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HI all,

I've got an interesting problem for someone in their 50's. Before I continue, I'll say that I've been dealing with computers for 37+ years, and dealing with the internet ever since it became available to the public. I didn't just start this stuff yesterday.

Decided I'm not having enough fun so I decided to get into gaming. Been threatening to for a while. I don't like the combat all the time and scare you games. I'm more into simulation, puzzle, analytical stuff with a slant toward space exploration where possible. Again, MINIMAL or no combat and fright. I signed up for the Humble Bundle subscription where you get a few games per month. I also set up a free account over at GOG which does DRM Free games. I linked the GOG account to HB. Some of the HB games are DRM Free but many are on STEAM.

One of the games I got with my introductory offer (Tropico) requires Steam. So, I figured I'd set up a Steam account and then link it to HB too. The ATTEMPT to do so is where my story ends.

I go to the steam site join page (https://store.steampowered.com/join/), fill out the data, then click the box to prove I'm not a bot, except I CAN'T. EVERY stinking time, I get "Your response to the CAPTCHA appears to be invalid. Please re-verify that you're not a robot below." I assure you, I'm not a bot, and I know how to pick out buses, cars, cross walks, and such from a grid of pictures. Over, and over, and over it fails. Tempted to break something nearby.

Before you ask, I've tried it with shields up, including noscript (trusting the sites I can see), privacy badger, and ublock origin. And I've tried it with shields down, all those disabled. I've tried it on Firefox and Brave (based on Chrome). I'm on Win7 and have not tried (old) IE. I'm on a VPN if it matters.

In googling around, I am NOT the only one having this problem. There are lots of MAD people.

You might say, contact support. You can't. All you can find is FAQ's. Apparently you can't contact them unless you have an account. If you can't make an account, you're sunk.

As Spock would say, "the logical choice is an act of desperation". So, I'm posting here.

A virtual tip of the hat goes to whomever tells me where that slightly modified quote comes from.

Side note, got a pretty cool space based walking simulator game called Stardrop from HB. Goes a bit slow and has a few rough edges but not too bad.

All help is appreciated. Gaming is supposed to relax me, not make me furious.

Sincerely,

Ron

The VPN might be the problem.
I was having trouble loading my game once, I had forgotten to disconnect the VPN. I read somewhere that it's against the Steam ToS to use one.

Tried without the VPN (even if you don't want to do that...)? Darn, second to it...

rfrazier said:

...
As Spock would say, "the logical choice is an act of desperation". So, I'm posting here.

A virtual tip of the hat goes to whomever tells me where that slightly modified quote comes from.
...

Click to expand...

Would it be from the Kobayashi Maru test in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn? I didn't look it up but I'm hoping I'm right.

Barry Wallis said:

Would it be from the Kobayashi Maru test in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn? I didn't look it up but I'm hoping I'm right.

Click to expand...

@Barry Wallis Sorry. It is Star Trek, as there aren't too many Spock's around. But, that's not it. I'll tell you guys later if nobody gets it.

Ron

I DuckDuckGoed it

also just learned how to use the SPOILER tag

First season of ST:TOS, The Galileo 7. I just re-watched this on Netflix 3 days ago. It refers to Spock dumping all of the fuel in the shuttle craft and igniting it while in a decaying orbit over a hostile planet in order to attract the attention of Enterprise which was about to abandon the search for the missing shuttle craft and 7 crew members and warp out of the system. Also, I love run-on sentences and was excited to get to post the right answer first.

Edit: ... and then missed it by 3 minutes.

rfrazier said:

... I'll tell you guys later if nobody gets it.

Click to expand...

There's a transcript of the conversation between Kirk and Spock here: https://comparativegeeks.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/spock-a-character-study/

* BELLS * WHISTLES * CHEERS * MUSIC *

You guys got it.



Here's the quote:

"KIRK: Now we all know, and I’m sure the doctor will agree with me, that desperation is a highly emotional state of mind. How does your well-known logic explain that?

SPOCK: Quite simply, Captain. I examined the problem from all angles, and it was plainly hopeless. Logic informed me that under the circumstances, the only possible action would have to be one of desperation. Logical decision, logically arrived at. "

Regarding my gaming problem, I'm going to try later without the VPN, although I can't imagine why recaptcha would care. Anybody with other ideas feel free to post. Thanks for the suggestions thus far.

Ron

rfrazier said:

I can't imagine why recaptcha would care

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The CAPTCHA is frequently a 3rd party website. If you have disabled third-party cookies, then you may face a problem.

Steam has a web-site and an installable client, have you tried with both? (The client uses an internal version of Chromium, I believe.)

Interesting. I ALWAYS have 3rd party cookies disabled. I haven't tried the client yet. Just the website.

Ron

Hi Guys,

I turned off my VPN and the Steam account creation procedure went through smooth as silk, including recaptcha. My security features were still in place, and I had trusted, the steam properties as shown in the noscript dialog as well as the recaptcha site. Strangest thing I've ever seen. Thanks for the ideas.

Ron

That's great, Ron! I'm pleased to hear it.

Steam, as a Valve product, is pretty trustworthy, AFAIK. Admittedly, I didn't get an account until I was forced to because I wanted a patch I could get only through the Steam client, but it's been over 15.5 years since I signed up. They've handled many ups and downs of being an online platform pretty well over the years, even if they forced the early users to sign up to get patches for their games. Steam has a pretty big user base, one which more than doubled in size after China un-banned video games a few years ago and allowed Steam's client into the country.

The freely-available statistics (accessed from the top left drop-down in the client? No, it's the leftmost option on the "secondary" menu, called STORE, the bottom option of which is STATS—click on STATS) are pretty interesting to look at. You won't see much data transferred over the past two weeks to or from Antarctica, but it's there sometimes, especially during the big annual sales. Also, North Korea is usually completely dark, but once in a while there's some unknown activity from Pyongyang. The maximum and average speeds from various countries have changed a lot over the years. It's been interesting to watch the changes as Steam has grown in number of users and as the worldwide internet has changed in speed. For a long time, South Korea had the fastest connections by far, but that wasn't the case last time I checked.

You can also compare your computer with the most common operating systems and other details of Steam users. It's not collected automatically. A certain percentage of users is given the opportunity to participate in the hardware & software survey each month. The selected users can decline or agree; that information is obtained from those who agree (OS used, version, GPU, CPU, number of displays, etc.). I think the bandwidth usage and transfer speeds are more automatically obtained. It's pretty amazing how much of the total usage comes from the USA (the only country with individual connection speed/transfer amounts statistics for each state, AFAIK), Germany, UK, and now China, which was once a country with no usage at all.

Steam goes down for a few minutes every Tuesday in the late afternoon Pacific time. You'll see that reflected in the statistics graphs as well.

There are a number of free to play titles you might find interesting, in the genre(s) of games you like and in the streaming videos & movies section, and also in the software section (some of which is related to gaming, but definitely not all!).

@danlock I haven't installed the Steam client yet as I'm still playing through Stardrop that I got from HB. That's a mostly cool game but it gets a little slow at times. There was one time when I was trapped in a certain place in a starship and didn't know how to get out. The mission objectives weren't giving me enough hints to get out. I had to revert back to a prior chapter and redo part of the mission while playing really close attention to what the narrator said. I'll have to check out the statistics you mention when I finish this game, I may jump into the Tropico or Fantasy Blacksmith that I got from HB. Both are on the Steam system. I'll have to check out those other sections too. Thanks for that info. Ron

I've been a subscriber to the Humble Monhtly (now Humble Choice) since the beginning, but there are 2-3 months I've skipped by putting my account on hold. I think I might do that for this month (the month with the Tropico game, which might be referred to as the November bundle), but I have until the first Friday of November (2020-11-06) to decide; I've never waited that long before so I don't think I will take that long to make a decision.

Best wishes!

rfrazier said:

Hi Guys,

I turned off my VPN and the Steam account creation procedure went through smooth as silk, including recaptcha. My security features were still in place, and I had trusted, the steam properties as shown in the noscript dialog as well as the recaptcha site. Strangest thing I've ever seen. Thanks for the ideas.

Ron

Click to expand...

Glad you got it solved. Might I suggest Kerbal Space Program for a nice space simulation.

Phillip Porch said:

Glad you got it solved. Might I suggest Kerbal Space Program for a nice space simulation.

Click to expand...

@Phillip Porch Thanks for the tip. Sounds like an interesting one.

Found it on Humble Bundle via Steam. Don't think that's DRM Free.


And on Gog, presumably DRM Free.


Ron

PS, Surviving Mars also caught my eye.


Ron

Well if you like puzzles, I'm going to recommend you check out "The Talos Principle" https://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/The_Talos_Principle/ It looks like a typical 3D FPS, but it's not. It's a puzzle game with a story overlaid (no spoilers) and there are very few twitchy type moments. There are multiple endings, depending on how willing you are to find all the secrets and do all the puzzles.

@PHolder Thanks for the tip. Depends on how puzzling the puzzles are. I still need my games to be relaxing.

Thanks for the tip. I've added it to my list of pending games. Now I won't be getting anything useful done for weeks!

Ron

rfrazier said:

how puzzling the puzzles are

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I believe they had a free demo of the experience, look for that to give you some sense of it. (I played mostly on the PS4, there was no demo there, just a promotional video that caught my interest.)

I think The Talos Principle was based, in some sense, on Portal and Portal 2, which is a fair bit more FPS/"twitch", but also very fun. I think it kinda affected other game developers, there are others that are somewhat similar. Two I can think of (although not sure which platforms have it) are The Spectrum Resort and The Turing Test.

@PHolder Interesting. Found it on Humble Bundle and Gog. Prices are different so they may be different versions. The trailer looks cool.



Ron

It turns out that Croteam decided to discontinue the demo. It's still in Steam (because if you already had it in your library, you get to keep it) so you could find it (and try it, knowing it's not been updated, so may not work, but don't assume the full game isn't still being updated.) https://steamdb.info/app/330710/

@PHolder Interesting idea. I'm not familiar with Steam from a usage point of view yet although I did get the initial account set up. I'm also not familiar with steamdb.info. Is the file you pointed to an authentic Croteam app? And not dangerous? No offense meant.

Still trying to get through the game I have. I'ts interesting enough to keep me going but it's also giving me some pain. I'm currently trapped in an area of the starship where I know what to do but cannot get past some security droids. There were also times when I didn't know what the story line expected and things were going very slowly. The simulator is realistic enough that I've concluded I definitely wouldn't want to be on a real starship all alone.

Ron

The Steam client is required, I believe. The Steam client is basically a web interface on top of a game launcher and game management engine and a social "place." (You can see what your friends play, and how much even, and see reviews, etc.) If the Steam client is willing to install it, then I presume it is safe to do so. I've never used that DB link myself (having the game already) so I don't know how it will work, but I am 99% confident it will just link you into the client (or expect you to visit that page inside the client.)

Well, it does have some interesting possibilities. Might have to put it on my games things to do list. I wonder how different the demo is from the game? Gonna wander back to the Stardrop starship and try to get myself untrapped.

Ron

Phillip Porch said:

Glad you got it solved. Might I suggest Kerbal Space Program for a nice space simulation.

Click to expand...

Oh, and if you do try KSP, I would recommend watching these tutorials on YouTube to help you get started.

@Phillip Porch That's really cool info. Always nice to see what someone who's been through the game experiences. I've added it to my growing list of game reference info.

Ron

rfrazier said:

@Phillip Porch That's really cool info. Always nice to see what someone who's been through the game experiences. I've added it to my growing list of game reference info.

Ron

Click to expand...

Glad to help. My friend is an airline pilot and told me he used to think check rides were tough. He got me interested. I’m still quite new but the YouTube videos from quill18 really helped me get somewhere.
Enjoy!

I was going to advise the viewing of the playlist of Kerbal Space Program videos on Scott Manley's YouTube channel. If Quill18 is any good, Scott Manley is probably good as well. He has places in the game named after him, I think (as a major backer on KickStarter), and an IRL asteroid named after him. He is from Scotland and has a degree in astrophysics, IIRC, but his employer is Apple, where he works (in California) on stuff he can't talk about. I think he's a U.S. citizen now. He's big into rocket technology and has many other science and rocketry videos available on his channel.

If you find you prefer Quill18 over Scott Manley for KSP, those other science/rocketry (current and historical) videos are sure to excite you. He knows his stuff and his videos are for the nerdy crowd, so expect more meaningful comments below his videos than after the videos in most YouTube channels. He makes really professional-looking videos, with superb visuals to accompany his narration about a topic, including looks at historic NASA tech and that of other countries. He also follows and summarizes, after the fact (usually within a day), current launches and development of new commercial rocket tech used by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman and Boeing and others who still have a finger in the launch-from-American-soil pie, as well as launches, successes, and failures by NASA/ESA and other countries, all with superb video accompanying each point he talks about (where it exists... the last big launch from India showed the Indian mission control screens for a few seconds and focused mostly on the people behind monitors who were looking up at the screens and their expressions and periodic clapping, which made it hard to guess what was going on with the spacecraft).

Scott Manley also has a series on What Kerbal Space Program DOESN'T teach, which goes over elements of rocket engines, rocket fuels, and various other details that occur "behind the scenes" in KSP so you don't have to know minutiae or have multiple degrees in Aeronautics, Design, and Rocket Science to successfully make an in-game space program work.

Oh, and there are videos in which Scott has gotten together with real astronauts to fly KSP ships into space. But I've teased his channel enough (can you tell I'm a fan? Most of the quality videos and summaries and detailed explanations are only 10 or 20 minutes long, but some are longer or shorter.

Wow! I just noticed that Scott now has enough subscribers (or whatever the requirement is) to qualify for his own custom YouTube Channel URL (I might be confused, if that's always been the case... a slight variation on his preferred name Syzygy)! He has 1.13M subscribers and 2,345 videos as of the time I'm typing this! That won't occur for quite a while more (sequential integers in his video count... not until 3456? 2468 will come much sooner, but that's just sequential even integers).

KSP 2, which is in development at this time, I think, will require a beefier PC+GPU to run it because the visuals will be more realistic, and, I think, will have more of those minor things that KSP necessarily glossed over. I can't remember details other than the improved graphics and better physics simulation. (Some of those things can be added to KSP via community-developed add-ons, but there's still a limit. KSP 2 will go beyond that limit inherent to the way KSP was developed in the Unity engine, which cannot simulate some things in as fine a detail as would be required to better-represent physics of extraterrestrial bodies and orbital mechanics/dynamics.)

KSP does a great job at doing what it does, though. It's an excellent product.

@danlock I took a quick look at Scott Manley's YouTube channel. Looks pretty cool. I subscribed but I'm starting to get so many YouTube notifications on various things, I may have to reverse course on some of them. I don't know if I mentioned it in this thread, but my time to game and even participate in forums comes and goes. I'm still plodding through my existing game at the moment.

Also, in recent days, I've been on a tangent researching Brushless Motor Design ( BLDC ) with ulterior motives in the realm of alternative energy as mentioned in this thread:


But, I will be considering other games later including the one you mentioned. I've added this new info to a reference email I've been emailing to myself. Thanks for that info.

Ron

@rfrazier Some more steam games to check out. Sorry if I repeated some that have been recommended already.
Factorio: This is my absolute favorite game. You can have complete control of difficulty including turning off enemies if you want to focus on building your factories. No time constraints
Portal: First person puzzle game (vast majority of puzzles don't have a time constraint). There is a sequel, but it has a few more complicated mechanics.
Cities Skylines: City building
Most of the Myst series games from the 90s are available on Steam, but some have been changed like realMyst and don't give the same experience they did when they first came out
Quern Undying Thoughts: similar to Myst
Crazy Machines series: similar to The Incredible Machine series from the 90s
Games related to programming: Human resource machine, 7 billion humans, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100
Machinarium

Happy gaming!

bdoyle159 said:

Games related to programming: Human resource machine, 7 billion humans

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I can definitely recommend Human Resource Machine to teach programming in the guise of a game. The sequel, 7 Billion Humans, wasn't as much fun for me, I found some of the puzzles relied too much on randomness in the solutions (I came up with) far too much. Basically the first game is all "single threaded" whereas the second game is more "parallel threaded".

@bdoyle159 @PHolder Thanks for those recommendations. I had no idea there were so many gamers in a group like this. I'm adding these to my ever growing list of possible ideas. I won't get anything useful done for at least a year. For anyone else who's jumped in with ideas, if I haven't specifically thanked you or given a thumbs up on your post, thanks to you all too.

Ron

Hi all, I've taken the game recommendations from this thread and posted them in a new thread devoted just to recommendations. If you'd like to add more recommendations for the types of games mentioned, please add to the new thread.

GAMES Simulation, Logic, Puzzle, Exploration, Story Games to RELAX By

Thanks for all the interaction thus far.

Sincerely,

Ron

rfrazier said:

@Phillip Porch Thanks for the tip. Sounds like an interesting one.

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And of course it is 75% discount until 28 October on Steam so I just bought my copy there.