Minecraft

The first time I played Minecraft, one grandson had me play on their laptop using another person’s login. He coached me on how to do various things including how to get through the first day and night in survival mode. Soon the other grandson asked to open the game up to the LAN and he joined the game. As a result, I learned quickly how the game can become a multiplayer game almost instantly. From that simple beginning I was hooked, and immediately downloaded, installed and bought my own Minecraft login. (Mojang, the creator of Minecraft, establishes a permanent login after you purchase the game. You can then download the game and install it on as many computers as you wish.)

Not long after that first experience, the older of the two grandsons established his own server using MCHosting as the platform for it. That meant all three of us could play online together no matter where we were. I don’t recall the exact timing, but probably within a year I decided to use the same hosting service and created my own server so I could learn more about that aspect of gaming and technology.

I, in turn, introduced Minecraft to my son and his daughter and they quickly decided they wanted it as well, so they both got their own login accounts and off we went. I now had two households in different states to play Minecraft with and several times all five of us were playing on one or another of our servers from three different states hundreds of miles apart.

My son tried a different hosting service when he set up his server (GGServers) and it had quite a bit lower monthly fee, so I decided to add a second server for myself and explore the two hosting services to see which one I liked best never intending to keep more than one server for very long. Eventually I settled on keeping the MCHosting because it was a little better overall and generally had less lag. I attributed that to my server location being at their Chicago hub while the GGServers server was in Montreal, much farther away.

As the grandsons have grown – one in second year of college, the other a high school senior – we have done less gaming together, but I still have some fun gaming with my son and granddaughter, who is in middle school and continues to enjoy several games. She, of course, does most of her gaming with her friends, which is appropriate.

As a result of the lower demand for it, I have discontinued having my own server. We now mostly play when we are in the same location and LAN works just fine.

I, on the other hand, continue to thoroughly enjoy playing Minecraft in single player mode, trying out new things and building new structures. Each major Minecraft update adds more features to explore and the latest version, officially called Update Aquatic (1.13.1), is no exception, with all the water features and creatures.

Gaming Overview

Several years ago, my grandsons introduced me to more sophisticated computer gaming than the simple free stuff like Solitaire. The first game they showed me in detail and had me try was Minecraft. It remains one of my favorite games and I highly recommend it for all sorts of reasons, not the least being how open-ended it is leaving virtually all of what happens to the player. It is a terrific tool for developing creativity.

Before long we also were playing World of Warships (shortly after it first became available). The grandsons had already been playing World of Tanks and wanted to try the Warships. After learning how to play World of Warships and enjoying it, especially with the grandsons, I decided to add and learn World of Tanks so I could play that with them also. Both games are free and can be easily downloaded and installed.

About the time Civilization V was released in its final expansion (2015), younger grandson talked me into buying it so he and I could play it in multiplayer mode. I did so and quickly became a fan of the game. We eventually convinced older grandson to get the game too. We’ve had a lot of fun playing together, using the audio only of Skype to be able to talk with each other while playing. Very recently we have used Discord instead of Skype, because of its better-quality audio experience while gaming.

Installing Civ V introduced me to Steam, a digital game distribution platform, and over time I have added various other games they distribute – Cities: Skylines, Rocket League, Stellaris – and more recently Europa Universalis IV and Civilization VI – again mostly because the grandsons were playing them and it was great fun keeping up a long-distance relationship with them via gaming.

I’ve always enjoyed playing various board games since I was a kid, so the transition to complex computer games was not difficult. One board game that I have enjoyed in its electronic version is Settlers of Catan. Microsoft games owns the rights of the electronic version, and one has to buy a license for the game to play it on a computer, but that is another game well worth the price.

I expect to continue gaming, especially having just invested in a replacement gaming laptop.

Alienware 17 R5

Once it was clear the Asus was not going to be salvageable, I started doing research on what I was going to buy to replace it.

I briefly considered a gaming desktop that would be high-end, probably a custom build on one of the build-your-own sites. Before long I realized that was not the best option at this time, because if I want to continue gaming with grand kids at their homes or otherwise while traveling, a laptop was the only option. It will be a few years yet before they are old enough to not be living at home – either at college or on their own – so laptop was the choice.

I did quite a bit of searching online for various options, first setting my sights on a less high-end machine in hopes of saving money while still having adequate power to run the games we play. That approach did not last long as it soon became obvious that the minimum specs I was willing to live with (such as 16 Gig RAM) meant a gaming computer was the only viable option.

After some more searching, I finally settled on the Alienware 17 R5. For the most part I am happy with it.

I ordered it online direct from Dell, and decided to pay the extra fee to expedite delivery (because by this time we had been operating with one computer in the household for a couple of weeks). My credit card service promptly decided it was an unusual expense and put a hold on it until I approved it, which I did within minutes of notification. Unfortunately, they would not try again to run the expenditure through until the next day, so I communicated with Dell and asked them to try it again immediately. It went through, but the delay ended up delaying the shipping a day. Following the shipping tracking was fascinating. The origin, apparently where the Dell factory or distribution center is located, was Kunshan, China. The next destination was Shanghai, China then Anchorage, Alaska. From there it went to Louisville, Kentucky where it went through customs. Although it only took a couple of minutes to clear customs (according to the UPS tracking report), it was a couple of days before it was reported as picked up and shipped from there, but it did arrive on the last day of the window of time promised when I paid the extra fee.

I was eager to get it set up when it arrived, but had decided when it was in transit that I was going to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro so I would have that on both computers. During the setup process I did the upgrade. Upon installation all went reasonably well, but I did find several updates of Windows and components, including drivers were required.

Only a couple of features have been a bit disappointing, though not enough to be a serious problem. First, the Alienware 17 R5 has only two USB ports! I was used to having four, so that was an adjustment, although most of the time I only use two – one for the mouse, the other for a portable backup drive that I connect and disconnect as needed. Second, I was somewhat surprised that the computer runs hot, especially while gaming. The Asus had such good internal cooling fans, small rubber legs keeping under the laptop open, and vents in the chassis, that it was not a problem. The Alienware runs much hotter and it sits flush with the board I use under it, so I quickly realized it would be wise to buy and use a cooling pad. I found one with four cooling fans, light weight, and otherwise quite functional. It was advertised as having two extra USB ports on it, but I discovered while setting it all up that one of those has to be used to power the cooling pad (plugged into one of the computer USB ports). So, I have no more ports than I had before. Minor inconvenience for the good cooling it provides, though.

I’ll share about the learning curve of using this new gaming computer in the next post.

Razer Failure

While enjoying the Asus computer and well before the worst of its problems began I made an investment in a new mouse.

After visiting and gaming with grandsons, I decided to buy a gaming mouse that one of them had. It is a Razer DeathAdder Elite. It is a really sophisticated mouse, but so far I have not really used any of its gaming features, because I am not sure I could get used to all the extra buttons, remembering which is for which action in a particular game. Also, the games I play for the most part do not require quick reactions or special functions, so a standard mouse works just fine.

Less than a year after purchase I started having problems with the left click button. Most of the time it would perform a double click after only a single click, and the click and drag function did not work. These problems made gaming very difficult.

After looking online for solutions, I engaged in an online chat three times with Razer tech support. Finally, after explaining I had tried everything they suggested (cleaning the mouse, reinstalling the device and software, updating driver, etc.) I eventually ended up having to request authorization for return of merchandise (an RMA as they called it – Return Merchandise Authorization). Because the one-year warranty was still in effect, a return was possible.

Once the RMA was approved, they sent me a prepaid shipping label, and I sent the mouse back using its original packaging. (I always keep the packaging just in case…)

The RMA process went smoothly. Once they received the old mouse, they sent me a new one. I have installed it and it works well, so far. I will take great care with this one, especially while traveling, so no pressure or bumping of the mouse buttons occurs, as I suspect that may have been a contributing factor in the failure of the first one.

I will very likely never buy another gaming mouse, unless I someday am playing games that require more functions than a standard mouse has.

Battery Charging Problems

About six months ago, I started noticing some problems with the battery on the Asus ROG G751JY. At first, it manifested in the battery discharging even while being plugged in. I thought that was quite odd because it only happened while playing Civ VI. After doing some research online, I learned that was a common occurrence with laptops and high-end graphics gaming. Simply put, the power going through the power cord and brick cannot produce enough power fast enough to run games like Civ VI, so the laptop had to use both the connected power cord and the battery to power the game. I never noticed that with Civ V or even the earliest versions of Civ VI, but with the Rise and Fall update, the power demand appeared to increase. After learning this was common for gamers, for a while I did not do any more trouble shooting, but learned to monitor the battery level so as not to be shut down suddenly in mid-game.

Then sometime a few months ago, the battery would not recharge upon closing the game and going back to regular power usage. When all else fails, reboot or shut down and restart is one of my mottos. So that became my go to solution, because after shutting down the computer and waiting a few minutes, it would begin to recharge. Sometimes I had to unplug the power cord from the computer, wait a few minutes, then plug it in again for the recharging to start. That led me to more trouble shooting research online and I found one particular site very useful. It identified eight possible causes for this problem. Some really obvious “operator error” possibilities like checking to see that the power cord is really plugged in to both computer and functioning A/C outlet and checking to see that all connections, such as power cord to power brick, were secure. Others were more ominous.

When the problem became noticeably worse, such as the issue occurring with Minecraft as well as Civ VI, I decided I was going to need to check out the more serious potential problems. From previous laptop experience, I knew sometimes taking out the battery to shut down any battery power connection and booting computer without battery would help determine if the battery was bad and needed to be replaced. So, I set out to do that. The only problem was with the Asus ROG, the battery was not easily accessible and the back of the computer had to be dismantled to get to it. That turned out to be too daunting a task for me, so I opted for taking it in to the shop.

I asked them to check the three options I suspected: 1) bad battery, 2) bad power connector on the computer (where cord connects to computer), 3) failing or bad power cord/power brick. They did not find any of the three to be the problem, so I took it home again, still hoping for it not to be the worst – a motherboard problem, although the most likely possibility was in fact the battery sensors on the motherboard.

I muddled along for maybe a couple of more weeks before eventually the battery would not recharge at all no matter what I did. Back to the shop. They rechecked everything and eventually settled on probability that the power connector was the likely culprit, so ordered a replacement. The first one they got was the wrong one, so another had to be ordered. After installation, the problem still persisted and so the test of a boot up without the battery in the computer was the final straw. Even then it would not boot up at all, confirming it was a problem with the motherboard. Needless to say, replacing a motherboard was too costly to consider.

So, RIP Asus ROG G751JY.

Asus ROG G751JY

About three years ago my laptop was not functioning well with the gaming I was doing and I decided if I was going to keep up with my grandsons – gaming with them online – I was going to have to invest in a better computer. After doing fairly extensive research on the options available, I selected the highly recommended Asus ROG model G751JY. I had intended to buy it from Asus directly, but found a much better price on Amazon and so bought it there.

I was very pleased with it and enjoyed using it, especially for gaming. It served me well in Minecraft, Civ V, World of Tanks, World of Warships, along with some other Steam games.

There was just one nagging issue – the internal Intel Wi-Fi adapter. It would just out of the blue drop connection. Through experimentation, I found two things that helped. One was to use the 2.4 instead of 5.0 connection to my network. Apparently my normal location of use of the laptop was just far enough away from the router that it did not always get a full-power signal. That was a minor adjustment, though I wished I had the faster connection. The second thing was it seemed to require nearly continuous driver updates, so I regularly checked and updated. Even so, it was very inconsistent. It was frustrating enough that I finally bought a USB Wi-Fi adapter (Linksys WUSB6300) and that worked very well, although sometimes the 5.0 connection still did not have full power.

Overall, for the time I had it, I liked it. The saga of its demise will be detailed in future posts.