Less Great Friday
Apr. 8th, 2022 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIf only because my car informed me on the ride home that oil change time is coming up, which involves calling the dealership that we bought it from, scheduling an appointment, driving up to that appointment, and then driving back, none of which are my favorite activities in the world. [sigh] Can't decide if I'm hoping there'll be a slot open tomorrow, just to get it over with, or one during my long weekend next week, meaning I have more of my Saturday to myself. . . I guess we'll just have to wait and see there.
As for the rest of my day:
Work – Very quiet and boring day for the most part – spent most of it finishing off looking at the spreadsheet of write-offs, then moved back to my original “let’s make sure these pledges are getting reminders” project before taking a moment to look up some duplicates for our processing company. As a Friday, it rather dragged, not gonna lie. *sigh* But I believe I’ve mentioned that I prefer that over being so stressed I can barely function, so – yeah. Weekend now, at least! Even if I have to clean. . .and potentially get my car’s oil changed.
Beanbags – Yeah, nice enough when I got home for us to play (once Mom had mixed up all the ingredients for the focaccia with dinner and finished planting her new flowers). I had a slow start, but a decent finish, while Dad ended up having the opposite and Mom was just all right across the board – AKA, I got 3-3-W, Dad got W-W-3, and Mom got 2-2-2! Not too shabby, I suppose, given how out of practice we all are.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and as I didn’t want to start a new Oxventure Stream only to have to wait until Sunday to see where it went, I instead ended up watching a trio of videos on Paralives (the Sims-like life simulator currently in development) by Simmer Erin! (Plus the start of one video on Sims 4 mods, but after just a couple of minutes I decided it was FAR too annoying to continue watching.) First one was the developers asking for comments from the community on if the game should have an emotions system, and how it should impact Parafolk (general consensus was “less overwhemingly than Sims 4 please! Traits first, then feelings!”); second one was the developers responding to some criticisms of their art style for the game in a Patreon post (basically, everything’s supposed to have a roughly hand-painted look, but the styles for the Parafolk and the environment don’t quite match, and it turns out that’s deliberate – they want to make sure the art style is very distinctly “them,” and that you can always see the Parafolk even in the most cluttered of houses); and third one was the developers asking for comments on how needs should work (mentioning specifically the “hierarchy of needs” concept – people seemed to think that everyone should have the same BASIC needs, but let stuff like traits and maybe even life state affect them (a technophobe maybe gets less Social from chatting on the computer, for example, or an elderly sim needs to visit the bathroom more)). It was some interesting stuff, but I really want to see what gameplay might actually LOOK LIKE in this game before I make any judgments. The building looks great, but – well. Sims 4 is pretty good if you’re a builder too.
2. Continue writing “Learn To Love Again”: Check – Alice has learned, to her own annoyance, that she has Simple Pyrokinesis, AKA control of small fires. Fortunately her mother has talked her around on the ability a bit, and conversation has moved onto Arthur being pissed with Radcliffe for leaving Alice in Rutledge and stealing her inheritance – and her rabbit, which had everyone confused. Which, fair. :p Should be able to wrap this chapter up tomorrow or the next day, then it’s just a matter of writing up the final one, yay!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – quick three-in, three-out today –
A) Started with this week’s Fun With Shorts – “Miss Esta Maude's Secret,” your average barely-animated poorly-preserved short about a schoolteacher who, on Friday nights, takes out her fast racing car and zips down the highway. And occasionally helps people in need, like a lost student, or a couple having a baby. Not anything special, but we had some good Josh riffs, like how she got the fast car from Tracy Chapman. XD Liked that one a lot.
B) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and his latest video – “What If Animal Crossing Was A Survival Shooter?” AKA, someone’s made an Animal Crossing clone called Longvinter that ALSO involves shooting the dudes you’re sharing the server with! Think AC crossed with Rust or the like. Kevin’s adventures mostly involved dying a lot to the various turrets people had put up to protect their houses (and occasionally directly to the various people with their guns), but he did get some stuff done. Like picking wildflowers and wheat! Charming a person with a heavily-defended house into giving him some free stuff out of pity! Looting outposts and warehouses of strange random crap! Fishing and finding it the world’s most stressful minigame! Gathering a bunch of wood with a chainsaw and selling it all, only to have to buy a bunch of wood later to upgrade his tent into a proper house! Traveling between islands in a desperate attempt to find more friendly people! Starving to death a couple of times and eating black pepper to survive! Getting ripped off by having to spend all his money on a boat ride to the supply island to buy a research tent at a jacked-up price (and then pay to go back)! Having to spend ages trying to find a place to put his tent because DAMN people claim property in this game fast! Chainsawing down more trees because you always need more wood! Putting a fireplace and a couple of copies of a random painting in his tent to make it homey! Building the world’s most mismatched fence with a code-locked gate outside of his tent/house! And finally getting a turret of his very own to scare off the newbies. XD We ended with him on the hunt for people and their cute little backpacks – hopefully that means we’ll be getting a sequel episode at some point!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and – well, he called it Drag Master, but YouTube calls it Grab Master! Either way, “[Gray] Stretched The Human Body To Unrealistic Extremes” in this video about a goofy mobile game where you have to drag people away from stuff to make them do the thing they’re SUPPOSED to be doing. Like yanking the son away from his video games so he can have dinner with the family! Or a robber away from the car he’s stealing so he can be arrested by the police! Or the daughter away from a pile of giant candy canes so she can visit the dentist! All of these strange clay-like people not only have delightfully weird text-to-speech dialogue, but they ACTIVELY FIGHT YOUR CONTROL and make angry comments about how they want to go back to their original activity. They’ll even throw things at the screen sometimes! But you can also throw things at THEM to make them cooperate, sooo. . . Gray had a lot of fun trying to find the most complicated ways to drag them across the levels, beating them up all the while. It’s jank, but in the best way. :) Sometimes that’s all you can expect from your mobile game.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just the one ask reply on Valice Multiverse. Though I am getting my pictures sorted for the next Smiler Always Chill Save update, so that’s something too! :)
*shrug* Can't say I wasn't productive! So that's good. . .and so we come to setting up my Saturday to-dos:
1. Clean my room
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and the videos in my Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and get through at least another day with Smiler
4. Continue writing “Learn To Love Again”
Hopefully all doable, though something might have to go if I do end up having to go in for the oil change tomorrow. Again, we'll see. As it stands, I'm doing social stuff at the moment, so it's time to head out -- night all!
As for the rest of my day:
Work – Very quiet and boring day for the most part – spent most of it finishing off looking at the spreadsheet of write-offs, then moved back to my original “let’s make sure these pledges are getting reminders” project before taking a moment to look up some duplicates for our processing company. As a Friday, it rather dragged, not gonna lie. *sigh* But I believe I’ve mentioned that I prefer that over being so stressed I can barely function, so – yeah. Weekend now, at least! Even if I have to clean. . .and potentially get my car’s oil changed.
Beanbags – Yeah, nice enough when I got home for us to play (once Mom had mixed up all the ingredients for the focaccia with dinner and finished planting her new flowers). I had a slow start, but a decent finish, while Dad ended up having the opposite and Mom was just all right across the board – AKA, I got 3-3-W, Dad got W-W-3, and Mom got 2-2-2! Not too shabby, I suppose, given how out of practice we all are.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and as I didn’t want to start a new Oxventure Stream only to have to wait until Sunday to see where it went, I instead ended up watching a trio of videos on Paralives (the Sims-like life simulator currently in development) by Simmer Erin! (Plus the start of one video on Sims 4 mods, but after just a couple of minutes I decided it was FAR too annoying to continue watching.) First one was the developers asking for comments from the community on if the game should have an emotions system, and how it should impact Parafolk (general consensus was “less overwhemingly than Sims 4 please! Traits first, then feelings!”); second one was the developers responding to some criticisms of their art style for the game in a Patreon post (basically, everything’s supposed to have a roughly hand-painted look, but the styles for the Parafolk and the environment don’t quite match, and it turns out that’s deliberate – they want to make sure the art style is very distinctly “them,” and that you can always see the Parafolk even in the most cluttered of houses); and third one was the developers asking for comments on how needs should work (mentioning specifically the “hierarchy of needs” concept – people seemed to think that everyone should have the same BASIC needs, but let stuff like traits and maybe even life state affect them (a technophobe maybe gets less Social from chatting on the computer, for example, or an elderly sim needs to visit the bathroom more)). It was some interesting stuff, but I really want to see what gameplay might actually LOOK LIKE in this game before I make any judgments. The building looks great, but – well. Sims 4 is pretty good if you’re a builder too.
2. Continue writing “Learn To Love Again”: Check – Alice has learned, to her own annoyance, that she has Simple Pyrokinesis, AKA control of small fires. Fortunately her mother has talked her around on the ability a bit, and conversation has moved onto Arthur being pissed with Radcliffe for leaving Alice in Rutledge and stealing her inheritance – and her rabbit, which had everyone confused. Which, fair. :p Should be able to wrap this chapter up tomorrow or the next day, then it’s just a matter of writing up the final one, yay!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – quick three-in, three-out today –
A) Started with this week’s Fun With Shorts – “Miss Esta Maude's Secret,” your average barely-animated poorly-preserved short about a schoolteacher who, on Friday nights, takes out her fast racing car and zips down the highway. And occasionally helps people in need, like a lost student, or a couple having a baby. Not anything special, but we had some good Josh riffs, like how she got the fast car from Tracy Chapman. XD Liked that one a lot.
B) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and his latest video – “What If Animal Crossing Was A Survival Shooter?” AKA, someone’s made an Animal Crossing clone called Longvinter that ALSO involves shooting the dudes you’re sharing the server with! Think AC crossed with Rust or the like. Kevin’s adventures mostly involved dying a lot to the various turrets people had put up to protect their houses (and occasionally directly to the various people with their guns), but he did get some stuff done. Like picking wildflowers and wheat! Charming a person with a heavily-defended house into giving him some free stuff out of pity! Looting outposts and warehouses of strange random crap! Fishing and finding it the world’s most stressful minigame! Gathering a bunch of wood with a chainsaw and selling it all, only to have to buy a bunch of wood later to upgrade his tent into a proper house! Traveling between islands in a desperate attempt to find more friendly people! Starving to death a couple of times and eating black pepper to survive! Getting ripped off by having to spend all his money on a boat ride to the supply island to buy a research tent at a jacked-up price (and then pay to go back)! Having to spend ages trying to find a place to put his tent because DAMN people claim property in this game fast! Chainsawing down more trees because you always need more wood! Putting a fireplace and a couple of copies of a random painting in his tent to make it homey! Building the world’s most mismatched fence with a code-locked gate outside of his tent/house! And finally getting a turret of his very own to scare off the newbies. XD We ended with him on the hunt for people and their cute little backpacks – hopefully that means we’ll be getting a sequel episode at some point!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and – well, he called it Drag Master, but YouTube calls it Grab Master! Either way, “[Gray] Stretched The Human Body To Unrealistic Extremes” in this video about a goofy mobile game where you have to drag people away from stuff to make them do the thing they’re SUPPOSED to be doing. Like yanking the son away from his video games so he can have dinner with the family! Or a robber away from the car he’s stealing so he can be arrested by the police! Or the daughter away from a pile of giant candy canes so she can visit the dentist! All of these strange clay-like people not only have delightfully weird text-to-speech dialogue, but they ACTIVELY FIGHT YOUR CONTROL and make angry comments about how they want to go back to their original activity. They’ll even throw things at the screen sometimes! But you can also throw things at THEM to make them cooperate, sooo. . . Gray had a lot of fun trying to find the most complicated ways to drag them across the levels, beating them up all the while. It’s jank, but in the best way. :) Sometimes that’s all you can expect from your mobile game.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just the one ask reply on Valice Multiverse. Though I am getting my pictures sorted for the next Smiler Always Chill Save update, so that’s something too! :)
*shrug* Can't say I wasn't productive! So that's good. . .and so we come to setting up my Saturday to-dos:
1. Clean my room
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and the videos in my Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and get through at least another day with Smiler
4. Continue writing “Learn To Love Again”
Hopefully all doable, though something might have to go if I do end up having to go in for the oil change tomorrow. Again, we'll see. As it stands, I'm doing social stuff at the moment, so it's time to head out -- night all!
