2/4/23 Weekly Blog

Hey all, taking a break from working on Sweet Expedition because I almost forgot about the blog... you can also chalk that up as my excuse of why there's no stream this week. But more on that in a sec. Still don't feel completely better around the wrists. Overall better than last week, I think. Still some discomfort when I type but not nearly as bad, especially with less reliance on rubbing medicine on it. But I was really hoping that I'd 100% recover by the time I got back to work since I can't just "take things slow" and still keep up with everything. Especially since I don't think people are going to cover my work well enough while I'm gone... really don't want to take all this time off, make some recovery just to end up in pain again because I'm typing too hard trying to catch back up. Especially since I feel work was a big factor of how my wrists got screwed up in the first place... but I'm rambling.

Big take away is that I feel better enough currently to work on Sweet Expedition. But I might have to take another break from it if things get worst with my wrists. On to the rest of the blog.

Streams and videos...

Videos are going on per usual, snuck a bit of editing in-between working on other projects or want to do something but need to rest my wrists. Decided to not stream this week between the whole wrist thing and Sweet Expedition; mostly the later since I don't feel like the wrists get in the way of causal gaming (aka as long as I'm not button mashing) too bad. I was just so close with Sweet Training before this all went down, so I've had so much drive wanting to finish it, even if doing other things might help speed up the recovery.

Definitely not starting up the idea of streaming Master Quest until I fully recover. There's already too much temptation to mash too hard with working on Sweet Training, let alone an actual Paper Mario mod.

I'd love to do some more causal streams in-between but when I do them is gonna rely completely on if I feel up to it and if I'm not too caught up in other things when there is a good time to do so.

Paper Mario project

Well, I could go on all day talking about exactly what I've been doing with Sweet Training, but for the sake of my wrists I'll try to keep it brief.

Battles in Sweet Training are done. Only thing I might change is some numbers like HP or attack depending on how playtesting goes. And I think I got everything I want done in the overworld too. Made a couple last minute additions to add a few more surprises but as long as I resist my temptations I think polishing and playtesting are all that's left. Like the most major mechanic I still want to add is a possible "pity system" where if you used up all your items and still lost a battle, the mod would give you just enough items to assure the fight is still beatable. Granted there's an optional challenge mode specifically where you can beat the fight with no items, so I'm conflicted if this is a needed feature. But I'm not sure if all challenge modes are beatable without items so it's something I still want to make just in case. Heck there's at least one I already don't think is possible currently but I want to leave in "for the memes", we'll see how that pans out.

I did want to expand on the things I revealed on Discord, but to save some typing I think I'll just wait. To keep everyone on the same page, I will say I did reveal that everyone's favorite "make Mario angry" badge from the hard mods will make a return in Sweet Training via a special filename code. And by a last-minute miracle I figured out how mods like Dark Star track turns so I can do things like make the Happy Heart badge activate every other turn instead of randomly. I was gonna just not bother, but I stumbled upon the code in a moment I was taking a break from scripting to rest. Plus I can tease that there will be at least one other move from Dark Star I got working in this mod. I plan on teasing more on Discord soon.

Oh, and yeah, one of those things I did to try and take a break from scripting was drawing art for the Sweet Training title screen... have a look...

Early on in the week was when I really tried to stay away from scripting to wrist my wrists. So in that time, I messed around a bit in Dawn of Djinn instead. I was going to finally start working on enemies, but I got sidetracked and reworked the new Djinn all over again. On the bright side I've confirmed the location of every new Djinn Charm in version 2.0 and there may be some new Djinn that didn't exist the last time I teased 2.0. Like a Venus Djinn that seals Psynergy or a Mercury Djinn that haunts. Most importantly Blanket puts foes to sleep again. It's probably my favorite Djinn in Dawn of Djinn, so despite my attempts to convince myself "it was for the best to nerf it" Blanket just did not feel right as just a defense debuff so it's back to the way it was, and Flint is back to the way it was in version 1.

Revisiting Dawn of Djinn made me realize I have a lot more progress on it than I thought. It's just real apparent that my focus lately has been with Sweet Training these past few months. I think once I finish Sweet Training, I'm gonna take a break and focus my mod time on Dawn of Djinn for a bit. But that's jumping ahead a bit.

Mis

I've been pushing myself to walk more and try to walk half an hour at least every day. I haven't done it every day but there's been days I walk a whole hour so I think it evens out. Especially since I've dusted off the treadmill for most of it, which is way more efficient than playing Pokemon Go. Actually been a good way to play some games I've been putting off or watch a video or two. Big thing is that I've been getting back into the GS hard mod, Reloaded. Last playthrough I got right before Colosso. Oddly enough the more I play, the more I think it's actually easier than Dawn of Djinn. I think I was just convinced it was harder because GS2 Reloaded is so much more brutal... or maybe I'm just in the swing of things though. I got the feeling that will change once I get to Venus Lighthouse though.

Other big thing of note is Pokemon cards. I got a bit into Pokemon cards in the start of the new year. Opening the packs from Christmas was fun so I started using getting more as a way to coax myself out of the house. Pokemon Go is becoming less effective at doing that so at least there's something. Like there's a Community Day tommrrow and I don't even know if I want to go out to play, despite how badly I need more Noivbat candy. That Pokemon has been in the game for years and yet I never got enough candy to evolve mine because of the brilliant idea Ninatic got to make random species cost quadruple the amount they normally do AND make it super rare. Pokemon Go hasn't been as fun as it used to for about a year now, but I do have enough interest to at least usually open it up when I go for a walk. It's just Community Days get more and more inconvenient to do between the awkward time and the cold. Plus I REALLY just want to focus on finishing Sweet Training. ...I guess we'll see how I feel. I'd be mad at myself if I miss out on this but I also hate the fact of going out to do it just because of fear of missing out.

That being said... I don't think I'll be going out again for Pokémon cards any time soon because when I bought cards today I bought way too many. In the past I've usually just got one pack, but I REALLY wanted to get Pokémon Go cards but they only seem to sell the packs in this big boxes so I decided to treat myself and just go for it.

I'll just not buy anymore for the next month or so and only open one pack a day to make up for it, if even that frequent. The box came with like 10 packs of cards or so, plus I saw they made cards for Pokémon Legends so I got a pack of that. That'll be plenty to last me the rest of the month at least.

One of these blogs I gotta show a highlight of some of the best cards I've gotten so far, but for now I'll share what I got from the pack I opened today. One down, nine more to go.