Fucky Friday
Jul. 18th, 2025 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickOne because I have officially gotten my period (though my body happily gave me enough warning signals that I was prepared and had a pad in when it actually started at work), and two -- well, see the "Work" section (and, to a lesser degree, the "Superliminal" section) below:
Work – Well, my second half-day Friday started out okay – while I was working in the front alone (my coworker having taken the day off), I was doing just fine – working on the GL, putting on the checks that came in the mail, talking with my supervisor about rearranging some of my vacation days (as my Mom said that it would be better for us to go where we’re going in September), posting some last-minute Easter Collection, and sending a file to my supervisor once my lunch break was done. I was just about ready to wrap everything up by doing some of the roster maintenance he forwarded…
Aaand then the assistant director showed up like ten minutes before we closed with another batch of gifts for me to put on (EXTRA last-minute Easter Collection). *grumble* I managed to do it, simply because there were only four gifts and I was able to put them on very quickly, but it was still annoying to have that happen just as I was getting ready to leave. But I put it out of my mind as I got everything put away and headed out the door. I had a decent commute home, and managed to arrive at the house at about 1:45 PM…
Aaaand that’s when I came upon my Mom ordering plane tickets to our destination. Or, rather, trying to, because she was having trouble with one of the bank cards, and – yeah. Cue her and my Dad having some real problems with trying to verify the charges as real (apparently the e-mails they were getting were VERY confusing), and me retreating to my room as quickly as possible so I didn’t get wrapped up in it. Though I could still hear them both yelling at the various customer service reps they were dealing with from time to time. *wince* Yeah, that – that was not fun. At all. I managed to play my video games like I wanted (see below), and the tickets were eventually successfully acquired, but it really put a damper on the whole afternoon. Ugh. *shakehead* Gonna be very glad to leave this week and all its various annoyances behind, that’s for damn sure...
Superliminal – Well, I got through the “Dollhouse” level today – which took longer than it should have, because that final fucking puzzle in this level is a fucking pain in the ass, especially if you’re doing a Collectibles Run. *huff* But I got everything in the end, which included:
A) The “Chair” constellation room, which was hidden in a fake shadow behind the right-hand exit door for the Relaxation Room (the room with a looping image of clouds being projected on one wall) – and I’m pleased to say that I got the stars for the chair lined up pretty quickly! :) Then again, it wasn’t hard to spot the big old clusters of stars that made up the chair – I just had to back myself into the right position. Still, happy it was one of the easier constellations to get!
B) The first blueprint of the level, which was atop a stack of boxes in the room where you end up after going through the window you have to resize so you can slip through the missing pane (making yourself smaller in the process) – just a simple hop, skip, and jump up said boxes, and I had my dream architectural sketch.
C) The blue king chess piece, which was atop the small doorway you have to go through to reach the pool room of the “hotel” you’re traveling through in this level – coincidentally, right next to the boxes where you get the first blueprint! It’s tiny, so it’s hard to see, but I spotted it right away after collecting the blueprint and made sure to give it a good click. Another one for the old computer chess game!
D) The second blueprint of the level, which is located atop the doorway you got through in the middle of the locker room for the pool (where, when you look up, you see a SECOND locker room stretching out above you, perpendicular to the one you’re traveling through) – all I had to do to get it was retrieve the bouncy castle floatie from the empty pool, head back to the doorway, and set down the floatie in front of it, resized so I could climb up it and onto the top of the door, scoring the blueprint lying on the “wall” next to the first bank of sideways lockers. Appropriately, it was the blueprint for the locker room itself. :) I mean, I had already figured all the blueprints were for the bits of the level where you found them, but this was the first one where it was really obvious!
E) And the third blueprint of the level, which is located atop the punch clock in the “employee break room” where you find yourself after completing the “resize yourself using these two linked doors (which you can resize using perspective tricks as usual) to get out of a locked box through the keyhole up above” puzzle. And THIS is where everything went wrong, because –
I. When I tried to complete the puzzle the FIRST time, right after finally getting one of the doors tiny enough to fit into the keyhole, when I turned around to go through the big door next to me to shrink myself and creep through said keyhole, I suddenly found myself glitching THROUGH the door to the other side of the piece of wall it was on, instead of coming out its linked twin. And after a couple more unsuccessful attempts to go through the big door, the door itself vanished, leaving me stranded in the box with no way to get up to the tiny door and thus get out. O.o I’ve heard of this bug before (or at least something like it), but I’ve never actually EXPERIENCED it, so it was a very confusing moment! (I wrote down in my notes that this was the game getting me back for managing to glitch my way into being the correct size for a door I was a little too large for after resizing the bouncy castle floatie slightly wrong in the previous puzzle. :P)
II. Then, after successfully completing the “through the keyhole” puzzle on my SECOND go, after falling in tiny form down onto the table with the chess game, I realized I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to actually get over to the blueprint atop the punch clock because I was one, so tiny, and two, moved INCREDIBLY fucking slowly (I tried to get to the end of the table, and I had to check if I was actually moving at one point by looking at the chess pieces behind me to see if they were receding at all!). Hell, I wasn’t even sure where the punch clock WAS, even though I knew it had to be in this room because of the description of the blueprint’s location in the guide I was using. The only thing I could grab in the room was the little cardboard dollhouse, and THAT only provided me with the exit to the level itself. So I went back and looked at the video included with my guide –
Aaaand realized that the author was using the linked doors from the inside of the box to resize themselves to something actually able to move around the room more freely and get to the punch clock. *facepalm* Makes sense once you see it!
III. Then, after resetting and redoing the puzzle, I attempted THREE TIMES to grab the doors and take them with me – all unsuccessfully. One time I just straight up accidentally dropped one of the doors onto the table below, making it so tiny in the process that I couldn’t actually pick it up again; the other two times, I managed to use the linked doors and resize myself at least a little, but not big enough to actually climb up to the top of the punch clock! I gave it the old college try, of course, using the chunk of wall the “embiggening” door was in as an extra ledge to try and climb onto the edge of the recycling bin right under the punch clock, but all I succeeded in doing was falling into the trash bin and the recycling bin respectively. Feel like I should get achievements for those failures, honestly. *grumble*
IV. FINALLY, realizing I was getting too frustrated, I took a moment, saved and quit, hopped on YouTube, and found a guide to getting all the blueprints that I could watch. I then skipped forward to the final blueprint of the “Dollhouse” section and watched what the creator, CarbonCarl, did, then got back into my game and did my best to copy his actions as exactly as possible. THAT worked, and I was able to resize myself back to roughly normal size, hop onto the table with all the boxes and the chess game and such, then collect the blueprint atop the punch clock. *huffs* I then proceeded to struggle with making the dollhouse big enough for my oversized ass to pass through so I could reach the exit elevator and end the damn level, but I managed it in the end. Very glad I did NOT have to reset from the checkpoint again – I think I would have cried. Thank you CarbonCarl!
So yeah, that was my experience getting all the “Dollhouse” collectibles. Easy-peasy up until the last one, and then FUCKING HELL. *pinches the bridge of her nose* At least it’s cleared now… Anyway, here’s the list of Other Fun Things I Noticed/Experienced While Playing This Level:
a. Remember how I told you at the end of my last level write-up that I found a corkboard in the hallway outside my suite at the beginning of this level? That had little copies of all the blueprints collected so far pinned to it? Well, it also has other things pinned to it, including someone’s “Dream Diary” for the month of May. Which included not only such dreams as falling off a cliff, then bouncing back up to the top of the cliff, over and over, before realizing they had no hands; wandering an endless forest while hearing the howling of wolves; and eating an endless bowl of cereal that eventually got everywhere; but also a note that whoever wrote it took the weekend off dreams. XD Given the kind of dreams they have, I think they need those weekends off!
b. I also told you at the end of the last write-up that I’d noticed there was a room open, across from the corkboard, that I’d never seen before in any previous playthroughs! Well, today I went inside that room (“Suite E,” according to the sign above the door) to check it out. What I found was basically large janitorial closet (with loads of pipes and a mop and bucket near the door), with a bed, an alarm clock reading “00:00 AM,” a few rather apocalyptic-looking pictures on the wall, and a boombox with a message from Dr. Glen Pierce – talking about the assumption that secret locations like this should contain “valuable knowledge instead of pipes filled with squandered human potential.” He said this assumption was wrong and in fact these locations SHOULDN’T contain valuable knowledge, because that’s bad design. XD Tell that to the game programmers, Dr. Pierce!
c. Something I noticed while looking at the corkboard and exploring Suite E – the music that you can hear coming from the Relaxation Room? It’s a slightly garbled version of the music from the final playable level, “Whitespace!” Complete with part of Glen’s monologue through the radios in that level, talking about how he had a dream once (though not going any further than that bit). Nice little Easter Egg for those of us on a repeat playthrough. :)
d. Just past the entrance to the Relaxation Room is a bit of dead-end corridor with a water fountain, which has a pamphlet for SomnoSculpt, the business run by Dr. Pierce that you’re visiting. I did my best to read it, and noted that Dr. Pierce couldn’t resist doing the “Hello. My name is Dr. Glen Pierce” thing even there (it’s a bit of a running gag that he always introduces himself like that at the start of every message he sends you – the Standard Orientation protocol, when summarizing some messages from him in one level, goes “Hello. My introductions are redundant.” XD). It also talked about how “is perception reality?” is the question they – er, YOU were looking to answer, and how their technology will change the world “once we get the kinks worked out and receive proper funding.” XD Glen – Glen, buddy. You could not sound more like an incompetent mad scientist trying to take over the world if you were actively trying. XD
e. I found TWO fire extinguishers I missed traveling this level – one right next to the entrance doors for the Relaxation Room, the other by the doorway in a room with a “fake” radio (that is, the radio works, but when you try to click on it for a message, you discover it’s a resizable object). Not sure how I missed either before (well, okay, it’s kind of dark around the entrance to the Relaxation Room, so I can hazard a guess on how I missed THAT one), but they’ve been emptied now, and I am one step closer to the “empty all the fire extinguishers” achievement!
f. Oh, speaking of that radio that’s actually a resizable object – it happens to be playing the level music, and whenever you pick it up, the music goes all wonky until you put it down again. XD
g. There’s a couple of janitor buckets in the level, and they’re all shaped like a bit like yellow toilets for some reason, complete with a black bit sticking out the side as the “handle.” XD Sadly, you cannot interact with this handle to “flush” them – missed opportunity, that!
h. There’s a non-working soda vending machine in the first cardboard dollhouse you interact with in this level, teaching you how the “resizing yourself” mechanic works called “Dream Pop” – after double-checking, I can confirm that all the other soda vending machines are called “Dream Soda,” so maybe the name being different was a hint that it wouldn’t work. ...and now I wish I’d checked to see if the offerings were different! The buttons looked the same, at least…
i. In one of the backstage areas, around the radio that says “things should be less scary now” right before a constantly-flickering light in the hallway you have to go down, there’s a TV displaying a test pattern attached to a long cable. Now, I THINK this TV is supposed to display an image from the developer’s demo The Museum of Simulation, which showcased some of the ideas that would come to full fruition in Superliminal – but I don’t know how long you’re supposed to wait, and I ended up getting impatient and leaving. One Easter Egg that it might be easier to get via watching YouTube videos!
j. That same backstage area, as you continue to traverse it, has boxes full of pillows – must be for all those suites that keep getting rearranged in the dreams. XD Plus a spoopy plant in a shadowy corner right before you get back to the “hotel” bit – just to be spoopy I suppose :P
k. And, right after my first reset to try the “escape the box through the keyhole” puzzle, after one of the doors I needed to use glitched into the ether, I discovered that there was a keyboard tucked away behind the doorway into the box – and it was interactive! You can bang out the tunes just like Neil the rat (tumblr joke). :D Most fun thing about that whole section, I have to say.
Aaaand there we have it – another level of Superliminal cleared! Tomorrow, we tackle “Labyrinth,” the one level where I haven’t gotten ANYTHING cleared. Mostly because it’s meant to be played with a sense of urgency, not a sense of “looking for collectibles.” :P Hopefully it goes well!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike, last night with “The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Build & Buy Overview” by James Turner! The second half of his overview focused on household items – bedroom stuff, bathroom stuff, kids’ room stuff, living room stuff, etc. Plus a quick look at the Required New Bar (which, admittedly, was gorgeous, and had an AMAZING bar back that looked like a glimmering galaxy), some of the unlockable stuff from working your way up the Apothecary skill and the Naturopath career, and some of the debug/live edit objects. And while he was once again overall impressed with the commitment to fairy tale styling and themes, and how beautiful everything was, he once again had some criticisms:
A) He felt one particular “leaf” rug was a LITTLE too cartoony compared to the rest of the items, explicitly comparing it to something you’d find in Animal Crossing
B) While he liked the new kitchen counters overall, he wasn’t wild about the visible seams between the joined counters...and even less wild about the low-quality wood textures on the top, with visible pixelation. Took him right out of the game! He also didn’t like that the “outer corner” matching cupboard piece with a big empty shelf didn’t have any slots to put anything on
C) He was not a fan of the fact that there were so few “clutter”-type decoration items (to go along with his annoyance over the lack of wall art), and that most of the few that we had were locked behind advancing in the Apothecary skill or the Naturopath career – he’s not against unlockables in theory, but it just seemed odd to him that you’d put basic clutter behind learning a few levels of a skill, or advancing in a career
D) While he was glad there was a full bathroom set, he noted that the pieces didn’t go together very well – the sink was very clean carved wood, while the toilet was a mossy stump, and the shower and tub were both made out of crystals and stone (which meant they matched ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the rest of the pack). They all looked good INDIVIDUALLY, just they didn’t make a very cohesive set when put together. Also, the wall mirror was set just a little bit too low to be used with the sink without clipping
E) He was utterly confused by the addition of a single ordinary park bench in among all the other fairy-tale-themed stuff one could sit on – especially when he realized the world around the lot he was showing everything off on was using BASE GAME benches. O.o Like, what the hell, guys? Why make a new ordinary bench if you’re not going to USE it anywhere? (Though maybe the bench is used in a different neighborhood – I think he was in Sprucederry Grove, and the bench looked like a good fit for the Coast of Adhmor and its aesthetic)
F) He pointed out that a few very important things were missing – namely, the bedroom set does NOT have a single bed (it goes bassinet – crib – toddler bed – big old canopied double bed); the living room set is missing a two-seater couch (aka a loveseat – and the weird Ordinary Park Bench does not count); and the kitchen set was missing THE ACTUAL KITCHEN. Literally, all we got for kitchen stuff is the counters, the cupboards, and the sink, which does double duty as a bathroom sink. No fridge, no stove, no nothing! James was like “that’s probably because one of the big things about this pack is living naturally without such appliances” but COME ON. Not everybody is going to want to have their Sims do that! You could have at LEAST included a campfire one could cook on!
G) And he reiterated how baffled/annoyed he was that the Enchanted By Nature pack didn’t come with any new outdoor plants, showing that there was TONS of fun stuff hiding in the “debug” section that could have been shoved into the catalog proper! Lots of bright colorful flowers, giant mushrooms, cool mossy stones – all stuff that I’m sure Simmer would LOVE to landscape with! It’s baffling why it’s all hidden behind a cheat!
So yeah – while James was very excited to build with the pack and play around with all the fun fairytale vibes, he wasn’t shy about revealing where he felt the pack let him down. And it does feel utterly stupid that they don’t have any outdoor plants, or a single bed to go with the double bed, or a single kitchen appliance. I mean, I really like the stuff I saw in this pack – major Wonderland vibes, especially with some of the fun mushroom-themed décor – but cripes. This is definitely a “get on sale” pack if I do pick it up! You can’t be bothered to give me all the items I should be entitled to in an expansion pack? I can’t be bothered to give you full price. *shakehead* That being said, I do look forward to seeing James build with this pack, as it is probably going to lend itself to some fun houses. In fact, he already noticed that one might be able to recreate the dollhouse included in the kids’ stuff as a full-sized house, given all the stuff in it is just tiny versions of actual assets in the pack...
2. Edit WeirdKev’s Gift Fic: Check – the “Glomgold details his plan for getting rid of Zan Owlson, involving Trojan Butts and ghouled sharks and fake Santa Clauses throwing chum, to LaCroix’s growing bafflement and annoyance” fic got its second draft today! Which, honestly, was not really much different from the first draft – I just reworded a few sentences here and there to make some of LaCroix’s lines sound a bit more like him, added in a couple of new lines, and reworked some awkward ones. Otherwise, it’s pretty much exactly what I wrote last week, with the most chaotic, ridiculous plan this side of Ducktales. XD Hopefully WeirdKev will like it – he’s the one who came up with all of Glomgold’s nonsense, after all! XD
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got another video out of my Watch Later tonight: “Innisgreen World Secrets And Features | The Sims 4 Guide” by Petey Plays It! A tour of the new world that comes with Enchanted By Nature and its three neighborhoods – Everdew, Sprucederry Grove, and The Coast of Adhmor! And happily, while each neighborhood is kind of compact (especially Adhmor, which is just crammed full of admittedly-adorable colorful houses), they all have plenty of stuff to see and to interact with! Including little parks with benches for Sims to nap on, woohoo bushes, and sometimes swingsets and/or barbecues; Fable Boards to find the Sims that can handle out “Fables,” the EBN version of the Cottage Living Henford-on-Bagley “Errands” (which offer rewards from the mundane to the fabulous); various bodies of water to splash around or bathe in; plants to harvest (including the new magical plants that come with this pack); and rabbit hole businesses to shop at (like a used bookstore, or a grocery)! Each neighborhood has unique features too – for example, Everdew has the headquarters of the fairy council, a good place to research fairy lore and the history of the land; Sprucederry Grove has the tree that allows you to summon Spruce Almighty, creator of PlantSims and gnomes; and the Coast of Adhmor has the Giant Gnome, who can influence your luck if you ask him nicely (or attempt to kick him). All in all, it’s a very pretty world, and Petey was on the opinion it was one of the more solid ones when it came to both interactivity and feeling alive. *nods* A point in the pack’s favor, that! ...Still probably gonna get it on sale, though. :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – we had the reverse of yesterday’s situation, where I had nothing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (as the queue was already sorted), but I did have something to stick in the queue on Valice Multiverse – another reblog on the “helping Seth find his brother Richard” thread that I have with The Coven Wars in the Forgotten Vows Verse! Their latest reblog saw the group indeed find Richard (who was still wandering in a daze near the square where Seth last saw him, happily), with a worried Seth asking him why he’d run off and Richard responding “...They’re loud today.” (For reference, the kid suffers from hallucinations, like Alice – Alice feels a bit of a kinship with him as a result.) I had Alice comment that she’s had days like that too, pointing out that Victor would know, while Victor introduced himself to Richard (as they hadn’t met previously). We’ll see what happens when Coven Wars next responds!
So yeah -- not the greatest Friday, but at least I accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish. And now I have to go to bed, as I have a full Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, meeeh. At least it comes with getting to listen to the last episode of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark! Other things I hope to do include working more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" getting through the "Labyrinth" level of Superliminal as indicated above; and watching at least one of the videos in my Watch Later (maybe the OXBoxtra crew reacting to super-fast carriages in Red Dead Redemption 2?). Hopefully all goals that can be accomplished -- night all!
Work – Well, my second half-day Friday started out okay – while I was working in the front alone (my coworker having taken the day off), I was doing just fine – working on the GL, putting on the checks that came in the mail, talking with my supervisor about rearranging some of my vacation days (as my Mom said that it would be better for us to go where we’re going in September), posting some last-minute Easter Collection, and sending a file to my supervisor once my lunch break was done. I was just about ready to wrap everything up by doing some of the roster maintenance he forwarded…
Aaand then the assistant director showed up like ten minutes before we closed with another batch of gifts for me to put on (EXTRA last-minute Easter Collection). *grumble* I managed to do it, simply because there were only four gifts and I was able to put them on very quickly, but it was still annoying to have that happen just as I was getting ready to leave. But I put it out of my mind as I got everything put away and headed out the door. I had a decent commute home, and managed to arrive at the house at about 1:45 PM…
Aaaand that’s when I came upon my Mom ordering plane tickets to our destination. Or, rather, trying to, because she was having trouble with one of the bank cards, and – yeah. Cue her and my Dad having some real problems with trying to verify the charges as real (apparently the e-mails they were getting were VERY confusing), and me retreating to my room as quickly as possible so I didn’t get wrapped up in it. Though I could still hear them both yelling at the various customer service reps they were dealing with from time to time. *wince* Yeah, that – that was not fun. At all. I managed to play my video games like I wanted (see below), and the tickets were eventually successfully acquired, but it really put a damper on the whole afternoon. Ugh. *shakehead* Gonna be very glad to leave this week and all its various annoyances behind, that’s for damn sure...
Superliminal – Well, I got through the “Dollhouse” level today – which took longer than it should have, because that final fucking puzzle in this level is a fucking pain in the ass, especially if you’re doing a Collectibles Run. *huff* But I got everything in the end, which included:
A) The “Chair” constellation room, which was hidden in a fake shadow behind the right-hand exit door for the Relaxation Room (the room with a looping image of clouds being projected on one wall) – and I’m pleased to say that I got the stars for the chair lined up pretty quickly! :) Then again, it wasn’t hard to spot the big old clusters of stars that made up the chair – I just had to back myself into the right position. Still, happy it was one of the easier constellations to get!
B) The first blueprint of the level, which was atop a stack of boxes in the room where you end up after going through the window you have to resize so you can slip through the missing pane (making yourself smaller in the process) – just a simple hop, skip, and jump up said boxes, and I had my dream architectural sketch.
C) The blue king chess piece, which was atop the small doorway you have to go through to reach the pool room of the “hotel” you’re traveling through in this level – coincidentally, right next to the boxes where you get the first blueprint! It’s tiny, so it’s hard to see, but I spotted it right away after collecting the blueprint and made sure to give it a good click. Another one for the old computer chess game!
D) The second blueprint of the level, which is located atop the doorway you got through in the middle of the locker room for the pool (where, when you look up, you see a SECOND locker room stretching out above you, perpendicular to the one you’re traveling through) – all I had to do to get it was retrieve the bouncy castle floatie from the empty pool, head back to the doorway, and set down the floatie in front of it, resized so I could climb up it and onto the top of the door, scoring the blueprint lying on the “wall” next to the first bank of sideways lockers. Appropriately, it was the blueprint for the locker room itself. :) I mean, I had already figured all the blueprints were for the bits of the level where you found them, but this was the first one where it was really obvious!
E) And the third blueprint of the level, which is located atop the punch clock in the “employee break room” where you find yourself after completing the “resize yourself using these two linked doors (which you can resize using perspective tricks as usual) to get out of a locked box through the keyhole up above” puzzle. And THIS is where everything went wrong, because –
I. When I tried to complete the puzzle the FIRST time, right after finally getting one of the doors tiny enough to fit into the keyhole, when I turned around to go through the big door next to me to shrink myself and creep through said keyhole, I suddenly found myself glitching THROUGH the door to the other side of the piece of wall it was on, instead of coming out its linked twin. And after a couple more unsuccessful attempts to go through the big door, the door itself vanished, leaving me stranded in the box with no way to get up to the tiny door and thus get out. O.o I’ve heard of this bug before (or at least something like it), but I’ve never actually EXPERIENCED it, so it was a very confusing moment! (I wrote down in my notes that this was the game getting me back for managing to glitch my way into being the correct size for a door I was a little too large for after resizing the bouncy castle floatie slightly wrong in the previous puzzle. :P)
II. Then, after successfully completing the “through the keyhole” puzzle on my SECOND go, after falling in tiny form down onto the table with the chess game, I realized I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to actually get over to the blueprint atop the punch clock because I was one, so tiny, and two, moved INCREDIBLY fucking slowly (I tried to get to the end of the table, and I had to check if I was actually moving at one point by looking at the chess pieces behind me to see if they were receding at all!). Hell, I wasn’t even sure where the punch clock WAS, even though I knew it had to be in this room because of the description of the blueprint’s location in the guide I was using. The only thing I could grab in the room was the little cardboard dollhouse, and THAT only provided me with the exit to the level itself. So I went back and looked at the video included with my guide –
Aaaand realized that the author was using the linked doors from the inside of the box to resize themselves to something actually able to move around the room more freely and get to the punch clock. *facepalm* Makes sense once you see it!
III. Then, after resetting and redoing the puzzle, I attempted THREE TIMES to grab the doors and take them with me – all unsuccessfully. One time I just straight up accidentally dropped one of the doors onto the table below, making it so tiny in the process that I couldn’t actually pick it up again; the other two times, I managed to use the linked doors and resize myself at least a little, but not big enough to actually climb up to the top of the punch clock! I gave it the old college try, of course, using the chunk of wall the “embiggening” door was in as an extra ledge to try and climb onto the edge of the recycling bin right under the punch clock, but all I succeeded in doing was falling into the trash bin and the recycling bin respectively. Feel like I should get achievements for those failures, honestly. *grumble*
IV. FINALLY, realizing I was getting too frustrated, I took a moment, saved and quit, hopped on YouTube, and found a guide to getting all the blueprints that I could watch. I then skipped forward to the final blueprint of the “Dollhouse” section and watched what the creator, CarbonCarl, did, then got back into my game and did my best to copy his actions as exactly as possible. THAT worked, and I was able to resize myself back to roughly normal size, hop onto the table with all the boxes and the chess game and such, then collect the blueprint atop the punch clock. *huffs* I then proceeded to struggle with making the dollhouse big enough for my oversized ass to pass through so I could reach the exit elevator and end the damn level, but I managed it in the end. Very glad I did NOT have to reset from the checkpoint again – I think I would have cried. Thank you CarbonCarl!
So yeah, that was my experience getting all the “Dollhouse” collectibles. Easy-peasy up until the last one, and then FUCKING HELL. *pinches the bridge of her nose* At least it’s cleared now… Anyway, here’s the list of Other Fun Things I Noticed/Experienced While Playing This Level:
a. Remember how I told you at the end of my last level write-up that I found a corkboard in the hallway outside my suite at the beginning of this level? That had little copies of all the blueprints collected so far pinned to it? Well, it also has other things pinned to it, including someone’s “Dream Diary” for the month of May. Which included not only such dreams as falling off a cliff, then bouncing back up to the top of the cliff, over and over, before realizing they had no hands; wandering an endless forest while hearing the howling of wolves; and eating an endless bowl of cereal that eventually got everywhere; but also a note that whoever wrote it took the weekend off dreams. XD Given the kind of dreams they have, I think they need those weekends off!
b. I also told you at the end of the last write-up that I’d noticed there was a room open, across from the corkboard, that I’d never seen before in any previous playthroughs! Well, today I went inside that room (“Suite E,” according to the sign above the door) to check it out. What I found was basically large janitorial closet (with loads of pipes and a mop and bucket near the door), with a bed, an alarm clock reading “00:00 AM,” a few rather apocalyptic-looking pictures on the wall, and a boombox with a message from Dr. Glen Pierce – talking about the assumption that secret locations like this should contain “valuable knowledge instead of pipes filled with squandered human potential.” He said this assumption was wrong and in fact these locations SHOULDN’T contain valuable knowledge, because that’s bad design. XD Tell that to the game programmers, Dr. Pierce!
c. Something I noticed while looking at the corkboard and exploring Suite E – the music that you can hear coming from the Relaxation Room? It’s a slightly garbled version of the music from the final playable level, “Whitespace!” Complete with part of Glen’s monologue through the radios in that level, talking about how he had a dream once (though not going any further than that bit). Nice little Easter Egg for those of us on a repeat playthrough. :)
d. Just past the entrance to the Relaxation Room is a bit of dead-end corridor with a water fountain, which has a pamphlet for SomnoSculpt, the business run by Dr. Pierce that you’re visiting. I did my best to read it, and noted that Dr. Pierce couldn’t resist doing the “Hello. My name is Dr. Glen Pierce” thing even there (it’s a bit of a running gag that he always introduces himself like that at the start of every message he sends you – the Standard Orientation protocol, when summarizing some messages from him in one level, goes “Hello. My introductions are redundant.” XD). It also talked about how “is perception reality?” is the question they – er, YOU were looking to answer, and how their technology will change the world “once we get the kinks worked out and receive proper funding.” XD Glen – Glen, buddy. You could not sound more like an incompetent mad scientist trying to take over the world if you were actively trying. XD
e. I found TWO fire extinguishers I missed traveling this level – one right next to the entrance doors for the Relaxation Room, the other by the doorway in a room with a “fake” radio (that is, the radio works, but when you try to click on it for a message, you discover it’s a resizable object). Not sure how I missed either before (well, okay, it’s kind of dark around the entrance to the Relaxation Room, so I can hazard a guess on how I missed THAT one), but they’ve been emptied now, and I am one step closer to the “empty all the fire extinguishers” achievement!
f. Oh, speaking of that radio that’s actually a resizable object – it happens to be playing the level music, and whenever you pick it up, the music goes all wonky until you put it down again. XD
g. There’s a couple of janitor buckets in the level, and they’re all shaped like a bit like yellow toilets for some reason, complete with a black bit sticking out the side as the “handle.” XD Sadly, you cannot interact with this handle to “flush” them – missed opportunity, that!
h. There’s a non-working soda vending machine in the first cardboard dollhouse you interact with in this level, teaching you how the “resizing yourself” mechanic works called “Dream Pop” – after double-checking, I can confirm that all the other soda vending machines are called “Dream Soda,” so maybe the name being different was a hint that it wouldn’t work. ...and now I wish I’d checked to see if the offerings were different! The buttons looked the same, at least…
i. In one of the backstage areas, around the radio that says “things should be less scary now” right before a constantly-flickering light in the hallway you have to go down, there’s a TV displaying a test pattern attached to a long cable. Now, I THINK this TV is supposed to display an image from the developer’s demo The Museum of Simulation, which showcased some of the ideas that would come to full fruition in Superliminal – but I don’t know how long you’re supposed to wait, and I ended up getting impatient and leaving. One Easter Egg that it might be easier to get via watching YouTube videos!
j. That same backstage area, as you continue to traverse it, has boxes full of pillows – must be for all those suites that keep getting rearranged in the dreams. XD Plus a spoopy plant in a shadowy corner right before you get back to the “hotel” bit – just to be spoopy I suppose :P
k. And, right after my first reset to try the “escape the box through the keyhole” puzzle, after one of the doors I needed to use glitched into the ether, I discovered that there was a keyboard tucked away behind the doorway into the box – and it was interactive! You can bang out the tunes just like Neil the rat (tumblr joke). :D Most fun thing about that whole section, I have to say.
Aaaand there we have it – another level of Superliminal cleared! Tomorrow, we tackle “Labyrinth,” the one level where I haven’t gotten ANYTHING cleared. Mostly because it’s meant to be played with a sense of urgency, not a sense of “looking for collectibles.” :P Hopefully it goes well!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike, last night with “The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Build & Buy Overview” by James Turner! The second half of his overview focused on household items – bedroom stuff, bathroom stuff, kids’ room stuff, living room stuff, etc. Plus a quick look at the Required New Bar (which, admittedly, was gorgeous, and had an AMAZING bar back that looked like a glimmering galaxy), some of the unlockable stuff from working your way up the Apothecary skill and the Naturopath career, and some of the debug/live edit objects. And while he was once again overall impressed with the commitment to fairy tale styling and themes, and how beautiful everything was, he once again had some criticisms:
A) He felt one particular “leaf” rug was a LITTLE too cartoony compared to the rest of the items, explicitly comparing it to something you’d find in Animal Crossing
B) While he liked the new kitchen counters overall, he wasn’t wild about the visible seams between the joined counters...and even less wild about the low-quality wood textures on the top, with visible pixelation. Took him right out of the game! He also didn’t like that the “outer corner” matching cupboard piece with a big empty shelf didn’t have any slots to put anything on
C) He was not a fan of the fact that there were so few “clutter”-type decoration items (to go along with his annoyance over the lack of wall art), and that most of the few that we had were locked behind advancing in the Apothecary skill or the Naturopath career – he’s not against unlockables in theory, but it just seemed odd to him that you’d put basic clutter behind learning a few levels of a skill, or advancing in a career
D) While he was glad there was a full bathroom set, he noted that the pieces didn’t go together very well – the sink was very clean carved wood, while the toilet was a mossy stump, and the shower and tub were both made out of crystals and stone (which meant they matched ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the rest of the pack). They all looked good INDIVIDUALLY, just they didn’t make a very cohesive set when put together. Also, the wall mirror was set just a little bit too low to be used with the sink without clipping
E) He was utterly confused by the addition of a single ordinary park bench in among all the other fairy-tale-themed stuff one could sit on – especially when he realized the world around the lot he was showing everything off on was using BASE GAME benches. O.o Like, what the hell, guys? Why make a new ordinary bench if you’re not going to USE it anywhere? (Though maybe the bench is used in a different neighborhood – I think he was in Sprucederry Grove, and the bench looked like a good fit for the Coast of Adhmor and its aesthetic)
F) He pointed out that a few very important things were missing – namely, the bedroom set does NOT have a single bed (it goes bassinet – crib – toddler bed – big old canopied double bed); the living room set is missing a two-seater couch (aka a loveseat – and the weird Ordinary Park Bench does not count); and the kitchen set was missing THE ACTUAL KITCHEN. Literally, all we got for kitchen stuff is the counters, the cupboards, and the sink, which does double duty as a bathroom sink. No fridge, no stove, no nothing! James was like “that’s probably because one of the big things about this pack is living naturally without such appliances” but COME ON. Not everybody is going to want to have their Sims do that! You could have at LEAST included a campfire one could cook on!
G) And he reiterated how baffled/annoyed he was that the Enchanted By Nature pack didn’t come with any new outdoor plants, showing that there was TONS of fun stuff hiding in the “debug” section that could have been shoved into the catalog proper! Lots of bright colorful flowers, giant mushrooms, cool mossy stones – all stuff that I’m sure Simmer would LOVE to landscape with! It’s baffling why it’s all hidden behind a cheat!
So yeah – while James was very excited to build with the pack and play around with all the fun fairytale vibes, he wasn’t shy about revealing where he felt the pack let him down. And it does feel utterly stupid that they don’t have any outdoor plants, or a single bed to go with the double bed, or a single kitchen appliance. I mean, I really like the stuff I saw in this pack – major Wonderland vibes, especially with some of the fun mushroom-themed décor – but cripes. This is definitely a “get on sale” pack if I do pick it up! You can’t be bothered to give me all the items I should be entitled to in an expansion pack? I can’t be bothered to give you full price. *shakehead* That being said, I do look forward to seeing James build with this pack, as it is probably going to lend itself to some fun houses. In fact, he already noticed that one might be able to recreate the dollhouse included in the kids’ stuff as a full-sized house, given all the stuff in it is just tiny versions of actual assets in the pack...
2. Edit WeirdKev’s Gift Fic: Check – the “Glomgold details his plan for getting rid of Zan Owlson, involving Trojan Butts and ghouled sharks and fake Santa Clauses throwing chum, to LaCroix’s growing bafflement and annoyance” fic got its second draft today! Which, honestly, was not really much different from the first draft – I just reworded a few sentences here and there to make some of LaCroix’s lines sound a bit more like him, added in a couple of new lines, and reworked some awkward ones. Otherwise, it’s pretty much exactly what I wrote last week, with the most chaotic, ridiculous plan this side of Ducktales. XD Hopefully WeirdKev will like it – he’s the one who came up with all of Glomgold’s nonsense, after all! XD
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got another video out of my Watch Later tonight: “Innisgreen World Secrets And Features | The Sims 4 Guide” by Petey Plays It! A tour of the new world that comes with Enchanted By Nature and its three neighborhoods – Everdew, Sprucederry Grove, and The Coast of Adhmor! And happily, while each neighborhood is kind of compact (especially Adhmor, which is just crammed full of admittedly-adorable colorful houses), they all have plenty of stuff to see and to interact with! Including little parks with benches for Sims to nap on, woohoo bushes, and sometimes swingsets and/or barbecues; Fable Boards to find the Sims that can handle out “Fables,” the EBN version of the Cottage Living Henford-on-Bagley “Errands” (which offer rewards from the mundane to the fabulous); various bodies of water to splash around or bathe in; plants to harvest (including the new magical plants that come with this pack); and rabbit hole businesses to shop at (like a used bookstore, or a grocery)! Each neighborhood has unique features too – for example, Everdew has the headquarters of the fairy council, a good place to research fairy lore and the history of the land; Sprucederry Grove has the tree that allows you to summon Spruce Almighty, creator of PlantSims and gnomes; and the Coast of Adhmor has the Giant Gnome, who can influence your luck if you ask him nicely (or attempt to kick him). All in all, it’s a very pretty world, and Petey was on the opinion it was one of the more solid ones when it came to both interactivity and feeling alive. *nods* A point in the pack’s favor, that! ...Still probably gonna get it on sale, though. :P
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – we had the reverse of yesterday’s situation, where I had nothing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (as the queue was already sorted), but I did have something to stick in the queue on Valice Multiverse – another reblog on the “helping Seth find his brother Richard” thread that I have with The Coven Wars in the Forgotten Vows Verse! Their latest reblog saw the group indeed find Richard (who was still wandering in a daze near the square where Seth last saw him, happily), with a worried Seth asking him why he’d run off and Richard responding “...They’re loud today.” (For reference, the kid suffers from hallucinations, like Alice – Alice feels a bit of a kinship with him as a result.) I had Alice comment that she’s had days like that too, pointing out that Victor would know, while Victor introduced himself to Richard (as they hadn’t met previously). We’ll see what happens when Coven Wars next responds!
So yeah -- not the greatest Friday, but at least I accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish. And now I have to go to bed, as I have a full Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, meeeh. At least it comes with getting to listen to the last episode of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark! Other things I hope to do include working more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" getting through the "Labyrinth" level of Superliminal as indicated above; and watching at least one of the videos in my Watch Later (maybe the OXBoxtra crew reacting to super-fast carriages in Red Dead Redemption 2?). Hopefully all goals that can be accomplished -- night all!
