Very Clean, Very Fallout Saturday
Aug. 22nd, 2020 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIt being a cleaning Saturday, as per usual, I spent most of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon cleaning -- unfortunately, this is what happens when you have a lot of shelves with a lot of delicate toys. Double unfortunately, I broke ANOTHER of my Corpse Bride figures -- or, rather, the stand. My articulated Victor figurine has a stand, you see, because he can't stand up on his own on his tiny feet -- he has a little bit of cobblestone under him, with two pegs that fit into his feet. Well, I'd picked him up to dust the shelf he and Emily sit on -- and while dusting, I jostled Emily. And when I grabbed HER to stop her falling (she's ALREADY broken her bone arm at the shoulder, I didn't want anything else snapping off!), I SOMEHOW managed to snap the pegs off the stand for Victor, which went flying. I mean, this is preferable to breaking Victor himself, but still a pain in the ass. Fortunately I had some of my putty stuff that I use to stick my Minimates in place around, so I've just used that to stick him to the stand. Should work, and if I ever need to detach him (like if I want him on his knees for a picture), I can. Still, this is why I mourn the loss of the "glass-fronted cabinets" idea sometimes.
Fortunately, day after the cleaning was pretty good:
-->I have Officially Confirmed the lousy performance of Fallout 4 on Thursday was due to my computer being an asshole, and not the new mod! It ran fine today, and I was able to go running all over the Commonwealth looking for gears and oil so I could build turrets for my settlements. XD I was also, after selling stuff to a bunch of the merchants in Diamond City, able to afford the Command Table from the mod and take a look at what it offers -- you can craft a bunch of Minutemen clothing items, if you like, and even Minutemen themselves! Though you need caps in order to do so -- I guess to represent their pay? Also I can now paint my armor pieces with Minutemen colors, if I have oil on me. So that's all very cool, and I'm happy the mod works. :) Coming to the end of the mod testing, w00!
-->Did some more work on my Fallout!Victor's timeline for my writing -- I am a bit hung up on what his official "title" would have been during his Army days. I've decided he was part of the Corps of Engineers, a field mechanic specializing in defenses (like automated turrets) and power armor repair, but -- well, I don't know if he'd have a special name for his rank. At least I've narrowed down when I want the incident that ends his status as an enlisted soldier happens. . .
-->Watched the requisite amount of YouTube:
A) Started with a couple of videos from TED-Ed involving various riddles (I didn't actually figure out either on my own, but they were still fun to watch):
1. The first about a king choosing his successor through literal rolls of the dice (four children, each having to roll two special dice twenty times, and whoever has the highest score at the end wins – however, if it can be determined that someone faked their score, they're disqualified; the riddle's all about seeing which of the three you can figure out faked their score).
2. The second about making as many viable beehives out of the last sixty members of a bee species as possible (you have to put the minimum number of bees into a hive to completely fill it with wax, then one additional bee to be the queen; the trick here lies in figuring out how to place your minimum number of bees so they WILL fill the whole thing with wax and allow in a Queen).
B) Then another video from Jon of Many A True Nerd, who happily talked about his problems with the Speech skill throughout the Fallout franchise – namely, that it's evolved into a badly overpowered mess, no matter what the creators have done to try and change it up. Have a high enough speech skill (or, in Fallout 4, high enough general Charisma)? Yeah, you can convince anybody of anything, despite any logical thoughts to the contrary. Hell, in New Vegas, if you have maxed-out Speech (regardless of your Charisma level), you can convince one of the scariest and toughest characters in the game to just peace out without a fight. And in Fallout 3, speech checks let you skip whole areas, which Jon considers antithetical to why you bought the game. His idea of an ideal speech system would be something like an incident in Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC, where doing tasks for townsfolk will influence their opinion of you, and thus whether or not they'll speak up on your side when you argue for the safety of a group on the island whose leader has just confessed to a monstrous crime – a reputation system that is very personalized and makes every NPCs reaction to you unique. Plus, throw in options where the player can influence the outcome based on something they've learned in their exploration, and you've got a good way of talking to people. Probably take a HELL of a lot of time to code, but one can dream, right?
C) And then I watched through the entire "Vampair" series playlist because the latest episode came out today, and I decided – why not binge the whole thing? It's an interesting little series that started out as a couple of fan animations to some Voltaire songs, and evolved into an actual something with a plot revolving around the vampire Duke, his intended victim and magically transformed vampire Missi, and the staff of evil magic that Duke used to own and is now Missi's (and the reason she's a vampire). This latest one was "The Showdown," which started out as a dance battle and then got – violent. XD And someone in the comments already has the BEST guess as to what the next song will be. . .
-->And I'm currently doing a bit of the RP thing over on Valice Multiverse -- have to get my update for tomorrow's Secundus Sunday on Victor Luvs Alice queued too. And answer the stuff on Dreamwidth. . .
So yeah, pretty full but fun day. Tomorrow -- catch up on remaining YouTube videos, write some more on "Secundus 2" Chapter 12, and do something in Sims 4 (thinking I might just do something silly in another save, because I've got a bit of a buffer with my Newcrest Adventures again). Reasonable for a Sunday, I think! Especially a potentially muggy one with a small chance of rain or thunderstorms (we had some big storms go by today that JUUUST missed us -- as in, you could hear the thunder, but it never actually came over our way. We'll see if we're similarly lucky tomorrow). Night all!
Fortunately, day after the cleaning was pretty good:
-->I have Officially Confirmed the lousy performance of Fallout 4 on Thursday was due to my computer being an asshole, and not the new mod! It ran fine today, and I was able to go running all over the Commonwealth looking for gears and oil so I could build turrets for my settlements. XD I was also, after selling stuff to a bunch of the merchants in Diamond City, able to afford the Command Table from the mod and take a look at what it offers -- you can craft a bunch of Minutemen clothing items, if you like, and even Minutemen themselves! Though you need caps in order to do so -- I guess to represent their pay? Also I can now paint my armor pieces with Minutemen colors, if I have oil on me. So that's all very cool, and I'm happy the mod works. :) Coming to the end of the mod testing, w00!
-->Did some more work on my Fallout!Victor's timeline for my writing -- I am a bit hung up on what his official "title" would have been during his Army days. I've decided he was part of the Corps of Engineers, a field mechanic specializing in defenses (like automated turrets) and power armor repair, but -- well, I don't know if he'd have a special name for his rank. At least I've narrowed down when I want the incident that ends his status as an enlisted soldier happens. . .
-->Watched the requisite amount of YouTube:
A) Started with a couple of videos from TED-Ed involving various riddles (I didn't actually figure out either on my own, but they were still fun to watch):
1. The first about a king choosing his successor through literal rolls of the dice (four children, each having to roll two special dice twenty times, and whoever has the highest score at the end wins – however, if it can be determined that someone faked their score, they're disqualified; the riddle's all about seeing which of the three you can figure out faked their score).
2. The second about making as many viable beehives out of the last sixty members of a bee species as possible (you have to put the minimum number of bees into a hive to completely fill it with wax, then one additional bee to be the queen; the trick here lies in figuring out how to place your minimum number of bees so they WILL fill the whole thing with wax and allow in a Queen).
B) Then another video from Jon of Many A True Nerd, who happily talked about his problems with the Speech skill throughout the Fallout franchise – namely, that it's evolved into a badly overpowered mess, no matter what the creators have done to try and change it up. Have a high enough speech skill (or, in Fallout 4, high enough general Charisma)? Yeah, you can convince anybody of anything, despite any logical thoughts to the contrary. Hell, in New Vegas, if you have maxed-out Speech (regardless of your Charisma level), you can convince one of the scariest and toughest characters in the game to just peace out without a fight. And in Fallout 3, speech checks let you skip whole areas, which Jon considers antithetical to why you bought the game. His idea of an ideal speech system would be something like an incident in Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC, where doing tasks for townsfolk will influence their opinion of you, and thus whether or not they'll speak up on your side when you argue for the safety of a group on the island whose leader has just confessed to a monstrous crime – a reputation system that is very personalized and makes every NPCs reaction to you unique. Plus, throw in options where the player can influence the outcome based on something they've learned in their exploration, and you've got a good way of talking to people. Probably take a HELL of a lot of time to code, but one can dream, right?
C) And then I watched through the entire "Vampair" series playlist because the latest episode came out today, and I decided – why not binge the whole thing? It's an interesting little series that started out as a couple of fan animations to some Voltaire songs, and evolved into an actual something with a plot revolving around the vampire Duke, his intended victim and magically transformed vampire Missi, and the staff of evil magic that Duke used to own and is now Missi's (and the reason she's a vampire). This latest one was "The Showdown," which started out as a dance battle and then got – violent. XD And someone in the comments already has the BEST guess as to what the next song will be. . .
-->And I'm currently doing a bit of the RP thing over on Valice Multiverse -- have to get my update for tomorrow's Secundus Sunday on Victor Luvs Alice queued too. And answer the stuff on Dreamwidth. . .
So yeah, pretty full but fun day. Tomorrow -- catch up on remaining YouTube videos, write some more on "Secundus 2" Chapter 12, and do something in Sims 4 (thinking I might just do something silly in another save, because I've got a bit of a buffer with my Newcrest Adventures again). Reasonable for a Sunday, I think! Especially a potentially muggy one with a small chance of rain or thunderstorms (we had some big storms go by today that JUUUST missed us -- as in, you could hear the thunder, but it never actually came over our way. We'll see if we're similarly lucky tomorrow). Night all!
