Frustrating At The End Saturday
Jul. 29th, 2023 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI mean, it wasn't a BAD day (the threatened thunderstorms never actually arrived -- we got some rain, but a good portion of the day was bright sunshine), but there was a major annoyance a little earlier tonight that threw off my mood, and -- well, you'll see --
Cleaning: Pretty standard Cleaning Saturday, honestly – got to work around 10:50 AM, and wrapped up at about 1:50 PM (with a break at about 12:50 PM for lunch). Not a lot of dust, but I have so many shelves and such it always takes SOME time to get everything sorted. But it’s all done for another couple of weeks, yay!
Tumblr: While I wasn’t particularly active on Victor Luvs Alice, I did make sure to catch up on all my Valice Multiverse stuff tonight – couple of thread replies, an ask reply (which was basically a request for angsty fanfic), the reblogging of an ask I sent that resulted in someone ELSE writing angsty fanfic, and a reblog of some “Incorrect Quote Generator” stuff which led me to discover that either there’s a new generator in town or the other one got a revamp and now has even more stuff, so I’m collecting more Valicer quotes for later. XD I am also working on getting the next set of Chill Valicer Save pictures sorted, from the One Nice Day of the honeymoon – up to about thirty now. We’ll see how many there are in the end!
Sims 4: Did a little more futzing around with the Windenburg version of Gutknecht’s Bend today – mostly, trying to figure out the darn internal layout for the first floor. I had a brainwave early on when I realized that the newly-expanded house now overlapped the basement “sewer line” slightly, meaning (after making the sewer slightly bigger to line up the “front” of it with the side of the house) that obviously the toilet should go in the back corner over said sewer, but I really had to think about the rest of it. I eventually stumbled across a layout that I think works, though, with some futzing here and there (and constantly going back to repaint the tower as bricks when the rest of the house is big stone blocks) – here, let me see if I can show it to you:
Okay, so, I ended up moving the main entrance closer to the middle of the house and making a sort of “entrance hall” that opened up on a big central hallway that connects with the bottom of the “tower” portion of the build – I ended up rebuilding the two diagonal walls because I felt like they should be “load-bearing” and help the structure above stay up, even if they made some of the rooms a bit weird (my headcanon is that the tower was there first, and then the lower portion of the house was later built around it). To the left of the front door, facing inwards, you have the bedroom, complete with fireplace and quick access to the tower (as I figured Elder Gutknecht, and later the Valicer trio, would want that); to the right is a room that I don’t know the “original” purpose of, but is going to be the gang’s “Prowess Training Room” (aka, a gym). Directly across from the bedroom is the kitchen – I ended up removing the stove for the moment and moving the cauldron down in there because that made sense to me as being in a kitchen – using it exclusively for potions can come later! The kitchen also has access to the back courtyard area – currently just a bunch of old pavers with a laundry line and bucket, but I intend to jazz this up and add things like a chicken coop later. (You can also see the ladder for the sewer at the side of the courtyard, next to the little “street” I built beside the house.) Next to the kitchen is a dining room, with another fireplace (though no table yet), and next to that is the bathroom! Which, thanks to having to be made a bit bigger to make the hallway nice and straight, has been partially separated into an actual bathing area, and the toilet and sink over the sewer line. :p The bottom part of the tower itself will serve as living space, hence why I put the piano, easel, and guitar in there. Then the second floor of the tower will be chemistry and crafting and suchlike, and the third floor more ghostly stuff. :)
So yeah – layout achieved! Mostly, anyway – I may fiddle around with room sizes, see if there’s anything else this house needs (though I don’t think so – it was only ever home to one guy, which is how the Valicer trio end up in the “there’s only one bed” situation when they first start living there). And of course I have to make it look super-abandoned and all that – this house is probably gonna be more expensive than any Sim out of CAS can afford, but given my intention for this house is for a challenge save where the Sims will immediately have NO money after moving in, I think it’s okay for me to gussy it up a bit, then use the “freerealestate” cheat when it comes to actually moving the Valicer trio in. ;) We’ll see how future building sessions go! Though I do hope I can get back to my Chill Valicer Save and actually play next week. . .have to see how all my mods are doing first!
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – having successfully escaped the mannequin house, Alice found that the left door in the upside-down hallway was now open, and led to a mostly-upside-down bedroom, with a chair and a telephone on the actual floor. This proved to be because you have to use the telephone to open the far wall to continue through the maze (just picking up the receiver will do), leading Alice to what I believe are the final couple of rooms in said maze. And the final enemy – one more clawed ghoul guy who I was tempted to have her get a sip from, but as she hasn’t really been using her vampire powers that much lately, and she topped up pretty well earlier, I instead had her trick the guy into chasing her back to the upside-down bedroom and trap him in there (as there’s a candle lever just beyond the room that re-closes the wall from what I can see). So now she just has to visit the room of mad scribblings (from that one loyal orderly who got locked in here and died) and the weird chapel room before she can get out into the mansion proper again! And finally find out what happened to Dr. Grout. . .
YouTube: Welp, I wasn’t able to watch the GrayStillPlays video in my Subs – I TRIED, but for some unholy reason, the minute I attempted to load up the video in anything other than absolute potato quality (aka 240p or 480p), YouTube’s ability to buffer it just TANKED. I only got through about six minutes of video in a HALF HOUR because it kept stopping and restarting, and I kept having to go back and rewatch bits to try and get it to properly buffer. I don’t know what the hell happened around 9:30 or so that utterly destroyed YouTube’s ability to play a video – I think it’s my internet provider, not YouTube itself, but it’s EXTREMELY frustrating. *sigh* Looks like it’s gonna be another week where I’m at least one video behind on Gray!
I did manage to watch something, though – right before I started suffering over buffering, YouTube allowed me to view a video from OXBox I’ve been waiting a while to watch: “THE MOST UNSETTLING HORROR GAME OF THE YEAR IS A DOOM II MOD?! Let's Play MyHouse.wad!” Mike and Andy taking on – well, it’s not ACTUALLY a DOOM II mod, I believe? You need some sort of DOOM emulator thing to play it, but I’m not sure you need actual DOOM II. Anyway, the conceit of the game is that the guy who released the map lost a dear childhood friend about a year ago, reconnected with the friend’s parents at the funeral, got the friend’s floppies, and discovered this DOOM II map mod of the guy’s house that he was apparently working on in secret, so he released it as a tribute to his late buddy. However, as you might imagine by the title of the video, this is no ordinary mod. It starts out like your standard “explore my house with enemies in it” map, but as it turns out, there are multiple versions of the house, starting with a much more smoothly animated version with upgraded graphics and the like that appears once you go outside searching for a particular orb on a pedestal (Mike noticed things had changed because the orb was gone and the enemies had all respawned, and I noticed shortly thereafter that the doors now opened normally instead of sliding upward as they would in an actual DOOM II mod); then moving onto a burned version if you make the mistake of interacting with the fuse box that spawns in new, creepier enemies; then moving onto a Brutalist, apartment-building-esque version of the house that has has two variants – one where you’re small and there’s a horrible hellhound in the living room, and one where you’re big and there’s a friendly German Shepherd – before turning into an AIRPORT (accessed through the parking garage) where you can get on an airplane; then you jump out of the airplane and end up in an overgrown rotting version of the house; and then finally you go outside, discover the lot was sold – and find the house gone altogether. Then, and only then, can you access the exit gate and actually leave. Mike and Andy found it deeply weird and disconcerting –
And, according to the comments, they BARELY SAW ANY OF THE GAME. Apparently the ending they got is the easiest one, and they accidentally locked themselves out of seeing the others by interacting with the fuse box and triggering the “burned house” variant to appear, instead of exploring more and doing other stuff. This thing has lore out the wazoo, it seems! Well, perhaps they will return to it one day and show us more of the game and its weird weirdness – people think it might make a good Hallowstream offering when it comes to that time of the year! I’m down. :p
*sigh* So -- yeah, it was the Gray thing that threw me off for the night. I was looking forward to that video, damn it! Hopefully I can watch it tomorrow. . .along with everything ELSE I need to get done. *grumbles* Where does the time go, I swear. . .
Anyway -- gonna try to finish off these pictures while doing the last of the social thing. Items on the to-do list tomorrow are getting a few tumblr drafts of the latest Chill Valicer Save update sorted; playing Fallout 4 and getting back on the road toward Hubris and Shamrock Taphouse, and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; catching up on this GrayStillPlays video and watching whatever Jon has in store for his vacation week; getting in a workout; and HOPEFULLY also answering Moose's latest messages. I'm really hoping that's not all too much. Gotta be more efficient with my time! Night all!
Cleaning: Pretty standard Cleaning Saturday, honestly – got to work around 10:50 AM, and wrapped up at about 1:50 PM (with a break at about 12:50 PM for lunch). Not a lot of dust, but I have so many shelves and such it always takes SOME time to get everything sorted. But it’s all done for another couple of weeks, yay!
Tumblr: While I wasn’t particularly active on Victor Luvs Alice, I did make sure to catch up on all my Valice Multiverse stuff tonight – couple of thread replies, an ask reply (which was basically a request for angsty fanfic), the reblogging of an ask I sent that resulted in someone ELSE writing angsty fanfic, and a reblog of some “Incorrect Quote Generator” stuff which led me to discover that either there’s a new generator in town or the other one got a revamp and now has even more stuff, so I’m collecting more Valicer quotes for later. XD I am also working on getting the next set of Chill Valicer Save pictures sorted, from the One Nice Day of the honeymoon – up to about thirty now. We’ll see how many there are in the end!
Sims 4: Did a little more futzing around with the Windenburg version of Gutknecht’s Bend today – mostly, trying to figure out the darn internal layout for the first floor. I had a brainwave early on when I realized that the newly-expanded house now overlapped the basement “sewer line” slightly, meaning (after making the sewer slightly bigger to line up the “front” of it with the side of the house) that obviously the toilet should go in the back corner over said sewer, but I really had to think about the rest of it. I eventually stumbled across a layout that I think works, though, with some futzing here and there (and constantly going back to repaint the tower as bricks when the rest of the house is big stone blocks) – here, let me see if I can show it to you:
Okay, so, I ended up moving the main entrance closer to the middle of the house and making a sort of “entrance hall” that opened up on a big central hallway that connects with the bottom of the “tower” portion of the build – I ended up rebuilding the two diagonal walls because I felt like they should be “load-bearing” and help the structure above stay up, even if they made some of the rooms a bit weird (my headcanon is that the tower was there first, and then the lower portion of the house was later built around it). To the left of the front door, facing inwards, you have the bedroom, complete with fireplace and quick access to the tower (as I figured Elder Gutknecht, and later the Valicer trio, would want that); to the right is a room that I don’t know the “original” purpose of, but is going to be the gang’s “Prowess Training Room” (aka, a gym). Directly across from the bedroom is the kitchen – I ended up removing the stove for the moment and moving the cauldron down in there because that made sense to me as being in a kitchen – using it exclusively for potions can come later! The kitchen also has access to the back courtyard area – currently just a bunch of old pavers with a laundry line and bucket, but I intend to jazz this up and add things like a chicken coop later. (You can also see the ladder for the sewer at the side of the courtyard, next to the little “street” I built beside the house.) Next to the kitchen is a dining room, with another fireplace (though no table yet), and next to that is the bathroom! Which, thanks to having to be made a bit bigger to make the hallway nice and straight, has been partially separated into an actual bathing area, and the toilet and sink over the sewer line. :p The bottom part of the tower itself will serve as living space, hence why I put the piano, easel, and guitar in there. Then the second floor of the tower will be chemistry and crafting and suchlike, and the third floor more ghostly stuff. :)
So yeah – layout achieved! Mostly, anyway – I may fiddle around with room sizes, see if there’s anything else this house needs (though I don’t think so – it was only ever home to one guy, which is how the Valicer trio end up in the “there’s only one bed” situation when they first start living there). And of course I have to make it look super-abandoned and all that – this house is probably gonna be more expensive than any Sim out of CAS can afford, but given my intention for this house is for a challenge save where the Sims will immediately have NO money after moving in, I think it’s okay for me to gussy it up a bit, then use the “freerealestate” cheat when it comes to actually moving the Valicer trio in. ;) We’ll see how future building sessions go! Though I do hope I can get back to my Chill Valicer Save and actually play next week. . .have to see how all my mods are doing first!
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – having successfully escaped the mannequin house, Alice found that the left door in the upside-down hallway was now open, and led to a mostly-upside-down bedroom, with a chair and a telephone on the actual floor. This proved to be because you have to use the telephone to open the far wall to continue through the maze (just picking up the receiver will do), leading Alice to what I believe are the final couple of rooms in said maze. And the final enemy – one more clawed ghoul guy who I was tempted to have her get a sip from, but as she hasn’t really been using her vampire powers that much lately, and she topped up pretty well earlier, I instead had her trick the guy into chasing her back to the upside-down bedroom and trap him in there (as there’s a candle lever just beyond the room that re-closes the wall from what I can see). So now she just has to visit the room of mad scribblings (from that one loyal orderly who got locked in here and died) and the weird chapel room before she can get out into the mansion proper again! And finally find out what happened to Dr. Grout. . .
YouTube: Welp, I wasn’t able to watch the GrayStillPlays video in my Subs – I TRIED, but for some unholy reason, the minute I attempted to load up the video in anything other than absolute potato quality (aka 240p or 480p), YouTube’s ability to buffer it just TANKED. I only got through about six minutes of video in a HALF HOUR because it kept stopping and restarting, and I kept having to go back and rewatch bits to try and get it to properly buffer. I don’t know what the hell happened around 9:30 or so that utterly destroyed YouTube’s ability to play a video – I think it’s my internet provider, not YouTube itself, but it’s EXTREMELY frustrating. *sigh* Looks like it’s gonna be another week where I’m at least one video behind on Gray!
I did manage to watch something, though – right before I started suffering over buffering, YouTube allowed me to view a video from OXBox I’ve been waiting a while to watch: “THE MOST UNSETTLING HORROR GAME OF THE YEAR IS A DOOM II MOD?! Let's Play MyHouse.wad!” Mike and Andy taking on – well, it’s not ACTUALLY a DOOM II mod, I believe? You need some sort of DOOM emulator thing to play it, but I’m not sure you need actual DOOM II. Anyway, the conceit of the game is that the guy who released the map lost a dear childhood friend about a year ago, reconnected with the friend’s parents at the funeral, got the friend’s floppies, and discovered this DOOM II map mod of the guy’s house that he was apparently working on in secret, so he released it as a tribute to his late buddy. However, as you might imagine by the title of the video, this is no ordinary mod. It starts out like your standard “explore my house with enemies in it” map, but as it turns out, there are multiple versions of the house, starting with a much more smoothly animated version with upgraded graphics and the like that appears once you go outside searching for a particular orb on a pedestal (Mike noticed things had changed because the orb was gone and the enemies had all respawned, and I noticed shortly thereafter that the doors now opened normally instead of sliding upward as they would in an actual DOOM II mod); then moving onto a burned version if you make the mistake of interacting with the fuse box that spawns in new, creepier enemies; then moving onto a Brutalist, apartment-building-esque version of the house that has has two variants – one where you’re small and there’s a horrible hellhound in the living room, and one where you’re big and there’s a friendly German Shepherd – before turning into an AIRPORT (accessed through the parking garage) where you can get on an airplane; then you jump out of the airplane and end up in an overgrown rotting version of the house; and then finally you go outside, discover the lot was sold – and find the house gone altogether. Then, and only then, can you access the exit gate and actually leave. Mike and Andy found it deeply weird and disconcerting –
And, according to the comments, they BARELY SAW ANY OF THE GAME. Apparently the ending they got is the easiest one, and they accidentally locked themselves out of seeing the others by interacting with the fuse box and triggering the “burned house” variant to appear, instead of exploring more and doing other stuff. This thing has lore out the wazoo, it seems! Well, perhaps they will return to it one day and show us more of the game and its weird weirdness – people think it might make a good Hallowstream offering when it comes to that time of the year! I’m down. :p
*sigh* So -- yeah, it was the Gray thing that threw me off for the night. I was looking forward to that video, damn it! Hopefully I can watch it tomorrow. . .along with everything ELSE I need to get done. *grumbles* Where does the time go, I swear. . .
Anyway -- gonna try to finish off these pictures while doing the last of the social thing. Items on the to-do list tomorrow are getting a few tumblr drafts of the latest Chill Valicer Save update sorted; playing Fallout 4 and getting back on the road toward Hubris and Shamrock Taphouse, and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; catching up on this GrayStillPlays video and watching whatever Jon has in store for his vacation week; getting in a workout; and HOPEFULLY also answering Moose's latest messages. I'm really hoping that's not all too much. Gotta be more efficient with my time! Night all!
