Weekly Blog 4/16/23

Don't mind the above, I've just been working on video thumbnails and thought this one would be very fitting as a thumbnail for the week's blog....

(Also, figured I might as well finish and get this up a day early since I'm not streaming tonight and therefore have the extra time to do so anyways.)

Streams and video

Spent a good chunk today alone getting all the videos I've finished editing uploaded and ready for Youtube, like the thumbnail you seen above. I got about half of May's videos already to go, so it's safe to say that May's video schedule will be the same as this month's schedule. But I'll give the full run down once we actually get to the end of the month.

I am close to the end with the Dawn of Djinn playthrough though. Just got done editing the Doom Dragon fight, and starting editing the final few fights of Crossbone/Vortex Island. There will definitely be enough videos left to take us through all of May, but I think by the time June rolls around we'll be all done. It's gonna feel strange to be done making videos of Dawn of Djinn. Between streaming it and then having the edited videos go on months after the stream series ended. Feels like I've been playing it forever. Feels especially personal with Dawn of Djinn being so close to me for, what I think is obvious, reasons. It's gonna be hard to find something that will take it's place. But we got plenty of time before then and already have stuff, like the Kirby streams or the currently ongoing Pokemon XG series, I could edit into videos for the time being. And I'm sure I'll be doing something worthy of being reworked as a playthrough by the time I finish both Dawn of Djinn and the Kirby Dreamland streams.

Also, before I forget, I uploaded a new Game N Chill earlier today. So, if you're curious about the mis stuff I was up to last week. It's a biggie so hopefully that'll make-up for lack of stream tonight. Yeah, I sticking to the plan of taking a small stream break. But I do already got ideas for next week, so look forward to that.

Modding/Game Creation

Dawn of Djinn progress has been going pretty good. This week was mostly focused on fishing up text changes for the Mercury Lighthouse and some NPC dialogue, post healing Tret.

Had a bit of a hiccup but that's only because text editing in GS 1 was being a prick like usual. Had a close call where I thought I was going to have to go back to an old draft because I foolishly saved when the text was corrupted, but I sorted that out. Stuff like that is exactly why I make backups of Dawn of Djinn as I reach major milestones, but that still would of been redoing more work than I would have liked.

TBH I was hoping to be further along, cause I've been really looking forward to getting this part of the mod done, but working within the text restraints of GS1 always takes more time than you would think. Definitely feel it could be better if I had more room for NPC dialogue, but I think I did the best with what I got.

In playtesting, I got a cool idea to make mind reading more useful via changing a little more text. If I remember to do that, that could make a fun clip to show-off for next week.

Fun fact, if you try to squeeze to much text without a line break, the game just gives up trying to make a box that fits it and you get mess like this. And honestly, this is some of the better case scenarios when it comes to issues with Golden Sun text...

Mis

I have a confession, I don't feel like I have too much else interesting to talk about this week. Minus some runs in Emerald Rouge and jumping between so many various other video games to remember them all; most of my week has been spent working, either with the day job or on stuff like videos and Dawn of Djinn.

That said, I forget if it was last week or this week, but I did finally start trying out Banjo-Kazooie for the first time. With Golden Sun still who knows how long before it ends up on Switch Online, it was the main reason I had any interest in upgrading my online plan beyond what is needed for the general online play. Everything else I either already owned or wasn't vital enough to justify the extra cost. But Switch Online was just about to renew anyways so I decided to bite the bullet and get the higher membership now rather than later. (Wish they also had a Virtual console I could directly give money to the games I wanted to support, but that's a rant for another time, NSO is [slightly] better than nothing.)

As for Banjo-Kazooie itself, it was fun. I've certainly gotten less patient over the years cause I couldn't stop thinking about how long the intro and how badly I wanted to jump right into the gameplay. Fun fact, I am that weird kid who played Banjo-Tooie growing up but never played the original Banjo-Kazooie. Can't remember why. I guess we just weren't aware that Banjo-Kazooie existed until we already had Tooie or something. The fact that it's never been rereleased on a Nintendo console meant I just never had a convenient way to play it until now. I've never owned a Mircosoft console and the PS3 was the only Sony console I ever owned, so Rare Replay wasn't an option for me.

As you might expect, the transition from N64 to Switch Pro controls isn't a perfectly smooth transition. Even more so than something like Paper Mario due to how heavily Z and the C buttons are used in the game. But I think I got used to it fairly quick. And the most important of the c buttons for Banjo was mapped to x & y, so pulling up the Tallon Trot is a button press and not awkardly tapping the C stick while holding another button. Considering Tallon Trot is objectively the most important move in Banjo, I think I made out pretty well with that happy accident.

Only had a chance to play the first world, but it was as enjoyable as I thought it would be. I thought that would be the case with my previous experience with games like Tooie and Donkey Kong 64, but it's nice to finally be able to say that I've tried it. In fact talking about it, got me itching to play more of it.