Lost Focus Saturday Evening
May. 30th, 2026 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, I've been VERY distracted this Saturday eve, to the point of really struggling to finish one of my video write-ups -- I think I used up all my focus this afternoon when I finished off Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy." Not that I'm complaining, since I'm very happy with what I wrote, but it's a little frustrating to not have any focus leftover tonight. *grumbles* I mean, I guess I am still on my period and thus should be happy that I have any focus at ALL, but still. Meh.
Anyway -- let's see if I can wrangle my daily write-up into shape for you all despite the brain being a bit of a shit --
Cleaning: Yes, today was just a Cleaning Saturday – no laundry, no granola, no other embellishments that I had to worry about. Just dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming! Though, of course, it still took a while – I continue to have a lot of knick-knacks, and the fact that I’ve been able to open my windows frequently over the past couple of weeks meant that at least a bit of dust and pollen got inside, meaning I had to be fairly thorough in the dusting at least. But it didn’t take any longer than any other Cleaning Saturday, at least, with the breakdown consisting of –
A) Dusting from roughly 10:45 AM to 1 PM, covering everything except my computer desk
B) Break for lunch from 1 PM to about 2 PM (as I had to help dry the dishes and use the bathroom and all that after eating)
C) Finishing the dusting and doing the Swiffering and the vacuuming from just before 2 PM through to about 2:45 PM (with a brief pause to go “what the fuck was THAT?” when we heard something loud tip over – not sure what it was, but it might have been the wind getting the neighbor’s bins)
*shrug* Pretty standard, if I’m honest! And I did get to listen to a pretty decent video essay on why Baldur’s Gate III did so well when it first came out by NeverKnowsBest while doing the dusting, covering the history of the franchise, the history of Larian Studios, and why NeverKnowsBest thinks BG3 is so good (and where it does fall down a little on the job). *nods* Still, glad I don’t have to do this for another couple of weeks!
Paralives: Poked my head back in here once my cleaning was done (and the game had finished patching itself – yup, team’s already released their first bug-fixing patch), taking about an hour to investigate the Paramaker and look around the map and familiarize myself with more of the controls and whatnot. How did that go? Well, allow me to share my findings with you –
A) Something I found in the settings when I first booted up the game is the ability to enable “Para Paths,” which are lines that show what path a Para is taking to get to where they want/need to go. This is turned off by default, but I turned it on because I feel like this might be useful information for later. We’ll see if it is or not the next time I dip my toes into Live Mode!
B) The initial loading screen into the game proper remains pretty long – I assume because it’s an open world? Though I can share that there’s a different animation when you’re loading into a household rather than the tutorial – a sketch of a living room, which starts with a couch, then gains a lamp, a potted plant, and a shelf of knick-knacks, before being snapped shut like a book. It’s cute, and it at least gives you something to look at during the wait!
C) I had a little trouble finding the height slider once in the Paramaker – mostly because there’s two of them. The one I noticed first was a little one underneath the two diagrams of a person (front view and side view) where all the manipulation points for changing a Para’s various proportions (like forearm width, thigh width, tummy extension, butt extension, etc) are – this one could be moved from side to side, and showed a Para’s height from a range of 0 to 100. Which confused me, as I was pretty certain you were supposed to be able to see how tall a Para was in feet or meters or whatnot when you adjusted their height –
And then I found the proper height slider nestled in between the two diagrams. Which went up and down as expected – and, when pulled, did indeed show a Para’s height next to them. Not sure what the deal with that first slider was! Especially since I think it changes what it’s measuring depending on what you’re manipulating on a Para at the time…
D) Speaking of the height slider, I discovered something very annoying about it – when you set your measuring units to be in “Imperial” (aka, feet and inches), it doesn’t actually show your Para’s height in feet and inches when you use the slider. Like, it puts “ft” next to the number it shows, but that number is a decimal. How do I know this? Well, I played around with the height slider on the randomly generated Para the game gave me to get an idea of the maximums and minimums, and to see how tall Victor, Alice, and Smiler would all be. I initially thought that the decimal was just a weird way to show inches while manipulating the slider for Victor and Alice, putting it at what I assumed to be 6’3” and 5’5” (my headcanon heights for them) –
But the minute I tried to do Smiler’s in-the-middle height of 5’10”, I discovered that, no, that decimal place was really a decimal, as “5 ft” immediately transitioned into “6 ft” when I hit what I thought was going to be the 5’10” mark. Meaning there’s no accurate way for me to get everyone’s heights right if I use Imperial units. *sigh* Why offer those units if you’re going to use decimals anyway?! Guess I’m converting everyone’s heights to meters for the next time I go into the Paramaker…
E) The real annoyance of the day, though? Trying to figure out how the fuck I rotated the Para in the Paramaker. Because, for some reason, that was not included in the controls/keybindings list, and I kept unthinkingly clicking on the Para and trying to drag it around myself (which very much did NOT work). I eventually resorted to looking it up on my phone (which was charging on my nightstand at the time), and thankfully someone had answered that very question on the Steam Community page for the game – you click and hold the right mouse button. *sigh* I really wish they’d make some of these controls clearer...sure, maybe I’m the idiot for not figuring it out sooner, but SURELY “rotate Para in Paramaker: click and hold right mouse button” should be in the list of keybindings somewhere, right?!
F) Anyway – poking around in the various categories in the Paramaker to see what was what and how easy it might be to recreate my OT3 revealed the following –
I. There are only two body scar options in the game currently – a bunch of little scars that can be placed on a leg, and top surgery scars for under a Para’s breasts. Not exactly ideal if I want to give my Alice Para the burn scars I headcanon her has having under her clothes – though the leg scars might be good for Victor if I can move them down to his calf, since I headcanon him as having a bunch of little scratch scars on one leg thanks to falling into a rosebush as a kid. There are also still plenty of options for birthmarks on the body, so I can probably adapt some of those to be Alice’s shoulder and leg “burn scars,” like I tried doing in Sims 4 when THEY added birthmarks.
II. Among the preset hair colors is a black hair with purple highlights, which I THOUGHT would be convenient for Smiler...but, annoyingly, said purple highlights do not appear on the one hairstyle in the game that kind of looks like their Sims 4 hair. >( Said hairstyle is also the wrong way around (with the long front bangs going down the opposite side of the face), as is the hairstyle I found that looked like it could be good for a Victor Para – I didn’t see an option to mirror-flip hairstyles, but if it’s not in the game already, it SHOULD be. It would be so useful!
III. On the plus side, there’s also a preset in the eye color section for yellow eyes, so at least any future Smiler Paras are set there. I mean, they won’t GLOW like I prefer, but Early Access game, no occults, one thing at a time. (That being said, there’s also a frankly demonic-looking preset with black whites and red irises, so…maybe we COULD have glowing eyes, Paralives team? *flutters eyelashes*)
IV. There’s not THAT many options for clothing and other accessories as of right now – but I was quite pleased to see a key necklace among the various necklace options when I checked out the jewelry available to Paras! So Alice Para will be able to have “Lizzie’s key” around her neck, which is good.
V. Speaking of clothing, one of the tops you can wear is a silly costume top that looks like a slice of bread with jam on it (it even comes with matching bread slippers, which I liked). This costume top is one of the ones where you can pick what kind of shirt/underwear is layered underneath it –
But, uh, as you can see, there’s a few issues in how the layering works with some of these shirts. Basically, all the collared button-ups work just fine under the bread top, but the more casual ones do this weird “stretch over the top” thing. I have submitted a bug report featuring this very screenshot, don’t worry.
VI. On the plus side, after going through the shoe category, I can confirm that shoes with thick soles or high heels actually do make Paras a little bit taller if they wear them! It’s a small detail, but it’s one I appreciate. :)
VII. Voices are going to be a problem for my Paras, as there’s currently only four voice options. I may be able to get my trio to look like themselves, but getting them to sound like themselves is probably going to be tricky. :(
VIII. The body presets, by contrast, have a decent variety, with various versions of thin, fat, and muscular bodies for you to use as starting points. There’s two thin ones in masculine and feminine frames respectively that should serve me well when I go to make Victor and Alice…
IX. Speaking of Victor, messing around with the various manipulation points on the diagrams revealed that I can make a Para’s arms and legs pretty thin (though not the thighs – Victor will be forced to have SOME normal human proportions); give them fairly sloped shoulders and long necks; adjust their eyes to be REALLY wide and round; make their nose really narrow and their chin really long and pointed – basically, there’s room for a lot of extremes here, which is good, because Victor’s puppet form is very extreme. I actually ended up doing a sort of pseudo-Victor while playing around with some of the manipulation points to see what I could do with them:
Obviously it’s far from a perfect match, but you get at least a few of the right vibes from this, I hope? At the very least, I hope you see what I mean about the hair – flip it the other way around, and it wouldn’t be bad at ALL as a Victor haircut!
G) I did not save any of my test Paras today – but I was pleased to see that I could have if I’d wanted to, because the game does have a library of potential households, much like in The Sims 4. And it even includes a button allowing you to go look for families on the Steam Workshop to download if you are so inclined. *nods* Convenient!
H) And finally, I took a brief break from all that Paramaker time (shortly after figuring out how to rotate the Paras, and before I went back in to get that screenshot of the fucked-up layering on the bread costume) to browse the map and try to open a lot to take a look at Build Mode...only to discover that you can’t build on a lot unless you have a Para purchase it, it seems. Which is annoying. >( I don’t want to have to have a Para with me every time I build, game! Sometimes I just want to go into a lot and start making a house! Or a shop, or other area of interest! *grumbles* Hopefully they’ll change that at some point in the future...especially as Melino and the surrounding area has some really giant fucking lots, and I’d love to do something with them...
So yeah – a fruitful, if often frustrating, session checking out the new life sim! It’s good to know what’s possible and what’s not in this game right now – especially when it comes to making my OT3. Seems like I’m going to want to wait until they add a little more stuff to the game when it comes to hairstyles and the like, though...either that or comb through the rapidly-expanding number of CC items people are making for the game, as the team DID make modding it very easy. XD We’ll see!
Writing: As indicated above, I did manage to finish editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” this afternoon! The final push ended up being almost two pages, and featured –
A) Kasimir smashing his smoke bomb and filling the hallway with some extremely nasty, smelly smoke, before grabbing Victor’s arm and ordering him to get them out of there – Nell panicked and ordered her guards to shoot, but as de facto leader Albert pointed out, they couldn’t see to shoot. Mavis attempted to make herself useful by grabbing one of the group, but ended up tackling another guard, Rick, instead. XD Good work on the smoke bomb, Edvard! Very useful in this situation!
B) Alice remarking that, useful as the smoke was, it was reminding her a little too much of escaping her burning house, so she’d like to get out of there sooner rather than later, and successfully grabbing Victor’s arm – Victor called for Smiler, who managed to find Barnaby by his coat and tow him back to the others, with Alice grabbing onto their sleeve once they were close. Victor thus attempted to direct the little daisy-chain of people attached to him toward the tradesman’s entrance, closing his eyes against the stinging smoke and relying on his sense of touch to figure out when they were getting close –
Only to jerk to the side as blast of compressed air flew by his ear from Rick taking a desperate blind shot at Nell’s command. *wince* However, the shot of air hit something in front of Victor that sounded an awful lot like wood, allowing him to locate the door and get it open, so – thanks Rick! Good job not killing your employer’s son! XD
C) Victor getting all his friends into the courtyard and directing them to go up and over the fancy iron fence at the edge of the property – Barnaby briefly tried to protest having to climb, but Alice made it very clear he was going over if she had to drag him, and Smiler pointed out that the alternative was to have to explain things to Nell Van Dort, so he got moving. XD Kasimir, meanwhile, noted that they might just have to drag him over, as climbing things was not his strong suit (bum leg and all) – Victor assured him that he’d help and showed him exactly where to put his feet on the scrollwork to get to the top with minimal issues. Because he’s a nice guy like that.
D) Victor watching everyone (yes, even Barnaby, who was threatened with having his head cracked open by Kasimir) climb to the top of the fence, then preparing to follow them up – only for Nell, who managed to follow them out, to grab his sleeve and demand to know what he was doing. Cue a furious Victor informing her that he was “getting away from you” before coldly telling her goodbye, tearing himself free of her grip (ripping the shoulder of his suitcoat again), and climbing up the fence himself to join the others.
E) And Victor freeing Barnaby’s coat from a spike before pulling him over to the other side, climbing down with his friends and helping Kasimir get solidly on terra firma again, and leading the others in running away from the estate just as the guards found their way out the door. Determinedly not looking back as there was nothing there he wanted to see.
*nods* Good stuff. We’ll let this sit for a little bit so I can do like a week or so with “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” then the week after that (which contains Victor’s birthday, by the by), I’ll figure out where I want to split this chapter and start getting it and the new Chapter 6 up onto AO3!
YouTube: Well, there was no CaFae Latte compilation today, but there was a CaFae Tales video (about the OG lesbian vampire Carmilla)...which I didn’t watch because I had three other videos I wanted to get to in my Watch Later today, and I started watching them too late to fit in the CaFae Tales video. ^^; Whoops! Hopefully I can get to it soonish...in the meantime, the videos I actually watched this eve included –
A) “7 Bosses You Triggered Way Too Early By Mistake” by OXBox! Jane and Mike (Andy is still missing in action; I mentioned this in my comment in the hopes someone might take pity on me and tell me where the hell he is) going through those really tough bosses/high level enemies in games that are worryingly easy for a newbie player to stumble upon and thus get destroyed by. Make the mistake of traveling back to the Thunder Plains and talking to a mysterious new NPC there after getting the airship in Final Fantasy X? Congratulations, he pulls you into a boss fight with Dark Ixion, a terrifying murder lightning horse with a sword coming out of its head, millions of HP, and immunity to all status effects! Decide you don’t need to listen to Chomps Lewis’s warnings about deathclaws ahead and stroll into Quarry Junction on the way to Vegas in Fallout: New Vegas? Congratulations, you just stumbled into a whole nest of the monsters and will not only have to fight the young, but their furious mother and her mate the alpha male! Figure it’s safe to park your cat van in Mementos, the procedurally-generated dungeon that you can find visiting the Collective Unconscious, for five minutes so you can get a snack or take a wee while playing Persona 5? Congratulations, you just let The Reaper – a level 85 mega-boss who can really give your party a terrible time – figure out where you are and yank you into a battle! Though that one can be mitigated if you’re playing the original version and it just so happens to be flu season in the game – turns out, Reapers are even more susceptible to getting the flu than ordinary humans! Something we should all be grateful for given they can otherwise utterly destroy you. (Get your vaccines, kids!)
B) “What Paralives did better than The Sims 4” by The Red Plumbob! Which was a quick list of things in Paralives that Red Plumbob felt were improvements over The Sims 4 (while also still noting that Paralives is in Early Access and thus buggy as hell, so you may still want to wait for its full release a few years down the line before getting it). Items of note included:
I. Paralives having a fully open world where lots just need a moment to load before you can visit them, rather than the semi-open “everything is subdivided into neighborhoods and there’s a loading screen while switching lots” thing Sims 4 had – a fully open world that is charming and beautiful to look at, by the by
II. Paralives having a color wheel that isn’t just available to customize clothing items (including their patterns), but skin tones as well (including allowing you to adjust the colors of things like shadows, highlights, and “natural blush” separately), instead of the pre-set clothing swatches and minimal adjustment to the (admittedly, at this point in time, rather large) number of skin tones available like in The Sims 4
III. Paralives having the ability to place walls with a lot more freedom in Build Mode, allowing the player to build at weird angles and make their own curved walls (though the ability to place doors and windows on curved walls has not been implemented yet, so make sure you have one straight wall to allow your Paras inside your curved monstrosity) rather than limiting the angles and only allowing you to place certain preset curved walls like in The Sims 4
IV. Paralives allowing you to fully customize Build Mode paintings by allowing you to choose what image appears inside them from a big list (or even from your own computer if you want), rather than giving you a preset number of swatches like in The Sims 4
V. And, of course, Paralives allowing you to stretch and squash not only many objects (like doors, windows, furniture, decorative items, etc) but your Paras as well, finally allowing people of different heights to be in the game! Something The Sims 4 never had (well, unless you knew the right cheats) – though given the animations can be a little janky, Red Plumbob admitted they totally understood why The Sims 4 never messed around with height. Hard enough animating two people interacting when they’re the same height!
An interesting look at what Paralives (in Early Access) brings to the table that The Sims 4 (after 10+ years) doesn’t! Though the bit I found the most interesting (and amusing) was Red Plumbob revealing that The Sims 4 added the ability to change the “base layer” of some clothing items in a recent patch...after it was publicized that you could do so in Paralives. Hmmm – seems like EA is rather eager to keep up with the Joneses… :p
C) And “Tav Speaks in a Cutscene | BG3 Cut Content” by Hyperspace Towel! Featuring a look at a removed cutscene that was supposed to trigger after the party meets Brynna and Andrick tending Edowin on the path in the forest near the owlbear cave, and Tav sends them off to either return to their camp or deal with the owlbear. Where Tav and a companion briefly talked about what the hell Brynna and Andrick meant by “True Soul” and “Absolute” or noted that the pair mentioned the Absolute just like the goblin Sazza back in the refugee camp (depending, obviously, on if they’d met Sazza or not by then), with Tav noting it all sounded like trouble. What was so special about this cutscene, you may ask?
Simple – as per the title, Tav actually spoke aloud during it. Under normal circumstances, Tav does not actually speak during cutscenes – instead, you choose what they “say” from the list of dialogue options presented. All of Tav’s voice lines happen when you’re in the overworld instead (AKA, when you’re in the semi-top-down view for moving about the world and getting into fights and suchlike – the companions’ party banter happens in the same mode), with them having a set series of pithy little comments they can make when you click on their portrait or send them to interact with something, and a few observations they can make when coming across certain things out in the world. In fact, they still say at least the first line they have in this cutscene after the interaction is over, it’s just in this overworld mode instead. It’s unusual to see them get a fully animated scene where they actually talk! And Hyperspace was very thorough when it came to showing it to us, recording a version for each of the eight voices you can give your Tav (or Dark Urge) AND showcasing all the companions’ responses – PLUS their comments when they’re the Origin character and thus the protagonist. They even made sure to include BOTH versions of Wyll’s voice – Lanre Malaolu from Early Access and Theo Solomon from the finished game! Now that is dedication. *applause* Good work, Hyperspace.
*thumbs up* Brain wrangled in the end! But now I really need to go to bed, as it is 2:10 AM here and I don't actually want to sleep through all of Smiler's birthday tomorrow. XD Goals for tomorrow include getting the Plushie Birthday Pic with Smileon, Victor Plush, and Alice Dolly; playing a little bit of Baldur's Gate III, as that's my Smiler game (I'll probably just finish off the long rest the gang is in the middle of); working on some sort of Smiler-based fanfic; reading some sort of Smiler-based fanfic; and watching a Smiler-related video (don't know if it'll be with my workout -- depends on when Jon uploads the latest episode of "The Worst Wanderer" -- but I'm sure I can fit SOMETHING in). Hopefully they are all achievable. *nods* Night all!
Anyway -- let's see if I can wrangle my daily write-up into shape for you all despite the brain being a bit of a shit --
Cleaning: Yes, today was just a Cleaning Saturday – no laundry, no granola, no other embellishments that I had to worry about. Just dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming! Though, of course, it still took a while – I continue to have a lot of knick-knacks, and the fact that I’ve been able to open my windows frequently over the past couple of weeks meant that at least a bit of dust and pollen got inside, meaning I had to be fairly thorough in the dusting at least. But it didn’t take any longer than any other Cleaning Saturday, at least, with the breakdown consisting of –
A) Dusting from roughly 10:45 AM to 1 PM, covering everything except my computer desk
B) Break for lunch from 1 PM to about 2 PM (as I had to help dry the dishes and use the bathroom and all that after eating)
C) Finishing the dusting and doing the Swiffering and the vacuuming from just before 2 PM through to about 2:45 PM (with a brief pause to go “what the fuck was THAT?” when we heard something loud tip over – not sure what it was, but it might have been the wind getting the neighbor’s bins)
*shrug* Pretty standard, if I’m honest! And I did get to listen to a pretty decent video essay on why Baldur’s Gate III did so well when it first came out by NeverKnowsBest while doing the dusting, covering the history of the franchise, the history of Larian Studios, and why NeverKnowsBest thinks BG3 is so good (and where it does fall down a little on the job). *nods* Still, glad I don’t have to do this for another couple of weeks!
Paralives: Poked my head back in here once my cleaning was done (and the game had finished patching itself – yup, team’s already released their first bug-fixing patch), taking about an hour to investigate the Paramaker and look around the map and familiarize myself with more of the controls and whatnot. How did that go? Well, allow me to share my findings with you –
A) Something I found in the settings when I first booted up the game is the ability to enable “Para Paths,” which are lines that show what path a Para is taking to get to where they want/need to go. This is turned off by default, but I turned it on because I feel like this might be useful information for later. We’ll see if it is or not the next time I dip my toes into Live Mode!
B) The initial loading screen into the game proper remains pretty long – I assume because it’s an open world? Though I can share that there’s a different animation when you’re loading into a household rather than the tutorial – a sketch of a living room, which starts with a couch, then gains a lamp, a potted plant, and a shelf of knick-knacks, before being snapped shut like a book. It’s cute, and it at least gives you something to look at during the wait!
C) I had a little trouble finding the height slider once in the Paramaker – mostly because there’s two of them. The one I noticed first was a little one underneath the two diagrams of a person (front view and side view) where all the manipulation points for changing a Para’s various proportions (like forearm width, thigh width, tummy extension, butt extension, etc) are – this one could be moved from side to side, and showed a Para’s height from a range of 0 to 100. Which confused me, as I was pretty certain you were supposed to be able to see how tall a Para was in feet or meters or whatnot when you adjusted their height –
And then I found the proper height slider nestled in between the two diagrams. Which went up and down as expected – and, when pulled, did indeed show a Para’s height next to them. Not sure what the deal with that first slider was! Especially since I think it changes what it’s measuring depending on what you’re manipulating on a Para at the time…
D) Speaking of the height slider, I discovered something very annoying about it – when you set your measuring units to be in “Imperial” (aka, feet and inches), it doesn’t actually show your Para’s height in feet and inches when you use the slider. Like, it puts “ft” next to the number it shows, but that number is a decimal. How do I know this? Well, I played around with the height slider on the randomly generated Para the game gave me to get an idea of the maximums and minimums, and to see how tall Victor, Alice, and Smiler would all be. I initially thought that the decimal was just a weird way to show inches while manipulating the slider for Victor and Alice, putting it at what I assumed to be 6’3” and 5’5” (my headcanon heights for them) –
But the minute I tried to do Smiler’s in-the-middle height of 5’10”, I discovered that, no, that decimal place was really a decimal, as “5 ft” immediately transitioned into “6 ft” when I hit what I thought was going to be the 5’10” mark. Meaning there’s no accurate way for me to get everyone’s heights right if I use Imperial units. *sigh* Why offer those units if you’re going to use decimals anyway?! Guess I’m converting everyone’s heights to meters for the next time I go into the Paramaker…
E) The real annoyance of the day, though? Trying to figure out how the fuck I rotated the Para in the Paramaker. Because, for some reason, that was not included in the controls/keybindings list, and I kept unthinkingly clicking on the Para and trying to drag it around myself (which very much did NOT work). I eventually resorted to looking it up on my phone (which was charging on my nightstand at the time), and thankfully someone had answered that very question on the Steam Community page for the game – you click and hold the right mouse button. *sigh* I really wish they’d make some of these controls clearer...sure, maybe I’m the idiot for not figuring it out sooner, but SURELY “rotate Para in Paramaker: click and hold right mouse button” should be in the list of keybindings somewhere, right?!
F) Anyway – poking around in the various categories in the Paramaker to see what was what and how easy it might be to recreate my OT3 revealed the following –
I. There are only two body scar options in the game currently – a bunch of little scars that can be placed on a leg, and top surgery scars for under a Para’s breasts. Not exactly ideal if I want to give my Alice Para the burn scars I headcanon her has having under her clothes – though the leg scars might be good for Victor if I can move them down to his calf, since I headcanon him as having a bunch of little scratch scars on one leg thanks to falling into a rosebush as a kid. There are also still plenty of options for birthmarks on the body, so I can probably adapt some of those to be Alice’s shoulder and leg “burn scars,” like I tried doing in Sims 4 when THEY added birthmarks.
II. Among the preset hair colors is a black hair with purple highlights, which I THOUGHT would be convenient for Smiler...but, annoyingly, said purple highlights do not appear on the one hairstyle in the game that kind of looks like their Sims 4 hair. >( Said hairstyle is also the wrong way around (with the long front bangs going down the opposite side of the face), as is the hairstyle I found that looked like it could be good for a Victor Para – I didn’t see an option to mirror-flip hairstyles, but if it’s not in the game already, it SHOULD be. It would be so useful!
III. On the plus side, there’s also a preset in the eye color section for yellow eyes, so at least any future Smiler Paras are set there. I mean, they won’t GLOW like I prefer, but Early Access game, no occults, one thing at a time. (That being said, there’s also a frankly demonic-looking preset with black whites and red irises, so…maybe we COULD have glowing eyes, Paralives team? *flutters eyelashes*)
IV. There’s not THAT many options for clothing and other accessories as of right now – but I was quite pleased to see a key necklace among the various necklace options when I checked out the jewelry available to Paras! So Alice Para will be able to have “Lizzie’s key” around her neck, which is good.
V. Speaking of clothing, one of the tops you can wear is a silly costume top that looks like a slice of bread with jam on it (it even comes with matching bread slippers, which I liked). This costume top is one of the ones where you can pick what kind of shirt/underwear is layered underneath it –
But, uh, as you can see, there’s a few issues in how the layering works with some of these shirts. Basically, all the collared button-ups work just fine under the bread top, but the more casual ones do this weird “stretch over the top” thing. I have submitted a bug report featuring this very screenshot, don’t worry.
VI. On the plus side, after going through the shoe category, I can confirm that shoes with thick soles or high heels actually do make Paras a little bit taller if they wear them! It’s a small detail, but it’s one I appreciate. :)
VII. Voices are going to be a problem for my Paras, as there’s currently only four voice options. I may be able to get my trio to look like themselves, but getting them to sound like themselves is probably going to be tricky. :(
VIII. The body presets, by contrast, have a decent variety, with various versions of thin, fat, and muscular bodies for you to use as starting points. There’s two thin ones in masculine and feminine frames respectively that should serve me well when I go to make Victor and Alice…
IX. Speaking of Victor, messing around with the various manipulation points on the diagrams revealed that I can make a Para’s arms and legs pretty thin (though not the thighs – Victor will be forced to have SOME normal human proportions); give them fairly sloped shoulders and long necks; adjust their eyes to be REALLY wide and round; make their nose really narrow and their chin really long and pointed – basically, there’s room for a lot of extremes here, which is good, because Victor’s puppet form is very extreme. I actually ended up doing a sort of pseudo-Victor while playing around with some of the manipulation points to see what I could do with them:
Obviously it’s far from a perfect match, but you get at least a few of the right vibes from this, I hope? At the very least, I hope you see what I mean about the hair – flip it the other way around, and it wouldn’t be bad at ALL as a Victor haircut!
G) I did not save any of my test Paras today – but I was pleased to see that I could have if I’d wanted to, because the game does have a library of potential households, much like in The Sims 4. And it even includes a button allowing you to go look for families on the Steam Workshop to download if you are so inclined. *nods* Convenient!
H) And finally, I took a brief break from all that Paramaker time (shortly after figuring out how to rotate the Paras, and before I went back in to get that screenshot of the fucked-up layering on the bread costume) to browse the map and try to open a lot to take a look at Build Mode...only to discover that you can’t build on a lot unless you have a Para purchase it, it seems. Which is annoying. >( I don’t want to have to have a Para with me every time I build, game! Sometimes I just want to go into a lot and start making a house! Or a shop, or other area of interest! *grumbles* Hopefully they’ll change that at some point in the future...especially as Melino and the surrounding area has some really giant fucking lots, and I’d love to do something with them...
So yeah – a fruitful, if often frustrating, session checking out the new life sim! It’s good to know what’s possible and what’s not in this game right now – especially when it comes to making my OT3. Seems like I’m going to want to wait until they add a little more stuff to the game when it comes to hairstyles and the like, though...either that or comb through the rapidly-expanding number of CC items people are making for the game, as the team DID make modding it very easy. XD We’ll see!
Writing: As indicated above, I did manage to finish editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” this afternoon! The final push ended up being almost two pages, and featured –
A) Kasimir smashing his smoke bomb and filling the hallway with some extremely nasty, smelly smoke, before grabbing Victor’s arm and ordering him to get them out of there – Nell panicked and ordered her guards to shoot, but as de facto leader Albert pointed out, they couldn’t see to shoot. Mavis attempted to make herself useful by grabbing one of the group, but ended up tackling another guard, Rick, instead. XD Good work on the smoke bomb, Edvard! Very useful in this situation!
B) Alice remarking that, useful as the smoke was, it was reminding her a little too much of escaping her burning house, so she’d like to get out of there sooner rather than later, and successfully grabbing Victor’s arm – Victor called for Smiler, who managed to find Barnaby by his coat and tow him back to the others, with Alice grabbing onto their sleeve once they were close. Victor thus attempted to direct the little daisy-chain of people attached to him toward the tradesman’s entrance, closing his eyes against the stinging smoke and relying on his sense of touch to figure out when they were getting close –
Only to jerk to the side as blast of compressed air flew by his ear from Rick taking a desperate blind shot at Nell’s command. *wince* However, the shot of air hit something in front of Victor that sounded an awful lot like wood, allowing him to locate the door and get it open, so – thanks Rick! Good job not killing your employer’s son! XD
C) Victor getting all his friends into the courtyard and directing them to go up and over the fancy iron fence at the edge of the property – Barnaby briefly tried to protest having to climb, but Alice made it very clear he was going over if she had to drag him, and Smiler pointed out that the alternative was to have to explain things to Nell Van Dort, so he got moving. XD Kasimir, meanwhile, noted that they might just have to drag him over, as climbing things was not his strong suit (bum leg and all) – Victor assured him that he’d help and showed him exactly where to put his feet on the scrollwork to get to the top with minimal issues. Because he’s a nice guy like that.
D) Victor watching everyone (yes, even Barnaby, who was threatened with having his head cracked open by Kasimir) climb to the top of the fence, then preparing to follow them up – only for Nell, who managed to follow them out, to grab his sleeve and demand to know what he was doing. Cue a furious Victor informing her that he was “getting away from you” before coldly telling her goodbye, tearing himself free of her grip (ripping the shoulder of his suitcoat again), and climbing up the fence himself to join the others.
E) And Victor freeing Barnaby’s coat from a spike before pulling him over to the other side, climbing down with his friends and helping Kasimir get solidly on terra firma again, and leading the others in running away from the estate just as the guards found their way out the door. Determinedly not looking back as there was nothing there he wanted to see.
*nods* Good stuff. We’ll let this sit for a little bit so I can do like a week or so with “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” then the week after that (which contains Victor’s birthday, by the by), I’ll figure out where I want to split this chapter and start getting it and the new Chapter 6 up onto AO3!
YouTube: Well, there was no CaFae Latte compilation today, but there was a CaFae Tales video (about the OG lesbian vampire Carmilla)...which I didn’t watch because I had three other videos I wanted to get to in my Watch Later today, and I started watching them too late to fit in the CaFae Tales video. ^^; Whoops! Hopefully I can get to it soonish...in the meantime, the videos I actually watched this eve included –
A) “7 Bosses You Triggered Way Too Early By Mistake” by OXBox! Jane and Mike (Andy is still missing in action; I mentioned this in my comment in the hopes someone might take pity on me and tell me where the hell he is) going through those really tough bosses/high level enemies in games that are worryingly easy for a newbie player to stumble upon and thus get destroyed by. Make the mistake of traveling back to the Thunder Plains and talking to a mysterious new NPC there after getting the airship in Final Fantasy X? Congratulations, he pulls you into a boss fight with Dark Ixion, a terrifying murder lightning horse with a sword coming out of its head, millions of HP, and immunity to all status effects! Decide you don’t need to listen to Chomps Lewis’s warnings about deathclaws ahead and stroll into Quarry Junction on the way to Vegas in Fallout: New Vegas? Congratulations, you just stumbled into a whole nest of the monsters and will not only have to fight the young, but their furious mother and her mate the alpha male! Figure it’s safe to park your cat van in Mementos, the procedurally-generated dungeon that you can find visiting the Collective Unconscious, for five minutes so you can get a snack or take a wee while playing Persona 5? Congratulations, you just let The Reaper – a level 85 mega-boss who can really give your party a terrible time – figure out where you are and yank you into a battle! Though that one can be mitigated if you’re playing the original version and it just so happens to be flu season in the game – turns out, Reapers are even more susceptible to getting the flu than ordinary humans! Something we should all be grateful for given they can otherwise utterly destroy you. (Get your vaccines, kids!)
B) “What Paralives did better than The Sims 4” by The Red Plumbob! Which was a quick list of things in Paralives that Red Plumbob felt were improvements over The Sims 4 (while also still noting that Paralives is in Early Access and thus buggy as hell, so you may still want to wait for its full release a few years down the line before getting it). Items of note included:
I. Paralives having a fully open world where lots just need a moment to load before you can visit them, rather than the semi-open “everything is subdivided into neighborhoods and there’s a loading screen while switching lots” thing Sims 4 had – a fully open world that is charming and beautiful to look at, by the by
II. Paralives having a color wheel that isn’t just available to customize clothing items (including their patterns), but skin tones as well (including allowing you to adjust the colors of things like shadows, highlights, and “natural blush” separately), instead of the pre-set clothing swatches and minimal adjustment to the (admittedly, at this point in time, rather large) number of skin tones available like in The Sims 4
III. Paralives having the ability to place walls with a lot more freedom in Build Mode, allowing the player to build at weird angles and make their own curved walls (though the ability to place doors and windows on curved walls has not been implemented yet, so make sure you have one straight wall to allow your Paras inside your curved monstrosity) rather than limiting the angles and only allowing you to place certain preset curved walls like in The Sims 4
IV. Paralives allowing you to fully customize Build Mode paintings by allowing you to choose what image appears inside them from a big list (or even from your own computer if you want), rather than giving you a preset number of swatches like in The Sims 4
V. And, of course, Paralives allowing you to stretch and squash not only many objects (like doors, windows, furniture, decorative items, etc) but your Paras as well, finally allowing people of different heights to be in the game! Something The Sims 4 never had (well, unless you knew the right cheats) – though given the animations can be a little janky, Red Plumbob admitted they totally understood why The Sims 4 never messed around with height. Hard enough animating two people interacting when they’re the same height!
An interesting look at what Paralives (in Early Access) brings to the table that The Sims 4 (after 10+ years) doesn’t! Though the bit I found the most interesting (and amusing) was Red Plumbob revealing that The Sims 4 added the ability to change the “base layer” of some clothing items in a recent patch...after it was publicized that you could do so in Paralives. Hmmm – seems like EA is rather eager to keep up with the Joneses… :p
C) And “Tav Speaks in a Cutscene | BG3 Cut Content” by Hyperspace Towel! Featuring a look at a removed cutscene that was supposed to trigger after the party meets Brynna and Andrick tending Edowin on the path in the forest near the owlbear cave, and Tav sends them off to either return to their camp or deal with the owlbear. Where Tav and a companion briefly talked about what the hell Brynna and Andrick meant by “True Soul” and “Absolute” or noted that the pair mentioned the Absolute just like the goblin Sazza back in the refugee camp (depending, obviously, on if they’d met Sazza or not by then), with Tav noting it all sounded like trouble. What was so special about this cutscene, you may ask?
Simple – as per the title, Tav actually spoke aloud during it. Under normal circumstances, Tav does not actually speak during cutscenes – instead, you choose what they “say” from the list of dialogue options presented. All of Tav’s voice lines happen when you’re in the overworld instead (AKA, when you’re in the semi-top-down view for moving about the world and getting into fights and suchlike – the companions’ party banter happens in the same mode), with them having a set series of pithy little comments they can make when you click on their portrait or send them to interact with something, and a few observations they can make when coming across certain things out in the world. In fact, they still say at least the first line they have in this cutscene after the interaction is over, it’s just in this overworld mode instead. It’s unusual to see them get a fully animated scene where they actually talk! And Hyperspace was very thorough when it came to showing it to us, recording a version for each of the eight voices you can give your Tav (or Dark Urge) AND showcasing all the companions’ responses – PLUS their comments when they’re the Origin character and thus the protagonist. They even made sure to include BOTH versions of Wyll’s voice – Lanre Malaolu from Early Access and Theo Solomon from the finished game! Now that is dedication. *applause* Good work, Hyperspace.
*thumbs up* Brain wrangled in the end! But now I really need to go to bed, as it is 2:10 AM here and I don't actually want to sleep through all of Smiler's birthday tomorrow. XD Goals for tomorrow include getting the Plushie Birthday Pic with Smileon, Victor Plush, and Alice Dolly; playing a little bit of Baldur's Gate III, as that's my Smiler game (I'll probably just finish off the long rest the gang is in the middle of); working on some sort of Smiler-based fanfic; reading some sort of Smiler-based fanfic; and watching a Smiler-related video (don't know if it'll be with my workout -- depends on when Jon uploads the latest episode of "The Worst Wanderer" -- but I'm sure I can fit SOMETHING in). Hopefully they are all achievable. *nods* Night all!
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Date: 2026-06-03 03:50 am (UTC)