#anyway did this bug get fixed in the new patch?

[99simproblems]

Wtf Is this a weird fetal position hug?

[changingplumbob]

First Round - Day two (Luther group)

Kristina: I love this place! It's so big

Nathalie: You don't think it's bugged do you

Alaina: We're on a reality show. If every single room doesn't have a microphone then someone didn't do their job. Aren't I smart *looks deliberately at camera*

Kay: I think is going to be fun!

Kristina: Kay did you get the room by mine? I reserved it for you

Nephinae: Of course you did

Nephinae storms off leaving the group confused.

Nephinae (voiceover): Kristina just gets on my nerves. And then she goes stealing my emotional support bestie? She's lucky I didn't clock her in the face- shout out to my past therapist Dale for teaching me not to punch people when I get angry. I just needed a minute to cool off

Alaina: She's interesting

Kristina: More like needlessly dramatic, I hope I didn't make you feel awkward Kay

Kay: *smiles* Not at all, it's nice to feel included

Abigail: Your ex sounds like utter garbage and I hope if I ever made him coffee it was terrible

Kristina: Oh you should have- no I probably shouldn't say what ingesting that plant does on tv

Alaina: *laughing* Remind me not to get on your bad side Kristina

Nathalie had disappeared outside to find Nephinae, but is it worth approaching a riled up hot head?

Nathalie: *scared* Thank goodness you're out here, there must be less microphones out here

Nephinae: *chuckling* the microphones are mainly where the cameras are Nat

Nathalie: That's what you think but I'm sure there's bugs hidden everywhere!

Sighing Nephinae leads Nathalie inside where they do a thorough inspection of the kitchen for any secret bugs.

Nephinae: See? Only two mics that aren't very hidden because they need to pick up sound

Nathalie: Someone must have moved the extras when we were outside! That'll be it darling

Upstairs Kay and Alaina have found the table tennis table, and decide to use it for its intended purpose.

Alaina: Best of five?

Kay: Have you ever played before

Alaina: No but how hard can it be

It was in fact very hard and most of the balls ended up raining down in the kitchen or front hall...

Nephinae (from the kitchen): Holy Cowplant! That one hit me on the head

Kay: Sorry!

Nathalie: I was just saying darling that if you dressed more your age-

Abigail: Save it. I don't want to listen to out there ideas all through lunch

Kristina: Abby Nathalie may have different fashion ideas than you do but it doesn't make her weird

Nephinae: She's just... adventurous

Alaina: Deanna there you are! Come sit by me for lunch

Deanna did not choose to sit by Alaina for lunch.

...

Alaina: I was just saying acting is a skill everyone- certainly every woman should have. Are you trying to say you've never acted to sell any of those nursery plants

Kristina: I say the truth about the plants, it's what the customers deserve

Nathalie: I was once a background actor in a laundry powder commercial. I had to fall in a patch of mud six times

Abigail: And I'm not allowed to say that was weird?

Kay: You didn't think of sticking to acting then Nathalie?

...

Nephinae: We found two in here

Nathalie: *nervous* But there's got to be more

Deanna: How else could they capture all the cute moments

Kristina: Yes we have to remember we are being recorded by cameras anyway

Kay: It's not so bad Nathalie. If you think about it maybe... I want to say 80% of what they record won't actually be used

Abigail: At least that many customers I serve don't even look at the latte art

...

Nephinae (voiceover): You could say my morning was... rough. Yeah my temper got the better of me so that kind of slowed the bonding. It was nice that Nathalie came to check on me though. At least I think she wanted to, she may just have wanted to unload her fears. Anyway for skill time I figured I should work on my charisma. I've fixed worse relationships than I have here so far, I can bring things back

Kay (voiceover): Things are going well. People seem to like me which is new, I don't really have friends outside my family anymore. And Deanna sat by me at lunch! We didn't get much talking done with some of the others having problems so hopefully I can get a solo date. In that mind I decided to work on charisma for the skill building time, I'll need to make the most of conversations I manage to fit in

Kristina (voiceover): Part of me wishes Nephinae could be a grown up and ignore whatever negative first impression she has of me... But the other part of me says be genuine. If you dislike me so be it, but don't think Deanna won't find out, her sister is co-producer after all. Anyway with all my brothers, I'm used to squabbles. I worked on charisma for the skill time today, I figured it was a good first choice

Abigail (voiceover): Something just got me annoyed this morning. Was it that I spilled my coffee or that some people seem to treat me like a child? Let's go with both! *sighs* I think they're all cool but I don't think it's mutual yet, maybe I should host a campaign on an off day. People can bond when faced with an army of goblins. Anyway I did logic for the skill time, very necessary

Alaina (voiceover): What a great start, love some drama I can appear superior to. Sure I invited Deanna to sit with me but I figured Kay would distract her. You bet I'm going to dazzle the industry with the time I'm here though, just watch me win Deanna back over. Anyway what was the question? Oh skill, right. I worked on charisma, not that I really need it but still

Nathalie (voiceover): My paranoia does get worse around strangers, I admit that darling. I may be *shudders* last but I am just going to show her what she is missing out on. Then when she inevitably breaks up with whichever patsy "wins" she'll know to call me. I spoke to my mirror for the skill time but really, why would I need more charisma? It already is my best strength

Another cloudy evening meant another indoor meal. Most of the contestants had settled down from the emotional roller-coaster of the morning and the talking was a lot lighter.

Kay: You made this yourself? It's delicious

Deanna: Thank you, I'm trying to work on my cooking

Nephinae: You should try out using a juice fizzer, I think you'd enjoy it

Kristina: You can make all sorts in one of those right

Nephinae: Absolutely

...

Abigail: It is a lot of writing really. I mean you can't just do one path you know?

Deanna: In case the group want to like do something unconventional?

Abigail: Exactly! You don't want to be caught completely unaware

Kay: It sounds like a lot of fun! We should do a... what are they called? On our day off

Kristina: A campaign!

Nathalie: Or we could not act like 5 year olds and-

Alaina: How dare you, I am five years old

...

With dinner tidied away the group head to the lounge to watch a film.

Kay: I'm surprised we're not watching one of Devin's films

Alaina: No need, I've seen them all as a student of film

Nathalie: I thought you were a waitress

Alaina: I am, doesn't mean I don't know I'm going to end up acting. What are you trying to say about Abby?

Abigail: *sighs* Leave me out of it

Abigail (voiceover): Don't get me wrong, waitresses do much needed work. But I'm a barista. It's like calling a landscape architect a lawn mower. Those two seem determined to misunderstand each other

Kay: How do you think they built that set?

Nephinae: Most likely an overlay of plaster that has the detail on top of the existing structure

Kristina: That's fascinating. And they got the plants right. The amount of times I've seen movies with trees in the wrong climate. What do you think of the plot Abby?

Abigail: Huh? Oh well I did guess that he was really her father

Nathalie: Darling do you do black magic?

Abigail: No... I just know how stories are structured from playing so many games

Deanna: It's a very impressive trick

With the film over most of the ladies headed to bed. Deanna had some time chatting with Kristina, Kay and Nephinae who stuck around for another hour or two.

Nephinae: Goodnight Deanna, sorry about my attitude this morning

Deanna: That's fine, it's stressful

Nephinae: Thanks for understanding *embraces*

Nathalie (voiceover): Why should I have stayed talking to Deanna? Someone may as well wash the dishes

Sims created by: @bakersimmer, @berrysims-lp, @daedriyth, @hashimasims, @invisiblequeen, @lostinsixam

[dragonindigo245]

I took a break from Sky for quite some time. I stopped playing early in Season of Passage and got back into it this week. I've experienced a great amount of culture shock.

First and foremost, God damn it they did cackling canoneer as a traveling spirit when I was gone? That guy has two of my favorite cosmetics. Wait... no they didn't? What's a returning spirit? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ARE LETTING US HAVE EXTENDED VISITS OF MULTIPLE SPIRITS AT ONCE?

Why is the Cresent Oasis so empty? And why are all the quests minus the last boring? Why do all of the ultimate gifts for Nine Colored Deer suck? At least in seasons past the Ultimate Gifts were mid at worst. The hair and cape are kinda shit tho. If I had been around to buy the season pass I wouldn't have. That's actually just sad what they have.

I'm glad they finally redid the starting area as Aviary Village but... why does it suck so bad? Why is the tutorial so long and why do you spawn so far from the portals? Also wtf why is Home broken? Half the time the constellations don't work properly there. We don't even get traveling spirits here anymore??? Why don't we just have them in both Home and Aviary Village?

The new Days of Bloom cape looks like a lettuce leaf hah- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY HAVE EVENT CURRENCY NOW??? Why can you get barely anything per day???

As a Rhythm moth I have seen the game change many times. I think this has definitely been the biggest sucker punch I've gotten though.

That said, I'm not opposed to what's changed. I like having event currency (it's stupidly low amounts per day tho, that needs fixed) and I LOVE the returning spirits.

That said, I think Nine Colored Deer was one of the worst seasons I've played. I have not been more bored by a season ever. Also, it's stupid that Home no longer has traveling spirits and that they didn't bug fix the constellations in the patch they just released. It's fine you want players to lean towards Aviary Village but let the ogs keep their thing too?

Anyway, that's the rambles of a veteran player done and over with.

[simmancy]

I’m planning on playing a Stardew Valley-inspired save and was wondering what mods you’d recommend using.

I don’t expect to get things 1:1, but I’d like to have some mods that add and expand on the gardening system and relationships.

So first as a disclaimer I'm going to out myself and say I'm not a SDV girlie--I grew up with Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons and they're what scratches my cozy farming itch--but they're similar enough and I do have a whole ass farm save to one day return to so...

For vanilla gameplay, you can get a basic cozy farming save going with Cats & Dogs, Seasons and Cottage Living but these mods SHOULD enhance your gameplay overall. I've used most of them to varying degrees in the past--anything I haven't used I marked, but they come from creators that I highly recommend.

As always, read the requirements for each mod! A lot require the XML Injector, and relationship ones often require the Mood Pack.

This mod list was written on Patch 1.98.158.1020 / Mac: 1.98.158.1220 (June 13 2023).

Mods for Better Relationships

First Impressions by Lumpinou: I know I always suggest this one, but if you are doing ANY sort of save where romance/relationship building is a core part of it, you want this! Starting off strong with a villager is a good thing! OR you can have enemies-to-lovers!

RPO by Lumpinou: I also always suggest this one. If you don't have it, please get it! It's beautiful! It's powerful! I honestly use all the modules, but I would specifically suggest Modules 15 & 17 here as they add to relationships. Module 17 is the new RPO Attraction system. But it's nice to have the rest of it too if you don't already, especially if you're planning on kids in your save. It really adds to the gameplay to find your ~ideal partner~ and then it turns out they don't want kids when you do :O

Road to Romance by Lumpinou: This adds a romance skill to the game, with custom interactions. Add in for more in-depth romance. (It also adds in rabbit hole dates which I like to get sims offscreen for a minute)

Have Some Personality Please! by Polarbearsims: This one I suggest to help with autonomy. You want your potential love interests to act of their own accord? Their traits to matter? Get this. It'll help. It can also block off romantic interactions :) so you feel like you've earned the heart events you're imagining

Wonderful Whims by Turbodriver: I'm not currently using either WW in my saves but I would suggest it for the attraction system, as again that will help with your quest for love. It can work in tandem with the attraction system from RPO as well :)

Home Regions by Kuttoe: this isn't really a relationship mod, but I would use it anyway JUST to keep your SDV sims in town where they belong... and keep the other townies OUT. You can set which TS4 worlds you want to see overlap from as well (like if you want some out of town visitors from Windenburg showing up, etc). Fun fact, it also fixes the problem where all your townies are Japanese so

No Randoms by Zero: and finally, this also isn't a relationship mod but it's pretty handy. Maybe you're like me and you don't want the default Mayor in your cozy farm save. You created your OWN characters to fill that role. Well, with this, you can assign the NPC roles in the game. Henford-on-Bagley has several NPC roles that play into the "story" of the world (Mayor, Garden Stall owner, Agatha & Agnes, Creature Keeper, etc) so it's definitely helpful for that!

Mods for Better Farmlife

Free Range by lot51: this mod lets your cows and llamas roam freely without the Animal Shelter. They DO make messes that you'll have to clean up though (cow pies, trash, etc) and there's a few other extra little things like fairy circles that can spring up :)

Bug Life by lot51: and THIS mod brings bugs to your active lots. I always did a lot of bug collecting to make extra money in my Harvest Moon games.

Bird Life by lot51: I have NOT tried this mod out yet but I'm adding it already because if you're going to add Free Range and Bug Life already... Enhance the outdoors! Why not! Bring your farm to life! BIRDWATCH! (has anyone else played Wingspan? great game)

Farm Animal Set by TheKalino: this adds more custom animals to the game, some of which you can harvest wool or eggs from. Some are just aesthetic. They're added to the Animal Shelter. Nice to expand your farm options, if that's something you want to do!

Cottage Living Tweaks by Zero: specifically Agatha & Agnes are Mortal; Village Gossipers are Residents; Dogs Chase Foxes More Often; and Patchy Scares Foxes (that's right. Use that scarecrow for something). These are just little tweaks to help you out. To be fair, if you're using Home Regions I don't think you'll need Village Gossipers are Residents but I also don't trust TS4 and I used them both at the same time in the past so.

Better Animal Hygeine, Better Animal Hunger, Better Animal Activity by LittleMsSam: these are small tweak mods just to make your life easier with the animals. :)

Calm Bees by LittleMsSam: if you want to add beekeeping to your farm (I would), this is a nice little addition to calm your bees tf down!

Flower Arrangements slower decay by LittleMsSam: I don't remember the Harvest Moon game I got REALLY into doing flower arrangements for, but there was definitely one and I definitely spent a lot of time doing them and gifting them to my love interest. So I'm suggesting it for that reason lmao

More Woodworks by LittleMsSam: you know, just in case your farmer is really into crafting...

Pets Everywhere by Kuttoe: adds stray cats & dogs to every world, including Henford-on-Bagley. Nice if you want to play it as if your farmer befriends the dog and they join the household that way.

Dairy Cowplant by Icemunmun or Cowplant Farming by BrazenLotus: you could have both of them but I think it's just easier to pick one. These add new cowplant varieties that make... milk! They can also make different kinds of milk.... See below with the harvestables... I feel like the Cowplant really does fit with Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons' level of quirky, you know?

Functional Mill, Plant Milk Press, Dairy Churn by Icemunmun: these are custom objects to, again, add onto your gameplay. They work with the custom harvestables below to add some more stuff for your farmers to create. And they're very on theme.

Cheesemaking Skill by BrazenLotus: another custom object/mod/skill that adds to what your farmers can make. I have NOT tried it yet but I'm honestly about to throw it into my game today because I'm obsessed with the very IDEA of it. I've used BrazenLotus mods in the past so I can recommend

Custom Recipes and Harvestables

One of the best parts of these cozy farming games has always been the cooking, right? The custom harvestables will add more variety to your farm... The custom recipes are just my suggestion to spice up your game. I am a glutton for custom recipes, tbh. Besides, the way to a love interest's heart is through their stomach, right? What better way to

Custom Harvestables by Icemunmun

Custom Foods by Icemunmun (requires custom food interaction)

Custom Foods by BrazenLotus (there are a LOT here--BrazenLotus has a whole homesteading section which is really cool and was not there the last time I went to their site and I'm literally obsessed)

Grannie's Cookbook by Littlbowbub

Oni's Food Mod (I use this one the least--right now in my "gutted' mod folder I only have Grannie's Cookbook--but I've used it in the past and still highly recommend)

Hopefully this helps! Happy simming!

[a1291762]

I've been debugging SFP modules again. The last time I did this I found a hardware bug, where the clock signal we generate was not accurate enough.

This time, things were a little simpler.

There was a major update, that included a kernel upgrade. The PHY driver now knows how to talk to our chip so we don't need patches to allow that. But our old patches allowed the PHY to fall back to a fixed default if the link is up but auto-negotiation fails. The new driver was not doing that. When auto-negotiation fails, it just marks the link as down.

I'm not sure we ever advertised this ability, and we don't allow the fallback settings to be configured, but our customers were relying on this anyway so we have to make it work again.

But getting here took a while. I dusted off the low-level tool I wrote last time to talk to the PHY and figure out what is going on. Weirdly, the tool reported everything was fine, because at the PHY level, it was. Mostly.

The PHY can handle switching between Copper and SFP but the driver does not make use of this. Instead, it polls each interface to figure which should be active. So even though the SFP link was up, the driver was ignoring it, and making the copper interface active instead.

[casmourde]

long rant about bg3 and people's weird behavior towards larian

Larian's continued support of their game and their community has given some people genuine brain rot. We were lucky to even get bug fixes post-release (I'm a cyberpunk 2077 fan), and they were both kind and creative enough to give us a FREE epilogue and add FREE content, but the community at large has taken this kindness and changed it into something entirely different and really unhealthy. Every time Larian updates us on patches and bug fixes, there are hundreds of comments demanding Larian "add" new content, "fix" characters, "fix" relationships, and I'm just baffled by how entitled this is. Do you guys know how video games work? You know you used to just get a video game once and that was it. If you bought a video game you bought a finished product. With more and more patch-based games becoming popular (stuff like Fortnite, Overwatch, Stardew, Genshin, etc), we're starting to see this design model bleed into triple a titles, which is fine (I'm not a big fan personally but I enjoy a lot of these types of games anyway), but it's giving people a really weird, backwards attitude about BG3. At this point I question whether those people actually enjoy the game they played or not. They demand so many changes and edits to characters that I find it hard to believe they even like those characters at all, and would much rather live in their world of headcanon and fanfiction (which, again, is fine) -- but at some point we have to acknowledge that BG3 was made BY Larian. The things you see as flaws in character's stories are canonical, put there by Larian for a specific reason. If you go under every post and demand they "fix" Wyll, I think there's a good chance you need to sit back and wonder if maybe Wyll is just like that. Because he is. That is who he is in the game's text. That is his story. If you don't like it, then by all means discuss what you would change, but it's unfair to belittle Larian for the story that THEY GAVE YOU. This is not to say there isn't a conversation to be had about Black characters in gaming being given really boring, lackluster stories, because that is 100% a noticeable trend (Preston Garvey from Fallout 4 comes to mind). This attitude also unfortunately extends to Gortash fans, and I know I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot here, but I want to discuss it lmao. I liked Gortash "before it was cool" you could say, back when the game dropped and it was gross to think he was attractive, et cetera (this is not something to be bragging about i know), and now that it's been kind of normalized to like him, Gortash fans are getting really invasive and, to put it bluntly, annoying. They whine like children in Larian's comments sections and on their own accounts about how Larian is so "unfair" to Gortash/Durgetash, how they are purposely removing Gortash content from the game to mess with us, etc. Once again, Larian cannot physically be "unfair" about a character THAT THEY LITERALLY MADE THEMSELVES. THEY choose what content to put in THEIR game. The Gortash that is in the game is the Gortash that they decided to put there. Nobody is hiding anything from you, nobody is hurting you, you're not special or different, there is no anti-Gortash agenda. If you can't engage with the canon content that Larian gives us, then I suggest that, for your own health, you move on. Gortash is my favorite character in BG3 because of what Larian did with him, not because of what he could potentially be if Larian bowed down to all of us and gave us everything we wanted. "Gortash romance when" NEVER!!!! And that's the fun bit!!!! We can all go crazy imagining what it would be like and we can make fan communities and fanfictions and art and it's awesome! Speculation and headcanon are awesome! Just stop expecting developers to cater to your every whim! It's unfair and will end up with you being sorely disappointed! Enjoy what they gave us and change it to fit your fantasy! If you like a thing, engage with it, play it, thank the people who gave it to us. Don't pester it to change.

[sl33pyfr0gt33th]

So I had this one really wonky oc idea tucked away at the back of my mind because I really wanted to experiment with more "random" looking characters-!

I have yet to figure out how to draw the normal Mortimer but I do have a Au variant of him drawn-!

Mortimer in regular TADC is a Ai designed by Caine to fix issues with a character’s appearance wether it be repairing glitches, or just patching up any wounds they may have Mortimer is more then likely to get it done quickly!

Yet in the carnival au he would be a human stuck in the game!

I’m not sure if I got the back story of the game right when it came to making his backstory so It’s a bit of just a beta version of it so I’ll just put a basic explanation under the cut-

Mortimer is a French man who came from a big family, he would always help out around the house and with cooking

out of his family he was a lot more level headed and collected then them but even despite that he was still on good terms with them all, things however had been getting tense due to some of his sisters moving out and his youngest sister who had been staying with their parents because she was struggling to apply for colleges was getting rather stressed out, he wanted to cheer her up and remembered that video games always helped her calm down and went out to buy one for her to take her mind off the stress, when he got back home a massive arguments ended up breaking out between the two when Mortimer said that she may be overworking herself, she moved out the next day never giving Mortimer a chance to rekindle their relationship

When he got stuck in the game he’s beyond confused, being dazed and unable to recall anything from him past besides his family really did a number on his mental state, he felt beyond lonely and almost isolated, wanting to get rid of the feeling as soon as possible he went from room to room checking for one that would budge but none did that wasn’t until a room happened to open a little earlier then it should’ve via a bug in the system, and with that he made it into gangles room earlier then he was meant to

Eventually time passes and he slowly begins to forget more and more about his life before this due to the hectic nature of all the games in the circus and begins to view gangle as a little sister due to how many roles he had to play in her shows where he was a older brother, when gangle hears about this she happily encourages it, it does make Mortimer’s performances a lot better anyways and they do look kinda alike due to the masks that are in his mane, so what harm could it do?

Eventually Mortimer recalls his actual family and begins to feel rather homesick, not leaving the spare dressing room behind gangles stage and isolating himself as he tries to think of a way to escape gangle visits him and tries to get him out and talking to others again, to which he usually is forced to comply via ribbons dragging him out of there.

maybe if he completes all the games he’ll be allowed out of the game? he decides to try to finish the games saving gangles for last because he wanted to say good bye and thank her for not giving up on him before he left, he makes it rather far but through slip of the tongue gangle finds out he’s planning on leaving, and gangle doesn’t want to lose her "brother" and decides to take matters into her own hands, wrapping one of her ribbons permanently around his neck like a mock collar like the rest to of them have she makes sure that Mortimer doesn’t leave,

(Concept idea of how the ribbon would look-!)

Around the time Caine enters Mortimer is already lost, genuinely forgetting he’s a human and believing he’s just a unfinished Ai, sure he doesn’t have a room but the spare costume closet behind stage works well enough, after all who doesn’t love a nice dress up game? Plus he also gets to sew new costumes for gangles many plays! So it’s not that bad really!

I feel like Caine wouldn’t notice he’s not a Ai until much later on, after all the only person who still recalls that Mortimer isn’t a Ai is Jax who’s still rather disappointed that Mortimer doesn’t really run away when he attacks anymore

SORRY IF ITS NOT THAT GOOD MY BRAINS BEEN COMPLETELY FRIED-

[a-tale-never-told]

Update

//Hello, everyone! Mod Sam here! I have returned to Tumblr and to the story blog as well.//

//Apologies for not updating a few days ago, I was taking my computer to get fixed for the sheer amount of horrific bugs and glitches last Friday, so I had to wait untill yesterday to get the computer returned to me, all fixed up and clear of any technical issues. The ports are finally working again, and the glitching has certainly stopped. Of course, it's still far too early to call, but it seems to be overall patched up//

//During the amount of time it took to fix my computer, I think I accomplished a lot of things I never really did before. Examples include me continuing the James Bond saga from the '60s, watching the new Equalizer that came out in September, witnessing that Yuri died, and Israel pretty much blowing Hamas to pieces at this point. In other words, daily life//

// Anyway, feel free to ask me questions about those topics, as well as my thoughts on them. I think I will start the story again tomorrow, as I'm still getting used to being on this computer again after a few days without it. I might not be able to respond now, as I have schoolwork to do, but feel free to send through the ask box, and I will eventually answer them once I finished all of my work for the day.//

//Either way, I hope you all have a good morning and I will see you lads later! Take care!//

[weatheryear]

Expansion Pack

Back in the day, before the internet, or even when we had the internet but it wasn't doing anything other than Slashdot and gay Star Trek erotica, you could not update your software. You went to the store, bought a box with shrink wrap around it, (unless you had the millions to commission something custom), put the disk into your computer, installed it, and played it. If a game was published with problems, they were permanent.

We literally had shareware, which were disks that you were explicitly told you were allowed to spread, in order to get information passed around through Sneakernet.

Sneakernet is another story.

Anyways. So, the game was published, and initially, you only one two options, tell the player how to fix your game, or sell a new game.

If we take DOOM, DOOM 2 was basically an expansion pack, but the concept didn't exist yet. It was decided afterwards that an iteration of a game, a full version number increase, should have mechanics built from the ground up.

Reminder this is what happened with Super Mario.

Left: Super Mario Brothers 1 (released 1985)

Mid: Super Mario Brothers 3 (released 1988)

Rght: Super Mario World (released 1990)

This is how fast computers were developing back in the day. This was called Moore's Law.

But, there was a middle ground. You could make an Expansion Pack. Xpacs were normally priced at half a normal game, and would add a full new campaign plus a few new units or weapons.

And life was good.

With the proliferation of the internet, games could now be patched. Initially, what they did was either:

Bug Patch: Fixing problems.

Balance Patch: They change the small numbers in the background to improve the playability of the game.

Content Patch: Free content.

But then they figured out that with the internet they could make patches as often as they wanted. Instead of a the great sigh of relief being able to fix the one major problem from the game, it turned into routine. Games no longer had work out of the box, to the point that it sometimes takes years of patches before a game is video game is viewed as even playable.

And then they realized people could pay for individual content. Instead of paying $40 for a whole new campaign that was as good as the original, and a few new playable classes, and a whole new set of items, you could now charge $2 for the dozen items, $10 per character, and $20 for an extremely short campaign that can be beaten in a few hours. Instead of paying half the price for the same amount of content as the original, you pay the full price, if not more, for much worse content. Each item and character is completely separate and not meant to work together, the campaign is about as long as the tutorial was, and every - single - separate piece gets fucked over the next time Microsoft updates their DLLs, and has to be patched, individually.

And we get WoW, that carved out 95% of the original mechanics to make the game easier for casuals, and destroyed the world's lore from the very first expansion pack, that you have to pay for, along with the monthly fee, and then if you want to have anything good, you need to pay real money for it.

For the record, Vanilla WoW spent ridiculous amounts of time and effort to stop any real-money transactions. If you got caught even offering, your account would be banned.

Back in the day, if you had a disappointing expansion pack, (usually on the third+ one), you just... uninstalled it.

to put this into context, the only reason I got rid of my NES/SNES/N64 was not because the games didn't work, and was not because the games were less fun then current names, but because I had played them through so many times that I wasn't even thinking while playing. If you get a working console and working cartridge, (because barbarians cannot take care of their electronics), THEY WILL STILL PLAY.

The only reason I can't play my Windows games, (other than giving them away), is because I realized how much superior Macs are.

And now we have governments discussing how loot boxes are casinos for kids.

[indefinitelyjaded]

Empty Nest (Super Sim Update)

TFW all your kids are graduated, grown, married, moved out, and making grandbabies.

Yes, that's right -- Stella and Dexter are officially empty-nesters. All three kids aged up to Young Adults, and immediately married their high school sweethearts and got busy (pun intended) starting their own families.

Cade and Luna got engaged and immediately eloped in the backyard. I didn't bother with screenshots of Kinsley and Orange or Tate and Noemi - truthfully, those two were getting engaged and married at the same time, so I couldn't, really.

Each of the kids moved into their spouses' family homes - I was kind enough to give Cade and Kinsley new homes (that do have toilets lol), but since Nina was the only other remaining household member in the Caliente house, they had plenty of room for Tate to move in.

No pictures yet, but Stella's first grandchild is already here - Cade and Luna had a daughter, Sawyer. (Both Kinsley and Noemi are currently pregnant with one baby each, so two more grandchildren will be arriving in the very near future!)

As for Stella, the Scientist career is veeeerrrry slow going. I don't know if it's the fault of the latest game patch or if the Scientist career is just extremely bugged, but I'm having major issues with unresponsiveness and cancelling queued actions, especially while she's at work. I also didn't realize that having a relevant degree for this career wouldn't really be an advantage, other than in pay (which I don't need to worry about - between all the money Stella has made in all her many, many careers, and Dexter's daily salary, the household reserve is at like half a mil and ever growing). I have to complete all the "breakthroughs" for levels 1-8 of the career, just to get promoted to level 9. I did use a re-traiting potion to give Stella the Genius trait, so she could be focused more often, which I think is helping. (I replaced her Cheerful trait with Genius... then she got a self-discovery pop-up asking if she should get Cheerful as a bonus trait. lol)

The glitches are so bad, I finally broke down the purchased the Steel Bladder, Forever Fresh, Forever Full, Needs No One, and Never Weary reward traits, so I could minimize the amount of "things" I needed to tell her to do. Personally, I find it sort of boring/too grind-y when Sims never need to take care of needs, so I wasn't going to purchase those traits. But here we are.

(The only other reward trait I have not purchased - and will not be purchasing - is Fertile. I think we all know how I feel about babies/infants at this point. The fewer the better!)

Anyway, I'm also having her load up on crystals and metals while she's in the Scientist career, in anticipation of the jewelry-making she'll be doing in the (distant) future. Hell, when I get that far, I might just have her go back to the Scientist career temporarily to load up on supplies. lol

I did download Turbodriver's moodlet fix, so maybe that will help solve some of my issues? I'm kind of glad I don't have time during the week to play, so I won't be tempted to (further?) wreck my save file. If nothing official has been said by this coming weekend, I might just have to start a new save of something else to play with for a while.

[bedlamgames]

https://patreon.com/posts/95542289 First version of the Twine version of No Haven is now up for those on the newly renamed Discord Server+Twine Early Access Tier and above

Text of the Patreon post including the rather speculative notes under the break.

Well here it is. 

Man, I hope this goes well.

This is based on the No Haven 0.863 RAGS version which gives you an idea of how long this has taken for the conversion to get to this stage.

The patch notes are going to be a lot more speculative than usual simply as I don't know entirely what works and what doesn't. 

It's reached the point where I need more eyes on this so I can get a better idea of what works, what doesn't, and what needs to be worked on first. I'd especially like some feedback based on going for multiple months worth of play to see if the Twine version can hold together that long. 

What I know works or are at least mostly  

- Most of the Assignments that were added up to 0.863 so that's everything up to and including Lady of Light, Life in Coiled Tentacles, and The Elvish Art. I've tested a lot of these and seen at least one result for many of them. 

- Scenarios.

- Unit Barks.

- Finish Days.

- Estimate Value.

- Examines.

- Standard and Quick Starts.

- Frequently Asked Questions.

- Stats. 

- All art up to 0.99. Yes, 0.99 and not 0.863 so all the new commission up to and including Whore Makers is in there too so in that respect something in Twine is now ahead of the RAGS version. I did this in the last two days so it's possible there might be some issues where Assignments I've tested and worked before now have miss-named art refferences. For example 'Error: <<include>>: passage "Assignment Tavern" does not exist'

- The UI.

- Likely a bunch more than is either too miscelleneous for me to mention now, or stuff I haven't got to testing and somehow works anyway. This has honestly happened more than you'd expect. 

What I know doesn't work or has known issues

- I've turned off some Assignments so they will be just plain text rather than being able to access them. These include Scour Dockside Taverns for New Talent, Price of Freedom (kinda amusingly this was the last Assignment added as of 0.863) , all Training, and Personal Assignments. 

- Full Custom Starts (Yes, I know this is priority number one to get sorted)

- Talking to.

- Nightly Activities.

- View Tutorial Options.

- The Morale and Supplies used on Finish Day had some real issues with the existing formatting so I've done something that at least kinda works for now, and likely will need to be entirely redone to improve the look to reflect how it was in RAGS.

- Suggestions do work but appear to be a bit finickity in when they choose to show up. I suspect this is an Assignment specific issue and so should be reasonably straightforward to deal with. 

- A number of options on the left side bar like Overview and Removal don't do anything currently. They just lead to a blank screen so I've left them as is. I may change up Overview to how it was in RAGS as the new Regions way of selecting Assignments may make some of it obsolete. Could do with your thoughts on that. 

- Turns out I was a bit over zealous with changing 's to Html code. In some menus this will show up as the code rather than it being converted. "Don&apos;t" rather than "Don't" for example. Don&apos;t bother to report this as I know to sort them out and from what I've seen it doesn't break anything so it's just a visual annoyance for now. 

- And outside of the art everything that's been added from 0.87 to 0.963 so that will include some bugs that have been fixed in those intervening versions. 

In terms of bug reporting I'm especially looking for things that will show up in red and white proceeded with an exclamation mark. For example: 'Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: State.variables.Assign[State.variables.Nh_v1].push is not a function'

Please copy those in full and either post them in reply to this post or in a new Twine Bug Reporting channel I've added to the Discord. 

Dead ends are the other critical reports. So that's where you click on something that basically ends the game giving you no option to do anything else. I suspect there will be at least some of these in the more complex Assignments which have extra choices in how they are resolved. 

Hope you enjoy, and please look forward to many more of these Twine releases in the future as the two versions will get closer and closer in priority until we can finally do away with RAGS for good.

[prokopetz]

@captain-modeus-the-enby replied:

I'm 100% unfamiliar with that game and it's reputation. What the deal with it?

Septerra Core was one of the earliest "JRPG style" games from a Western developer, as well as one of the first such titles to be published for the Windows PC as its native platform. As you may have gathered from the name, it was in large part an attempt to ride on the coattails of the PC port of Final Fantasy VII, which had some out a year earlier.

By modern standards, the combat system is quite clunky, and there are rather a lot of bugs, but that wasn't the problem (and certainly nothing that can't be fixed with a fan-made patch, anyway). The real problem is the game's development was basically a bait and switch.

See, Septerra Core's main selling point in its promotional material was that, being a native Windows PC title, it wasn't subject to the limitations of contemporary consoles. It had a long list of claimed features – full voice-acting, long FMV sequences, high-resolution pre-rendered backgrounds, etc. – that were basically unheard-of in the genre at the time ("the time" being 1999), and a free pre-release demo containing the game's complete playable prologue seemed to back up those claims. When it was released, it was greeted with solid but unexceptional 8/10 reviews, and on the strength of the demo and those reviews did very well for a niche PC title.

The trouble starts when you get past the portion of the game that the demo covers. Once you reach that point, the production values quite suddenly go down the toilet: the pre-rendered backgrounds are much worse looking and often visibly unfinished, the FMVs in the prologue turn out to represent 50% of all FMVs in the entire game, and the "full" voice acting basically vanishes entirely apart from party members. None of the reviewers had caught this because, as it transpired, they'd only played roughly the first four hours, and had thus reported on the portions of the game which appeared in the demo.

People who've picked up the game decades later often plain don't notice the sudden drop in production values because it all just looks "retro" to them, but it caused quite the furor when it was new!

Honestly, the only thing that's ever made me feel disconnected from the current generation of gamers is that people are unironically trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Septerra Core.

[fungisteri]

Live Fungi Reaction: Splatoon 3's 5.0 patch notes

It's late and I'm not in a great mood, so let's just get done with this. Been told they're mid... Surely these fuckers aren't about to make my night worse, are they?

Still disappointing it's only 8, by the way! Especially since it's the easiest part of the game to code!

Supported gear... it's going to be a t-shirts exclusive just like with folding clothes for your locker, isn't it? I swear, sometimes it feels like they're not even trying with these half-baked additions.

3 songs... now that's interesting!

On the two new main weapons- I'm not like, thrilled about either of them, but I am looking at the Dread Wringer with interest.

I'm in a rush so I won't go in depth.

Only kits I'm looking forward to are the Sorella Brella (which I probably won't play) and the Blobblober Deco (which I will 100% play- Deco just keeps dropping banger after banger, huh? truly the superior weapon brand!)

I really wish they could've given us splat bomb booyah on dynamo, but allegedly this might work as well.

Everything else is a major disappointment, ESPECIALLY the inkline tri-stringer, as a tri-stringer user myself. That said, I'll try the kit anyways because it's the first thing the weapon class comprised of TWO WEAPONS has gotten in an entire YEAR. Reeeeeaaally below rock bottom in here.

By god they are really pushing it with these.

Brellas need buffs, they heard- So they're getting the most inconsequential changes possible! Literally beyond parody. These weapons struggle killing, not regening their shields! And even then, your non-existent netcode we pay 20$ a year for makes those useless anyways! Come the fuck on, man!

And why the reeflux nerf? That thing's fallen out of use a WHILE ago, this was so uncalled for. Why did they create a missile spammer that struggles to get kills and then just bury it further?! I swear, Nintendo hates these two weapon classes specifically.

These sound interesting!

They're fairly toning back cooler meta (RIP, you were incredibly fun while you were here for a whole month or so) and making some changes to Killer Wail 5.1 I cannot understand. But that thing definitely needs changes anyways, so I'll welcome there. Zipcaster might also be interesting... Not the damage buff it needed, but could still be interesting.

Ohhhh, that's fun!

Tenacity has been irrelevant for a while, especially with the existence of Last Ditch Effort, which has been needing nerfs since the previous game. This looks promising!

Good on them for finally taking care of n-zap. Annaki really didn't deserve that though, that thing is already underused. RIP

No idea what any of this means. Cool! 👍

I've been grinding SR a lot lately due to terrible rotations in other modes, so I'm definitely keeping my eyes on this 👀

New songs... fun 👀

Only thing I care about is the last item. I mean, everything else is cool, but HOLY SHIT. THEY ACTUALLY FIXED THAT. THANK YOU NINTENDO FOR GIVING US THE BARE MINIMUM WE DIDN'T EVEN THINK WE WOULD GET LET'S GOOOOOO

I can already spend hours customizing my locker, so this is gonna be a BLAST.

It's late so I won't be looking at bug fixes.

A mixed bag of a patch, but I will say, I do like some of the changes being made. Hopefully after the pre side order drought we'll get all the things we REALLY need. But until then, I will probably be fine with this. Time to grind the upcoming catalogue whenever I have the time, I guess!

[gardenvarietygay]

Sixty-four-ish plugs later and one little patch of my yard is starting to look like a garden. None of them look like anything right now besides the snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata) which I got for free. Please ignore the weeds, I’ve done four major weedings in this area alone. The plan is that all of these plants will grow into each other so densely I won’t need to plant a ground cover (hahaha we’ll see). The rectangular whitish-grey lump in the middle of this bed is half of a trough planter that froze solid and cracked in half on the diagonal, I thought it was too funny to waste so I plopped it in here as a shelter for anybody passing through.

Also it’s hard to tell but my “lawn” is way too tall for this suburb. I keep the front much shorter but I’m the only person who sees lightning bugs in their backyard so I’m keep on not mowing the back. Eventually the front lawn will be replaced with shrubs and flowers anyway.

Because I'm a landscaper and work in a nursery, everyone assumes my own garden must be spectacular. It's... this. I put my clients' gardens first and if I have any time leftover, I tend my own. This is also my first real growing season in this house and I've spent a lot of it fixing problems previous owners created (invasive clematis on the fence, a huge pile of sand in the middle of the yard where they put a chicken run that they then took with them in the move, regrading the slope around the foundation, putting downspouts on the gutters, ripping out a half-formed brick patio made out of the wrong materials improperly set, etc. etc. etc.) I also inherited the "river rock landscaping" that you see in this photo. I hate rock mulch because it's hard on the plants growing in it but also because it makes everything hotter. I did my best to work it into the soil in this area and I'll continue topdressing with organic matter periodically to hopefully cover it up. Anyway, a lot of these plants won't bloom until fall so there's a good chance I'll get some flowers this year, even if it's in October. Hopefully next year I'll actually have something to show for my efforts.

The stars of this bed are:

Aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)

Blacksamson coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia)

Blue wild indigo (Baptisia australis)

Dense liatris (Liatris spicata)

Flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

New York aster (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii)

Partridge pea (Chamaecrista fascisculata)

Pitcher sage (Salvia azurea)

Showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa)

Snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)

Western ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

Hello I'm here to weigh in on the amalgamate the states idea. What if we amalgamated them into one state, one large state with a decentralized government, that held elections based on popular vote rather than an electoral college outdated racist demographic information, and which updated its core tenets every 20 years to reflect the change in generation. And also had term limits on people in office such as to be no longer than 2 five year terms?

I mean it's just a thought and it would still be far from perfect.

But I live here and I don't know it just feels....better.

But also like, I do want the list of the ten amalgamated states you made.

okay so fair warning i'm canadian and also a bit stoned atm so you need to promise to not make fun of me for not knowing shit about your states, their names, your history, or my fashion sense. but here's my proposition to fix things as someone with no political power who doesn't live in your country. (to determine which old state capital becomes the new state capital, i propose a gladiator fight to the death and every old state sends their strongest warriors. that's open to negotiation tho.)

Minimichiowisconsindillinois- tbh i made this one just to piss off my ex since he said everyone living there would hate that idea. eat it, beard. this is a nice little centre state. it feels like a satisfying size. i originally devised it to be just states that were touching the great lakes but that IA one there really squares it out nicely.

East Topland- tbh i don't know too much about these states. it seems cohesive, though, and i think new york on the land has a lot of forest so if The OG Crew wants to start shit they'll have a buffer.

The OG Crew- i know these are not the only states that were like the starter states. east topland got some of those, i think. but these are the states that feel, to me, like they're the first states that started this whole deal out in the first place. if you would like to edit your history books to say i'm right, that would be a decent thank you for sorting this whole mess out for you

The Nothing States- these are the states i generally don't know a lot of stuff about. i think they're yeehaw states in some parts. but i have friends in at least two of them i think so i don't want to make up stereotypes because they will call me out because they don't care how stoned and canadian i am. rude. adding montana there on the end is a bit aesthetically displeasing but we need to keep the etsy sellers who sell prints of the shape of your state with a heart cutout in business so this leaves some tempting options.

New Oklouissippansexas- i am also keeping spelling bee judges in business. this also feels like a cohesive chunk. like i assume they vibe. plus when they have pride people can make t-shirts saying "New Oklouissippansexual" and that's gotta be a job creator.

The Midmidst- a very cool name for the middle of the country that i mostly drew because a purple stripe up the middle is nice. colorado gets included because we're not getting a straight line anyway so might as well give them, like, something

The Midwest 2- because it always bugs me that the midwest is so far east so it's fixed in this patch update. these places have a lot of empty space of various varieties, i think, and i feel it's important to have that all grouped together in one convenient state

Flo Rida- the same state but we do specifically rename it to honour flo rida and legally it has to be pink on every new map. this is self-explanatory

WETBOIZZZZZZ- for some reason when i originally did this calculation i thought it would be funny to name all the west coast states WETBOIZZZZZZZ. i still do tbh that owns. i think the west coast states all have a chill vibe, so i feel like they could probably be a state with a very strong identity before we meld all the people. WETBOIZZZZZZZ is obviously a party state but, like, a relaxing party, and i think it rules

Not Part Of The US Any More- hawaii can do whatever it likes- it can be part of whatever state it wants, or it can just leave america altogether because of, you know, everything. we're taking alaska since that just makes natural sense. again, no further questions needed

so there you go, 10 states (well, 9 states and one amerexit) that i could grow to respect

[manonamora-if]

Another week passed... I did things!

Patched some lil bugs (one that I had created trying to fix something else...), reformatted some pages, and fixed some typos.

Since the end of the Comp, the French IF community has been streaming the entries. Last Wednesday was my turn! It is not a full playthrough (as the game is really that long), but it solved all puzzles but one. The participants in the stream were also quite close in figuring out the story... :)

Two people on the IntFiction Forum are also reviewing the Comp entries. And I was among the first to get very lovely reviews from both of them!

I've also got someone lovely return from players in general, as well as more critical feedback/ideas for edits. When I have a bit more time, I will try to implement those and add an English translation to it...

Anyway, play DOL-OS here!

No one has figured out the Easter Egg or found the hidden meaning either yet... :(

I have finished reworking the UI. This include shuffling around some blocks, increasing the container size, simplifying the Interface code, adding some transitions between screens, fixing the animations (;-; finally), adding a new "screen", customising the Dialog boxes, etc...

AND ! The UI has been optimising for Mobile view too! To get the full experience, I'd still advise for a screen being at least 900x600, but smaller screen (portrait) will be able to play soon!

Before I upload the fix, I would like to add a tad more text (a small scene with Mr. E) and add a few extra settings, especially for timed/typed animated text (tested, need to add to the file), and font options.

Maybe next week update? Or the week after...

You know what I forgot last week? Recoding the searching through the room part of Scene 1 (because it's a sperate file)... That's done now. As well as the side destination options. I've done 1/3rd of Scene 2, not touched Scene 3, and half of Scene 4.

I thought I would have been further than I am now but I'm not... I forgot how big the chapter were. Each file is 1.3k - 2k lines of code/writing. That's a lot to go through.

On the plus side, since I've figured out a better way of coding the next animation, I got to optimise some stuff!

I am still not set on a title, but I do have the theme for my SeedComp! entry: Noir... but kind of a spoof?

Short pitch: you play as a down-on-your-luck P.I. waiting for your next case to pay your bills, when a Dame enters your office.

The whole thing is drafted, I've described the big actions/choices, and started writing it. Since I've also set myself on the One Page template as my UI, I won't need to spend too much time on that. Just the coding, when the writing is done.

Some repeat of last week:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~IFDB AWARDS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The IFDB Awards are almost over. Less than one week to vote!

Check out this post for more information.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SEEDCOMP !~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A bit more than 2 weeks left on the Sprouting Round of the @seedcomp-if ! Come join me and create a little game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SPRING THING~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Spring Thing 2023 Edition is officially open. You can register your intent until March 1st !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FRENCH COMP~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can vote for the comp entries until the start of March! Voting does not happen on itch, but a google form linked on the Comp Page.

~~~~

That's about it. Toodles~