WARMTH LIKE HOME UNAWARES

Here's an update yay.

I've been normal I guess, I'm being screened for bipolar lol. Maybe I just have every disorder that exists...

Well, it's really just like further specifying my troubles I guess?

Anyway, the website is coming along pretty well -- all the programming is 100% complete, including the blog and updates page, which means programming-wise it's launch-ready. Well, I'll probably test it a bit more but outside of a little bug testing it's launch-ready.

The only content I have left to edit is Laura's scenario so far, the Innocent Life diary, and the two entries in the TokiMemo3 diary. I also need to write introduction pages for all those things, and SCARLET GRACE as well. UNLIMITED:Saga and Romancing SaGa 3 already have theirs done.

The most difficult (as in, cumbersome, none of it is difficult, just ... consuming lol) thing will be finding all the images for Innocent Life since the links are almost all dead now, and they're buried in facebook somewhere. They're in albums that are separated by play session (which means probably also mostly separated by diary chapter) so at least it won't be like... trying to find them in a nonlinear fashion or something...

The second most annoying thing will be writing the SCARLET GRACE intro page, because I'm having the intro pages give the basic story background (like, what you would find in a manual or on the game's website or whatever. UN:Saga's I got from the manual and RomaSaGa3's is a translation of the intro story sequence thing in the game).

But I'm going to use the guidebook's little story section with the cool art to write this intro, which means translation fun!!! X_X Well, since I already played the game to completion once, hopefully I'll be familiar with all the vocabulary in it... but I'm sure I'll have forgotten tons of Chinese characters, which means looking them up in a kanji dictionary and I explained before how tedious and obnoxious that is in another post, and that's even using the most convenient electronic dictionary I can find lol.

In other news I've been really into a few games that are eating away way more time than they should.

First is Tree of Savior which is a free MMO I'm playing w/ X. It's probably the most fun and well-made f2p MMO I've ever seen? It's a really cool game and I really like it. I'm playing a healer and she's a destructive mage type and we go really well together. We just started doing instanced dungeons and they are a lot of fun. The story is a bit easy though, so it can be kind of tedious, especially if you want to do all the optional objectives like fill your monster diary thing by killing like 209580329850239580 of each kind of monster...

Another cool thing about it is that you're encouraged to have multiple characters and trade with yourself, and there are rewards in the game for doing things like collecting certain sets of items or completely uncovering maps of areas... but what's great is that these tasks are assigned to your entire team (account) and so you can do parts of them with each character or whatever if you want. And once you've finished one, all characters in your team can get the reward, even if you create a new character. And the rewards are EXP boosts and stuff, so once you've gotten very far in the game with one character, having completed lots of maps and collections, you can easily level up a brand new character and blaze through the early story stuff to get to the more interesting later-game stuff right away.

The game has a really cool class system where you choose one of 4 base classes and then every 15 class levels you 'rank up' and choose a new class in your base class's school. You get eight ranks up in all, and you get to keep all the abilities and bonuses you learn from each class, so which classes you pick will drastically change your character's build. And all the base classes have a lot of variety in the advanced classes (each one has 20 in all) so you can end up with a DPS cleric or a tank archer or something if you wanted to. There are also some hidden/secret classes but I don't know much about it...

The game encourages party play but works well for solo play if you want to play solo. This is not just in the large variety of skills and builds, but also in the way skills are designed. For example, the Cleric's healing spells work by placing magical symbols on the ground. If an ally steps on it, it heals them, and if an enemy steps on it, it hurts them. And you can power it up to place multiple seals at once... but it's cool because you can put the seal away from the enemy for your friends to walk on or place it right under the enemy to deal damage. And then you can augment it by going to a 'master' and spending ability points to give it additional abilities like increased damage, or to lose its damage altogether (so it only works as a support/healing spell).

The story seems pretty elaborate and cute, though nothing really super engaging. I still like reading all the text because the lore is neat enough, though.

The other games are SuperStar SMTOWN which is weird kpop game and IDK how I got into this but now I'm obsessively playing it...

And then Star Trek: Timelines which I just started which is a f2p phone game where you do little missions and collect crew members and level them up, your typical "buy stuff from the item shop or take forever" mobile game, but it's pretty cool for a free game and I'm really enjoying it so far.

There are two types of missions, ship battles and away team things. The ship battles are really stupid and boring and just 100% based on your setup and you just sit and watch it. You tap little buttons but there's like no real strategy to it out of like... the most basic strategy even a baby could do it...

The away missions are really fun, though. You have an mission you have to work toward and there's a little story, and there are lots of different paths to get that objective completed. For each 'step' in the mission, you can choose different ways of accomplishing it. For example if you need to get past some security people, maybe you will have options to drug their food, sneak in another way, or fight them head-on. That's kind of a cliché example but there's really a lot of different things. You choose one of your crew to do the task, and each crew member has levels in different fields like science, engineering, diplomacy, medicine, command... (actually that's all of them except "security" which is essentially just fighting LOL) as well as special traits like 'Pilot,' 'Jury Rigger,' 'Public Figure,' whatever. Certain objectives will match up with certain traits and the crew member will get a boost.

Basically there's just a target number you have to reach to clear the objective, and you compare that with your crew member's base stat + any bonuses they got from traits + a random number that they roll based on their roll range (which you can also increase). Whether you clear or fail the objectives in the mission you continue moving forward, but the mistakes you make earlier in the mission will cause trouble in the final outcome, making it harder to pass.

Each objective has flavor text for success and fail and maybe critical success... I haven't paid enough attention to notice (since usually I either always get critical success or never get it, and I don't remember what it said last time anyway if I replay a mission). But yeah, it describes what happens based on your actions and how you move forward toward the main goal of the mission.

There's also various stories where you'll see lots of characters from the series which is fun, and the overall story arcs span many missions and you can change how the story goes in those through your choices, even to the point of the conclusion being different, and whatever happens at the end of an arc shifts the balance of power in the universe forever (lol). Basically your choices let you pick who 'wins' in a conflict or whatever, so you're usually choosing to support different factions or whatever. I ended up supporting the Klingons and Cardassians in the first two stories because they're hot LOLLL and because you get to recruit a member from that faction at the end, and the first story you got Worf, and the second one you got Dukat so I kinda had to pick those XD

You also influence your diplomacy level with the various factions as you do this and they can like or dislike you, which means when you try to buy items from them you might be locked out of some if they don't like you enough. You can also do shuttle missions which are just idle/waiting missions where you send someone to help out a faction and they're gone for like... 3 hour or something and then they come back and you get rewards XD

There's also various events in the game, like this PvP-ish shuttle combat thing which is stupid, some PvP crew member fighting thing that's going on right now (but I think it's ending today?), and these daily missions where you can only use low-ranking characters on the challenges...

Like most of these games, you mainly recruit crew members through a random pull, and what's annoying about this game is that the random pull will give items or characters so you can just end up getting tons of items... You also recruit crew members through the story and stuff, too. And you certainly won't find yourself lacking in crew members; I have already dismissed many because I had a bunch I didn't even want.

You can get like every character ever except for Dr Pulaski (I FEEL LIKE THIS IS LIKE HOW THERE'S NO TIBERIUS IN IMPERIAL SAGA) and many characters have multiple variations you can get... like there are like 10 different Picards or something. It's not just the main crew, like... pretty much any major subcharacter is recruitable. A good example, there are three variations of Lt Barclay. THREE. That's a lot!!! (But no Pulaski LOL and only 3 Archers...) and pretty much if there's a character that was in more than one episode or was just in one but it was a popular/memorable episode you can probably get them.

The event starting tomorrow you can get Robin Hood Picard and Nottingham Q :) Which means mustache Picard :)))))

It's really fun and you can also have friends and fleets (guilds) in the game, and there's even in-game chat. I ignore the global chat but you have a fleet chat, and maybe friend chat too (I have no friends so idk). I joined an LGBT fleet and people actually talk in it and it's scary. I want to make my own but I have no one to join :,) I'm trying to force my brother to play it XDDD Even though he doesn't like Trek (well, he pretends like he doesn't... he's only ever seen Enterprise and he liked it and watched the whole first season with me sooo uh LOL)

But yeah within your fleet you can also have squadrons, which are teams of five players, and certain events are squadron events where you work together... I don't know what it will be like because I've only been playing for like a day, but a squadron event (the mustache Picard event LOL) starts tomorrow... I joined a squadron in my fleet but I feel bad because they're all like Lv50+ and I'm like... level 12 LOLLL. Plus I'd rather play with friends and I kinda hate playing with strangers... but I want to see what the game has to offer. The event structure seems like it might be similar to Shpherd's Crossing Online which is great because that game had great events. And there's lots of Picard stuff to get from this event :D

Most of my pulls have been kinda boring. In the beginning my most powerful characters were like... Wesley Crusher and Alexander (Worf's kid LOL). But I've really powered up some others now and my best characters include Sisko (command, security), Archer (command, security), Spock (science), Data (engineering), Hoshi Sato (diplomacy), Dr Crusher (medicine), and Seven of Nine (science and engineering).

There are three old mustache Scottys available in the game so I really want those 8))))

I also recently got T'Pol and Trip so I have more than enough to make an entire away team of Enterprise crew :D With Archer commanding *___* Though they're like both really weak but I feel like eventually T'Pol could be better than Seven.

The art in the game is pretty cool, it's like comic bookish style illustrations.

Also at the beginning you get to choose one captain to be like your starter Pokémon... but uh... you can only choose Kirk, Picard, or Sisko!! I chose Sisko bc the art of him was very handsome XD I love his little voice clips, too.

Some characters have voice clips and it's like... weird who they chose to give voice clips to... Wesley has voice clips but Dr Crusher and Riker don't...???

Anyway talking too much. I actually came on here to get the Innocent Life diaries XD

So, I was waiting til I finished the tutorial part of the website to launch it, but I'm starting to think maybe I should start with just a Play Diary website? It sounds horrible but I don't know if I could manage updating both play diaries and tutorials regularly, and I'm already losing a lot of motivation because the idea is overwhelming.

Plus the tutorial site would still start with just like... one little thing which is like... not really substantial anyway? Like, I've only written the first project's lessons, which is pretty basic. The idea was to launch with that and continue adding a new lesson weekly but like...

I know it is ridiculous but writing a lesson and writing a play diary in one week seems like a lot of work even though it's like extremely minimal work?? It's not that the actual WORK is a lot of work, it's that I already realize that I have to find times when I'm not having problems with anxiety or depression or sensory shit and I have to be alone and etc etc plus switching focus is almost impossible for me so if I feel like doing play diary but need to work on tutorial or the other way around I will like... just get overwhelmed and do nothing lol.

Like, I know it sounds stupid and it's like "ok but sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to do" or whatever but believe me it's NOT THAT LOL. I'm not just being finicky or lazy like my brain literally will fight with me and make me increasingly ill if I try to force myself to switch focus or force focus on something it's not already focusing on. And I seem to have little control over when these focus shifts happen, though trying to force new ones usually makes them ALL collapse and then I just focus on like... being depressed for a while???

But yeah IDK I think I might just finish up the play diary site as it is and launch it, and then start adding new content to it. Maybe I can even continue doing several diaries and wait and do the tutorial thing later...?

I found this like 'coffee' crowdfunding site (I forget the name but it's like a weird spelling of coffee lol) where you basically just accept $3 donations called "coffees" and you can like set goals and stuff on it? It seems better than a donate button and less intimidating than a Patreon to a potential donor, so I might try that out once I get the site up.

I keep thinking about it so I think I'll probably end up doing it, but I still want to do the "every NES game ever" play diary lol. Maybe once I get the site up and running and finally edit the Innocent Life diary and get caught up editing unsaga (since there's a lot more now), I'll start it???

But uh IDK.

The main reason I didn't want to launch the website w/o the tutorial thing is because hosting costs money, and it was going to be like... two separate subsites hosted on the same server, and I figured it would be better to like... already have both in existence when I pay for hosting since it will be a substantial amount of money for me (and probably cut like... a couple months off of my "this is where you run out of food" time limit) and I was hoping to do a little minor monetization with the sites, but uh...

I'm really terrible at promoting myself already, and I don't really have anywhere to promote the tutorial site?? I mean, I have accounts at a few game dev forums and stuff like that but like... I'm not going to just go make a topic like HEY GUYS GO TO MY SITE AND PAY FOR IT ALSO SORRY FOR NOT PARTICIPATING HERE FOR YEARS LOL

But I'm more likely to "promote" my play diary site because I'm active on game forums and stuff and constantly talk about it anyway? So I can just mention it and I won't feel like I'm like... imposing. IDK LOLLLLL;;;;

But I also was thinking, that if I can get the PD site up and running well enough, and finish Dens's coloring book thing, I could get back to working on Rogue Nightmare, and I feel like having a bigger game like that published will give me more credibility and attention for a game dev tutorial site anyway??????

And then I can use the web hosting to host a devblog for the game and stuff.

IDK like honestly this seems like a WAY BETTER PLAN since like the chance of me successfully monetizing either of these things is like pretty low and like that's not really the reason I'm doing it (monetization is more just like... a life necessity LOL because I'll need to make up for the cost of hosting somehow) but I just hate changing plans even if the new plan is easier and better??? Like it just feels 'wrong' and like... makes me feel like I shouldn't do anything at all.

Why... is my brain like this...????

Anyway, opinions/reassurance/something? Is putting off the site for probably a very long time just for the sake of having a small part of the tutorial launch alongside it worth it? You have to keep in mind that I may not be able to continue to afford hosting, so there's a chance if I don't launch the tutorial site, I may never get to launch it.

But I guess if I keep holding off, I just will end up spending all money on food and have $0 total so... nothing will launch XD I mean that's like quite a way away -- I have enough money to eat until 2018 at least. How far into 2018 I can go, though, I'm not sure yet. But there's a lot of time before then so anything can happen. Maybe I'll become functional enough to do Real People work or something soon?

So, I got an email from ebay saying that I had a $10 coupon which was cool, but it seems you have to spend a certain amount to use it so that is lame. While there, I decided to see if anything interesting had popped up since the last time I searched and found The limited edition box set of Tokimeki Memorial 3 for only $24 D: But uh, the shipping is $26 so it's like... $50. I'm so sad tho because I defo can't afford that D: And it's one of my fav games of all time... and it even comes with little figures of all the girls D: Well, the six 'main' ones. It's the first and only time I've ever seen it for sale :\ though I saw another one on there for even more lol. it had the obi around the box so that's cool but I can easily go without that lmao.

I also saw the limited edition tokimemo 2 which comes with a PocketStation which is neat XD I wonder if you can use in on the US version of FF8 and play the chocobo game XD

You can use it with Rockman COMPLETE WORKS, but you have to play with someone else who has a PocketStation and the game, too... As it's a little multiplayer-only thing :\

But yeah it sucks not having money to spend on luxuries .__. generally I don't think much of it because I can get along pretty well with what I have, but when I see things I want it feels bad XD I should just not go to ebay ever XD

Anyway, I caught up with all the unsaga play diaries for my site, now I need to actually put together the sagasca and romasaga3 subsites, but it will be mostly c/p of the unsaga site with some minor changes, and then do all those entries... Shouldn't take too long to do them. Then I'll start on the tutorial which may take a while, but...

Also, here's some imsaga crap: ( Read more... )

SOOOO If you're wondering why I haven't been uploading play diaries (haha jk no one is wondering that) it's because I forgot my controller over the weekend (I think I mentioned that?) and indeed started working on my website, which now I've become absorbed in that. A lot of the "work" so far has been learning and understanding as I've never really built a website before and I had no idea how DBMS worked or how to use PHP or CSS or anything and the extent of my HTML knowledge came from like... using lj.

So I'm moving along kinda slowly but I'm getting the hang of it. Learning exactly how databases worked and how to connect to a database server with PHP was like... the biggest hurdle I had to overcome, because I literally knew NOTHING about this subject and didn't even really know what I was supposed to be looking for.

But once I figured that part out, it's been moving pretty slowly.

I'm going to keep working on this and then migrate the play diaries over there, once I've finished it and found a way to host it. I'll also be able to host the images so there will be no more broken images, and everything will look and be organized so much nicer.

But then since I'll have the website up and working (and honestly doing the play diaries first is a good way to learn my way around all this tech before trying to make my tutorial site) I'll of course want to start working on the tutorials lol so I'll probably end up slowing down play diaries to work on tuts.

I think what I'll do is go to doing only one play diary at a time. I'll probably alternate between doing SaGa and TokiMemo plays. So I'll finish up unsaga very soon (I have enough caps and progress for another entry... I actually could probably go to the end right now, but something cool happened and it makes me want to power up the party even more XD)...

Then I'll only have RSG3 to work on, and I'll start alternating after that (so, tokimemo after rsg3, then probably another scarlet grace run or maybe unsaga again, cuz I kinda wanna finish all the scenarios XD). I actually have enough content for another RSG3 entry, too, lol.

Though I'm not going to work on this now, I kinda want to create an unsaga fansite, or maybe like an entire SaGa series fansite. Something like Serebii but for SaGa XD I appreciate the SaGa wiki but I want to be able to do more with it and not have it be on wikia and etc. But yeah XD

For now, working on website. Once I get the 'base' down, it will just be a matter of migrating all the entries. That's going to take a long time because I will 1. have to reformat each entry individually and 2. have to find all the images that broke so I can reinsert them. Though while I'm "reformatting" (which will be pretty easy) I'm going to also try to maybe fix some typos and grammar errors and stuff as I go... so that will take a while. I may even touch them up a little (like... fix paragraphing issues and stuff idk XD) just because it will bug me not to do it as I reread them looking for typos and stuff XD

So it will probably easily be a couple weeks before I get back to doing play diaries...? I don't want to create MORE reformatting work for myself by creating more entries right now XD Though I do kinda miss playing the games XDD So IDK exactly what I will do. I mean, I guess I can keep playing and just not make new posts LOL. But I don't want to like... have tons of screenshots and not remember what happened?

Anyway, that's what's happening with me lol. I also started trying to exercise... today was day 2. I have some other 'life improvements' as recommended by my therapist but uhhh they are hard LOL (it's like, facing your fears kind of things lol)

But exercising puts me in a better mood which makes me more likely to be able to do those things, so it's good. And even though it's minor stuff that most people wouldn't view as any kind of accomplishment whatsoever, I actually have been trying to confront things that make me anxious and force myself to do things even though I feel afraid to do them, like uh... leaving other people are in the apartment (as in, like, chancing interactions with people LOL)

Also I've told a couple people about my autism diagnosis and most people like get weird about it like they aren't sure how they're supposed to react?? Like... I think that people don't know like... if they're supposed to feel bad or something because I think people don't really understand what autism is lol.

But uh personally I am happy to have the diagnosis because knowing I am autistic is a lot more helpful than wondering if I am -- basically all being autistic means is just that I experience the world differently from non-autistic people, and knowing this means I can better tailor my self-care and how I relate to others because I can better understand what kinds of special needs and circumstances I have.

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with autistic people in general, no matter how it manifests, and I don't think it's really something that should hold people back or whatever -- though I think we live in a society that only values neurotypical people, so most problems autistic people face are problems caused by a lack of understanding or compassion from others, stigmatization, and trying to use goods, services, etc. that are created specifically for allistic people rather than the actual neurological differences themselves. Like when a left-handed person is injured from using a tool only designed for right-handed people, it is not because the person is ~afflicted~ with a ~left-handed disorder~ that makes them like... some broken subhuman that is less than a right-handed person... it just means that the design of the tool is flawed because it doesn't take into the account that not all people are the same.

Of course, there are some harmful things that autistic people can do to themselves or others, but not any more or less than harmful things allistic people may do to themselves or others, so... honestly autistic people are just different, and that's really it. It's just... a different kind of person to be. Just like speaking a different language and coming from different culutres or something, it just changes the way you communicate and experience the world, but it doesn't make you any less of a person or anything? And it's not really something to be pitied or whatever, it's just... being different.

But yeah I felt like this long before even realizing I might be autistic so I'm not just like... saying it because I got a diagnosis or something lol. And because I felt this way I was kind of shocked that other people seemed uncomfortable or pitying when I said I was diagnosed, though I guess I honestly should not be surprised because of the aforementioned stigma...

Um, in other news, this guy who I already forgot his name has been cast as the new Trek captain. I appreciate that it's an older man with a rectangle head but I'm sad that he's very ... British-looking and bald-faced. Though he is still quite handsome and I like his thin lips lmao.

OK I have rambled enough. Back to dev.