<h1>july 2021: mostly moving (IRL, not in-game)</h1>
august 1, 2021<br>
#diary <br>
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@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ august 1, 2021<br>
<h3>friday, july 8 </h3>
<ul>
<li>I ordered some rayon rib knit for a mock turtleneck, but customer service emailed me yet again saying that it's out of stock. There were over 100 yards in stock when I placed my order...all I want is 2 yards. I thought the housing market was unreasonable, but the basic black fabric market is brutal. </li>
<li>Urban Decay announced their new Vice Hydrating Lipstick for Summer 2021. It's official. My all-time favorite lipstick line is discontinued, and they're replacing it with a bland color range. "35 Los Angeles-inspired shades from sheer pink and everyday nude to bold." Good-bye gunmetals, blacks, and purples. They don't even have my MLBB mauve anymore. I can't believe the "Does Pink Make You Puke?" brand is chasing cookie-cutter LA influencers now. </li>
<li>Urban Decay announced their new Vice lipstick. It's official. My all-time favorite lipstick line is discontinued, and they're replacing it with boring colors. Good-bye gunmetals, blacks, and purples. I can't believe the "Does Pink Make You Puke?" brand is chasing cookie-cutter LA influencers now. </li>
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<h3>friday, july 9 </h3>
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@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ august 1, 2021<br>
<img src="/static/img/ext/yaoihands.jpg" alt="(image: meme where the manga guys are drawn with tiny heads and giant hands)">
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<li>A while back, I found a used bookstore run by an old lady that almost exclusively sells Harlequin novels (we're talking 3 or 4 solid aisles). Did you know that's a publishing house, not a genre? And it's not just something old ladies talk about - it's this entire world with ridiculously distinctive branding. That crazy red branding unlocked a memory of when I found a free manga on Google Books, but it was co-authored by some Western woman. The artstyle was kinda like that meme where the guys have tiny heads, and it was about an architect lady in an office or something. The whole thing felt really Western (read as "boring" lol). I looked it up and, turns out, that was a Harlequin <i>manga</i>. Apparently Harlequin's a Canadian company, but they have a Japanese branch that converts the stories into manga for the Japanese audience. Who knew the influence of those books reaches across cultural divides? </li>
<li>Romance novels in general are items of pure marketing, so they're fun to observe in the wild like that. If you haven't watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJiv14uPOac">Chris Zukowski's GDC talk about genre marketing tropes</a>, I recommend it. Starting at 28:15, he compares effective romance novel covers to effective game covers of various genres, and the sophistication of the visual language was pretty eye-opening. </li>
<li>Romance novels in general are items of pure marketing, so they're fun to observe in the wild like that. If you haven't watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJiv14uPOac">Chris Zukowski's GDC talk about genre marketing tropes</a>, I recommend it. Starting at 28:15, he compares effective romance novel covers to effective game covers of various genres and opens my eyes to the sophistication of visual language. </li>
<li>Anyway, I bought something while I was there to be polite: Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Heirs of Hammerfell (unrelated to The Elder Scrolls). I started reading it today. It's an okay 80s-90s fantasy book. </li>
<li>Made tags into links that show all diary entries that share that tag </li>
<li>Added a word cloud, ordered by frequency. I love blogs with word clouds so much and finally have one of my own. </li>
Mostly catching up to deadlines, giving extra play-time to kitty, and making new friends in Pixelmon. Also, sewing a few more garments is a stronger priority than gamedev lately. My old pants and pajamas were too threadbare and holey, so having cute new clothes is such a good feeling. It's also just fun to sew. It's a shame I let mass-producing face masks for the hospital give me such bad burnout. <br>
Mostly catching up to deadlines, giving extra play-time to kitty, and making new friends in Pixelmon. Also, sewing a few more garments is a stronger priority than gamedev lately. <br>
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I'm still designing and redesigning systems instead of adding content, but now it's to make sure all the systems work together smoothly. I'm also really struggling with making contextual controls intuitive. I really want to be able to sit down for a few hours and implement a full event, start to finish, complete with dialog and a multiphase boss fight and rewards. <br>
Gamedev-wise, I'm doing an integration test and playtesting. It's a real struggle to make the controls do everything I expect them to. Game companies make contextual controls look easy. Maybe I'll find time to implement a full event, start to finish, complete with dialog and a multiphase boss fight and rewards once the integration test is done. ;-; I think I have all the programming-centric systems in place to do that. Art, animation, and sound will be its own wave. <br>
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Anyway, I can't believe I've been titling my monthly diary entries as "2020" all year. Finally fixed that. Also...why is the whole website on such an old version? Have I not been pushing anything to live? I thought I had a word frequency cloud and a working diary page navigation pane. Weird. Fixed most of that. <br>
Anyway, I can't believe I've been titling my monthly diary entries as "2020" all year. Finally fixed that. Also...why is the whole website on such an old version? Have I not been pushing anything to live? I thought I had a word frequency cloud and a working diary page navigation pane. Weird. <br>
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<h3>sunday, october 17 </h3>
<ul>
@ -25,5 +25,10 @@ Anyway, I can't believe I've been titling my monthly diary entries as "2020" all
<li>Next, I want the player to use a skill on Chloe. The skills in the player's skillbar are generic'd and all the text doesn't display. (Stupid Jiskan.)</li>
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Last Updated October 29, 2021 <br>
<h3>Halloween, saturday, october 31 </h3>
<ul>
<li>Usually I prepare a costume or at least put out my skeleton doormat, but Halloween almost completely slipped my mind this year. At least I got candy. I've always lived in apartments, so I've never had trick-or-treaters before. I thought they all did Trunk or Treat or some school function instead these days, but we actually did have a few visitors. :) </li>
<li>I'm budgeting again, so I'm calculating the cost of homemade meals. A biscuit, egg, and bacon is like $1.32, minus the cost of tarragon or whatever I feel like adding to the egg. <a href="https://sugarspunrun.com/easy-homemade-biscuits/">Sugar Spun Run</a> is the recipe I usually use, and it's like $0.65 per biscuit. </li>
Mimi Momo
3 years ago