u/Xijit

Installing CashyOS onto a new system and it hasn't been pleasant.

Intel i9-12900kf

ARC B580

Gigabyte B760i motherboard

I have been trying to get either CashyOS or Bazzite to install on this thing for two days and neither of them will successfully install. Bazzite hit a harder wall than CashyOS (likely because this is a full Intel system), so I refocused on CashyOS. After multiple crashes when running the installer, I upgraded the BIOS, which had the lovely side effect of turning on secure boot, and that took a solid hour of fighting Gigabyte's BS menus to get shut off.

Now the installer is running, but despite saying that it was downloading a bunch of files, I have zero network traffic showing on the networks tab, the progress bar has stopped moving at 33%, and the log screen of the installer has been doing nothing but cycling through the slide show for 54 minutes.

I am going to leave this overnight, but if nothing has changed in the morning I am throwing in the towel and installing Windows ... I would rather not, but I have no idea what is going wrong and I am tired of having these installers quit working without telling me why.

It was a recent Nextfest demo, but I can't remember which one, and I also can't find the demo in my library anymore (maybe cancelled or removed from steam?!?!)... The setting was Victorian / Lovecraft, but I am fairly sure it was early this year & wasn't a Halloween themed Nextfest.

The little girl was dying from an incurable disease that was ravaging the country, so her father had a spell / ritual cast on her that turned her into an Undead spirit type of thing. But there is a time lapse between when it was cast and when she comes back, so the mansion is decrepit she wakes up in the middle of a pentagram / ritual circle and the remaining residents are possessed monstrosities. The spirit girl is too weak to walk, but there is a clockwork butler thing in the room with her that she rides on the back of while it acts as her legs and fights for her.

The gameplay inside the mansion is like OG Resident Evil / silent hill, with a semi fixed perspective as you move between rooms and pick up items to unlock doors. But it has a Souls like bonfire save system and the combat is also souls like with a stamina system for light and heavy attacks / you get a gun at the end of the mansion that uses mana to fire. You have to fight one of the maids for the mansion, who has become craized and possessed, she chases you around in a hallway and grows more arms as you get her health down to 75%/50%/25%.

After you get out of the mansion, the gameplay switches to a 2.5d perspective while you explore the grounds around the mansion. There are a series of interconnected rectangle field zones to explore, and the field zones will procedurally repopulate each time you die and respawn at a bonfire (I.E. sometimes there will be a witch house, sometimes there will be a cemetery, sometimes there will be a bandit camp).

There is also a road meandering through the field zones that leads to a crossroads, with one direction leading to a mine that you can get very far into exploring, and the other leading to a village with a locked gate. In the middle of the crossroads you meet a scarecrow with a sketchy vibe, who offers you the key to the village gate if you do something for him. I can't remember what it was, but it wasn't hard & he leaves after giving you the key.

But then when you go to use the key, he jumps you and says he wants to enslave you to use as his tool. Queue the second boss battle of the demo as he chases you around with a big ass scythe. This fight was pretty hard and I ended up cheesing it by kiting him around and hitting him with spells. Once you beat him, the demo ends.

It wasn't a AAA grade game, some of the art was kinda crappy, but I liked it and it well made enough that I was sure it would make it to a full release ... I think it was from an Asian development team, but absolutely was not Anime.

I can't remember the name and the demo is no longer in my library, so I am worried that it got cancelled and pulled from steam.

I need some binoculars for spotting my shots on targets at the range.

But I am paralyzed by the indecision of wanting a nice set, but not wanting to spend more than $150, but not wanting to trust Chinesium brands claims of being waterproof, but also I kinda got wide eyes and some of the smaller designs don't open up wide enough.

Does anyone have particular feelings about binoculars?