<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)">
<ul>
<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>Mostly spent my birthday sleeping and catching up on chores, but I was able to redeem my birthday coupon at Publix for free ice cream. I thought it would be a pint, but they gave me a whole half-gallon. They're seriously vying for best birthday program, but Sephora maybe wins 2021. My lips have never looked so big and hydrated before Sephora's Laneige lip mask freebie (and I'm in the middle of a harsh, dry winter). </li>
<li>Mostly spent my birthday sleeping and catching up on chores, but I was able to redeem my birthday coupon at Publix for free ice cream. I thought it would be a pint, but they gave me a whole half-gallon. They're seriously vying for best birthday program, but the Laneige lip mask from Sephora maybe wins 2021. Most lip products do nothing for me, but there are a few that at least prevent my lips from becoming dull and chapped like the Winky Lux matcha balms. The Laneige blows everything out of the water, though. My lips have never looked so big and smooth, and I'm in the middle of a dry winter. </li>
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<h3>rest of the month </h3>
<ul>
<li>My husband's hosting Christmas this year, but the new house still has lots of random boxes and cluttered surfaces. They'll be in town in two weeks, so cleaning is top priority. We barely have any furniture or decorations, so I hope it goes okay. They don't . </li>
<li>My husband's hosting Christmas this year, but the new house still has lots of random boxes and cluttered surfaces. They'll be in town in two weeks, so cleaning is top priority. We barely have any furniture or decorations, so I hope it goes okay. </li>
<li>Still making sure all the systems are integrated together...Death, XP, Levels, Level-Up Rewards, XP Bar, Themes for Skill Library and Skillbar</li>
<li>If more than 50 million levels are gained at once, the game lags for a few seconds. Maybe level-up rewards could be divvied out more efficently, but apparently the <a href="https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-experience-level-in-an-rpg">highest level in any game</a> is 65,535 (Fallout 4 and Guardian's Crusade). I'm not going to worry about a Guinness-tier edge case now, if ever. </li>
<li>My family's hosting Christmas this year. My in-laws are visiting next week, so I compressed all the random packing boxes and did my best attempt at decorating last week. Maybe we can take advantage of post-Christmas sales and do better next yet. </li>
<li>This week, I'm going to do a mean job of sweeping and sanitizing all the surfaces. </li>
<li>They've still not decided if they'll be spending Christmas with us or in a different town, and how long they're visiting for. Going with the flow is fine, but I'd be a way more entertaining host if I knew how many meals and nights of activities to plan lol. </li>
<li>I'll do my best, and it will turn out fine. ;-; </li>
<li>For fun, I can take them to the lake, rent some movies, and obviously show them our new house and neighborhood. For food, everything needs to be gluten and milk-free. It'd be easiest for me to have basic breakfast foods like egg, bacon, corn tortilla, and whatever the girls' favorite cereal is, then cook ground beef and maybe hams. I miss chicken, but that's only been in stock a few times the past 2 years, but I can dream. I like egg-based dishes, but they usually require milk. I'm thinking we can eat at the park near my house since I don't have enough chairs for everyone.
chimchooree
3 years ago