I do actually still exist!
I just didn't post for a month...ahaha...no, see, I wanted to wait until I had a job so I could be all, boo-yah, job acquired! But then, well, I didn't get one yet. So, yeah.
BUT perhaps I shall soon! I've applied for a full-time position at my lab, I'm interviewing with HR tomorrow. If all goes well, I would have a full-time salary, actual health benefits, and even some vacation time! AND I'd have twice as many hours at work in the lab, and thus would be twice as productive. I'm hoping to first author a paper so those extra hours are important.
It's kind of sort of almost a done deal? As long as nothing goes horribly wrong tomorrow anyway. So, fingers crossed.
Other than that...well, I spent the summer coding data basically. Lots and lots of data. Which hopefully will be useful for a paper. It's strange not to be going back to classes, when so many people I know are...
My D&D group has just started a new campaign. Tonight was the first session, it seemed to go pretty well? Hopefully the story of the campaign will be interesting for them, this time during character creation we linked their backstories to the campaign a bit more. Well, except for the one player who always wants a backstory that's basically 'has no friends or family, wants more power/loot'. He uh, is not super into roleplaying I guess. But that's fine as long as he has fun.
I'm also working on my romhack again! I finally wrote the script for chapter 16 and formatted all the text I had so far. Now I'm doing event scripts through chapter 16, and then when those are done I'm planning to put together a beta version with chapters 11-16 and try to convince someone to playtest it. It...may be difficult? I still have not convinced any of my irl friends to play the original romhack, alas. But at least I'll be doing incremental testing this time in SOME form. I also have some support conversations written so maybe I'll format those as well, although they're so long they may need to be cut down. I don't think supports can be spread across multiple text slots, either...I mean I guess if I knew how to edit the code for playing supports, but well, I don't. Eh, if they're so long they can't fit they're probably far too long anyway.
Thus far Raven/Erk is done but Erk doesn't appear by chapter 16 so, yeah, not useful yet, Raven/Eliwood C, Eliwood/Hector C and B, Lyn/Nino C and B, Hector/Ninian and Nino/Ninian are all written. So, it's a start! I'm struggling with the supports for the main five (the lords, Nino, and Ninian) a little because unlike the other characters, they have a lot of character focus during the story, so I don't want to duplicate that in their supports...yet, for some characters, Ninian especially, it's hard for her central character issues NOT to come up. Basically her deal is that she's afraid to get close to others or really enjoy things at all because of how painful it would be to lose them. I guess at this point I'm going with, she might overcome this for a particular person in a support, but it still applies more globally in the main story. I'm not sure what to do with her and Lyn's supports yet...I'm not sure how to have them interact in general. Hector outright distrusts Lyn, but I'm not sure on Ninian.
And, of course, again, the issue is that Hector and Ninian's central concern with Lyn is also central to the plot...so developing it in support convos would conflict with their developing views in the main story. Sigh, too bad I don't know how to reprogram the support system to work more like FE9/10 where getting supports depends on how many chapters character fought in together. That lets you have the supports match the story developments properly.
I guess this is why, when you think about it, in FE7 and FE8, the main story doesn't really involve the relationships between the main characters changing. Their relationships with non-playable characters change, but not within the player-controlled units. Or not super dramatically, anyway.
But, anyway, the first 16 chapters are written at least! And I'm mostly done coding chapter 14, so then there's just chapters 15 and 16, and testing the events. No doubt they'll all break and I'll have to fix them lol...but it's progress!
You know what's one odd thing about text in FE7? I've written 16 chapters worth of text now, and it's not like I write a tiny amount of text either. And yet, I've only just reached the chapter 4 text slots. FE7 puts so little text in each slot for some reason. Yeah, some of that is because there's a lot of different tutorial prompts early in Lyn mode, so those are all extra slots...but there are lots of times where text is just split between two text slots for no evident reason. I mean yeah, I tend to do very few on-map cutscenes so there's no movement between bits of dialogue that would require multiple text slots, and yes that's a bit lazy, but still. It surprised me.
But yeah, look for the beta sometime in the future!
And that's basically what I'm up to...trying to get started on writing a paper at work, working on my romhack, trying to do a good job DMing my D&D group. I've actually got ideas for a homebrew campaign, but have been having trouble putting it together. I just don't know how to properly map a city, is the thing. Maybe I'll wait until the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide comes out, I dunno.
Hopefully, next time I post, I will have a full-time job...that's the dream, anyway...*fingers crossed*
BUT perhaps I shall soon! I've applied for a full-time position at my lab, I'm interviewing with HR tomorrow. If all goes well, I would have a full-time salary, actual health benefits, and even some vacation time! AND I'd have twice as many hours at work in the lab, and thus would be twice as productive. I'm hoping to first author a paper so those extra hours are important.
It's kind of sort of almost a done deal? As long as nothing goes horribly wrong tomorrow anyway. So, fingers crossed.
Other than that...well, I spent the summer coding data basically. Lots and lots of data. Which hopefully will be useful for a paper. It's strange not to be going back to classes, when so many people I know are...
My D&D group has just started a new campaign. Tonight was the first session, it seemed to go pretty well? Hopefully the story of the campaign will be interesting for them, this time during character creation we linked their backstories to the campaign a bit more. Well, except for the one player who always wants a backstory that's basically 'has no friends or family, wants more power/loot'. He uh, is not super into roleplaying I guess. But that's fine as long as he has fun.
I'm also working on my romhack again! I finally wrote the script for chapter 16 and formatted all the text I had so far. Now I'm doing event scripts through chapter 16, and then when those are done I'm planning to put together a beta version with chapters 11-16 and try to convince someone to playtest it. It...may be difficult? I still have not convinced any of my irl friends to play the original romhack, alas. But at least I'll be doing incremental testing this time in SOME form. I also have some support conversations written so maybe I'll format those as well, although they're so long they may need to be cut down. I don't think supports can be spread across multiple text slots, either...I mean I guess if I knew how to edit the code for playing supports, but well, I don't. Eh, if they're so long they can't fit they're probably far too long anyway.
Thus far Raven/Erk is done but Erk doesn't appear by chapter 16 so, yeah, not useful yet, Raven/Eliwood C, Eliwood/Hector C and B, Lyn/Nino C and B, Hector/Ninian and Nino/Ninian are all written. So, it's a start! I'm struggling with the supports for the main five (the lords, Nino, and Ninian) a little because unlike the other characters, they have a lot of character focus during the story, so I don't want to duplicate that in their supports...yet, for some characters, Ninian especially, it's hard for her central character issues NOT to come up. Basically her deal is that she's afraid to get close to others or really enjoy things at all because of how painful it would be to lose them. I guess at this point I'm going with, she might overcome this for a particular person in a support, but it still applies more globally in the main story. I'm not sure what to do with her and Lyn's supports yet...I'm not sure how to have them interact in general. Hector outright distrusts Lyn, but I'm not sure on Ninian.
And, of course, again, the issue is that Hector and Ninian's central concern with Lyn is also central to the plot...so developing it in support convos would conflict with their developing views in the main story. Sigh, too bad I don't know how to reprogram the support system to work more like FE9/10 where getting supports depends on how many chapters character fought in together. That lets you have the supports match the story developments properly.
I guess this is why, when you think about it, in FE7 and FE8, the main story doesn't really involve the relationships between the main characters changing. Their relationships with non-playable characters change, but not within the player-controlled units. Or not super dramatically, anyway.
But, anyway, the first 16 chapters are written at least! And I'm mostly done coding chapter 14, so then there's just chapters 15 and 16, and testing the events. No doubt they'll all break and I'll have to fix them lol...but it's progress!
You know what's one odd thing about text in FE7? I've written 16 chapters worth of text now, and it's not like I write a tiny amount of text either. And yet, I've only just reached the chapter 4 text slots. FE7 puts so little text in each slot for some reason. Yeah, some of that is because there's a lot of different tutorial prompts early in Lyn mode, so those are all extra slots...but there are lots of times where text is just split between two text slots for no evident reason. I mean yeah, I tend to do very few on-map cutscenes so there's no movement between bits of dialogue that would require multiple text slots, and yes that's a bit lazy, but still. It surprised me.
But yeah, look for the beta sometime in the future!
And that's basically what I'm up to...trying to get started on writing a paper at work, working on my romhack, trying to do a good job DMing my D&D group. I've actually got ideas for a homebrew campaign, but have been having trouble putting it together. I just don't know how to properly map a city, is the thing. Maybe I'll wait until the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide comes out, I dunno.
Hopefully, next time I post, I will have a full-time job...that's the dream, anyway...*fingers crossed*