Tale

Final Fantasy XV, while also trying out Planetarian and Fruit of Grisaia when I want something a little less time demanding. Planetarian came to me highly recommended, but it's slow to hook. Fruit of Grisaia I should hate, but I do not. The protagonist is an ultra-perfect jackadoodle, who is some sort of mysterious secret agent type whose backstory keeps referencing a master like he trained in forgotten martial arts out in the woods. He ends up at a school that only has 5 other students, all of them girls. And a single teacher/principle, also an attractive woman. I'm pretty sure they all want him. But his sarcasm is on point. And one of the girls keeps trying to stab him, which is the quickest way to my heart, I don't know about you. And another is trying her hardest to be a tsundere cliche, which ends up being delightful.

There was a rumor of Obsidian involvement after Human Head. I always wonder if that's how Avellone ended up involved.

Developers are pets confirmed. Or orphans.

Apparently he's giving a talk in Poland, so he probably stopped by. Otherwise I'd be getting paranoid.

Yeah, I got TLG today, but I'm still finishing up Steins;Gate 0. And I'm loving 0 so very much. I want to play FFXV before that, too. Edit: Then there's the Rogue One DLC for Battlefront. An embarrassment of riches, I tell you.

Hope everything's okay at Obs.

I was forced back to Muv-Luv, moving on to Unlimited. Forced because my new PS4 arrived today. I installed a 2 TB hard drive in it and started transferring the data from the old one. Lo and behold that's going to take 9 hours.

I'd leave the Milky Way just to get away from people who have no sense of adventure. Nobody ever asks "why send a probe beyond Pluto?" Or "why explore the bottom of the Marianas Trench?" But they do ask "why build intelligent machines?" Which is kind of a racist question to ask if you think about it.

You truckers need some culture!

Honestly, more developers should work like this.

Am I really the only Steins;Gate fan? Steins;Gate 0 just got even more interesting for me. Any scene with Okabe is heartbreaking. And all of the other scenes practically make me so giddy I can't sit still.

Steins;Gate 0 SQUEE!

Watching Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV as I type this. The voice acting is so bad I have to comment.

I never imagined enjoying Muv-Luv Extra as much as I did, I was never into romantic comedies. All the side routes were crap, but the one main route I've done so far was simply fantastic. Aside from the lacrosse stuff. I'm actually going for the other main route right now and it's kind of sad knowing in advance that the other girl won't get the guy. Dag nabbit, they all deserve to be happy. I'm told Muv-Luv Alternative is one of the best sci-fi VNs ever. I can't wait until we get a US release of that.

Since Square Enix doesn't want to sell me Final Fantasy IV at a cheap price, I'll just move on to my other weaboo obsession. Visual Novels! I am Tale, devourer of stories! Up now is Muv-Luv. Which is apparently the story of a high schooler and his childhood friend. Wacky hijinks ensue when he wakes up to a mysterious woman in his bed. I'm yelling out loud WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON about once every five minutes.

And the good one out of my Steam sale purchases ends up being Helen's Mysterious Castle. Just a fun game overall. Star Wars Battlefront II has not aged well, especially mechanically. The campaign makes me want to hurt people. Red Faction Guerilla I'm positive is still good, but I'm not making time for it tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Bought some games on the Steam sale, some of them were cheap, short, with great reviews so I thought I'd try them first. First up was Lisa. Absolutely terrific reviews! Also with some cheap as heck fights. Ran into one fight where the thing prevented me from taking any actions while beating me up. Game over. It was a poor early impression. Helen's Mysterious Castle. Great reviews and it was easy to see why. It has a very interesting combat and leveling system. You're not leveling up your character, but their weapons, and all combat is about trading attack and defense stats between the two combatants. I really liked it. Then I kept wandering in circles because it looks like I hit a dead end. Can't find any way forward. Not a great feeling to have a little over an hour into the game. On Tale Plays Free Games we have Saira. Well that's an interesting default control scheme... It's a puzzle platformer that looks like someone accidentally made the entire thing in paper crafts. It's not bad, it's just not interesting. Completed the tutorial and felt like I'd seen enough. Next up is probably the highlight of my sale purchases, Hector Badge of Carnage. Among the last adventure games published, not developed, by Telltale games before The Walking Dead set their direction, it looks hilarious and has good reviews. It was also released originally around the time of Puzzle Agent. And I freaking love Puzzle Agent. Can't wait to try it.

What in the ever loving

Screwing around in RPGMaker MV still. Splitting my time between just seeing what everything does and seriously overwriting the script.

Played a good deal of Battlefront over the weekend. I really enjoy this game. I'm sort of pre-emptively missing it for when I stop playing it. Trying to familiarize myself with RPGMaker MV, too. I kind of wish it came packed with a strong sample game to take apart. That's how I'm used to learning these things. Taking apart Morrowind, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, even Shadowrun. I wanted to take apart Dragon Age: Origins for a mod project, but then I found they won't even let you access most of the core games assets or scripts. But it's probably not time efficient to try the old methods. I'm challenged by the desire to learn aspects of the tools that aren't really relevant to what I'm doing now. Played briefly with the character generation system, found things it was lacking and almost went around hunting for ways to get what I want. Fought the urge to fill the database with items, set up classes, equip the placeholder characters with equipment analogs. I also tried seeing if their Javascript system had a built-in editor. It doesn't look like it. I have no need of scripting my own plugins yet... Distractions... Took a look at their event system to see how I can apply triggers and am a bit lost already. That's precisely where I'd go to dissecting existing content to figure out. But maybe youtube tutorials will get me the same results with less trial and error.

Finished my first run of Tyranny. I'm liable to wait on a second run until there's some news about DLC. Battlefront has a 4x XP weekend, so hitting that up now.

I'm actually adapting an existing story I've already written and adding bits from another story I abandoned. The ending is in hand, but seeing how the adaptation process and limitations of the medium will change it excite me.

Yesterday I crafted the foil badge and initiated trades with two fellow Obsidianites for regular cards so I can craft the regular badge. Today I got a booster pack. The card gods have a sense of humor.

Motivational tools are always required. An update system enables people to ask me "why was your last status update a month ago? Are you actually doing any work?" It's one of the main objectives of a writing group. If you don't show any progress to the group every week, they will laugh at you. This is a strategy I've barely thought about. I've worked on mods for several games and usually get bogged down detailing Act 1. I'll give this a shot. I was going to get everything in rough detail first, but I was thinking more "placeholder art in real layouts" by that. But maybe that would take more time than I should spend on the first pass.

I'm going to ignore my total lack of artistic skill. If I get far enough for there to be a chance of completing it, at that point I might just hire someone to do the sprites I need. The current plan is to get enough rough areas and characters (complete with bad custom editing) done of the first planet for pre-alpha screenshots as a first milestone. I find that there's a fine line to tread between talking about a project and being held accountable. If I just talk about a project, that sort of replaces my motivation to actually produce. But if nobody even knows I'm doing it, they can't shame me when I'm being lazy.