Weekly Blog 12/4/22

Last minute blog because I got really busy between IRL stuff and trying to make progress on all my projects despite not having as much free time this week as last week. A new Game N Chill went up yesterday, so feel free to check that out if you want more rambling. A little outdated because I recorded this one an extra week in advance but some fun stuff actually happens in the gameplay itself, that I think it's worth it. Besides, it's been awhile since I've last played Pokémon Legends live for one of these.

Paper Mario/Golden Sun

Some progress has been made with Sweet Expedition, but nothing I really want to talk about this week. The most eventful stuff happened last week/already talked about in Game N Chill. I did take a solid chunk of time to sit down and mess around with stuff with it, which doesn't always happen every week so I'm happy it happened two weeks in a row.

I wish I had more to talk about with Dawn of Djinn. But this word document on the new Psynergy and classes is SO TIME CONSUMING. I'm pretty sure I've been working on that alone for over a month...

...what I can talk about today is just tonight, as I'm approaching the last few classes of the mod, I made a realization. So for these documents, I've taking a lot of inspiration from my Nintendo Power strategy guide of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Which results in formatting like this...

...it's fine and all, and it works in vanilla Golden Sun. However, with the larger amount of upgradable Psynergy in Dawn of Djinn and the class system as a whole being a bit more complicated, it can be a bit of a mess at time.

This was especially an issue with what I like to call "the symbiotic relationship" classes. "Fun" detail, that a casual Golden Sun fan will easily overlook, but the Venus/Mars dual class and the Mercury/Jupiter dual class function slightly differently. Their arrangement of Djinn is different from any other class in the game, resulting them getting stronger quicker than all other classes. A detail I didn't really notice until too late with Version 1, that I'm trying to take in account as I'm working on new classes for 2nd Mix.

Okay. That was a bit of a tangent, but point is these classes were even more of a mess to document than the rest. So I caved and tried a new approach, resulting in the chart looking more like this...

So yeah, it took a little time to get used to, but I think overall this is a lot cleaner than whatever the heck I was doing for the other classes. I'd try it with everything else, but the issue is that it already took me AGES just to get this far and starting all over and delaying working on the mod proper is far too intimidating at the moment. We'll see how I feel once I finish writing out all the other classes. I should because it'll make tracking a lot easier, but I just don't want to think about that for now.

(Also, feel free to speculate what all the new Psynergy are, half the reason I decided to share the screenshots was because I thought seeing some new moves out of context would be more fun for the casual fan than my random class rambling.)

Videos

Got some decent video editing progress for a two-day weekend where a chunk of it got taken up with IRL things. Made a new Dawn of Djinn video, almost finished another XG video. And got just about everything video wise scheduled and ready for this month. That all was just today, who knows how much I've gotten done this week total.

Ironically enough the only thing I haven't had a chance to start yet is the last Sweet Expedition preview video for the month. Haven't even started the post-commentary on it yet. But thanks to all the progress I made the previous week, I still have two weeks to get it done. Between that and having everything else set for the month, I should have plenty of time to do it, just got to remember to do it before using the mic for anything else.

Streaming has been going great too. I've finally decided to take some time to set things up so I stream to both Youtube and Twitch at the same time, and it turned out not to be so bad. It's great because I've really enjoyed streaming on Youtube but I feel a lot of the Twitch audience have been missing out on the more casual streams I've been more frequently as a result. So this is a good way to keep the focus on Youtube without completely abandoning the Twitch platform.

Only downside is that I wouldn't be able to keep it up if I did get affiliated on one of the platforms some day, but screw it. I don't even know if I want to be a Twitch affiliate. Watching streams and being a streamer on Twitch isn't as fun as it used to be. The whole ad system is part of it, and that part would get even worst if I was affiliated, not sure if it would be worth it.

If people really want to give me money that badly, I have a Ko-Fi. Actually set it up around the time I used to do Patreon, but I gave up on Patreon and that stuff a long time ago.

I figured I'd leave some option to tip if people are feeling generous, and Ko-fi feels like it would work better for me at the moment. It's a more tip-based system to thank me for what I've already done, rather than a subscription system that might raise expectations of what I will do in the future. Supporters don't feel committed to contribute consistently and I don't have to feel guilty if I don't feel like working on one thing for an extended period of time.

If you couldn't tell from the nature of this blogs, I'm kind-of all over the place with the things I create. So, between working full-time with your more traditional office job, and all the types of projects I juggle online, I'm concern that I wouldn't meet up with expectations if I did start a Pateron. Not to say I wouldn't reconsider if I were to ever get popular enough that it was a realistic possibility, but it's not in the cards for me at the moment.

Plus now that I do modding, it would create some awkward situations if people thought I took money to do fan games of IPs I don't own. At least it's not the only thing I do, so I could in-theory build a system around videos or something like that, but still... ...not worrying about that for now. (̶M̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶I̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶r̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶O̶v̶e̶r̶s̶e̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶E̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶v̶i̶d̶e̶o̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶)̶

For now, I'm happy just to see how much people have been enjoying my projects now that I'm branching out and reaching new faces. There's been a lot more love on videos showing off my mods lately and I want to remind you all that I still really appreciate it. Thank you all for all the comments and love things like the Dawn of Djinn, Jenna Edition showcase, and Lost Age 20th Anniversary videos have gotten. (Still sometimes log onto ROM Hacking dot net just to see the numbers of downloads on Dawn of Djinn because it still feels surreal to me that over 100 people actual were interested enough in it to download it, let alone the 300+ that it's at now.)

...welp that was a tangent... take away is videos are going great, thank you all for the continue support, the love is more than enough for me, I have my own means to pay my own bills, but the Ko-Fi is there if you want.

Mis

I really should just wrap up this blog, but I didn't want to go this whole thing without at least saying that I've finally got to try out the Sparks of Hope game and have been really enjoying it. The people were right, Ubisoft's "minion rip-off" really does seem to be the best Mario RPG made in a long time. The customization system is solid, and the combat has had a nice blend between having depth but not being overwhelming. I didn't get why people were claiming that a tactics game was "the best Mario RPG to come out in a long time", but I see it now. There is a level-up system this time around and your "Sparks" get stronger too.

TBH I got the game because the Spark system reminds me vaguely of Djinn and I long for those mechanics so badly that I thought Sparks might scratch that itch. I enjoy the concept of messing around with different character/Spark combinations, especially with each character having their own skill tree and the Sparks being able to level up their own way. Obviously, it's not the Djinn system but it captures the fun of it in its own way so that's good enough for me. Plus everything else in the game has been solid so far. Only complaints so far is Ubisoft being Ubisoft, but it doesn't really feel fair to even consider those things a factor.

That being said, if anyone wants to make a modern game that copies Golden Sun Djinn I won't complain. It's sort of Overseer of the Elements thing, but at this point I've strived so much to build off it in my own way, rather than copy it directly, that I feel there's enough room in the world for there to be multiple game series that can make those core concepts and make them fun for a more modern audience. Lord knows I've been keeping my eyes open, hence that game who's fail Kickstarter might as well be what started me on the downwards spiral of finally getting into the modding community that I'm in today.

Okay. Spent the entire rest of my night writing this blog. >_> Wanted to do other things before going back to work, but what can one do? At least I got to talk about things, don't feel like I've done that enough lately.