Low Humidity Saturday
Jul. 22nd, 2023 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd unholy HELL is it so much nicer when the air is drier! Like, I could just sit in my room with the windows open and enjoy the breeze -- yeah, it was HOT, but it wasn't UNBEARABLY hot like it's been. I swear, I didn't really cotton on how grumpy having to hide in the AC with my shades down to avoid the heat had made me until today, when I could just, you know, sit and breathe. (Got the AC on NOW, of course, but that's just because it's still a warm night and I need it to cool my room down for sleeping.) And tomorrow's supposed to be similar, perhaps even nicer -- we can but hope! A small respite from the damn stickiness plaguing our land. . .
Anyway -- had a reasonably productive day while enjoying the fresh air --
Tumblr: Valice Multiverse is still plagued by horrible dash, but fortunately also has no activity, so I feel okay in mostly ignoring it for the moment. As for Victor Luvs Alice, though – well, first of all, got all my pictures for this week’s Chill Valicer Save Update (sixty shots of the Wedding Picture Explosion and day one of the honeymoon in Sulani) done last night before I went to sleep, yay! Then, this morning, I caught up on all my tracked tags pre-lunch and grabbed a cool bit of Alice: Madness Returns fanart and a Corpse Bride/Everything Everywhere All At Once meme that spoke to me for my drafts, before getting the initial drafts of the Chill Valicer Save update with pictures and starter text and tags sorted right after lunch! ...And then I realized “oh, hey, I forgot to put the last few minutes of the music mix I was listening to back on while I was doing that,” so I went ahead and completed the first post (the Wedding Picture Explosion) while listening to that. XD Good stuff all around!
Sims 4: I did indeed end up having a building day today (I WOULD have hopped into CAS to make my Coaster Crew, but without that “more columns” mod...look, some things you don’t realize are quality of life until you get them. Maybe I’ll make them over my upcoming vacation instead), fiddling around with my old “Gutknecht Bend” build in an attempt to make a challenge house worthy of a potential future “Valicer In The Dark” save –
A) First things first, though – I spent a good amount of time on the “nice” version of the house, and I didn’t want to lose it. So that went into the Library once I’d gotten into the game and checked my Gallery page (someone downloaded my Tranquil Circle Spa build, yay~). Now, no matter what, I have a copy of at least ONE version of the lot sorted!
B) With that taken care of, it was time to completely gut the house – all furnishings, all decorations, all the doors and windows – hell, I even just straight up took off the little greenhouse and garden areas around the back. This is supposed to be a relatively cheap house for renovating, after all!
C) That being said, there was actually something that I very much wanted to add to the place – a “sewer line!” I’d established in one of Polyship Week stories for the Valicer In The Dark trio that there was one of those, with an opening for them to dump – stuff – down near the house, and so I wanted to actually create that on the lot. I did a little fiddling, and created myself a large basement room with a ladder in one corner leading out to the yard. I painted the walls to look like bricks and the floor to look like old, broken stone; put a small, thin pool up against the far wall and colored it with murky water to look like sewage (and gave it an appropriately rocky pool trim); and put three homemade planters along the other wall nearer the ladder to make a homemade mushroom farm! Because that’s what a lot of people use old sewage pipes for in Duskwall. :D Threw in a few dim lamps for light at night, put a stone circle “rug” next to it for a “manhole cover,” and it was good. It’s simple, but I like it!
D) Around this time, I decided I also wanted to save this version of the lot to my Library, because I was thinking that, if I do end up doing my “Valicer In The Dark” challenge save, I might have the gang live in Windenburg, and thus it might be better to take this version of the lot to Windenburg to build. However, when I did so, I got a message saying that I already saved this template and if I wanted to overwrite the old one or save a new copy. I initially thought that it had something to do with the name being the same and quickly added “Reno” to the lot name, but the message still popped up when I went to save. Puzzled and a little thrown (I guess the game is “huh?” when you try to save two versions of the same lot?), I decided against sticking it in my Library for the moment and instead just took a quick look at Windenburg to see where I could plop it later on, when I gave saving it another go. I think the best lot (at least in terms of matching the size of the lot where I’m building in Forgotten Hollow) would be the one where the Munch family currently lives – I’ll have to try saving it to my Library again when I’ve done a little more fiddling and evict them later! (Or at least move them to a different house. :p)
E) Okay, that digression over, it was back to fiddling with my build! I began playing around with adding the “busted out” door and window frames from Werewolves into the exterior walls – decided I didn’t like the archway for the front door so replaced it with a Vampires door that looked right for the lot. (Though I did end up using the archway around the back, as I really wanted to use it.) I also removed all the interior walls as I wanted to play around a bit with the layout of the rooms, and ended up making the entire side tower just a little bit bigger to give Sims more room to play around with in there – floor space is at a premium in all octagonal rooms, let me tell you! Especially when you have stairs in them. Speaking of which, this necessitated moving the stairs around a bit to make sure they were roughly flush with the front and back walls, but I got it all sorted in the end. :) (I mean, I could just put the stairs on the OUTSIDE like in the actual Corpse Bride movie, but that seems a mean thing to do to your Sims when you have Seasons). I also took a moment to grab just about everything I thought the lot might need to start – robotics bench, woodworking table, upright piano, easel, laundry bucket and line, guitar, the crappy homemade punching bag and weights machine from Werewolves, a séance table, and a cauldron. Though it just occurs to me that I should have gotten a selling table for Smiler too...well, this is definitely gonna be a multi-day project, so I’m not too worried about it. :p
F) Around this time, though, I started thinking about the lot traits and challenges that I wanted on this lot, and went to check those out. The lot already had the “Peace & Quiet” lot trait (which allows Sims to gain more skill reading and lose Tense moods faster) – I ended up adding “Science Lair” for more Logic and Rocket-Building skill, and because it fit the vibe – Smiler’s certainly going to be using it as something of a science lair! (Victor, by contrast, will be using it as a magic lair. :p) As for challenges, I stuck on “Simple Living” (must cook with ingredients), “Off The Grid” (no automatic utilities – that is, no power and no plumbing), “Spooky” (attracts ghosts – a must in Duskwall), and “Reduce and Recycle” (have to empty your own garbage) as the obvious ones – I’m tempted to also go with “Creepy Crawlies” (attacks by insects and bats), “Grody” (stuff just is gross here and makes Sims a bit sick when they try to eat), and “Filthy” (stuff just gets dirtier faster), but for now we’ll work with the stuff I KNOW needs to be on there.
G) With lot traits and challenges in place, I started work on trying to figure out my interior layout again – which, honestly, ended up similar to the old one, only the kitchen is smaller and the bedroom now has a fireplace in it. I also began to wonder if the place should actually HAVE an interior bathroom, or if it should rely on an outhouse instead – if the place is “Off The Grid,” why would it have indoor plumbing? And the place is supposed to be in “rather fallen to ruin” Six Towers anyway...I gotta look at my Blades in the Dark book again and get a better idea of how many people actually have plumbing and electrical power in the city. I know the wealthy probably have nice flushing toilets and electroplasm lamps, but the poorer folk...hmmm. Anyway, started fiddling around with a potential outhouse situation, but didn’t get very far with it – mostly because I’m not sure a fancy pull-chain toilet or the shiny “Ambassador” toilet really fit the vibe of an outhouse. Hmmm. (Though there is a good tub that I found that has the right look – have to keep that for any bathroom situations!)
And around that time, I looked at the clock, thought, “Okay, you know Mom will want to play beanbags today and there’s other stuff you want to do, so let’s wrap this up,” put some of the items in their proper places around the house to help define the rooms (like adding a bed to the bedroom, and sticking the fridge and stove in the kitchen, and putting the robotics bench in the second story room of the tower because need to use that space for SOMETHING), saved, and quit for the day! Maybe not my most productive playsession in Sims, but it was nice and chill, and I feel like I’ve made a decent start on the lot that I want? Sometimes, that’s all that matters. :) (And it was a nice change from the micromanagey stuff I’ve been doing with the Valicer trio, even if I do like that too and am eager to get back to their store.)
Writing: Did another chunk on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” and I’m quite proud of this bit – having found the ostentatious mystical sunlight room and identified the mortal ashes of one Kent Alan Ryan by dragging what remains of his jacket out of the mystical sunlight, Alice discovered that the whole reason Kent got himself killed is that there’s a lever one has to pull (upward, for some reason) right in the middle of the mystical sunlight. Having sussed out from his remains that going into the light was a bad idea, Alice had to figure out a plan to pull that lever without getting burned. . .
And I had what I felt was an awesome brainwave. Namely, Alice brought a duffel bag into this hell house with her to carry her shotgun and other necessaries (like a cooler with the blood she found in Grout’s lab) – and in my experience, those bags have detachable straps. Meaning Alice could take the strap off her bag, turn it into a crude lasso, and toss it into the light to try and snag the lever and pull it up. She had to get kind of close, and I only had it work on the fourth try, but she did it, and even Wonderland had to go, “okay, yeah, that was pretty brilliant.” :D I even got to work in an oblique mention to the probable fem!Malkavian outfit a normal player of the game would be wearing around this time (the cowgirl outfit with the assless chaps). So I’m very pleased with myself! I really did not want her to actually get burned before Grout set the place on fire, and this felt like a nice workaround. :) Of course, now she has to go and find out what the lever opened...at least I’m being kind enough to not force her to fight the two orderlies that spawn in this version of the maze for no particular reason? (I think it’s scarier if there’s no enemies to fight beyond the typical ghouls.)
YouTube: Got two videos out of the Watch Later while also keeping up with Gray in the Subs, w000~
A) First up, from Petey Plays It, “12 Things You Didn't Know About Spellcasters In The Sims 4!” A list of twelve things you might not know about Spellcasters and their abilities and suchlike, ranging from “hey, remember that all the cool wands and brooms and such you can collect can be great décor!” to “Spellcasters can actually train the Medium skill from Paranormal Stuff faster!” to “you CAN kill Sims with Inferniate if you set the ground BELOW them on fire, instead of the Sim themselves” to “Copypasto is so broken that it can straight up copy money trees – not the fruit, THE WHOLE TREE.” Which, while I knew pretty much everything else in the list, WAS some new information for me. Damn...something to store away for later, perhaps? XD (Not that I can see any of my Sims needing more than ONE money tree, that thing gives you loads of cash, but still.)
B) Then, from OXBox, a list video I’ve been trying to watch for weeks now – “7 Times You Made the Game Unwinnable Through Stupidity!” Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about those games who liked to twist the knife by letting you make the game unwinnable through a silly or stupid action and then not immediately ending. Like Space Quest 5, which will let you leave one lab area without a key item to stop an ambush a little later on (Mike seemed surprised by this, which makes me feel he is not familiar with Space Quest as a series and its propensity for letting you murder yourself in many creative, occasionally-delayed ways). Or The Secret Of Monkey Island, which in its original state will let you spend 478 pieces of eight (earned via being a tester human cannonball for some acrobats at a circus) on one unusable grog vending machine, preventing you from buying the items you need to actually, you know, become a pirate and progress (apparently this happened so often the game was patched to stop you from spending more than one piece of eight on the machine). Or – Garfield: Big Hairy Deal, a 1987 game where Garfield had to save his girlfriend Arlene from kidnappers, and which would allow you to run down Garfield’s hunger meter to the point where he’d just eat whatever was in his inventory – including quest-critical items (yes this is apparently a real thing and I now want OXBox to play it). Point is, some games are very, very mean when it comes to making them unwinnable, so try not to do anything too ridiculous, okay?
C) And finally, from GrayStillPlays, “Which car wheel can climb the most stairs?” – aka another GTA V Alex Torture Board! And this one was weird – rather than having Gray test the climbing power of vehicles, Alex got the modding community to make driveable giant tires and wheels for Gray to take up his spiraling staircase of pain. We had rubber wheels, wooden wheels, and rusty metal wheels, and Gray found driving all of them to be really, really bizarre. Especially in first person. XD And it’s not like Alex gave Gray an easy set of stairs to climb, oh no – not only did the size of the stairs increase by a half-foot per section (meaning they started at six inches and increased to I think seven feet tall by the end), most of them had challenges! Because Alex loves challenges! Gray had to take his wheel-mobile up the following staircases –
I. “Baby Steps” Staircase – shallowest staircase, no challenge except random NPCs ending up on the board because Alex built it in the middle of a crowded beach – basically this is the spot where Gray could get used to driving the various wheels
II. “Flooded” Staircase – staircase was low enough in the water that the waves kept on crashing on it (for some reason~) – and occasionally a boat would end up on the course. No chance of flooding out in a tire, but the water didn’t make climbing any easier!
III. “Wastelander” Staircase – my beloved Wastelander rustbucket truck returned as an OBSTACLE, with Gray having to dodge a staggered trio of Wastelanders continually driving at him as he climbed the stairs – not easy at all in a tire
IV. “Windmill” Staircase – the classic Gray obstacle returned to make his life miserable, with windmills set on the board, pulsing through the board, clipping through the board, lying horizontally on the board, or just randomly gyrating at the end of the board to knock him off when he let down his guard
V. “Icy” Staircase – a snow-and-ice-covered set of steps that were both tall and slippery – though generally traction wasn’t too much of an issue for Gray, it was more how high the steps were getting
VI. “Closing” Staircase – a timed staircase where Gray had to make it up to the other end of the staircase before another, slightly taller staircase phased into it and knocked him off the road – and no, he couldn’t get on top of the intruding staircase, he tried
VII. “Pulsating” Staircase – a staircase where the various steps kept pulsating up and down – so sometimes they’d be tall, and sometimes they’d be short, and occasionally they’d be darn near flat, only to spring up again. All about the timing, this one!
VIII. “Crazy Ball” Staircase – very tall staircase with a random ball on it that flung itself back and forth at random, meaning at any moment Gray could be smacked off the board by it – a simple obstacle, but very effective
IX. “Rotating” Staircase – yup, a staircase that spun around a central axis, meaning that Gray had to both climb the stairs AND drive in such a way that he turned with the staircase until it reached the next block without falling off
X. “Stop It!” Staircase – a staircase covered in those “!” stop signs – a couple moving normally, one doing a circle in the middle of the stair, and two more making a thumbnail hole at the top
XI. “You’ve got an Amazon delivery” Staircase – giant stairs with loads of destructible cardboard boxes in front of them Gray had to power through in order to climb them
XII. “Break the Glass Ceiling” Staircase – even more giant stairs with small glass “lips” at the end of each step, requiring Gray smash a hole through the glass before climbing them
XIII. “Take a Flight” Staircase – Huge stairs with the airport “Take A Flight” signs on them that Gray had to get over – one just making the stair even higher, and two others forming another thumbnail hole
XIIII. “Boss” Stair – one final huge stair with a wall in front of it before the win – and if I did my math right, this was the seven-foot monster step.
So yeah – lot of shit to get through! Gray ended up trying all the wheels, with some being better than others – the earliest wood and metal ones were so bad they barely made it past the flooded area, never mind the Wastelander. A wobbly “drunken” tire got all the way to the “Closing” Staircase, but couldn’t get past it in time, while the giant tire and the double tire both made it to the “Crazy Ball” Staircase and no farther. The winner, as it turned out, was the final wooden wheel, which had a bunch of ridges on it for amazing grip and really good handling that allowed Gray to actually dodge things, meaning he could actually get past all the stuff in his way and make it all the way to the top and the end, w000! :D Hell of a board, let me tell you – not surprised at ALL this one ended up a half-hour episode!
Other: We did indeed play beanbags today (it’s so much nicer playing when it’s not humid as hell out!), and we all managed to win at least one game! I had good first and fifth games (though I crashed in the second two), Dad did really well in the second and third, and Mom had a come-from-behind victory in the fourth. :) Final scores were me W-3-3-2-W; Dad 2-W-W-3-2; Mom 3-2-2-W-3. Not too bad! And we should be able to get in a similar round tomorrow, if the weather holds. Fingers crossed!
Not too shabby -- feel like I covered everything I wanted to cover. . .apart from the fanfic thing. *sigh* Seriously, why is it so hard for me to get to these chapters and leave reviews. . .too many other things pulling at my brain wanting attention! Well, hopefully I can get to it tomorrow. Other items of note include finishing up at least a couple more posts of the next Chill Valicer Save update in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts; keeping up with Gray and Jon on YouTube (Fallout Sunday, after all); starting the trip back to Goodneighbor and working on getting the Silver Shroud costume and Drinkin' Buddy in Fallout 4 and updating the Playthrough Progression appropriately; and getting in a workout. Probably gonna have more beanbags too tomorrow, since, again, weather supposed to be excellent. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts! :) But for now, I'm enjoying the AC cooling off my room while I do the social thing. :p Night all!
Anyway -- had a reasonably productive day while enjoying the fresh air --
Tumblr: Valice Multiverse is still plagued by horrible dash, but fortunately also has no activity, so I feel okay in mostly ignoring it for the moment. As for Victor Luvs Alice, though – well, first of all, got all my pictures for this week’s Chill Valicer Save Update (sixty shots of the Wedding Picture Explosion and day one of the honeymoon in Sulani) done last night before I went to sleep, yay! Then, this morning, I caught up on all my tracked tags pre-lunch and grabbed a cool bit of Alice: Madness Returns fanart and a Corpse Bride/Everything Everywhere All At Once meme that spoke to me for my drafts, before getting the initial drafts of the Chill Valicer Save update with pictures and starter text and tags sorted right after lunch! ...And then I realized “oh, hey, I forgot to put the last few minutes of the music mix I was listening to back on while I was doing that,” so I went ahead and completed the first post (the Wedding Picture Explosion) while listening to that. XD Good stuff all around!
Sims 4: I did indeed end up having a building day today (I WOULD have hopped into CAS to make my Coaster Crew, but without that “more columns” mod...look, some things you don’t realize are quality of life until you get them. Maybe I’ll make them over my upcoming vacation instead), fiddling around with my old “Gutknecht Bend” build in an attempt to make a challenge house worthy of a potential future “Valicer In The Dark” save –
A) First things first, though – I spent a good amount of time on the “nice” version of the house, and I didn’t want to lose it. So that went into the Library once I’d gotten into the game and checked my Gallery page (someone downloaded my Tranquil Circle Spa build, yay~). Now, no matter what, I have a copy of at least ONE version of the lot sorted!
B) With that taken care of, it was time to completely gut the house – all furnishings, all decorations, all the doors and windows – hell, I even just straight up took off the little greenhouse and garden areas around the back. This is supposed to be a relatively cheap house for renovating, after all!
C) That being said, there was actually something that I very much wanted to add to the place – a “sewer line!” I’d established in one of Polyship Week stories for the Valicer In The Dark trio that there was one of those, with an opening for them to dump – stuff – down near the house, and so I wanted to actually create that on the lot. I did a little fiddling, and created myself a large basement room with a ladder in one corner leading out to the yard. I painted the walls to look like bricks and the floor to look like old, broken stone; put a small, thin pool up against the far wall and colored it with murky water to look like sewage (and gave it an appropriately rocky pool trim); and put three homemade planters along the other wall nearer the ladder to make a homemade mushroom farm! Because that’s what a lot of people use old sewage pipes for in Duskwall. :D Threw in a few dim lamps for light at night, put a stone circle “rug” next to it for a “manhole cover,” and it was good. It’s simple, but I like it!
D) Around this time, I decided I also wanted to save this version of the lot to my Library, because I was thinking that, if I do end up doing my “Valicer In The Dark” challenge save, I might have the gang live in Windenburg, and thus it might be better to take this version of the lot to Windenburg to build. However, when I did so, I got a message saying that I already saved this template and if I wanted to overwrite the old one or save a new copy. I initially thought that it had something to do with the name being the same and quickly added “Reno” to the lot name, but the message still popped up when I went to save. Puzzled and a little thrown (I guess the game is “huh?” when you try to save two versions of the same lot?), I decided against sticking it in my Library for the moment and instead just took a quick look at Windenburg to see where I could plop it later on, when I gave saving it another go. I think the best lot (at least in terms of matching the size of the lot where I’m building in Forgotten Hollow) would be the one where the Munch family currently lives – I’ll have to try saving it to my Library again when I’ve done a little more fiddling and evict them later! (Or at least move them to a different house. :p)
E) Okay, that digression over, it was back to fiddling with my build! I began playing around with adding the “busted out” door and window frames from Werewolves into the exterior walls – decided I didn’t like the archway for the front door so replaced it with a Vampires door that looked right for the lot. (Though I did end up using the archway around the back, as I really wanted to use it.) I also removed all the interior walls as I wanted to play around a bit with the layout of the rooms, and ended up making the entire side tower just a little bit bigger to give Sims more room to play around with in there – floor space is at a premium in all octagonal rooms, let me tell you! Especially when you have stairs in them. Speaking of which, this necessitated moving the stairs around a bit to make sure they were roughly flush with the front and back walls, but I got it all sorted in the end. :) (I mean, I could just put the stairs on the OUTSIDE like in the actual Corpse Bride movie, but that seems a mean thing to do to your Sims when you have Seasons). I also took a moment to grab just about everything I thought the lot might need to start – robotics bench, woodworking table, upright piano, easel, laundry bucket and line, guitar, the crappy homemade punching bag and weights machine from Werewolves, a séance table, and a cauldron. Though it just occurs to me that I should have gotten a selling table for Smiler too...well, this is definitely gonna be a multi-day project, so I’m not too worried about it. :p
F) Around this time, though, I started thinking about the lot traits and challenges that I wanted on this lot, and went to check those out. The lot already had the “Peace & Quiet” lot trait (which allows Sims to gain more skill reading and lose Tense moods faster) – I ended up adding “Science Lair” for more Logic and Rocket-Building skill, and because it fit the vibe – Smiler’s certainly going to be using it as something of a science lair! (Victor, by contrast, will be using it as a magic lair. :p) As for challenges, I stuck on “Simple Living” (must cook with ingredients), “Off The Grid” (no automatic utilities – that is, no power and no plumbing), “Spooky” (attracts ghosts – a must in Duskwall), and “Reduce and Recycle” (have to empty your own garbage) as the obvious ones – I’m tempted to also go with “Creepy Crawlies” (attacks by insects and bats), “Grody” (stuff just is gross here and makes Sims a bit sick when they try to eat), and “Filthy” (stuff just gets dirtier faster), but for now we’ll work with the stuff I KNOW needs to be on there.
G) With lot traits and challenges in place, I started work on trying to figure out my interior layout again – which, honestly, ended up similar to the old one, only the kitchen is smaller and the bedroom now has a fireplace in it. I also began to wonder if the place should actually HAVE an interior bathroom, or if it should rely on an outhouse instead – if the place is “Off The Grid,” why would it have indoor plumbing? And the place is supposed to be in “rather fallen to ruin” Six Towers anyway...I gotta look at my Blades in the Dark book again and get a better idea of how many people actually have plumbing and electrical power in the city. I know the wealthy probably have nice flushing toilets and electroplasm lamps, but the poorer folk...hmmm. Anyway, started fiddling around with a potential outhouse situation, but didn’t get very far with it – mostly because I’m not sure a fancy pull-chain toilet or the shiny “Ambassador” toilet really fit the vibe of an outhouse. Hmmm. (Though there is a good tub that I found that has the right look – have to keep that for any bathroom situations!)
And around that time, I looked at the clock, thought, “Okay, you know Mom will want to play beanbags today and there’s other stuff you want to do, so let’s wrap this up,” put some of the items in their proper places around the house to help define the rooms (like adding a bed to the bedroom, and sticking the fridge and stove in the kitchen, and putting the robotics bench in the second story room of the tower because need to use that space for SOMETHING), saved, and quit for the day! Maybe not my most productive playsession in Sims, but it was nice and chill, and I feel like I’ve made a decent start on the lot that I want? Sometimes, that’s all that matters. :) (And it was a nice change from the micromanagey stuff I’ve been doing with the Valicer trio, even if I do like that too and am eager to get back to their store.)
Writing: Did another chunk on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” and I’m quite proud of this bit – having found the ostentatious mystical sunlight room and identified the mortal ashes of one Kent Alan Ryan by dragging what remains of his jacket out of the mystical sunlight, Alice discovered that the whole reason Kent got himself killed is that there’s a lever one has to pull (upward, for some reason) right in the middle of the mystical sunlight. Having sussed out from his remains that going into the light was a bad idea, Alice had to figure out a plan to pull that lever without getting burned. . .
And I had what I felt was an awesome brainwave. Namely, Alice brought a duffel bag into this hell house with her to carry her shotgun and other necessaries (like a cooler with the blood she found in Grout’s lab) – and in my experience, those bags have detachable straps. Meaning Alice could take the strap off her bag, turn it into a crude lasso, and toss it into the light to try and snag the lever and pull it up. She had to get kind of close, and I only had it work on the fourth try, but she did it, and even Wonderland had to go, “okay, yeah, that was pretty brilliant.” :D I even got to work in an oblique mention to the probable fem!Malkavian outfit a normal player of the game would be wearing around this time (the cowgirl outfit with the assless chaps). So I’m very pleased with myself! I really did not want her to actually get burned before Grout set the place on fire, and this felt like a nice workaround. :) Of course, now she has to go and find out what the lever opened...at least I’m being kind enough to not force her to fight the two orderlies that spawn in this version of the maze for no particular reason? (I think it’s scarier if there’s no enemies to fight beyond the typical ghouls.)
YouTube: Got two videos out of the Watch Later while also keeping up with Gray in the Subs, w000~
A) First up, from Petey Plays It, “12 Things You Didn't Know About Spellcasters In The Sims 4!” A list of twelve things you might not know about Spellcasters and their abilities and suchlike, ranging from “hey, remember that all the cool wands and brooms and such you can collect can be great décor!” to “Spellcasters can actually train the Medium skill from Paranormal Stuff faster!” to “you CAN kill Sims with Inferniate if you set the ground BELOW them on fire, instead of the Sim themselves” to “Copypasto is so broken that it can straight up copy money trees – not the fruit, THE WHOLE TREE.” Which, while I knew pretty much everything else in the list, WAS some new information for me. Damn...something to store away for later, perhaps? XD (Not that I can see any of my Sims needing more than ONE money tree, that thing gives you loads of cash, but still.)
B) Then, from OXBox, a list video I’ve been trying to watch for weeks now – “7 Times You Made the Game Unwinnable Through Stupidity!” Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about those games who liked to twist the knife by letting you make the game unwinnable through a silly or stupid action and then not immediately ending. Like Space Quest 5, which will let you leave one lab area without a key item to stop an ambush a little later on (Mike seemed surprised by this, which makes me feel he is not familiar with Space Quest as a series and its propensity for letting you murder yourself in many creative, occasionally-delayed ways). Or The Secret Of Monkey Island, which in its original state will let you spend 478 pieces of eight (earned via being a tester human cannonball for some acrobats at a circus) on one unusable grog vending machine, preventing you from buying the items you need to actually, you know, become a pirate and progress (apparently this happened so often the game was patched to stop you from spending more than one piece of eight on the machine). Or – Garfield: Big Hairy Deal, a 1987 game where Garfield had to save his girlfriend Arlene from kidnappers, and which would allow you to run down Garfield’s hunger meter to the point where he’d just eat whatever was in his inventory – including quest-critical items (yes this is apparently a real thing and I now want OXBox to play it). Point is, some games are very, very mean when it comes to making them unwinnable, so try not to do anything too ridiculous, okay?
C) And finally, from GrayStillPlays, “Which car wheel can climb the most stairs?” – aka another GTA V Alex Torture Board! And this one was weird – rather than having Gray test the climbing power of vehicles, Alex got the modding community to make driveable giant tires and wheels for Gray to take up his spiraling staircase of pain. We had rubber wheels, wooden wheels, and rusty metal wheels, and Gray found driving all of them to be really, really bizarre. Especially in first person. XD And it’s not like Alex gave Gray an easy set of stairs to climb, oh no – not only did the size of the stairs increase by a half-foot per section (meaning they started at six inches and increased to I think seven feet tall by the end), most of them had challenges! Because Alex loves challenges! Gray had to take his wheel-mobile up the following staircases –
I. “Baby Steps” Staircase – shallowest staircase, no challenge except random NPCs ending up on the board because Alex built it in the middle of a crowded beach – basically this is the spot where Gray could get used to driving the various wheels
II. “Flooded” Staircase – staircase was low enough in the water that the waves kept on crashing on it (for some reason~) – and occasionally a boat would end up on the course. No chance of flooding out in a tire, but the water didn’t make climbing any easier!
III. “Wastelander” Staircase – my beloved Wastelander rustbucket truck returned as an OBSTACLE, with Gray having to dodge a staggered trio of Wastelanders continually driving at him as he climbed the stairs – not easy at all in a tire
IV. “Windmill” Staircase – the classic Gray obstacle returned to make his life miserable, with windmills set on the board, pulsing through the board, clipping through the board, lying horizontally on the board, or just randomly gyrating at the end of the board to knock him off when he let down his guard
V. “Icy” Staircase – a snow-and-ice-covered set of steps that were both tall and slippery – though generally traction wasn’t too much of an issue for Gray, it was more how high the steps were getting
VI. “Closing” Staircase – a timed staircase where Gray had to make it up to the other end of the staircase before another, slightly taller staircase phased into it and knocked him off the road – and no, he couldn’t get on top of the intruding staircase, he tried
VII. “Pulsating” Staircase – a staircase where the various steps kept pulsating up and down – so sometimes they’d be tall, and sometimes they’d be short, and occasionally they’d be darn near flat, only to spring up again. All about the timing, this one!
VIII. “Crazy Ball” Staircase – very tall staircase with a random ball on it that flung itself back and forth at random, meaning at any moment Gray could be smacked off the board by it – a simple obstacle, but very effective
IX. “Rotating” Staircase – yup, a staircase that spun around a central axis, meaning that Gray had to both climb the stairs AND drive in such a way that he turned with the staircase until it reached the next block without falling off
X. “Stop It!” Staircase – a staircase covered in those “!” stop signs – a couple moving normally, one doing a circle in the middle of the stair, and two more making a thumbnail hole at the top
XI. “You’ve got an Amazon delivery” Staircase – giant stairs with loads of destructible cardboard boxes in front of them Gray had to power through in order to climb them
XII. “Break the Glass Ceiling” Staircase – even more giant stairs with small glass “lips” at the end of each step, requiring Gray smash a hole through the glass before climbing them
XIII. “Take a Flight” Staircase – Huge stairs with the airport “Take A Flight” signs on them that Gray had to get over – one just making the stair even higher, and two others forming another thumbnail hole
XIIII. “Boss” Stair – one final huge stair with a wall in front of it before the win – and if I did my math right, this was the seven-foot monster step.
So yeah – lot of shit to get through! Gray ended up trying all the wheels, with some being better than others – the earliest wood and metal ones were so bad they barely made it past the flooded area, never mind the Wastelander. A wobbly “drunken” tire got all the way to the “Closing” Staircase, but couldn’t get past it in time, while the giant tire and the double tire both made it to the “Crazy Ball” Staircase and no farther. The winner, as it turned out, was the final wooden wheel, which had a bunch of ridges on it for amazing grip and really good handling that allowed Gray to actually dodge things, meaning he could actually get past all the stuff in his way and make it all the way to the top and the end, w000! :D Hell of a board, let me tell you – not surprised at ALL this one ended up a half-hour episode!
Other: We did indeed play beanbags today (it’s so much nicer playing when it’s not humid as hell out!), and we all managed to win at least one game! I had good first and fifth games (though I crashed in the second two), Dad did really well in the second and third, and Mom had a come-from-behind victory in the fourth. :) Final scores were me W-3-3-2-W; Dad 2-W-W-3-2; Mom 3-2-2-W-3. Not too bad! And we should be able to get in a similar round tomorrow, if the weather holds. Fingers crossed!
Not too shabby -- feel like I covered everything I wanted to cover. . .apart from the fanfic thing. *sigh* Seriously, why is it so hard for me to get to these chapters and leave reviews. . .too many other things pulling at my brain wanting attention! Well, hopefully I can get to it tomorrow. Other items of note include finishing up at least a couple more posts of the next Chill Valicer Save update in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts; keeping up with Gray and Jon on YouTube (Fallout Sunday, after all); starting the trip back to Goodneighbor and working on getting the Silver Shroud costume and Drinkin' Buddy in Fallout 4 and updating the Playthrough Progression appropriately; and getting in a workout. Probably gonna have more beanbags too tomorrow, since, again, weather supposed to be excellent. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts! :) But for now, I'm enjoying the AC cooling off my room while I do the social thing. :p Night all!
