine, I just needed to reseat it. (FWIW, I did give the PC plenty of time to configure the memory on those first attempts. I am aware that as you change the memory layout the motherboard needs to cycle/relearn the memory speeds.)

If I were doing this again, I might suggest buying a test bench setup or otherwise doing a sanity POST verification of the components before putting them in a case.

After I got the computer to POST, one issue I did run into was fans. I misunderstood the wide range of fan models Lian Li was selling and ended up buying a mix of fans and controllers that were not fully compatible. I made a midday MicroCenter run to buy compatible alternatives and had to reinstall them a few times to get it all worked out. Ultimately, I had to install two separate fan controllers (one for the LCD fans and another for the simple RGB fans).

The full desk shot.

Windows

Not having a readily available Windows computer around, I followed some instructions to download the Windows 11 installer and make a bootable USB drive from my Mac. This worked fine for me, though sadly, I did not get a working network driver for the motherboard’s wifi chip from Windows, so I had to download some manual drivers onto a separate USB drive to get that working. Once I was on the wifi, I could get all the other drivers directly from this machine, as well as the many OS-level updates.

I had a Windows 10 license from my old gaming PC, which worked fine for registering this copy of Windows 11.

Windows 11 is frustratingly pushy about trying to get you to create your local account via an online Microsoft account. I used a few suggestions to avoid this, but it seems like an ongoing nag I get from time to time.

One of the biggest problems I ran into was the EFI boot partition. So, EFI is what Windows uses as its boot loader, and when you install Windows, it tries to be helpful. It self-discovers all the hard drives in your computer and will attempt to set up what is needed. What I observed is that when I did my clean install of Windows, it saw a working EFI partition on the USB installer and would not set one up on my main SSD. Thus, my system would boot on a power cycle if I had the USB installer plugged in but would not if removed.

I did 4 or 5 clean installs of Windows, trying to nudge it in the right direction. I tried to pull out the USB drive at a specific point during the installation, but it never worked as I wanted. I ended up following some instructions to manually create an EFI partition on my SSD and finally got everything to boot on a clean power up with no USB drive plugged in.

Tools

During this assembly, I loved using my iFixit tools. Having all the various screw types and extenders really came in handy. I’ve used this set for two notable projects now (this and my Framework laptop) and continue to appriciate how well they work.

It’s easy to overlook, but make sure you have many USB drives if you do a build like this. I did not and had to do a data dance when creating USB drives to flash the motherboard with the latest BIOS and other things. Keep that Windows 11 bootable USB drive around for future issues.

Final Thoughts

I’m really pleased with my build. I had to make a few visual compromises with the fans, but overall this turned out just as I had hoped.

So far, my main games have been Civ 6, Stardew Valley (trying to finish perfection on my latest farm), and World of Warcraft (rolled a new gnome mage on the new Classic servers).

As 2025 approaches, I’m looking forward to Civ 7 and a playthrough of Red Dead 2 with some mods to shake up the gameplay. There is a rumor that MLB: The Show might get a PC release this year, and if so, I might play it here.

Download MP4.

If you have a game suggestion or any follow-up questions, reach out.

Learning Rust via Game Development: Starting Dungeon Crawler

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 09:45:54 -0400

A second update and demo of my work through Hands on Rust. This time we are building a graphic turn-based dungeon crawler game.

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Learning Rust via Game Development

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 11:59:26 -0400

A short show and tell for how I am learning Rust through game development.

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Gaming Update, December 2019

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 16:44:31 -0500

With the holiday break going strong and my time for gaming increased, I figured I’d share what I’ve been playing lately.

World of Warcraft Classic

I’ve been playing regularly since its release and enjoying the retro feel for a few months now. I have a Level 55 Gnome Mage on Deviate Delight, an RP-PvP server. I also have a small collection of alts, all around the 16-18 level range. I’m taking things slow and enjoying the journey. I doubt I’ll join any scheduled raiding guilds but instead will focus on casual things.

Link’s Awaking

I got the remake alongside a Switch Lite. I am very fond of the original GameBoy version and this remake has been a fun experience. It’s a pit pricy for a Switch game, so unless you are hungry for the nostalgia, I’d recommend buying it used in a few months. The Switch Lite has lots of pros and cons. I’m going to keep mine BUT it’s not something I’d recommend for others. Can share more if people are interested in a future post.

Pokemon Sword

With hesitation and frustration I bought the new release and sadly it has not hooked me in. It just feels dull, very repetitive and stale. Game Freak’s laziness and greed bleed through the experience. I really hope this is a wake up call for them and the series. I’ll continue to give it some of my time but I would not be surprised if it end up in the archive before finishing it like Ultra Sun/Moon and Let’s Go before it.

Final Fantasy 1

There is an event called Final Fantasy Fiesta going on over on Twitch where two streamers are playing all the mainline Final Fantasy games back-to-back in a race of sorts. It has me nostalgic so I went to play the first game a few days ago. I first looked through my closet for options (found the GBA version and NES Classic version) but ended up using OpenEmu and a spare PS4 controller on my MacBook Pro to play the original NES release. I’m a few hours in and enjoying the grind, sometime re-watching Sherlock via Netflix on the side.

That’s pretty much it for now. I didn’t ask for any new games for Christmas as I already have a high backlog stack so I suspect this will be my focus through January.

Enjoy the holiday break and play some games!

First ElixirConf, and Then Azeroth

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 15:20:41 -0400

Happy Friday everyone. Hope you all had a good and productive week. I myself am feeling pretty good.

Went heads down this week and made some project progress for both clients and personal endeavors. Today, Friday, I’m working from home. First cleaning up a bit and then probably some more client work. Would like to close a few threads before attending ElixirConf next week.

I’m going for four days. First two days are workshops and then two days of conference talks. My workshops will be:

Build Performant, Real-Time UIs with Phoenix LiveView - LiveView is something I have experimented with but have yet to get going in my projects. I am excited to get past the simple demos into more complex use cases.
Build a Smart Camera with Nerves, Phoenix, and Absinthe - I have almost no hardware experience and this is more of an experimental thing for me. Lots to learn!

It’s going to be a fun week. Over the last year I’ve really started to get over the beginner hump of Elixir and am ready to sink my teeth into some of the deeper aspects (or aspects like Nerves and embedded software I’ve never touched).

Sadly while I’m away at ElixirConf I’m also going to miss the opening of WoW Classic. I’m really excited to see how Classic works out as I’m not a fan of current retail WoW but still enjoy the lore and atmosphere of Azeroth. It sounds like the early days are going to result in a fair amount of login queues so maybe my Elixir distractions will be for the best.

Pretty sure I’m going to level a Gnome Mage as my main. Server is Herod (PvP).

Regardless to all this, I am also looking forward to September and a no more trips for a little while. As much as I like to get out I also love being home and enjoying my routines. I also need to start getting more time into my side project and start it’s marketing / validation path to see if it’s a real product or not. More to come on that.

Enjoy the weekend and have some fun.

Gaming Update, February 2019

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 12:00:00 -0500

First and foremost I’ve been playing Civilization VI, and getting better too. Civilization VI is by far one of the most complex games I’ve ever played (this is my first game in the series) but its been fun learning the game mechanics. I’ve been nudging up the AI difficulty as I go and it’s starting to get rather challenging, though like many I do wish the AI was smarter rather than just more rewarded in order to draw its advantages.

This week we will see a new expansion for Civilization VI, Gathering Storm, which will add lots more environmental issues (global warming, volcanos, river floods) amongst other additions and changes. Related to the release, there is a Steam sale for the core game plus all previous DLC for 70% off, $40 total. If you’ve been on the fence about trying Civilization VI now is a great time to check it out. I do recommend trying the base game before getting the new DLC to make sure you like the game format first. If you do jump in, let me know and we can play online together.

In Civilization VI downtime I’m on a bit of a Final Fantasy kick. I’m playing the Final Fantasy X HD remake for PS4 and Final Fantasy XIV (MMO) for PC. I’ve had the HD remake sitting around since when I bought the PS4 and playing it is part of my general goal to explore more of my backlog before buying new games.

As for FF XIV, well I need my MMO fix since I’ve turned off WoW. I’m not putting in crazy hours or anything. I’m taking things slow and steady, exploring the game and its many, many job choices. I really like the crafting system so far. It is so much deeper than WoW’s crafting and I like how I can level all the jobs on one character.

That’s it for now. Keep on gaming!

Gaming Update, September 2018

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 00:24:04 +0000

Forgive me, it’s been a while since my last gaming update. So, what am I playing?

Well first off, I’m officially done with Hearthstone. It’s a shame cause I like the game, but the price has just gotten out of control.

I was playing a bunch of World of Warcraft over the summer and into the new expansion. I leveled my rogue Paperkut to 120 but ended up unsubscribing right when the raid came out. I’m not interested in doing the whole “guild and 2-3 nights a week” raiding schedule and while I’m sure I would enjoy the braindead yet soothing process of leveling and gearing my alts it will still be there for me in a few months. For now I wanted to try some new games and put some more time into programming side projects.

After WoW, I went retro, starting games of Wind Waker, Earthbound and even a Pokemon Platinum Nuzlock. I consider them all still active playthroughs. Since my last nuzlock update I was able to finish the second gym with only one death so far. (RIP Perch, the Starly.)

And finally, last weekend I bought Cities Skylines — and oh man am I having fun building my cities. I’ll fault the game with having a poor built-in tutorial process but I was saved by lots of helpful web tips and tutorials. The base game is $29 with lots of paid for DLC. You don’t need the DLC to get started so if you fancy city simulators and have not checked it out yet, I do recommend. PC preferred, since it has a large mod community.

Let me know what you are playing! Email is fine, but blogging is better. See ya next time.

Hearthstone is too expensive.

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 13:25:31 +0000

Some chat about how Hearthstone went from expensive to ludicrous expensive over the last year — and I’m out.

Links:

Gaming Update, May 2018

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 18 May 2018 15:15:35 +0000

From April trends, I continued to play Stardew Valley into early May. It kind of died off over the last few weeks though since I don’t have much left to do, beside more and more money.

I also finished April pretty heavy into the new Hearthstone expansion. It was fun to see the new cards and decks. Nothing ground breaking, fun times and good fodder while I also listen to podcasts.

What’s new for me is my second attempt at Zelda on Switch. I’ve made it much further than my first attempt (~ 15 hours in) and am getting better with the controls (though some mistakes still happen in the heat of battle). Exploring is fun though if I’m honest I feel like I would benefit from a little more direction. In my last play session I was tasked to fetch some arrows on a hill. There is a mob up there who I attempted to kill. I say attempted cause he kicked my ass repeatedly. I’ve been trying to avoid walkthroughs for this game but I wanted to take a peek to see if I was suppose to be here later in play, with more hearts and armor — turns out you are suppose to be stealthy and avoid this mob. We’ll see how that goes.

Second big update for me is Civilization 6! I bought the game when it first came out but never got too deep into it. I think I tripped over a YouTube video or something which put it back in my mind but yeah, I’m really enjoying it. It’s my first ever Civ game and the rules are overwhelming but fun to learn. The games last forever and it’s hard to put down so be prepared to dump major hours into game sessions. I’ve been playing standard games but it does have a lot of scenarios for a quicker experience I want to try out.

What’s next? Probably more Civilization 6 and Zelda. I also did purchase via pre-order Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Hyrule Warriors for Switch. I never got to play them on the WiiU but they look like fun. Also getting excited for E3 in June. There have been some Pokemon leaks for the Switch game and I’m a little nervous about the Go integration rumors but we’ll see how it turns out.

Gaming Update, April 2018

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:57:29 +0000

So last month I explained how I recently unsubscribed from WoW, somewhat because of it’s addictive nature and somewhat due to an interest in catching up with my growing game backlog. A few weeks in what do I do but replace it with new crack in the form of Stardew Valley.

I remember buying and playing Stardew Valley when it first came out (along side when I built my current PC gaming rig) and while I thought it was neat at the time it didn’t grab my attention from WoW.

A few years later, one of my let’s player subs starts doing a series with it and it got me really hooked. It shares a lot of the “build” feelings I get from Dragon Quest Builders (which has sadly died down since I started my farm) but adds a lot of personality with it’s pixel art style and unique town characters. The realtime day cycle and never ending things to do makes it extremely addictive to play for me. (Just one more day…)

So yeah, I’m in Year 3 of my farm. It’s pretty much end game content and achievement stuff now. I am contemplating doing my own Let’s Play (with a new farm) with it but we’ll see.

In other game news, I have been continuing to play Secret of Mana. I probably have 2 more sessions before that one will be done. I think I’m going to finish the story but leave the grind-y achievements be and move on.

Last month I mentioned Pokemon Ultra Moon and I didn’t get too far. I finished the first island but not feeling it at the moment so put it down. (This despite catching a shiny Zorua too!)

I did fire up Hearthstone for a few play sessions at the end of the month. Wanted to make sure I got my card back for the month’s season. Also looking forward to the new expansion which should land mid-April.

One nice thing they are doing right now is rewarding full packs with quest completion. The cost to own cards is something that makes it hard for me to recommend Hearthstone to new players. Let’s hope their generosity continues in the year to come.

Up next? I’d really like to give Zelda: Breath of the Wild a second chance. I put in like 5 hours when I first got it but nothing since.

Gaming Update, March 2018

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 21:23:00 +0000

Things have been pretty quite here so I thought I’d update you all on some things, you know the important stuff — like gaming!

First, what I’m not playing, World of Warcraft. I still love WoW. I think the Legion expansion went very well. I do however find myself playing it too much. As an example, I can sit down for a WoW play session and it will go on for hours, sometimes filling up most of the day. Whereas when I play other games I usually cap out at a healthy 90 minutes or so. Thats what I need to do so I can keep up with my work side projects as well as get into a pile of games I’ve bought over the last year but haven’t gotten into. I’m sure I’ll be back to WoW in time but I’m due for a good break.

So what am I playing? First up, I’ve been enjoying Dragon Quest Builders on the Switch the last two weeks or so. It’s a mix of Minecraft and live action RPG gameplay. It plays in the Dragon Quest 1 world and oozes nostalgia in it’s monsters, music and lore.

Next up is the Secret of Mana remake on PS4. This was one of my top games growing up and has an OST that I still listen to on a weekly basis while I work. The remake has been very controversial in gaming circles, mostly for the new music not living up to expectations. Overall I still prefer the SNES music as well but I don’t hate the remake at all. I find it a fun revisit to a classic game with a new flavor. And if you want the original music, it is included as a option.

Finally we have Pokemon Ultra Moon. I didn’t get too far into this remix version Generation 7 when it first came out. At the time I had just finished collecting the regional dex for Pokemon Sun so I ended up taking a break. Having been a few months out, it’s nice to be back. Despite the repetitive nature of the “remix” I still have fun. I even was lucky enough to get a Shiny Zorua for my early team.

What you playing? Ping me on Micro.Blog or email with your own gaming update.

My New PC Gaming Computer

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 22:53:29 +0000

Final Parts List: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/4Wjcf8

I’m a fairly serious/casual gamer (as in serious love of many games, casual in that I can only play so many hours a week because of other life responsibilities). I play a lot of 3DS (Pokemon, Zelda) and I also own a Wii U, a PS4 and lots of other older/retro consoles.

I’ve been considering a gaming PC for a while. My main drive has been to support a mix of playing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. I’ve been playing both on my 2011-era iMac (Bootcamp-ing into Windows for FF14) but the graphics performance of the old machine was starting to become a real limiting factor. Additionally was the interest in playing some PC-only (or PC preferred) games, like Overwatch and Stardew Valley.

A few months ago I started assembling a parts list and talking to some other friends. Part of me just wanted to buy a pre-built system but for better or worse my geeky friends assured me the assembly wouldn’t be that bad and it would let me save some money or buy some better components.

My initial target was to spend about $1500 and go for a upper mid-tier machine. I wasn’t interested in VR right now and just wanted something to play games. After getting acquainted with the video cards and performance I choose the GTX 970. I had a full parts list waiting to go but I didn’t pull the trigger. This was around April and I was still traveling a bit. I was also working towards paying off my student loans and decided I’d do that first.

When I came back to my parts list at the end of May there was the announcement of the new GTX 1080 and 1070. These new cards were destroying the performance charts and I started to get a little greedy. I kept up with the release, and noticing the 1080 was selling out joined an alert website to let me know where and when it became available. I eventually grabbed a Founder’s Edition directly from Nvidia. I will concede the upcoming non-Founder’s Edition cards are probably better cooled and cheaper but I was anxious to play and didn’t want to wait until end of June / July to get my hands on this thing. I splurged.

I came back and cleaned up my final parts list. I ordered the rest of the machine from NewEgg with a few pieces from Amazon. (Even if a bit more I’d prefer to buy from NewEgg and Amazon who are very easy to work with regarding returns and such.)

One item I was not planning to buy but did, was a new monitor. I was really hoping to get dual use out of my Apple Thunderbolt monitor (which I use with my iMac to extend my display) but as I did research it would seem hooking that up to a display port was not going to work out. I ended up buying a Dell Gaming S2716DG 27-inch monitor to make it work, and it does. I just am not enjoying using it with my iMac as much as my other Apple monitor since the colors aren’t matching like they used to.

Assembly

After ordering the parts a week before, I sat at home Friday night and got started with the assembly. I took my time. I read the motherboard and other manuals as I slowly connected it all together.

Some things gave me trouble. It took a few attempts to get the motherboard mounted in the case. In general there was always a scary feeling of putting too much pressure on a part to get it to fit in. The case came with a ton of different screws and I had to take a lot of time to make sure I was using the right pair for the job.

Windows

I worked on Friday from 8pm till about midnight and then Saturday morning 9am until lunch to finish the assembly. Much longer than a seasoned PC gamer I’m sure — but keep in mind this was my first build since college and even then I had a lot of help from my roommate. Once assembled I was lucky in that it powered on into the BIOS right away.

Despite some known gaming headaches, I decided you use Windows 10. It installed fairly quickly. During initial setup I did opt-out of a lot of personalization features that do not interest me. My next challenge, getting the network card working.

My gaming PC is not near my cable modem so I need wireless connectivity and surprisingly this is not on the motherboard — I needed a seperate PCI card. The card I bought seemed to use PCI for the housing but also plugged into the USB on the motherboard. After spending some time downloading the latest drivers and playing the format game with some USB sticks I eventally installed the software but the card would not start up. It took some searching but I eventually found out I had to disable XHCI Handoff to enable the third USB connection on my motherboard which is what I was using to connect the wireless card. With all of that figured out, I had network access on my computer and began downloading some system updates and then some games.

The Games

I’m sure I’ll buy some more in time (and would greatly love your recommendations, email me) but for now the primary PC games for me are:

Final Fantasy 14
Overwatch
Civilization V
World of Warcraft (idle until Legion)
Stardew Valley (New, not played yet)
Rocket League (New, not played yet)
Undertale (New, not played yet)
Hearthstone (I play this on my iMac and iPad as well but there are some nice Windows-only analytics add ons I might try.)

Final Thoughts

I have mixed feeling about the time I spent doing the build. It does feel empowering to refresh my memory of how to do it all — but that said it’s not something I get a ton of enjoyment out of so let’s hope this box keeps ticking without too much maintenance in the years ahead. And while I do carry a little guilt about going for the super high end video card I also look forward to for the next few years being able to turn on ULTRA options without losing frames.

31 Days, 31 Products: Elgato Game Capture HD

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 02:36:44 +0000

Day 17: Elgato Game Capture HD

This post is part of a larger series where for 31 days I’m posting a story about a particular product or service I’ve come to enjoy.

Elgato Game Capture HD is actually a hardware/software combo. Its an external capture device that does HDMI passthrough, grabbing whatever video signal you are passing through (be it from a video game console or computer display). It will them compress the video as mp4 on the device and and delver the compressed video to a Mac via a USB cable connection (which is also used for power). On the Mac you’ll run some software that saves the capture to disk and also optionally helps you stream to Twitch.

I originally bought and used the Game Capture HD to help me record some Let’s Plays.

Let’s Plays are video series where an individual will play a game, capture it as well as their commentary while they play. Some personalities are very detailed in the mechanics and secrets of the game while others treat the videos very casually, almost as a diary of sorts, mixing in stories of the past as well as the present.

As for my own “Let’s Play career”, it was short lived. I had a bunch of fun doing a handful of series before quitting mid-way through Final Fantasy IV. I quit because I started to have other life goals and while fun, the amount work it took to produce the videos compared to their small impact — it didn’t feel worth it.

ANYWAYS… the Elgato Game Capture HD found its way to be useful for me once more this past year when we decided to start capturing CocoaHead talks. I now use the device to capture our HDMI output (before it’s redirected to the televisions) and I have to say the recorder software holds up well to us switching machines, resolutions and what not while recording. After the meeting, I take the videos from here and then match a separate audio capture we do through a lapel microphone to build our final video, (edited in ScreenFlow, and published on Vimeo).

If you are interested in video capture you can browse the Elgato Gaming site for a rundown of the current product lineup. The device I use is the base model and costs $150 retail but there are other options if you want higher frame rate capture (mine is 30 fps, they also have 60 fps available).

31 Days, 31 Products: Hearthstone

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 05:01:10 +0000

Day 16: Hearthstone

This post is part of a larger series where for 31 days I’m posting a story about a particular product or service I’ve come to enjoy.

Everyone needs something to destress, something to be a friendly distraction in-between long coding sessions. For me as of late this is a mix of podcast walks and Hearthstone.

Hearthstone is an online card game from Blizzard, designed around the heroes of Warcraft. Warcraft lore is not a requirement but will be enjoyed for those have some background. Leeroy!

The format of the game has you pick a hero class and build a deck of 30 cards (a mix of class specific cards, and general cards). As you play the game you’ll draw cards, spend mana to play cards, use cards to fight other cards and hopefully, overtime, kill your opponent. It sounds more complicated than it really is. The good news is Hearthstone is extremely welcoming to new players. It has some great tutorials to get you started.

Hearthstone is a free to play game. You can earn gold through daily quests (win 2 games as mage, etc.) and other means which let you buy more cards, expansion packs or play special Arena mode games (which itself rewards cards). These things can also be unlocked for cash directly should you start to enjoy the game and want to progress your card collection a little faster.

As it goes, being a free to play game, you’ll have a plenty of opportunity to experience the game to see if you like it without spending any money. If you do like the game, you will probably want to buy some cards to jumpstart your collection. The need for this will also vary with how much you like to experiment with new decks. Sure enough there are players our there who have gotten Legendary rank using pure Free 2 Play accounts.

The game itself is playable on the Mac/Windows, iPhone or iPad. If you every want to throw down, my Battle.net name is zorn711. Good luck.

A Walled Garden of Shit

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:55:27 +0000

From the App Store Review Guidelines:

We have over a million Apps in the App Store. If your App doesn’t do something useful, unique or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.

I sure wish they would take that guideline to heart and start rejecting some of this shit.

So PBG got an iPad and found some shitty iPad games and I’d like to say these are the exception — but they’re not. There are tons of these crappy apps on the store and while it helps inflate that “total app” number for Apple it really hurts people browsing around trying to discover new apps.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/rm_Y2t51tUE

WEIRD IPAD GAMES!

GoldCards 1.1

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 20 May 2014 13:43:03 +0000

GoldCards, a Hearthstone reference guide version 1.1 is live on the App Store.

It is mostly a data update regarding the recent nerf of Unleash the Hounds though I did squeeze in a few other bug fixes.

MegaManEffect now on GitHub

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 20:25:35 +0000

A few days ago I started to archive a lot of the Clickable Bliss website, replacing it with a smaller “hiatus” version. In the process I moved the MegaManEffect which lived primarily via a blog post and a GoogleCode subversion repo to GitHub.

https://github.com/zorn/MegaManEffect

The MegaManEffect is an application that emulates an effect seen in the classic NES game Mega Man 2. When you launch a Mac OS X application, the screen goes dark, stars sweep the night sky and your application’s icon is presented in a blue letter box bar with a cheesy 8-bit music introduction.

MegaManEffect was written while I attended the ADHOC/MacHack conference in 2004 and took second place in the ADHOC Labs Showcase! In the summer of 2005 the application hit a nerve in the community generating tons of interest and downloads. It is to this day one of the most distributed pieces of code I’ve even written.

Funny enough after tweeting the move I ended up getting an email and later a pull request to update the code base to compile on 10.9. I approved the pull request today (thanks @smithrobs!) with a few other fixes.

The MegaManEffect will be 10 years old this summer.

Week in Review: WWDC, E3 and CocoaHeads

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:02:27 +0000

It’s been a crazy week. Some random notes and observations…

WWDC

Apple did a tremendous job streaming the Keynote. I watched it live on my Apple TV in the living room while chatting with friends on IRC and Twitter. It was awesome. As for the content, let’s review:

Mac OS X 10.9, Mavericks — Not a huge fan of the name. I liked Sea Lion! As for the user facing features, most are pretty meh for me, I will enjoy better dual monitor support. I also like the idea they are pushing iCloud Keychain and that it will suggest higher quality passwords for people. I myself will stick with 1Password but this is a great feature for users at large. The advanced tech of 10.9 looks great. Love the focus on battery life.

iOS 7 — I have very mixed feelings for the new UI. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t. Between the historic adoption rate of new versions of iOS and the complexity of delivering a consistent experience across iOS 6 and iOS 7, I can see many apps moving to iOS 7 only in the coming months, particularly ones that aren’t released yet.

While not reviewed in detail during the keynote, the real gems for me are in the developer tools and APIs released this week. Xcode 5 looks awesome. The new continuous integration services of OS X Server looks great (though time will tell if it can be a full on replacement for current solutions). Tons of brand new tech including: Text Kit, Sprite Kit, Game Controllers, UIKit Dynamics and better multitasking have been introduced along with some great improvements to current APIs. It’s going to be months until I have time to play with everything.

New Mac Pro — I’ve been a long time customer of the Mac Pro and was in the market for one in 2011 when I sadly, after continued uninspiring updates to the product line, had to settle for a loaded (max RAM / max Graphics Card / 256 SSD) iMac instead. Not to sound like a total dick, the iMac has been great and really fast but I still longed for the multi-drive, graphics card replaceable, mega ram slot tower that I was accustom to. So this new Mac Pro is actually in my eyes more of a loaded Mac mini style device. There is little chance you’ll be replacing these graphic cards (yes cards, it has two of them; probably to support the unannounced retina display this Mac Pro will probably ship along side with) and there doesn’t seem to be much room for extra internal hard disk space. That said, this machine’s stats looks awesome and I have been antsy for a retina display on the desktop. I’ll have to see a price tag before I commit myself but am happy I have options when it comes time to upgrade my current iMac.

There were also new Macbook Airs released at the show. I have and really enjoy my 13-inch Air and while the new extra battery life of these new models are probably very important for some people I am lucky enough to be able to plug-in when needed so will probably skip this generation. If it was a retina screen, maybe I’d change my tune.

Sessions — After the keynote, Apple, like they had promised, started publishing the session videos, usually less than 24 hours after they had been presented. By the end of the week we also had choices for HD or SD variants as well as the PDF slides. This helps take the sting out of not being able to acquire a ticket a lot and I thank Apple for putting forth the extra effort to do so.

E3

I haven’t been keeping up with E3 nearly as much as I have been Apple news, but seems like everyone had a great time out in LA. Playstation 4 announced it will not be following Microsoft’s lead and is promising very little DRM on the PS4 that will inhibit things like game sharing and used game sales. This, plus a cheaper price tag and arguably better under-the-hood tech has pushed itself to the top the console food chain. Time and games will tell how things end. For me, I’m not planning on a day one purchase. I’d like to see how things pan out and find a must have game to push me over the edge.

As for my Nintendo, for which I always have a love/hate relationship with, we saw a new Smash Bros, a new Super Mario 3D World, as well as lots of new info on the new 3DS Pokemon and Zelda titles.

Moving from back to front, I’m getting pretty jazzed for the new Pokemon. Even outside my previous fandom for the series, this new release has a lot of new elements to check out. Being a huge Link to the Past fan has me interested in this new sequel game though I’m still mixed on feelings of curiosity mixed with disappointment that they aren’t doing something more unique. I own Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS and it was not something I really enjoyed. The gameplay was very slow and continued use of the same old Mario platforming was exhausting. Considering the lack of interest New Super Mario Bros got as a Wii U title, you’d think they’d start to catch on that we need real NEW things but alas this seems lost on Nintendo. Finally, Smash Bros fans will inevitably enjoy a new release of Smash Bros. Even I get a little giddy seeing MegaMan added as playable character. Unfortunately I’m not a fighter fan. I no longer share a house with people to regularly play with and even when I do play these games at a party it becomes a button mash as no one knows all the moves. I think I’ve grown out of it. 🙁

CocoaHeads and our iOS 7 Hackday

On Thursday we had our usual monthly meeting for CocoaHeads. With the Apple event still in-progress there was lots of chatter about all the new stuff. When the meeting finally started we actually ended up with so many talks and demos we went over time. Reactive Cocoa in particular kept many a CocoaHead asking questions and thinking out of the box.

Saturday we held a hackday, our first CocoaHead event in some time. The hackday was focused on iOS 7 and had people work solo or team up to experiment with the latest API toys. Throughout the day we provided breakfast, snacks and a home made lunch from IndyHall’s own Kara LaFleur (@KaraLaFleur). At the end of the day we presented our results to the group and awarded book prizes from the Pragmatic Programmers and Big Nerd Ranch. All in all things went great and it was good to see some people attend who normally can’t make our nightly meetings.

Sunday Rest

It’s now Sunday and after an extremely busy week I’m relaxing. I do have plans to head out for some dinner later to wish my Mom to wish her a happy Father’s Day but otherwise am enjoying a lazy day around the apartment.

For all my Apple and gaming friends, I hope you enjoyed this week as well and enjoy the upcoming releases. Have fun!

New Let’s Play Section

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:38:17 +0000

While I haven’t mentioned it too much on the blog, I’ve recently got back into Let’s Plays. From the new Let’s Play index page:

Let’s Plays (often shortened to LPs) are basically people playing a video game and adding commentary on top. Some people like showing off all the things and secrets, such as HCBaily and ChuggaaConroy, while others treat LPing more as a personal journal, like NintendoCapriSun. I’m still finding my voice but am enjoying the process.

I just finished a Let’s Play of Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and have now started a Let’s Play of Super Mario Galaxy 2.

http://youtube.com/videoseries?list=PLcuknvxBZ9L4GiN4Sj5eCXcxfGjIhB2SG

For more info, RSS links and such check out the new LP index page.