Rushed Early Release Wednesday
Feb. 16th, 2022 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI have lost track of time despite having more of it than usual to myself today, so have an update form:
Work – Short and fortunately pretty quiet – I did my usual tasks and put some things that had to be returned to donors into the mail, basically. Not a heck of a lot you can do in just three and a half hours, but some important stuff got done, and that’s the main bit. Also gassed up on the ride home, so that’s all good for a little while, at least.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another evening on the bike to finish off OXBox’s “Hitman 3 Valentine’s Day Contracts! ROMANTIC AGENT 47 HELPS CUPID!” Mike got his ducky stashed away by the greenhouse and tossed it at his targets – while it was technically an accident kill, he failed not having any bodies found, and he was promptly in combat, so not a good plan! And so the restarts continued –
And continued, and continued, as Mike continually failed to find a good way to kill these three! He also continually failed to find the emetic mine, which apparently is in “Tools” instead of with all the other mines, which annoyed him. He eventually did locate it, but the initial attempt to use it to commit murder failed miserably because – well, he detonated it from inside the homing briefcase to try and get both the gardener and the photographer sick at once, only for the plume to go up just BETWEEN them and not get either. He also once just shoved the gardener into the pool in the middle of his garden (just for fun, as he was planning on restarting anyway), and knocked him in with the homing briefcase (a legit attempt, but people saw the unconscious body fall into the water and clocked that this was no accident, so he failed “no bodies found” again and was promptly in combat). Finally, with time ticking (because Luke and Ellen were streaming directly after them), Mike finally came up with a plan that looked like it would work. First up, wait for Ken the gardener to head out, then quickly throw the emetic mine at the photographer and detonate it so he for certain was caught in the blast. The photographer went to throw up in the nearby lake, which was perfect – Mike kicked him in, and boom! One accident death! Then Mike went after the judge, Sato, using similar tactics, but this time an emetic syringe disguised as a pen, which he stabbed Sato with during a rare moment when he wasn’t in view of others (Mike had tried this during an earlier run, only to have to scuttle it when he got caught trespassing in the house and had to bolt). Sato went to the port-a-potties, and Mike drowned him in there – turns out leaving the body to be found was all right so long as everyone thought it was a tragic accident. And finally, it was time to take out Ken. Mike waited for him to return to the garden, then began looking for angles where he could drop the hanging cage in his garden on his head without being immediately spotted. . .
And then it transpired that Ken’s routine had been broken, because normally he pauses on a certain rock to take pictures with the photographer before going onto the bridge. . .except the photographer wasn’t there, so he just wasn’t moving. Mike TRIED to get him to move by firing a silenced shot at the bridge, but this just got everyone’s attention and started panic – so the plan was scuttled, and Mike went Full Him and just shot the fleeing Ken before bolting himself, working his way through the bushes back to the motorbike at the edge of the level. One star for that contract. XD Ah well, at least it got down! And tomorrow, we start Livestream Oxventure fun as we look at the lead-up to the reveal of their music video! Fun times, fun times. . .
2. Edit Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check! Got the document in the manager over at FF.net, and I’ve combed through the first two sections – correcting a misspelling here, tweaking or adding a line there. Funnily enough, I compared it to Chapter 3, and it’s actually only three pages longer, according to LibreWriter – I get the feeling it FEELS longer because so much happens in it, though. Anyway, we’re past Alice getting some ammo and a bag from Trip, and meeting Jeannette and getting “Slashterpiece” at the Asylum – next up, time to go through some more sidequests!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two in the actual Subs today, thanks to Kevin’s day off – and thanks to my half-day, took care of the stuff in the Watch Later too! :)
A) Started pre-workout with James Turner and another episode of the Cottage Living LP! The key things that happened this episode are –
I. James decided to expand the basement vault area into a proper fancy storage for the vault full of money tree money and all of Hazel’s stolen objects (collected from her old house), adding another ladder entrance from the shed, building a big tunnel system that eventually became a not-so-secret nectar cellar (the Sims equivalent to wine), complete with bottles and casks and whatnot, with a door to the “staff area” that is currently just a long hallway with some fancy chandeliers and the vault because he ran out of money. Unfortunately, since he insisted on using platforms to make different “levels” in the basement without making different floors, his little expansions to set up new nectar niches and get the hallway sorted and whatnot kept shifting around things upstairs on the ground floor – sending stuff like some of the office computers and desks and a couple of the kitchen counters into the household inventory, and constantly cutting out a chunk of the ground because the ceiling for the tunnel kept disappearing. Apparently platforms are super glitchy like that! Ugh. . .but it seems to be working now, and James has high hopes of turning it into something awesome.
II. Hazel did another renovation – a Vet Clinic renovation on behalf of the Bailey-Moons, whom I guess took over one of Katrina Bigwallet’s vet clinics! James was initially like “aw, I put a lot of effort into this, I don’t want to change it all up” (especially since the clients’ color likes were Gray and Black), so he was going to keep it all to one room – but then he started looking into new ways to jazz things up on the given budget, and ended up redoing the lobby seating, replacing the floors, doing some new counters and adding some little medical touches to the treatment room he was focusing on, and throwing up some new fun art around the place (like jazz cats, and dogs playing “Don’t Wake The Llama,” and one of Hazel’s own paintings of the night sky XD). The client liked it a lot, and Hazel got a decent payday, but James felt like he’d been half-assing the renovations lately and took another renovation for the Realm of Magic Bigwallet house – time to do a bedroom reno and really do a good job on it!
Other than that, the main keywords for this episode were “glitches happen” – beyond the problem of the basement screwing up things directly above it, James also could NOT get Hazel to cook together with any of her family (her son really just needed to pee, so James canceled it for him, and for some reason Trenton also couldn’t cook with her, soo. . .), and Chaz had to replace a few of his chickens because he just wasn’t getting any good golden eggs, and a few of the chickens he did have were either a) elderly or b) still classified as chicks. So yeah. Game works perfectly, folks! *sigh* But things are going well otherwise – Chaz just planted the next set of giant crops, Nina’s birthday is coming up, and Trenton may have a shot at this week’s Finchwick Fair if he gets enough relationship with Llamanade! All stuff to look forward to!
Oh, and – we got confirmation today: Trenton and Hazel are indeed only engaged, as “Plan Wedding Event” is one of their romance options. Not that I think we’ll be seeing any wedding stuff from them right away. . .while the pack has been delayed a week so that it can release everywhere, including Russia (enough Simmers spoke out that I guess EA decided to change their minds – either that or this was all a PR stunt, as some people are conspiracy theorying), apparently, uh, wedding venues don’t actually work. In that you can’t choose them as a spot to host weddings. *facepalm* EA, what the fuck. I want to like Sims 4, I really do. . .
B) Then, this evening, we had a couple of OXBox/OXtra videos –
I. “7 Videogames That Injured People in Real Life” – Andy takes us through the rather dark subject of real-life injuries caused by video gaming! Not just the obvious “Pokemon Go cause people to stop paying attention to their surroundings and wander into traffic – or play while driving” either – you had stuff like Super Sonic Blast Man, an arcade where you used boxing gloves to punch a steel pad to make the protagonist punch things, and which caused people to injure wrists and hands; the phenomenon of collapsed lungs in eSports gamers (possibly caused by them unknowingly holding their breath during matches); and an arm wrestling machine that broke arms and ended up being recalled. Kind of depressing, Andy! Who suggested THIS as the Tuesday list??
II. “7 Dickest Moves by Soulsborne Games That You'll Laugh About Much Later” – Ellen and Luke talk about the big “dick moves” by FROM Software games, specifically the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne – though Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice also got a mention. From being slammed into spikes by a bloodied lift in Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls, to a log trap that will kill you in the usual way the first time you encounter it, then fall from its chain and kill you by running you over the second time in Bloodborne, to the howling Nightjars swooping down from kites to one-shot you in a village in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, there’s a lot of ways for these kinds of games to kill you that will make you rage at the moment, but then go “okay, maybe that was KIND of funny” later. Much later. XD Ooh boy, I suspect we’re going to get ALL the “Commenter’s Editions” out of this one. . .
C) And then, of course, it was time for GrayStillPlays and another round with Happy Wheels! Started with a Spongebob-flavored bottle flip (where his jellyfish sat between the sponge himself and dreams), then moved onto such things as a ball throw into a glass fall (which he won first try); an “impossible” spike fall (which he won first try – well, after blowing himself up looking for secrets); a challenge board where the trick is not get spiked in the head, nor get shot off the board or bounced into hell (this one took a few tries to grab the winning coin); a van jump (got it second try); a “try to stop” board with Pogo Man getting yeeted (again, second try – the trick is to keep your head); a board where it kept telling you not to do the things you needed to do to progress (like press big red buttons, or win tic-tac-toe – though Gray did legitimately avoid killing a woman, and lost an arm for it); an escape from the facility (where MOST of the traps don’t fire – just to lure you into a false sense of complacency when you come to the falling spike ceiling near the end); “Bottle Run Purple” (where the win was placed JUST UNDERNEATH one of the final platforms before the supposed end, and protected by invisible walls – you had to fall in JUST the right way to reach it, which Gray REALLY struggled with); a javelin through where the farthest throw gets a shout-out (Gray had a perfectly good throw right at the beginning. . .but insisted on freeing Nixon and crawling straight off the board, throwing the javelin all the while XD); and a rampage as the Sun (what could be more Floridian?). Ah, so many weird and wonderful boards, so little time. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, though this one came down to the wire simply because of getting all the text sorted for the “Dynamic Summary” ship meme! I can talk about things when I want to. . .Friday was just a reblog of some cute Corpse Bride OT3 fiction, while Saturday I put up a fan remix song of The Smiler themes that I really like. You can blame this for the reason I’m updating so late on a work night!
5. Play Unpacking and get more stickers: Check! I played through the “getting my own house” and “turning it into our own house” levels, and a tiny bit of the “and baby makes three” level, rearranging stuff and looking for achievements. And I did indeed find a couple – a sticker for “12:00” that I thought referred to the alarm clock ACTUALLY referred to the fact that you can set the time on the microwave in the new house! (Though maybe you can set alarm clock times too, I haven’t tried.) I also discovered that any level that contains a toilet allows you to flush that toilet, and suddenly “gotta flush ‘em all” became completely understandable. XD That and “baby builder” – build a giant tower of the baby blocks, which I saw in Jon’s livestream of the last few levels of this game – are the reason I dipped into the very last level. Still have a few to discover, though – “Hat on Head,” “Solve a puzzle,” “brew some coffee” (which I’ve been trying to do, but I’m not sure how?), and “tidy whities” (which DEFINITELY refers to the underwear, but again, I’ve been putting that away neatly as long as I’ve been playing and it hasn’t clicked. . .) Well, you can always go back into previous levels and keep fiddling (how I managed to get “gotta flush ‘em all”), so I’ll just keep doing that next time I play!
Well, at least I got everything I wanted to get done, done, and even got in the extra fun of vidya games -- just wish I'd done it all a little bit earlier! Ah well, weekend's coming up fast again -- night all!
Work – Short and fortunately pretty quiet – I did my usual tasks and put some things that had to be returned to donors into the mail, basically. Not a heck of a lot you can do in just three and a half hours, but some important stuff got done, and that’s the main bit. Also gassed up on the ride home, so that’s all good for a little while, at least.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another evening on the bike to finish off OXBox’s “Hitman 3 Valentine’s Day Contracts! ROMANTIC AGENT 47 HELPS CUPID!” Mike got his ducky stashed away by the greenhouse and tossed it at his targets – while it was technically an accident kill, he failed not having any bodies found, and he was promptly in combat, so not a good plan! And so the restarts continued –
And continued, and continued, as Mike continually failed to find a good way to kill these three! He also continually failed to find the emetic mine, which apparently is in “Tools” instead of with all the other mines, which annoyed him. He eventually did locate it, but the initial attempt to use it to commit murder failed miserably because – well, he detonated it from inside the homing briefcase to try and get both the gardener and the photographer sick at once, only for the plume to go up just BETWEEN them and not get either. He also once just shoved the gardener into the pool in the middle of his garden (just for fun, as he was planning on restarting anyway), and knocked him in with the homing briefcase (a legit attempt, but people saw the unconscious body fall into the water and clocked that this was no accident, so he failed “no bodies found” again and was promptly in combat). Finally, with time ticking (because Luke and Ellen were streaming directly after them), Mike finally came up with a plan that looked like it would work. First up, wait for Ken the gardener to head out, then quickly throw the emetic mine at the photographer and detonate it so he for certain was caught in the blast. The photographer went to throw up in the nearby lake, which was perfect – Mike kicked him in, and boom! One accident death! Then Mike went after the judge, Sato, using similar tactics, but this time an emetic syringe disguised as a pen, which he stabbed Sato with during a rare moment when he wasn’t in view of others (Mike had tried this during an earlier run, only to have to scuttle it when he got caught trespassing in the house and had to bolt). Sato went to the port-a-potties, and Mike drowned him in there – turns out leaving the body to be found was all right so long as everyone thought it was a tragic accident. And finally, it was time to take out Ken. Mike waited for him to return to the garden, then began looking for angles where he could drop the hanging cage in his garden on his head without being immediately spotted. . .
And then it transpired that Ken’s routine had been broken, because normally he pauses on a certain rock to take pictures with the photographer before going onto the bridge. . .except the photographer wasn’t there, so he just wasn’t moving. Mike TRIED to get him to move by firing a silenced shot at the bridge, but this just got everyone’s attention and started panic – so the plan was scuttled, and Mike went Full Him and just shot the fleeing Ken before bolting himself, working his way through the bushes back to the motorbike at the edge of the level. One star for that contract. XD Ah well, at least it got down! And tomorrow, we start Livestream Oxventure fun as we look at the lead-up to the reveal of their music video! Fun times, fun times. . .
2. Edit Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check! Got the document in the manager over at FF.net, and I’ve combed through the first two sections – correcting a misspelling here, tweaking or adding a line there. Funnily enough, I compared it to Chapter 3, and it’s actually only three pages longer, according to LibreWriter – I get the feeling it FEELS longer because so much happens in it, though. Anyway, we’re past Alice getting some ammo and a bag from Trip, and meeting Jeannette and getting “Slashterpiece” at the Asylum – next up, time to go through some more sidequests!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two in the actual Subs today, thanks to Kevin’s day off – and thanks to my half-day, took care of the stuff in the Watch Later too! :)
A) Started pre-workout with James Turner and another episode of the Cottage Living LP! The key things that happened this episode are –
I. James decided to expand the basement vault area into a proper fancy storage for the vault full of money tree money and all of Hazel’s stolen objects (collected from her old house), adding another ladder entrance from the shed, building a big tunnel system that eventually became a not-so-secret nectar cellar (the Sims equivalent to wine), complete with bottles and casks and whatnot, with a door to the “staff area” that is currently just a long hallway with some fancy chandeliers and the vault because he ran out of money. Unfortunately, since he insisted on using platforms to make different “levels” in the basement without making different floors, his little expansions to set up new nectar niches and get the hallway sorted and whatnot kept shifting around things upstairs on the ground floor – sending stuff like some of the office computers and desks and a couple of the kitchen counters into the household inventory, and constantly cutting out a chunk of the ground because the ceiling for the tunnel kept disappearing. Apparently platforms are super glitchy like that! Ugh. . .but it seems to be working now, and James has high hopes of turning it into something awesome.
II. Hazel did another renovation – a Vet Clinic renovation on behalf of the Bailey-Moons, whom I guess took over one of Katrina Bigwallet’s vet clinics! James was initially like “aw, I put a lot of effort into this, I don’t want to change it all up” (especially since the clients’ color likes were Gray and Black), so he was going to keep it all to one room – but then he started looking into new ways to jazz things up on the given budget, and ended up redoing the lobby seating, replacing the floors, doing some new counters and adding some little medical touches to the treatment room he was focusing on, and throwing up some new fun art around the place (like jazz cats, and dogs playing “Don’t Wake The Llama,” and one of Hazel’s own paintings of the night sky XD). The client liked it a lot, and Hazel got a decent payday, but James felt like he’d been half-assing the renovations lately and took another renovation for the Realm of Magic Bigwallet house – time to do a bedroom reno and really do a good job on it!
Other than that, the main keywords for this episode were “glitches happen” – beyond the problem of the basement screwing up things directly above it, James also could NOT get Hazel to cook together with any of her family (her son really just needed to pee, so James canceled it for him, and for some reason Trenton also couldn’t cook with her, soo. . .), and Chaz had to replace a few of his chickens because he just wasn’t getting any good golden eggs, and a few of the chickens he did have were either a) elderly or b) still classified as chicks. So yeah. Game works perfectly, folks! *sigh* But things are going well otherwise – Chaz just planted the next set of giant crops, Nina’s birthday is coming up, and Trenton may have a shot at this week’s Finchwick Fair if he gets enough relationship with Llamanade! All stuff to look forward to!
Oh, and – we got confirmation today: Trenton and Hazel are indeed only engaged, as “Plan Wedding Event” is one of their romance options. Not that I think we’ll be seeing any wedding stuff from them right away. . .while the pack has been delayed a week so that it can release everywhere, including Russia (enough Simmers spoke out that I guess EA decided to change their minds – either that or this was all a PR stunt, as some people are conspiracy theorying), apparently, uh, wedding venues don’t actually work. In that you can’t choose them as a spot to host weddings. *facepalm* EA, what the fuck. I want to like Sims 4, I really do. . .
B) Then, this evening, we had a couple of OXBox/OXtra videos –
I. “7 Videogames That Injured People in Real Life” – Andy takes us through the rather dark subject of real-life injuries caused by video gaming! Not just the obvious “Pokemon Go cause people to stop paying attention to their surroundings and wander into traffic – or play while driving” either – you had stuff like Super Sonic Blast Man, an arcade where you used boxing gloves to punch a steel pad to make the protagonist punch things, and which caused people to injure wrists and hands; the phenomenon of collapsed lungs in eSports gamers (possibly caused by them unknowingly holding their breath during matches); and an arm wrestling machine that broke arms and ended up being recalled. Kind of depressing, Andy! Who suggested THIS as the Tuesday list??
II. “7 Dickest Moves by Soulsborne Games That You'll Laugh About Much Later” – Ellen and Luke talk about the big “dick moves” by FROM Software games, specifically the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne – though Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice also got a mention. From being slammed into spikes by a bloodied lift in Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls, to a log trap that will kill you in the usual way the first time you encounter it, then fall from its chain and kill you by running you over the second time in Bloodborne, to the howling Nightjars swooping down from kites to one-shot you in a village in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, there’s a lot of ways for these kinds of games to kill you that will make you rage at the moment, but then go “okay, maybe that was KIND of funny” later. Much later. XD Ooh boy, I suspect we’re going to get ALL the “Commenter’s Editions” out of this one. . .
C) And then, of course, it was time for GrayStillPlays and another round with Happy Wheels! Started with a Spongebob-flavored bottle flip (where his jellyfish sat between the sponge himself and dreams), then moved onto such things as a ball throw into a glass fall (which he won first try); an “impossible” spike fall (which he won first try – well, after blowing himself up looking for secrets); a challenge board where the trick is not get spiked in the head, nor get shot off the board or bounced into hell (this one took a few tries to grab the winning coin); a van jump (got it second try); a “try to stop” board with Pogo Man getting yeeted (again, second try – the trick is to keep your head); a board where it kept telling you not to do the things you needed to do to progress (like press big red buttons, or win tic-tac-toe – though Gray did legitimately avoid killing a woman, and lost an arm for it); an escape from the facility (where MOST of the traps don’t fire – just to lure you into a false sense of complacency when you come to the falling spike ceiling near the end); “Bottle Run Purple” (where the win was placed JUST UNDERNEATH one of the final platforms before the supposed end, and protected by invisible walls – you had to fall in JUST the right way to reach it, which Gray REALLY struggled with); a javelin through where the farthest throw gets a shout-out (Gray had a perfectly good throw right at the beginning. . .but insisted on freeing Nixon and crawling straight off the board, throwing the javelin all the while XD); and a rampage as the Sun (what could be more Floridian?). Ah, so many weird and wonderful boards, so little time. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, though this one came down to the wire simply because of getting all the text sorted for the “Dynamic Summary” ship meme! I can talk about things when I want to. . .Friday was just a reblog of some cute Corpse Bride OT3 fiction, while Saturday I put up a fan remix song of The Smiler themes that I really like. You can blame this for the reason I’m updating so late on a work night!
5. Play Unpacking and get more stickers: Check! I played through the “getting my own house” and “turning it into our own house” levels, and a tiny bit of the “and baby makes three” level, rearranging stuff and looking for achievements. And I did indeed find a couple – a sticker for “12:00” that I thought referred to the alarm clock ACTUALLY referred to the fact that you can set the time on the microwave in the new house! (Though maybe you can set alarm clock times too, I haven’t tried.) I also discovered that any level that contains a toilet allows you to flush that toilet, and suddenly “gotta flush ‘em all” became completely understandable. XD That and “baby builder” – build a giant tower of the baby blocks, which I saw in Jon’s livestream of the last few levels of this game – are the reason I dipped into the very last level. Still have a few to discover, though – “Hat on Head,” “Solve a puzzle,” “brew some coffee” (which I’ve been trying to do, but I’m not sure how?), and “tidy whities” (which DEFINITELY refers to the underwear, but again, I’ve been putting that away neatly as long as I’ve been playing and it hasn’t clicked. . .) Well, you can always go back into previous levels and keep fiddling (how I managed to get “gotta flush ‘em all”), so I’ll just keep doing that next time I play!
Well, at least I got everything I wanted to get done, done, and even got in the extra fun of vidya games -- just wish I'd done it all a little bit earlier! Ah well, weekend's coming up fast again -- night all!
