#now I know why alternative textures exist lmao

[mesquitecandle]

The con of mods: retroactively ripping the color and joy out of vanilla farm layouts from path and building recolors.

Still like both these old layouts though, even if I screwed up on the animal area for the beach farm.

[mellz117]

Hi! I’m Mellz and I’m starting up Kingdom Hearts 2 on the PlayStation 2! 

Just below are links to the first parts of my previous Kingdom Hearts plays.

[ KH1 ] _ [ Re:CoM Sora ] _ [ KH Re:CoM Riku ]

It’s been a hot minute, like 3,155,763 smoldering hot minutes, which would be 6 years including leap years. Yeah it was 01/27/2014 last I touched this game, exactly 6 years ago to this day (01/27/2020) as of me starting up again. This was an accident.

Guide thingy: Things like long gaps between commentary and days will be separated by a line of dots like that ->  ……

Text relating to an image posted will have a blockquote either above and/or below the image

Dialogue exchanges will also be separated by a blockquote

Ok I'm playing on standard difficulty, if I'm having a hard time, then I just suck. If you’re reading this and haven’t experienced KH2 for yourself, why are you here? Go away, there’s spoilers for things that aren’t revealed until later.

SO LET’S JUST JUMP INTO IT

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I always liked this fancy CGI opening. There’s a lot of things I missed last I saw it.

IT’S HIM. Look how cute he is! 

So we start off with a recap of Kingdom Hearts via a dream it seems and our protagonist, my precious boy Roxas, wakes up his own home all alone because apparently DiZ didn't create a digital family for him. But KH is notorious for forgetting parents, so maybe they did. I’m not Cinema Sins so I wont ping this game for not giving Roxas fake parents lmao

In the next scene Roxas is more interested in his own hands than he is in his friends' conversation. 

blurry ring textures, blurry checker pattern. Not everything holds up well on a flat screen TV

He hasn't been paying attention so he's just as confused as the player is at this point when he finally takes his attention off his hands.

This dialogue is so early 2000's. KH1 and CoM avoided this but with the urban setting of Twilight Town it's DEFINITELY noticeable and outdated. So rumors have spread about Roxas, Hayner, Pence, and Olette that photographs are being stolen, and THEY'RE the theives. Who is the operator of the rumor mill? Seifer and his posse. Also the actual WORD is gone too, they try to say “photo” but it just DOESN’T EXIST. This is where the game gets a bit odd.

TUTORIALS GALORE. I JUST WANT TO PAUSE AND CHANGE THE CAMERA CONTROLS STOP TELLING ME ABOUT MY NEXT OBJECTIVE but no no it’s telling me how to lock on, control my camera, context sensitive buttons, etc 

This girl’s dress looks like shes wearing a bra over it 

I like how the animal AI hasn't changed at all in this entire series. And by like I mean hate, KH3 doesn't change that. Sven is as boring as this cat we have to look at.

The gang heads to the sandlot where Seifer, Fuujn, Raijin, and Vivi like to hang out I guess? Vivi is a little, solid black, wizard dwarf amongst all these regular humans and no one bats an eye. This shit is normal. Seifer with his stupid Seto Kaiba jacket, shows up to further accuse Roxas and his friends of stealing photos, one specifically of Roxas flat on his face and Seifer standing triumphantly over him (which we’re actually shown later). "That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers" he says in regards to it and challenges Roxas to a rematch.

A+ dialogue

Seifer. My dude, ya dumb-dumb. If you think for one second that I'm gonna let my boy lose to you, you are sorely mistaken. 

“If you get on your knees and beg, maybe I’ll let it slide.” Seifer says and Roxas plays it slick, taking a knee and looking through a convenient selection of foam weapons. Battle ensues.

So of course I win because Seifer is a pleb, and Pence takes a commemorative ______ of Roxas's sound victory, but oh no! Something stole the camera right out of Pence's hands! Roxas gives chase, because apparently he's the only one who cares enough to do so, and confronts the actual thief, a Dusk type Nobody. Roxas is taking this creature encounter rather calmly. Like mild confusion at most.

I hate these things, they're creepy. When you do a reversal on them they like, plant their hands on the ground behind them and their legs wrap around their arms while they spaz out. Ughghdhahh

Of course Roxas's foam bat doesnt cause any damage to the Dusk, and suddenly a familiar giant key digitally manifests in his hands. DiZ is installing mods I see. I have a Keyblade mod in Skyrim, so we have something in common.

After we defeat the thief the next scene shows the gang at the usual spot with the recovered photos. Ok ok so was "photo" the only word deleted from the vocabulary or were any other alternative words taken away too? Like, if they could have said "picture" this whole time, they would have had much less stupid sounding dialogue exchanges. Whatever lmao.

“Tell us about the picture thief.”

“Not much to say. The pictures were just lying there.”

You liar. Tell them about how you fought a wormy, white boy.

Pence notices all the pics are of Roxas and speculates the picture thief wanted to take the REAL Roxas and Hayner is like

The best friendships are ones where you can take jabs at each other and know there’s no malice intended.

 In the scene thereafter, the kids go their separate ways, the evening(?) sun assaults Roxas's eyes, and whenever he closes them he gets another vision? Idk what time of day it is it always looks the same.

God ok as someone who hadn’t played CoM before playing KH2 for the first time, I must have been SUPER lost regarding who DiZ and Namine were and why Sora is in the pod. More recaps of KH1: I don’t know why they found it necessary to redub over the old voices with the new actors in these flashbacks.

Moving on. Roxas learns what the Keyblade is through his dreams. On his way to meet up with his friends, he tries summoning the Keyblade with a stick, when that doesn’t work he carelessly throws it aside and it hits this cloak clad man behind him. This dude is either completely unfazed by that is or so offended he can’t even say anything and walks away before he goes all Karen on Roxas’s ass.

We’re back at the usual spot and summer vacation is nearing it’s end. Hayner wants to go to the beach before school is back in session! You poor fuckers...

Same, dude. I’m waiting on my tax returns, looking forward to that.

SKATEBOARD

“TO DEFEAT THE HUNSSSSSSS!”

Pretzels at the beach? Salty and not refreshing. I got you fam, I’ll make enough money for a watermelon. Roxas is so poor omg... How much is 150 Munny in American currency?

Just BEAT the cargo with a foam bat. What’s IN the bag? Is it trash? Clothes? Is it potentially breakable? Next. Time to beat some bees!

So Poster Duty was my go-to job in this game in the past because you could get 100 Munny if you did well. But now that I’m older I realized how annoying it is. I had an efficient route planned out, hit as many of the 3 poster placements in that route, and be over and done with that in about 1:10....

But then Roxas goes aND DOES THIS!

FUCKING SKIPS THE ONE DIRECTLY NEXT TO HIM, DEFYING GRAVITY IN FAVOR OF THE POSTS BELOW

HE DOES THIS CONSISTENTLY!! I do have a live reaction to this but it’s too big for tumblr. I’ll have it up on youtube one of these days

Eventually I stopped sticking posters to walls and became a mailman until the game made me stop.

Black-clad man is back with his own stick! Oof, Roxas eats the pavement and is manhandled by cloaky boy. WAS THIS ROUGH TREATMENT REALLY THAT NECESSARY? You might wanna treat Sora's Nobody with a little more respect. AND YOU STOLE HIS HARD-EARNED MONEY! YOU BASTARD!

The gang is on the clock tower, very dangerously high up. Wtf what if someone falls?! Roxas feels so guilty about what happened and Hayner gets over this little fiasco pretty quickly and the next day he already has another fun plan.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

On his way to the station, Roxas crosses paths with Pence and Olette, the latter two freeze and Roxas meets Namine. Is her interest in Roxas linked to her desire to be Sora’s friend? A strange girl tells Roxas she wanted to meet him “at least once” and he doesn’t know what to do lol. Namine doesn’t stay long, leaving Roxas with his confusion. What is going through his head? A girl he doesn’t know seems to know him well enough to want to see him. Pence and Olette unfreeze after Namine is out of the shot. Pence and Olette have such a cute relationship, I’d love for them to be siblings. Pence goes shopping with her even if he might not want to. I can relate, I hate clothes shopping.

These Dusks don’t seem like too much of a threat tbh, they just kinda swagger slowly towards Roxas and grab his hand. Roxas hardly struggles to escape to the sandlot.

Chicken wuss

WE FINALLY GET SOMEWEHERE, we end up on the stained glass pillars in the Station of Serenity (?). Time to grind for like 5 minutes because this giant noodle boy already killed me once.

This thing really unsettles me. All the creature Nobodies do! They’re all twitchy and stretchy. DISGUSTING

DAMN THAT IS A HIGH FALL HOW DO YOU SURVIVE THAT?!

Upon defeat, this big noodle boy falls on top of Roxas and Namine saves him from being enveloped by darkness.

Namine really seems to like to silence him. First she shoves her hand in his face but that was too forward. This time she daintily places a finger over her lips and says her part. Black-cloak guy shows up, rough handles Namine a little bit but not as roughly as he did Roxas. AND SHOVES ROXAS INTO A PORTAL

SEIFER IS AN OPPORTUNISTIC SHITLET POSING IN FRONT OF HIS UNCONSIOUS BODY. Bitch you didn’t earn that. Hayner, Pence, and Olette see Roxas with Seifer’s gang, Hayner feels betrayed thinking Roxas ghosted him in favor of Seifer. He stays pretty salty about it for a good while

IM NOT WORKING ON THIS LIKE I SHOULD. ITS ALMOST A MONTH SINCE STARTING. In my next post we'll be "Struggling" to progress. Eh? Eh? Get it? Like the tournament?

I'm not funny.

Here’s the next part: [ _2_ ]

Below is a compilation of my live reactions and comments throughout this point of the game.

[minervamagicka]

CC Creator Question Tag

I was on a CC bender and saw the talented @murfeelee doing this, and of course, I think it’s bloody fantastic, so here are my answers. It was actually pretty fun to do, all things considered.

Under a read-me so I don’t bomb some dashboards with long paragraphs.

1. What was the hardest project you’ve worked on so far?

Honestly, the Wrench CC I released a while back. This was mainly because no pre-ripped models from Watch_Dogs 2 exist, which meant I had to export models from my own copy of the game. Now, normally, this isn’t an awful fate or particularly hard for me to have to do, but for the love of God, Ubisoft makes it HARD to sift through their game files. That was probably the hardest part of making that set, mainly because I couldn’t find the poor guy’s textures and spent way too long having to blindly search through W_D2′s files.

  2. How long have you been creating cc?

Eh, I don’t know, 2016? 2015? I did private recolours and such earlier but I really got into the heavy stuff when The Witcher 3 came out and I wanted to start converting clothing, which is how my earlier abominations came about when I started heavily experimenting with meshes and rigging. I’ve done stuff in Garry’s Mod previously -- Damn it, Valve, I want to learn how to rig for Source but it’s TOO HARD -- involving .obj files and the like so I had some prior knowledge of modelling programs, but little knowledge of how to apply it to the Sims 3. A lot of my education was trial and error.

3. What’s your most favourite thing you’ve created?

GARRUS.

Call me the staples button because that was easy to determine. I don’t even know why I decided to start working on that project, I think it was a mix of fascination and hard-on for Mass Effect at the time, and also to see if it was possible with how I understood the Sims 3′s functions. And, well, it was! It was also so different than other CC I had seen coming out, and involved a beloved character... Perfect storm for me to be proud.

4. What’s your most hated thing you’ve created?

As cliche as it sounds, I really don’t like the job I did on Triss’ outfit from the Witcher 3, which was my first piece of CC on this Tumblr. I am 100% going to go back and re-do that (And more) just to make up for how trash I think I handled that outfit, to bring it up to my current standard of quality. In fact, I might start on that now.

5. What inspires you to create?

Honestly? Lack of what I wanted. Unless I’ve received a request for something, 100% of the time, when I release something, it’s because I wanted it in my game. Also that I want my fandom OCs to be dressed properly in clothes from their universes, damn it.

6. What gets you unmotivated to do anything or to delete your project?

When I hit a roadblock I can’t overcome no matter what I try. I generally have��‘systems’ I can run myself through when making CC, especially conversions -- ‘Oh, that doesn’t work? Cool, I’ll just try this..’. -- But when that fails too that’s when I’m like ‘Welp, time for a work-around to the work-around!’ and by that, I usually mean finding an alternative means of getting the effect I want.

7. What’s one thing you wish you knew how to do/do better?

Making actual sims. Most of the time I’m pretty insecure/worried about how my Sims stack up to others, and tend to overcompensate for that by decking them out in custom CC that makes them speshul.

8. How long does it usually take you to make something?

That sort of depends. If I want it, and I want it now? I can have an outfit in-game in 3 or so hours, and that’s working nonstop on it. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee it being perfect the first time around, but I’ve streamlined my outfit conversion process down to the point it takes me no time at all.

9. Is there a certain schedule you stick to when publishing?

Seeing as this blog was literally dead for half a year because I didn’t want to put anything out... No, not really. Whenever it’s done.

10. Your favorite programs to work with?

I would be lost without Blender. Seriously. Without Blender I’d be screwed. Milkshape and Photoshop take a close second as I use all three at once in my creation process.

11. Who do you look up to (creator wise)?

@kurasoberina was always an inspiration, but I think a lot of people can say that :^)

12. How many projects do you have at the moment?

Good joke, kid. Uhhhh. Currently, I would classify my crusade to convert Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate objects and clothing to be my project, and there are various subprojects under that -- Assassin attire, Victorian-era attire/props & then the attire and props from the hidden WW1 segment of the game. Right now, focused more on the Assassin attire and the WW1 objects because that’s where my OC is, lmao.

13. Screenshot your wips folder (if you have one)

Take me out to dinner, first.

Yes, the New Folder thing is real. Yes, I actually use that as an organizational system. Yes, it works for me. It’s best not to ask how or why. The name of my WIP folder is funnier, tbh.

14. Do you plan on creating for a long time or is there a certain period you know you’ll stop?

I don’t see myself stopping until it becomes completely unviable to do, I.E. TS3 becomes too outdated or something. Maybe my public releases will slow down -- Hell, they already have, but I still want nice clothes in my game.

15. What helps you keep focus during your creating process?

I have Spotify character playlists that I listen to when I’m doing conversions for a particular character -- I.E. I listened to Ayessa’s playlist whilst doing her outfit. Or I throw on Netflix. Actually, weird as it sounds, when I really want to focus I put an episode of Ghost Adventures on, because watching 3 surfer dudes yell at the Devil is surprisingly helpful.

Not sure how many CC creators follow me, but I’d love to see any of you guys give this a try too. Could be fun.