So long wisdom teeth

Apr 02, 2019 08:01

It Is Finished! by Petra

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Hi all. Most of this month was pretty ordinary, but this last weekend was rather busy. On Friday, I had my wisdom teeth removed. This involved a treatment called "conscious sedation", which meant I was technically awake and aware, but in a very low-anxiety state...and I can't remember any of it. c.c It's a peculiar experience, for several minutes after I was administered the medicine I was fully lucid, cooperating with the nurse to get a blood pressure measuring cuff on my arm, wondering what it would feel like once it kicks in...then without any clear ending point of that period, I was waking up on my parents' couch. Kind of existentially scary to lose a part of your life like that, but I suppose it's a part I wouldn't much care to remember anyway. X)

The day after that (Saturday), my church had a work party in the morning to do general maintenance on the building. I wouldn't have taken part ordinarily because it's a bit of a drive for me just to add one more body to an already chaotic work crew, but since I was spending the night at my parents' place (not wise to drive in the 24 hours after the sedation, even though I felt quite aware once I woke up on the couch), I was able to participate. After that, my family had a birthday party for my brother. I had to have some specially-made potato soup rather than the tacos everyone else was eating due to the tender condition of my mouth, but at least cake is plenty soft. ;) As usual when there are such get-togethers, most of the activity revolved around taking it in unorganized turns to keep an eye on my nieces while everyone else chatted -- or in my case, mostly played Super Mario Odyssey. Fortunately that doubled as a way to keep the girls entertained for at least part of the time. ;)

And finally, Sunday my church had a picnic after the service, as we typically do when there's a fifth Sunday of the month. I still had to be selective about my food choices, but my jaws were able to handle a hot dog and some brownies and cookies. I also took some leftover hamburgers with me, which will be handy since I didn't have much opportunity to cook anything for this week. ;9

There's been an important development in the Unity system which affects the ASCRS app. It was actually announced sometime last year, but I didn't find out about it until this month when a security issue prompted me to download the latest version of the editor. The development is that they're phasing the current networking library out of use. This means I'll eventually have to rewrite the code that handles network communications in my app. Hopefully it won't be too different from before, but getting networking to function has been probably the biggest time-eater and morale-slugger I've faced in that project, so it's worrisome. c.c;

That aside, most of my accomplishments this month have been bug-fixes and quality improvements. I added a debug menu that allows me to quickly populate a scene with characters, so that I don't have to create them by hand every time I want to test something. I also set up a capability for a couple of menus to treat pressing the Enter key while typing in a certain input field as submission of that field, so that you don't have to click the OK button. It's a little detail, but it makes things smoother.

On Zelda RPG, Esava and Tommy made the trek through Gerudo Desert and arrived at Gerudo Fortress. They called out to the gate guards for sanctuary, and after an exchange parodying this classic scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they were admitted by Nabooru. Esava seemed to be shocked when he saw Nabooru, though he hasn't said why yet. I was tempted to have Tommy remark IC that Nabooru looked a lot like Esava's late wife, but even if I was guessing right about that, it probably would've been stealing Esava's thunder for later on. Besides, Esava had a son, so his wife couldn't have been Nabooru's Termina doppelganger, at least not as an actual Gerudo...and Tommy only got a quick look at Esava's wife anyway. Tommy was almost as awed to learn that the Gerudo are a clan of thieves (at least historically though officially no longer). Maybe this is a place where his own talents will be appreciated. 8D

Meanwhile, the cat + fox group is still dealing with the Fears of the sleeping children. Tipper made up a tektite Fear, which she was lucky enough to be able to take out immediately. Kito made up a like like Fear and neither damaged it nor suffered damage in his first round. Sheikah managed a bite on his guay Fear and asked Tipper to help out with one of the remaining ones. Tipper hopped into the fight against the like like Fear but didn't get a hit, and that's where we stand now.

Mighty No. 9:

Yet another Humble Bundle title, and I'm glad I got it that way rather than dropping full price or even sale price on it directly. X) As you've probably heard, Mighty No. 9 is a spiritual reboot of the Mega Man series led by the artist and illustrator who worked on the original Mega Man and has since struck out on his own. Mighty No. 9 was a crowd-funding giant fueled by fans ravenous for a game that would capture the charm of Mega Man without being tainted by the corporate gigantism of Capcom. As you've probably also heard, most of the gaming community was disappointed by the result.

The main point where Mighty No. 9 goes wrong is that it tried to add something quirky and original to a game that was supposed to reboot a classic formula, and it failed. I append the "and it failed" because in theory adding a new mechanic could make such a game fresh and amazingly fun instead of simply a good but familiar game, but it was a risky move and didn't pay off in this instance. The new mechanic is that enemies don't disappear purely from being shot (well, they can, but it takes a lot of extra pummeling). Instead, they become "destabilized" after enough hits, and the hero (whose name is Beck BTW) can finish them off by dashing into them. He also absorbs some energy from doing this, which goes into a meter that when filled lets him fully restore his health bar, and it also increases your score, should you care about such.

The trouble is that if you want to get full credit for this (and maintain a combo multiplier that's critical for high-score runs), you have to dash into the enemy almost immediately after they're destabilized. This means you have to know exactly how much damage each enemy takes and be up-close for the final shot, and if you underestimate them, guess what? You just dashed right into a pain factory! :D There's also the factor that there are sometimes hazards that make dashing into an enemy dangerous, like another enemy behind them, a drop into a bottomless pit below them, or even instant-kill spikes. Yes, it wouldn't be a proper Mega Man-like without liberal application of THOSE vintage vexations, would it? =.=

I'll mention one thing the game does which I thought was rather fun. Once you've beaten a particular stage, the boss of that stage will show up to help you once in another stage. It's nothing spectacular, they just appear in the background or foreground to forestall some hazard you would otherwise have to deal with yourself, lending a bit of character to the stage's progression and giving you the feeling you're part of a team. The boss that helps this way in a given stage is also the one whose weapon will be especially effective against the boss you'll be facing. Furthermore, in the stage select menu if you have the advantageous weapon for a particular stage an "Advice" button will appear beneath that stage, providing a brief spiel from the boss who'll help out. This clues you in to the stage boss's weakness, so once you've overcome the hurdle of one boss, you can always know which stage to tackle next for the easiest run. (Although of course these days you can just Google it, but that's cheeeeeatiiiiiing. ;9 )

Bottom line? Probably not worth your coin and time unless you're a rabid fan of Mega Man-style games and can power through some frustrations.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character analyses part 2:

Isabelle:

Isabelle is to Villager as Luigi is to Mario -- a fighter with many similarities, but easily enough differences to be their own entity. I would say she's definitely air-style, though not quite as much as Villager. Her moves are a little more practical and not so quirky; this is most obvious with her down-special, which plants a trap that can be automatically or manually triggered rather than Villager's three-stage tree-chopping narrative. Nevertheless, compare her to the average of all fighters and she's clearly idiosyncratic. Combine this with the fact that she's far more at home in the air than on the ground (her regular attacks on ground have pathetic reach) and you have a fighter that's pretty much pure air-style wackiness.

Incineroar:

First off, the obvious thematic disconnect -- Incineroar does not lend himself very much to fire-style play, stomping around the field at a slow gait and throwing out attacks with strength but a little delay. He's much more of an earth-style fighter, relying on power and priority to punish those who assault him. You could also say there's an element of water-style there, especially since he has a counter move; it's just that instead of dodging and catching the foe on a whiff, he does better by predicting the foe's move and simultaneously doing one that counteracts it. He also doesn't have quite the sweeping range of the most iconic earth-style fighters. Still, I'd say he's solidly in the earth-style category overall.

King K. Rool:

As you'd probably expect from a fighter of his girth, King K. Rool is strongly earth-style, moving slowly but dishing out pain with powerful and high-priority attacks, some of which feature super-armor. What you might not expect (or maybe you would from his manic expression) is that he also has a pretty fair dash of air-style. His blunderbuss special has a secondary effect of sucking in projectiles (or fighters!) after shooting its cannonball, giving it some very situational nuance. His up-smash attacks up AND THEN FORWARD, which can catch water-stylists looking to take advantage of a whiff off-guard (it did me a couple times during that tournament X) ). Finally, while he's not the most graceful in the air, his up-special gives him practically edge-of-the-map recovery potential.
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