Saints and Sinners FINALLY up

Chapter 3

Yeah, um. I still have no idea why that took so long. But it's done now, and next week I'll work on TD, which is also insanely overdue.

The good news is, Picasa finally fixed their mass upload widget so it didn't compress all images the same regardless of your setting, so uploading is now less tedious than before (and slightly faster).

Non-LJ users: I will be posting a spoilery followup post at my livejournal soonish.

this week is full of FAIL

I'm... really not sure what happened to the week. Again. On the good news front, my sleep schedule, which has been really munged up, seems to be back to normal, so I'm hoping that'll help. And I got some comments to folks on boolProp. On the bad news front, no, I'm still not done writing the new S&S chapter and haven't gotten anywhere with TD. Both of which suck, yea verily.

I did, however, finally notice that the select in Photoshop has a fixed ratio option, which will make cropping quicker. So, um. Yay. I'm a bit past the halfway point, but I'm probably not getting any more done today, alas.

molasses

Pictures are sorted and split, one set for the chapter I'm working on and the rest thrown into a folder for a second chapter later.

I really need to go comment on some recent releases, aside from the brief comments a couple people got on LJ posts... maybe not today, but I am reading even if you aren't seeing comments...

The molasses? That's my brain.

More later, I hope.

no, not dead

And all the Gen B kids are finally in college. I just had another of those easily-distracted weeks, and this weekend is just gonna be worse because the Gub'mint Stimulus Check came and we're getting new games with part of it.

I will work on sorting pics and writing as quickly as I can, though don't expect to see an S&S update until after the weekend, and TD probably... end of next week, maybe? I'm not making any promises. But I'm trying to make a schedule for rotating through games so this stops happening.

I seem to have fixed my hair binning issues. I think. I do tend to bin hairs unless they're advertised as binned, plus I have some rules for what bin things go in (a lot of things people call brown I think of as dark blonde, and if I genuinely can't decide if something is red or brown I throw it in custom, for instance). Anyhow the problem seemed to be putting white hairs in custom even tho I marked the elder as elder. I changed it so all white is now just elder and if I really want white hair on a younger person I'll export and import it.

I'm still not sure who is going to be heir. Without giving anything away, I can at least give you a taste of my dilemma. One kid I might want because they're the only one not a certain Aspiration and the only one with Akio's eye colour is also the best looking. One of the others rolled bi, which isn't necessarily a reason to not use them but does mean that if the person they end up liking best is of their own gender I probably would want to skip them. More than likely I'll post some pics and stats after the chapter is out (on LJ only for the cut tag) and see if anyone has an opinion, though I'm not going to hold a real vote, just solicit some feedback.

Have a good weekend. I'll be adventuring in the north and building galactic empires, so I'm sure I will. ^_^

Hair glitches

There's something really screwy going on with elder hair colours in my game. I don't know if I'm having game issues or binning issues or what, but some hair that appears white in previews and even appeared white after change spontaneously became black, and now it's white in previews and portraits but black on the head...

I'm going to rebin all the hair I binned in the hopes it's just some weird pointer glitch or I messed up binning in the first place or something. I just tried with two specific hairs I had it happen on as an experiment to see if that helps, but I may not get back into the game tonight to test it.

(I really hope it's just a weird misbin issue and rebinning will fix it at least. Seeing as how my honey's computer exploded yesterday I'm feeling pretty paranoid, though. Not. Um. Literally exploded. But the video card is screwed and possibly other problems.)

Where did the week go?

Okay, I got distracted, there were health issues, and now it's Thursday and I'm about where I'd hoped to be Monday night... so everything's behind.

I'm going to get the Gen B kids to college and then do a chapter, which may or may not go up to that point. Likely "not", but we'll see. A few are already there, but I've still got the younger ones to go. I'm not bothering to play college until everyone's there... the kids will go into dorms based on their age group so I can just play the eldest kids more.

As soon as that's done, I'm going to focus on TD for a bit, doing the next episode and the extras... I'll probably release E4 first and then the extras as a separate update. Then I'll work on E5 too. I've got some building to do in S&S so I can alternate in case I get bored with shooting. Also I can play Neopets or something for short breaks. It's been far too long since I released my last one, though, so I'd like to try to get E5 up fairly quickly after the extras... I also really need to start working on the full scripts for E8 onwards.

In the meantime, while you're waiting for an actual chapter or episode, have a lolSim:

Today's WTF Moment

So, I did go fiddle with my Uni housing, but only in the sense of fiddling with existing designs and adding another 2-bedroom option. I'll do a 3- and maybe a 4-bedroom next time.

Then I went to actually, y'know. Play.

I've had some issues with my headmaster being a jerk, at least in one house. Two visits, two barely-scraping-by approvals. He rejected almost all the schmoozing. So I was thinking about manually generating a second one at least to give myself another option... and frankly, was tempted to teleport him over to my simSelf's house and whack him.

I think he must've heard me, because when I had him over to another house, he not only accepted most of the schmoozing, I actually got as many schmooze points as I did tour points...

Anyhow, all that led to this loltastic moment, courtesy of ACR:



I'm still going slow, but I think next week you can have either a large chapter, or a chapter followed reasonably quickly by another. I do want to get some work done on the next ep of TD but I think it's going to wait until next week.

some progress and an odd glitch

I actually have the game loaded still right now, but I am taking a quick break after some bafflement.

Blather Blather Blather

I'm so behind. I just... haven't loaded the game. I have skimmed the updates on my list but not read in depth or (obviously) left comments. Oh, except Miranda's BC, I need to go read that. I actually do want to play, I just keep getting distracted by other things. Like, um, I was going to play last week, but then I found the FMVs/cutscenes from a game I couldn't finish, so I was watching those, and then it was suddenly 3 days later...

I'm also still having issues with the entire concept of Free Time and Apartments. On the one hand, not only do I not want SecuROM on my machine, but I refuse to reward EA for releasing buggy products, being slow to patch, forcing one to buy subsequent EPs to get fixes for stuff they broke in earlier EPs (which they just did again with the FT patch, I noticed), and putting invasive, security-hole ridden, crappy DRM on their products and proposing to put even worse on future ones.

On the other hand, Free Time has some things I'd really like to play with (hobbies really do seem like they'd be fun, for one), and Apartments, while I'm not interested in the concept so much, has SPIRAL STAIRCASES. And a some other things I wish they'd had earlier.

So... sorta sad to do without, but I really don't want them having my money. For FT, I have been waffling about buying used and using third-party fixes to keep my computer uncompromised and my game running with minimal trouble. I just don't know. It's making me a bit cranky, too. Also, last time I installed a new EP mid-legacy, it ate my legacy. This time I've got better backups so I could revert but money is very tight around here so if I buy something I damn well better get use out of it.

I know there's, erm, money-free options, but I prefer to not use those even in these circumstances. If for no other reason than it validates gaming company's views on DRM. Not that DRM really stops those things. But that's another topic.