#i've been slowly learning how to decorate properly lately

[abugidaithink]

what if i made a rate-worthy demon level and then made a humanization of that

[tomyo]

Story of seasons friends of Mineral town: The Powertrip

I would like you to come back to a simpler time with me, dear reader. Do you remember Kanye's Power? Do you remember the mlp version? Around that time, I shared on this exact blog some cringey art reveling in exploiting the ruby spice farming trick to for the first time properly fun my wonderful life farm. Now and again, a bokumono game gives its players some way to break the game, but the friends of mineral town took it to a new level.

Okay, let's rewind. Amidst playing ANB, I became frazzled from the sheer amount of mechanics I had to keep track of. I have moved Yuri into town, but now I was struggling to complete restoration project 3. At some point, I messed up a day and took a step back. Now I have not kept track of switch games on my backlog, but this past winter, I was gifted fomt but had not touched it. Fomt was my first HM game and something I knew intimately since it was so straightforward. I decided to take a quick shot at it. Oh, how novel it was at the start.

Within one night's worth of work, I had basically become the kingpin of quaint Mineral Town.

I did not intend it, in fact I barely read anything major. Just some basic costs and a crop guide. However, during the first horse race, I was saving money for a new rucksack but now was unable to buy it. I take a look at the medal information and figure I'd try my luck at getting the power berry seeing as save scumming was much less tedious now. However instead, I ended up with a good number of broaches. That was when I made my first 50k.

Now you can ship the broaches just fine but I had learned of selling to Huang and figured I should befriend him for next time. Pretty much a day later I ended up with van's favorite (VF from here out) to which I believe is a new addition that you can sell to Huang for ~50k each.

Apparently, you get this every time your transaction count lands on a 10 in its count. Heavily exploitable, but you don't even need to try. So far I have received 3 without even trying and it's been more than enough money to basically complete the game.

By mid summer I had enough to pay for one of every animal, upgrade the house fully and furnish it fully, upgrade all weapons to max, and upgrade the barn and coop one level up AND buy the materials for that rather than slowly accrue it.

The thing is, I also had completed most of this by late spring. All the animals I needed and plenty of seeds, it was time to call upon the sprites. As one should know, sprites love flour, the easiest bribery ever. Had all seven won over in time to plant 90, yes 90, pineapples. And even more plants with that, about 10 of everything I could have at the moment. The money every couple of days was ludicrous. I was making thousands without some cheat. I was even smart enough to not hire all of them at once so there was always coverage. It was basically great assistance while I built up my skill with the watering can. Sadly not mythril yet but gold works fine.

So I'm living large, what now?

Well child me was not as good at patience with this game and would do dumb shit like make myself pass out and only talk with Karen. I guess it's time to befriend the town.

Now this time as I had remarked previously, I intended to marry Elli. Though as a divergence back up, I also confessed to the harvest goddess my interest and was giving some stuff to karen too. Oh, but there is romancable gift options? Darn, and the new guy has a boyfriend gift for you too. Oh wait, the game ENCOURAGES YOU to date all the singles. Yes. Bokumono outprogressed stardew valley in the same game that it first let you date same sex (not as a conditional feature). I mean, how can I say no to that? Why shouldn't I date the whole town before settling down? I WANT FREE HOUSE DECOR DAMMIT.

And boy have I achieved that. Guess what. Most singles have a really simple to get thing in their likes category. Most people in fact like store bought flour too as I've learned.

So now I am in early Fall, collecting various foliage and woeing some people to let me into their rooms and give me recipes. I am mostly waiting around to repeat my sudden wealth gain at the fall races but now with tens of thousands instead of the previous 3k I had at the time. It would take roughly 5000 broaches to buy that cabin from Gotz, although that doesn't factor material or if they'll let me keep that many broaches. Moreover I'm holding out for the free beach house at 150 gifts to which should come in fall of next year if I am pious.

But what's most on my mind is buying my first dog and learning cooking so I can spend the winter lake mining for kappa jewels, some of each gem, and the power berry. If I get the cursed tools as well is up in the air since I still need to upgrade 5 of 6 tools to mythril which takes quite a lot of time especially since not every one is full exp yet. Likely I will try to upgrade the hoe and hammer before winter, the watering can at the start of it, and get the axe and pole done in time to trek the depths one last time.

Sadly what has truly stopped the glory of this progression is simply my real time availability to play it. I started at the end of my free time week and have been busy since. Maybe one day i'll finally be able to gain those mythical houses that were so unattainable in the og.

[dashawfrostart]

This *Past* Week In "Time & Again" #16: Preps For Something Big (And Unknown)

In regard to "Time & Again", the last week was... rather odd. One might possibly say it was somewhat uneventful, but that's not really true. In fact, it was SO EVENTFUL that I'm a little agitated right now. Or maybe "agitated" is not the right word. The writer/editor in me, sadly and to my shame, is failing to put it properly into words now to make it descriptive enough.

The most important thing is that little stuff here and there in Chapter 5 has been improved, altered (where needed) and fixed. So now it looks even better. For example, I recoloured a whole set of speech bubbles in Inkscape to make certain that the readers understand it easier to whom the certain lines belong to. As I worked on that particular improvement, I learnt a new trick yet again. I really like it how the newer interface in the latest versions of Inkscape works comparing to, say, that from the version 0.92 that I used when I only started to learn vector software. It makes everything much easier and allows to swap certain things in a matter of a few clicks (but also including a few minutes of swearing because I didn't realize that I was hitting the wrong buttons to begin with - that's how it sometimes goes for me 😅… but dis ok, everybody is learning, right?!). That goes for swapping gradients on the go, as well. I learnt that one can just import another SVG file that had extra gradients into another one to make extra pre-made gradients available in the list for an easy colour swap - and I needed that because I had to use the exact same colours for certain speech bubbles. I could've used a colour picker, of course, to take the colours from an already complete page... but I'd say swapping the gradient colours from a dropdown list is easier and hassle-free. I like that.

(those two pictures above are the examples of what I did, taken from one page: those are the straight exports of the speech bubbles from Inkscape. To the left, that's an old version, and to the right that's an updated new version as it is going to appear in the final release)

I also checked all the text again to make sure that I never missed anything that needed to be italicized (further reading on how I improved my font and created an italic version of it is in my previous post). Fonts are important in my story. Whenever something is highlighted in the text, be it through the formatting or via additional decorative effects - that MEANS certain something. The change of the font itself is also significant. Little details like that make me happy, and I love to see how meticulous the other artists can be when it comes to the little details like that. In my opinion, in art every little detail has a certain meaning, has an impact on the story and/or how it's perceived by the readers. So, in short, everything is important. It might be a hint of sorts, after all.

I even mused ahead, and not only I took extra notes on important monologues/dialogues for Chapter 6 that I'll start working on later this year (approximately in summer), but I also brainstormed the whole idea of "Time & Again" all over and came up with the certain concepts for the very distant story elements, even in regard to Chapter 8. I got ways to go, but it's never wrong to fantasize and refine what you've already had in your mind for the future 😉.

I am patiently waiting, enjoying my nice cup of Earl Grey tea in my apartment on this snowstormy day (yep, we are suddenly snow buried), as my editor gives the chapter a second read for further refinement. I'm very content about how it's going.

And I'm slowly setting up a page for Chapter 5 on my Itch.io - I'm gradually, resolutely getting there.

That's practically all I've done for the story itself within the last 7 days or so.

Majority of my incredible effort lately has been put into something else though.

And here's some important news: I've been trying to prepare for the two grand adventures that potentially await me in May. But - funny how it often happens this way in life, innit? - realistically speaking, only one of these adventures is going to take place in my life, for they are mutually exclusive. There is simply no way to combine them. It's either/or - no options in between. Therefore, knowing in advance that I put double the effort, only half of which will potentially pay off, it makes my life right now pretty fun, no doubt about it. But this is something that absolutely has to be done.

One of those endeavours is artistic - and another one has a great life importance to me. The artistic one though requires A LOT of preparation and a certain financial investment, too. Unfortunately, where it all stands right now, due to the time limitations, I am terribly restricted in my options. This is why I'm virtually trying to do a tribal dance with a tambourine in my right hand, twirling around the dining table, singing incomprehensible impromptu songs in all the languages I remotely speak in (hopefully not futile) attempts to draw a certain positive outcome closer to me. And trust me on that: this is not an easy task. I foresee myself looking like a sun-dried prune once the hassle is over.

You know, in videogames, I view RNG as some kind of a nuisance. It might be nice at times, but, being a fan of games where I have full control over everything I do, I cannot appreciate RNG very much. I like to be responsible about my own actions, and I want to know when I screw up or succeed, so that I could make adjustments to my actions accordingly. All this "RNG a.k.a. gambling, bro!" makes me cringe. In cases like that, I always feel like AI just hates me, LOL. Never have I been very lucky in small life events either... well, except for that one time, or maybe two at best. Well, if interpreting having blue jays at my balcony feeder as "a lucky event", then I'd say three. Yup.

Closer to May, aside from Chapter 5 release, hopefully! - I will make an announcement about if I rolled 20 for realsies and what The Real Life RNG is gonna present me - because the choice between the two possible routes does not depend on me. So we'll have to go from that. It's also fair to mention one of these routes potentially leads to me going radio silent (blog silent?.. internet silent?..) for a month. Which means no updates on the state of "Time & Again" for a while.

But enough of babbling for now, otherwise I turn into Edgar - who babbles all the time (according to Lothar anyway). That was another one not-really-to-the-point post. I had plenty of those many years ago 😁

See you soon! 👋