My blogging steam apparently ran out in the wake of Blaugust. Taking a quick glance around the community, I may not be alone in that. But still; I did have higher hopes!
Instead, speaking honestly, I (briefly) considered just skipping the journal, too. But I know, beyond any shadow of doubt, if I start down that path Time to Loot would leap from ‘all but over’ to ‘actually over’.
And lack of steam or no, I’m not quite ready for that!
Beyond the decompressing post Blaugust, it has also been a rather busy period at work, with travel, updating the strategic outlook through to 2030 and the tactical level realignment that goes on in the wake of a new strategy.
Probably more than any of that, I gained firsthand understanding of why Bhagpuss has found Suno has encroached so much on gaming and TV time.
Suno’s version 5 model landed this month, mostly calling out clearer vocals and richer sound. Having been playing with ‘v4.5+’ beta model before the release, which I have to imagine is essentially the training set for v5, I’d be lying if I said I noted a significant difference.
Possibly Suno is a little better at following the in-line lyric style and instrumentation guides given, but hard to be sure given the variances you can get in generation to generation even against the same exact prompts, guides, and ‘advanced settings’.
I also gained access to Suno Studio this month.
I’ve worked with Studio on a few songs now, it definitely has a lot of potential, but for my use case and at least currently, carries an equally high number of frustrations.
Most of them coming from the fact that ‘stem’ extraction is fairly hit and miss, and can introduce sound artifacts that didn’t exist in the original generation.
When all I’m wanting to achieve is to tweak the per-instrument positioning on the sound stage, it’s fairly irksome.
For those using it in probably the more ‘proper’ fashion, and creating elements from the ground up, I have to imagine it’s already quite the power house.
In any case, moving on to actual games! Because I did play some. Borderlands 4 came out!
Gaming Goals
September Gaming Goals
Borderlands 4: Finish the Main Story
Did that. Did a little post game content too. But what did I think overall?
*sigh*
I think I probably got my money’s worth. As a co-op experience, it was, as Borderlands in general is, a hugely fun experience. But equally, it was an experience rife with glitches, quest bugs, performance falling well short of the mark, and generally carrying an all around ‘it’s not ready yet’ feel.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I regret purchasing it, but I’d also struggle to suggest anyone not already pretty invested in the idea of playing it through with a friend group to jump in just yet.
Maybe give it a bit more time in the oven, see if even a small discount might arrive soon, and jump in then!
October Gaming Goals
- Coral Island: Get to a tier 3 house, and tier 2 Coop and Barn.
I had Coral Island in my Steam library for yonks. I backed it on Kickstarter way back in the day, but hardly touched it even post 1.0.
Sort of out of the blue, but perhaps as a palate cleanser post Borderlands, I’ve gone in fairly deep and played through the full first year.
I did not prepare well for Winter (i.e., I hadn’t saved up any Wild Seeds), so it became a bit of a rough run from a farming perspective. Fortunately, Ranching even with a single Coop and Barn at tier 1 was still making decent coin.
I am starting to wane in interest though, I can sense it already with other game starting to enter rotation, but we’ll see!
Games Played September 2025
| Rank | Game | Hours | % Gaming Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Borderlands 4 | 46.1 | 38.8% |
| 2 | Coral Island | 36.6 | 30.8% |
| 3 | Wuthering Waves | 24.6 | 20.7% |
| 4 | Hades II | 3.5 | 2.9% |
| 5 | Helldivers 2 | 2.7 | 2.3% |
| 6 | Hollow Knight Silksong | 2.4 | 2.0% |
| 7 | Farthest Frontier (1.0 Beta) | 1.6 | 1.3% |
| 8 | Final Fantasy XIV (Stormblood) | 1.2 | 1.0% |
Books Read September 2025
Gone onto something of an Urban Fantasy run after finishing Mark Lawrence’s Library Trilogy. Mostly prompted by curiosity as to what Benedict Jacka had got up to since finishing his Alex Verus series.
His new series, Inheritance of Magic, seems good! Good enough, anyway, that I pre-ordered the third book for Kindle and wish that I’d waited a little longer before this particular spot of curiosity struck, as there is going to be a lot of waiting to see this series unfold!
Enter Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series to fill the gap. I’m through two of the five books in the bundle I bought already, and I can tell I’ll be getting the rest. It’s a bit of an interesting spin on the genre, too, being set in ‘Depression era’ New York, but where magic of various forms has taken the place of certain aspects of technology developments.
I’m torn on having Goodreads count it as a single book though. It’s >1,800 pages for the five books, which is not out of the question but certainly on the longer end of my typical books, but each individual book is shorter than my typical.
Still- I think I’ll hit my 15 book target easily enough even counting it as just the one, so eh! :)
With Suno, I’ve stopped using v5. I used it for a few weeks and it constantly bugged out on me, to the point where I was surprised if I got any result that wasn’t glitched. I went back to v4.5 and the glitches vanished almost completely, with the few that still appeared being very minor. Given that I couldn’t really hear any difference in v5 anyway, it seemed like a major downgrade.
I do still remaster in v5, which seems largely bug-free, but even then the results are rarely an improvement. More often they seem a little muddy compared to the 4.5 originals, which I tend to stick with as my final mix anyway. As for Studio, I still haven’t tried it. I can already extract stems if I want to, which I do only occasionally, and I’m not sure I want to get into the full DAW remixing experience because I suspect it will turn out to be a huge amount of fiddling about to no particularly good end.
Studio is also a move away from what I really like about Suno, which is the way it lets me act as the songwriter in a band. Back when I actually was in a band and wrote some of the songs, what would happen was that I’d turn up at rehearsals with the lyrics for some new song I’d written and I’d sing it, accompanying myself on guitar in a very basic fashion, that being the only way I could play guitar. Then the rest of the band would mess around with it and come up with their parts and we’d knock it about for a while, maybe over several sessions, until eventually it turned into a full arrangement.
And that’s pretty much what Suno does, except in seconds instead of hours. Which is why it feels like the songs I make with it are every bit as much my creations as anything I would have done with a band would be. It’s not like I’d have come up with the drum parts or the keyboard fills or even the basslines, so I’m not all that keen on moving into Studio and having to take more direct control over all of that.
I’ve definitely noticed the influx of glitches in v5, yeah. Which is frustrating, as I’ve had a few generations I really liked — until some glitch or oddity strikes in the track.
Hasn’t been enough to send me back to v4.5 yet, but, I could definitely understand why you would.
re: Studio, you might still be able to approach it somewhat in the manner you want — you can do things like record a hum or voicebox line, then generate an instrument off the back of it. It is still down to maybe a more granular layer than you would like.
I haven’t tried that method first hand yet though, I’ve only tried extracting Stems from an already generated track, but I’ve found that experience a little frustrating so far as each individual stem is generally pretty poor in quality.
Hopefully, with a little more time in the oven, most of these issues will come right!