mouse Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Strange Days

Yesterday was an extremely strange day, because an event happened that was largely unexpected. As I have talked about over the last several months, my laptop is definitely seeing its age. At the time I got it, it was an amazing power house of gaming with dual GT 650m video cards… that could pretty much run whatever I happened to throw at it. The problem is the laptop is from 2012, and in that time a lot of stuff has changed and we have gone through three generations of video cards. So long as games were largely based on the PS3/Xbox 360 architecture everything was peachy, but as games dropped support for that generation and started to focus on the PS4/Xbox One it began to struggle. The first game I can remember that it flat out would not run in a way that I could stand to play it… was Dragon Age: Inquisition which is shockingly taxing on a video card… especially one of this age. Then came Fallout 4… and a long string of games that I had to run at 720p with greatly stripped down resolution options to get them to run at all. So since before Christmas I had been watching the local Craigslist to see if there were any options out on the market that could be snatched up on the cheap. I have a mixed past when it comes to Craigslist, because I have been able to get some insane deals like a Playstation 4 in early 2014 for only $200. I have also gotten insane run around that seemed to last for weeks over a couple of laptops that the other party simply flaked out on.

Still I was not in dire straights and part of me was wanting to wait to see what the next generation of Nvidia cards looked like before purchasing a brand new laptop… which seemed to be the direction I was heading towards. Then over the weekend I actually saw something good on Craigslist, which surprised me in the midst of all of the over priced machines… and laptops that predate my current one. Someone was selling a Asus Republic of Gamers laptop with an Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor, 16 GB of Ram, a Nvidia Geforce GTX 960m video card, with 1TB data drive and a 128GB SSD. At first I apparently texted the wrong phone number, as I missed a zero in a sequence of four zeroes in a row. However after texting the right address the guy responded pretty quickly. I asked the standard questions… like does it have any issues, why are you getting rid of it, etc… and then started making offers. Miraculously I apparently started off the bargaining in the right place, because I was able to talk him down to $600 which is a significant deal for that laptop. So last night I spent the ever so fun game of starting to install everything I “need” to be happy with a laptop, but I have to say anytime I upgrade like this there is a little bit of sadness too. I develop a personal relationship with my computers… and I guess part of me feels a little bad about kicking one to the curb to spend time with a newer model. I know that is a strange sequence of thought… but I can’t help but feel a little sad that I am moving on.

Remote Play

Screenshot taken with Fraps while Streaming from PS4

One of the great promises of the Playstation 4 was the ability to remotely play the system from a Vita, Android device, or the Playstation TV set top box. For the most part this works… but with certain constraints. The Vita appears to do an amazing job of remote play, given its limited real estate and the slightly wonky control scheme. However the Playstation TV set top box has been nothing but a disappointment. There are threads all over the place talking about how to somehow get it to perform well, but most of these involve having a hard Ethernet connection back to the same router that the Playstation 4 resides connected to. The problem here is… the entire idea of having it is to be able to extend the reach of your PS4 to another television. Basically for a long time I was looking for a way to play my PS4 somewhere other than sitting up in my office, where I have it for the purpose of recording gameplay footage. Awhile back I read about an unofficial side project that extended Remote Play to the PC, but never actually got around to checking it out. The software is currently in active alpha development, but from what I was reading online it seemed like it actually worked well. The author charges $10 for access to the alpha client… which is the only thing that had kept me from playing with it already. So last night I took the plunge hoping that I could sit there and play PS4 as my laptop downloaded and installed various bits of software.

Screenshot taken with Fraps while Streaming from PS4

Firstly I have to say… this thing is phenomenal. There are a few hoops that you have to jump through like registering your PC with your Playstation 4 as a remote play device. Additionally in order to get the native DualShock 4 to work I had to track down LibUSB which honestly took longer than any other part. Once installed my DualShock 4 installed on my system and was recognized by the Remote Play application. Unlike the native Remote Play options… this thing connects insanely fast to your PS4 and even the wake on lan functionality seems to work great. The real test however is if I could manage to play Destiny on my PC without being frustrated by the control input lag. Sure enough I managed to complete several duties and even hopped into some crucible where I managed to rack of some decent kill streaks… all running remote over my wireless network. Every now and then there is a slight bit of artifacting… and occasionally there might be an input hiccup… but in the grand scheme of things it works insanely well. There are some constraints… you are limited to a maximum of 720p running at 60 fps. For the most part I ran the default of 720p at 30 fps and the experience was not necessarily perfect but good enough for me not to care about any imperfections.

Screenshot taken with Fraps while Streaming from PS4

Where the really awesome bit comes in is the fact that the software author currently is working on mouse and keyboard controls, and for a little bit I actually tried playing Destiny with mouse and keyboard. There is some work that still needs to be done… and the mouse just doesn’t quite move fast enough yet to make game play truly viable… however since this software is actively being developed on I have a feeling that at some point soon… or with some configuration tweaking I will be able to sit on the sofa and play Destiny without the Dualshock 4. Part of me wants to throw money at this guy to get him to add more features… because seriously this thing is working amazing. Folks have already chimed in with “But Bel, Aren’t they adding official support?”. This is true, but I have a feeling that Sony isn’t going to add in all of the features that this software is already starting to support, like the ability to pretty much play with ANY usb controller and not just the Dualshock 4. I have a feeling that without any doubt Sony is not going to support Keyboard and Mouse emulation either. In any case… it is $10 well spent even if you just want to play around with it. Over the course of the night I played Destiny, Rayman Legends, and Farcry 4 all without issues. Also of note… ALL of this was while I was downloading a game from steam, a game from origin, and copying files across my network… and STILL the remote play session refused to lag.

Handbag of Fury

As mentioned yesterday we headed up to Joplin to go shopping and took my mother in law with us, since she wouldn’t tell us anything she actually wanted for Christmas. The goal was to take her shopping and hopefully find something along the way. This process involved me getting drug to a bunch of stores I would never actually visit on my own. I brought my 3DS with me, but oddly enough I never actually used it. I mostly piddled around on Twitter, Tumblr, and occasionally guild chat via the WoW Armory application. I did pretty well for the first three or so stores, but after that I started hanging out in the car while they were shopping inside.

I am sure by doing this I missed numerous things that were photo worthy, but the highlight of the day was the above handbag. It quite literally has a set of brass knuckles built into the clasp. I am not sure if this was really intended for self defense, but it certainly would hurt like hell to get hit by that. I tried to convince my wife that she needed it but she was un-swayed. I am not sure how we ended up together, because if it were my choice there would be skulls on everything. Hell I play a Deathknight… that class is all about beating down things while wearing skulls. My wife on the otherhand wants none of that nonsense.

I keep finding these awesome scarves with cute little skulls, and she is completely uninterested in them. She is not exactly a girly girl… but I guess bedazzled skulls is a bit too far in the other direction for her. Both her and her mother found several things during our trip, which is good. I found a few interesting clearance Legos, but decided not to pick them up because really I would have just been picking them up for a few interesting parts… and had no interest at all in the thing they were intended to build. These were originally 90 dollar sets that were selling for 40, but that still seemed a bit pricy to purchase just for a handful of nifty thingamajigs.

Gloam the Conqueror

When I finally got home from the whirlwind trip of shopping madness I built myself a fuzzy little cocoon on my comfy sofa and settled in for some World of Warcraft. I did my normal crafting cooldowns crawl, making sure everyone had created their trademarked rare daily craftable, before settling in on Exeter my Paladin Blacksmith. The first goal of the night was to farm up the rest of the Motes of Harmony needed to craft two Ghost-Forged blades for my rogue. While I was trying to get a hold of Fists of Fate, I was unable to do so and gave up on that mission settling for the two crafted blades instead. I still think it is almost criminal at this point that Motes are not bind on account, since I seem to have way too many on some characters and never enough on others… but I have settled on a decent way to farm them.

I badly photoshopped a map of The Dread Wastes to indicate where I go to farm motes. There are supposedly better drop rates elsewhere in the world, but I find this to be my favorite spot. Firstly no one is ever out here… granted by me saying this there will automagically be tons of people out there next time I need motes. Secondly and quite possibly the most important reason… all this stuff is level 90, easy to kill and gives Black Prince reputation. Most of my characters need this badly to be able to progress their way through the cloak quest chain. Especially now that I have the repair mount, this is an awesome place to go mindlessly kill things and make tons of money doing it. Additionally the mobs die pretty fast once you are in timeless isle gear and you can make a big loop of the island and by the time you reach the other side everything is completely full spawn again.

Finally I got my 40 motes and crafted the blades, enchanted them with windsong and was up and running on Gloam. I have to say having the crafters to built a starter set of gear for Pandaria eases the transition. You hit the ground running and are able to slaughter pretty much everything, even on the super squishy classes like the rogue. I made my way through the first few sections of Pandaria before sleep claimed me. My goal for the day is to make it through all of Jade Forest. Not really sure if this will happen or not as today is supposed to be the last “nice” day for awhile, and I have a feeling I will get drug from my cocoon and out into the world. If that happens no promises on how far I will make it on my goals.

Redragon Perdition

At this point pretty much every MMO gamer is familiar with the Razer Naga and most are also familiar with the Logitech g600. They each provide a different take on the concept of the large number of button MMO mouse. Each has its strong points and its weaknesses. The Razer for example, I have had three of them die in exactly the same way after about two years. Similarly I recently had a g600 kick the bucket after about the same two year threshold, granted the g600 did not die so spectacularly. The Nagas started “jumping” in that the cursor would mysteriously accelerate at high speeds in one direction or another. The g600 on the other hand started missing mouse clicks. One of the actions you do more than any in an MMO is holding down both the left and right mouse buttons to move forward. The g600 would stop registering that my right mouse button was clicked and as a result I would stop forward movement.

When I was looking on amazon for a replacement, I noticed the Redragon Perdition, that literally looks like a combination of the best features of the Naga and the g600. At the time it was a little over $20 cheaper than either of the other mice so I figured I would give it a chance. The reviews were really favorable and it featured a naga like shape but with g600 style buttons. The mouse itself was a little late getting to me, as it was shipping during our recent ice storms. However when it arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the built quality. This is after all in theory a chinese knockoff of a Naga and g600, but it is a very good one. One of the problems I have with both the Naga and the g600 is that they don’t feel nearly as good as the old Logitech mx500 gaming mice. These had a really great slightly rubberized pebbled texture to them, that just felt nice in the hand.

Much to my surprise the Perdition has almost this same texture. Additionally like the mx500 it has counterweights that can be removed from the base of the mouse to give it a solid feel in your hand. I find weight mice easier for me to use since I have extremely large hands. The perdition also sports a truly insane 16400 dpi resolution… which I immediately had to scale back as it was insanely twitchy. If you have ever wanted to play a game by barely moving your hand at all… then that might be the resolution for you. Additionally the software that it comes with lets you customize pretty much everything about it, including creating damned near any possible color of LED light, and controlling the “throb” motion.

So far I am a fan, I have gamed normally with it for roughly two weeks and it still feels great. My only complaint so far is that middle clicking the mouse wheel requires more effort than any other mouse I have had. Luckily I don’t really middle click anything but in my browser window to open new tabs. However if this is a hotkey you regularly use in your keybindings, just be warned for my sausage like fingers… it takes quite a bit of pressure to get it to register a click. I like the shoulder button quite a bit because it is comfortable to hit with the side of your finger, but not as prone to accidentally hitting as the third mouse button was on the g600. If you are in the market for a new mouse and not opposed to taking a gamble on a chinese knockoff… I highly suggest you check it out. I really am enjoying it so far.