#osom's weekly journal

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - January 11th, 2025

Hello there, this is my 2nd weekly journal of 2025. As of writing this journal, I am stuck at home, as per usual. I'm sure you guys know about the story about a severe fire spreading around the east coast, whereas a big-ass snowstorm happened in the midwest. Turns out I'm among the midwest, meaning we've got 10 inches of snow over here. Now, I may be very into snow as a kid considering I used to love playing in it whenever it happened, but nowadays I can't stand snow in the slightest. It just drives me absolutely insane whenever it happens because too much snow can be a little troublesome for me, and most other people I know about.

I did some snow shoveling. Not much of it, but I certainly got as much as I could off the back deck and the front deck of the house. Couldn't exactly get it off the road, not only because it's made of gravel but there's a HUGE layer of ice underneath all that snow that I just couldn't get into. I did get it all off the top of the cars we have, of course, so there's that.

Besides the snowy stuff and me being stuck at the house, I didn't really do much this week. I've been having issues staying motivated, not to mention my desk chair being broken by now so I have to stick with a dining room chair. And needless to say, it's VERY uncomfortable compared to my desk chair so it's practically unreliable for hour-long sessions of any kind on my laptop. And, as much as I've been meaning to catch up on my gaming backlog, the closest I've gotten was playing Webfishing again and getting more mileage on Infinitode 2. If you're into tower defense games and want something other than Bloons TD6, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say for this week. A rather slow one, but it's still the beginning of 2025, so I'm sure I have plenty of time to pick myself up. Hopefully. See y'all next week, and stay safe, wherever you're at.

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - June 8th, 2024

I know it's very early in the morning (at least for me), but I'd like to write out this journal real quick.

Only five days into FixTF2. We've seen to gain quite a lot more traction now, several news outlets were making headlines, popular YouTubers were making their own videos about it, and we even have the official TF2 voice actors supporting the movement as well! At least two of them, I'm unsure about the others yet.

You know, I may have overthought me boycotting Steam as a whole, I feel like it's not going to be effective in the long run until many others are willing to do it with me. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm still not buying anything from their store, I haven't bought anything from there in a month besides to gift one of my Steam friends Half-Life 2 Deathmatch. But otherwise, I'm not buying anything from Steam until the designated date shown in a previous weekly journal. Hell, I even started buying from GOG.com a few weeks back, though I had to go through some hell to get the payment to work. And itch.io is also a good place to find some games, too.

What I'm saying is that I will probably go back to using Steam online again, and get back into Source mapmaking since I kind of miss it. I'm still thinking a bit hard about supporting Valve, as they made some beloved games, but with older Valve games, I think it's safe to say they're not as supported as their newer titles, as hard of a pill that is to swallow. Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary is coming up in the next few months, and I actually planned on making a map-pack to celebrate the occasion. However, due to the circumstances, I don't have enough time, and I tend to worry about putting in as much effort into my work as I can before publishing it, compared to most others I probably know.

Chances are, I may just make one single map for the celebration, but I'm going to try to make it a big one. However, my backlog is already as big as it is, so I'll have to think of something. But enough fluff, let's go ahead and say that I'm thinking of using Steam again, but just for Source mapmaking and testing, as well as uploading to the Workshop as per usual. But I need your opinion(s). The FixTF2 movement is going VERY hard, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. That doesn't mean, I won't keep supporting it, in fact I'm still doing my best to keep the flame going.

So, to sum things up, I want to get back into Source mapmaking, as I've been aching to do it for quite some time, but I need your input. The questionnaire will be linked at the very end of this journal, and you're free to fill it out as you wish. In the meantime, I've made another one of those flyers for the FixTF2 movement, so I thought I'd show it to you guys as well.

This has been Week 3 of the Silvercatto Weekly Journal. Enjoy the rest of your day, and remember to keep the flame going. Toodle-oo!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - February 8th, 2025

Hello there! Kept ya waiting, didn't I? Yeah, I greatly apologize, I'm not sure why I felt the need to skip last week's daily journal, I guess I'm too caught up with college homework before even considering getting back on track with everything else I'm trying to do. On one hand, I finally got the main room figured out for my upcoming map: Duskfall Fortress! (spoiler alert, I used ChatGPT to help me with the name, but I modified one of its name suggestions lol)

Other than that, nothing really special. I spent WAY too much money on the first week of February, which is already a huge mistake of mine and I need to think about better financial decisions. On another note, I got to hang out with my old high school friend this Wednesday and Thursday, we mostly did a lot of walking but we did watch some YouTube videos together, hella fun.

And... yeah, that's all I really have for this week. I may have left out a few things that I forgot to mention, but right now my headspace isn't in the right place due to me paying too much attention to the political conflict happening right now, and I need to try to change directions to what I'm trying to focus on. Regardless, thanks for tuning in. See you next week!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - January 25th, 2025

Time for another weekly journal! Sorry I had to skip the last one, but I'm back in College now! The first week back in school was a bit slow, I will admit, but I managed to take this as an opportunity to build a house in my Minecraft world using the newly added Pale Oak logs. I know, I tend to use the same formula for house building quite a lot, but if you have other house building formulas you'd like to recommend, I'm all ears. I still need to finish up that mountain, but it's kinda gotten a lil tiresome and burning me out a lot more than it should, simply because I start cooking more than I can chew up.

On another note, I also decided to explore the rest of the seed that my creative world is contained within, and as I was flying across the place, I managed to find myself a floating shipwreck. Honestly, this discovery is quite incredible for me as despite how much I've seen in this game's world generation, this one is definitely out of my league; who would've known that a shipwreck can be generated out of the water, barely even touching it?

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading the weekly journal, and have a good rest of your day!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - January 4th, 2025

It's finally 2025! One year passes, another one takes its place, meaning it's time for new memories to come along. I won't lie, this year has been a bit of a rocky start, but rest assured; I'm still kicking and trying to pick my feet back up.

So, despite my best efforts, Webfishing sadly didn't win the 2024 Steam Awards for the "Sit Back and Relax" category. Of course, I was devastated seeing which game actually won, and it... kind of made me upset for quite some time. But the good news is that Webfishing actually got a new update that (hopefully) fixed all the issues that people have had with the game's bot issues, so I took advantage of it and decided to play for a little bit. And as it turns out; I managed to catch... the big boi.

Yes, that's correct. I caught the rarest fish in the whole game, which certainly made my New Year's despite all the circumstances. I'll still be playing this game back and forth once every blue moon, so if you see anyone in a lobby named "Cattobutt," that would be me. Can't wait to fish with you guys in the near future!

Well, other than that, nothing else has been going on in my end, just a slow week into the beginning of 2025, but I'm sure that things will pick up eventually. Just know that I'm still alive, and I'll still be here to keep you guys updated on how I'm currently doing. Thanks for reading week 21 of my weekly journals, and I shall now sign off to say this;

Happy 2025, everyone. Let's make it count.

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - December 28th, 2024

This is my final weekly journal of 2024. I was meaning to write one for last weekend, but I got caught up with some things at home, so I'm gonna get this one out of the way for the time being.

Hoo boy, what a roller coaster of a year! While it may not seem like I was doing much, I actually got back in touch with a high school friend of mine and we actually hung out quite a bit this year, mostly playing Minecraft with each other on his modded Create server, as well as visiting in person to have a few sleepovers here and there. It was quite a good time, and I'm hoping we can arrange more meet-ups in due time. But we'll see.

I also managed to get some proper help with my mental health and emotional stability, even if it doesn't seem like much, and it's a little bit slow, I'm sure it'll end up being worth it in the long run. Despite all that, I only managed to upload one map to the Garry's Mod workshop, but I think it's among the best one by far, despite it mostly using Team Fortress 2 assets and not much custom ones.

I am hoping by next year, things will be better and more semi-productive, at least in terms of the hobbies that I do. I have a huge backlog of unfinished games, Source maps, and other projects I'd like to at least catch up on, and I'll sadly admit that it's been especially slow, even with the weekly journals I've fallen behind on.

Needless to say, this year's got its ups and downs, but I kind of enjoyed it a bit more than last year, now that my mom's able to drive to places again. Things are starting to pick up from what they used to be, so I have high hopes that it'll stay that way. Thanks for reading this journal, and I hope you readers have a holly jolly Christmas, and a happy 2025! Stay tuned for more weekly journals!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - December 14th, 2024

My deepest, greatest apologies for not catching up with my weekly journals after... a month now? Let's just say that I had to catch up on my college assignments, I was having a hard time trying to adjust my headspace to become more productive (horrible excuse, I know) and I just haven't exactly thought about my Tumblr journals, given that college was finishing up for me. This semester has since been fully complete, as I had my last day of class yesterday, and now I only have two weeks left before moving back into the dorms.

I guess I should start using this weekly journal for more than my projects, and simply tell you guys how I'm doing. Lately, I've gotten way into Webfishing, a little too "hooked" into it, if you will. I've met some cool people, some mean people, and some... absolute weirdos, across most of the servers that I entered. It was a fairly good experience, and I want to keep playing it more often. Unfortunately, the game seems to be in a rough spot as bots keep joining servers and flooding the chat with weird junk, so there's really not much to say about that.

On another note, I've been thinking about hopping back onto my Xbox to try and catch up on achievement hunting, as I just bought a bunch of Sega games from the digital storefront as they've been since delisted by now. So thank goodness I was able to catch onto that. The last month, I will admit, has been rather slow for me, and I'm gonna try and catch up on everything as much as I can. Sorry I'm unable to show any pictures for this journal, but maybe next time. Have a good day, thanks for reading week 19 of my weekly journal!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - October 26th, 2024

Finally back on the grind again. Not much to share this time around, though I did make myself a font that I'll probably end up using later down the line, at least I hope I am. The lowercase letters probably look a little inconsistent, but I may modify those accordingly if possible. I can't exactly share this as a usable font yet, but you can still take the raw files and use them accordingly if you wish. Though don't say I didn't warn you.

That's all I got to share, really. Not much has really happened this week besides procrastination as usual and me deciding to make this font for funsies.

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - October 12th, 2024

Cloudburst Woods is now available for download on the Steam Workshop! My deepest apologies for skipping last week's journal, I've been a bit caught up with my birthday celebration last weekend that I barely found the time and place to write a journal for last week. Nonetheless, I'm hella proud of what I made here, and I'm sure I'll be able to deliver just as well for the next project. Thanks for sticking around!

Not much else to say here. I am however, working on a new project that I currently cannot show quite yet. But once I start development, I'll be sure to share with you guys how it's gonna go. See you next week!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - September 28th, 2024

The map is just about finished! I am currently planning on a release of the 4th of October of this year. I am hoping to get a trailer finished by then to really up the hype for this place. Or at least try to since, well... my audience is rather small. But regardless, I'm quite proud of what I've made here, I don't wanna spoil too much, but here are a few highlights of what I have to show here.

I will begin working on my next project soon! However, I've been rather low on caffeine lately, so it makes it a lil harder for me to focus... but soon I might stock up on some refreshers to at least hopefully keep me awake soon so I can provide more amazing content for you guys. (I sound like a YouTuber when I say that lmao)

Thanks for reading Week 16 of my weekly journal. Have a great day, fellas, I'll be seeing you next week!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - September 21st, 2024

Do you remember, on the 21st night of September? (sorry, I couldn't resist lol)

Hello again! Finally updated my journal on time this time, on a Saturday. I've still been hard at work on Cloudburst Woods, adding some pathlights and other useless details that may cause the compiler to have a seizure. But so far, I think it's looking pretty good. Sadly, I can't show too much because it might cause the compiler to have a seizure and spew out random errors to get me to fix it. But regardless of that, I think we're getting somewhere.

I can't show too much right now as it'd spoil the surprise, there are some hidden details in this map, some of which you may be familiar with.

Short one, I know, but I'm still confident on how the map is going so far. I can't wait for you all to see it when it's finished! Thanks for reading, I'll see you all next week!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - September 15th, 2024

I had to skip a day of journal writing for personal reasons and save it for today. I wasn't really feeling the best in terms of emotional stability, but I'm doing much better now.

Oh me oh my, do I have a lot to share this time around! I've been hard at work on this map, and I think it looks absolutely phenomenal so far, probably just as ambitious as Stoneway, though I think it needs probably one more structure and a few more detail props scattered around, and I think we're just about done with the map on the surface after those two.

Short journal, I know, but I feel like the map is nearing completion. We already have a properly photogenic location or two, and with all the foliage scattered around, it's already looking more and more lively by the second. Thanks for reading my weekly journal, have a nice day!

(this one was a lil rushed, sorry)

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - September 7th, 2024

So, I've been quite hard at work lately! This is perhaps been the most productive I've been in a lil over a month. Sadly, no progress has been made on my TF2 map. BUT! I did start working on another project of mine that THANKFULLY hasn't been abandoned yet. Introducing: Cloudburst Woods! A continuation of Cloudburst Town that takes place in a forest this time, not much of a town. Sure, Cloudburst Woods may also be town-like, but I feel as if it'd make more sense to name it as a forest instead. Even if there might not be that much trees, I'm still discovering more and more props within TF2's files so I can use them to their full potential when decorating my map with detail props here and there. I think this looks fantastic thus far.

As usual, any and all recommendations are welcome for this project and others that you may have in mind. Thank you so very much in advance, I'm willing to hear anything you got for me!

There's been a lot of progress on this map than you think. At first it started off as relatively bland, but as I gave it a bunch of detail props, it's most certainly coming together quite nice. I'm proud of this so far. Thank you for reading Week 13 of my weekly journal; see you all next week!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - August 30th, 2024

Guess who decided to open the Hammer editor for the first time in months! There has been some time wasted on trying to get my TF2 map layout properly set up, but I've been burnt out from so much thought processes going through my own brain to figure it out, only to have my thoughts run blank from within the ideas, since my map is covered in skybox textures and I didn't want to mess it up too much and make it unrenderable due to the messy structure of it. On another hand, I got back to work on one of my earlier projects; Cloudburst Woods! I've built this lil house on the cliffside, it took a bit since I made it slightly too big at first, but I did manage to scale it down properly. Now it looks... somewhat livable, despite being in a damp, swampy forest. At least, that's what it's supposed to look like, buuuuut it's still a heavy work in progress. On another note, I've been working on something for my Ceramics class that I'm sure you guys might like to see once I finish it up, or at least once the teacher allows us to finish it up at some point in time. But anyway, here's what Cloudburst Woods looks like so far, starting with the house on the cliffside.

Thanks for reading my 12th weekly journal, and I'm glad I was able to document something, as this week was kinda stressful, and the last week wasn't the best either. I'll see you all next week; let's make it count!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - August 24th, 2024

Good afternoon! I deeply apologize for not making any prior journal entries in the last three weeks. A whole lotta nothing happened those past days and I was completely unmotivated one way or another to keep working on my projects. I think I may have been burnt out at the time before writing this journal. Things have gotten much better overtime, especially now that I moved back into the dorms. I was gonna write a journal entry last Saturday, but the unpacking process made me feel SO tired that I had to take a break for the rest of the day, and move on from there.

I did get medication to help me focus a little better, as that was one of my biggest issues for my previous projects. Keeping my focus isn't as easy as it sounds, especially if you're burnt out from everything. Hopefully, I can fix it eventually and get back on the grind. But for now, I thought I'd share this journal entry with you guys to let you all know how I'm doing. Thanks for reading this short journal, and I'll see you folks next week. Toodle-oo!

[silvercatto]

Weekly Journal - July 27th, 2024

Sorry, there's nothing new for this journal either. I'm mostly just waiting to go back to college so I can start being productive again, for... personal reasons. Allow me to share some eulogies for the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360 consoles, however.

I remember when my brother picked up his Xbox 360, I was only like eight to nine years old at the time, and we just moved to a new house back in 2010 before my brother's birthday. Of course, I was still a hardcore Nintendo fanboy at the time but I was willing to give the Xbox 360 a try. Most notably, my memories on that console were as followed; Hexic HD(a built-in game with every Xbox 360), a couple demos for A Kingdom of Keflings, and a few more I don't really remember of, Sonic Generations, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Thrillville Off the Rails, multiple sports games because my brother is a huge sports-head, and most notably, Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition.

Minecraft, the game I probably sunk the most hours into, with two separate worlds I made for survival and creative mode respectively. Those two world files are probably still on my brother's 360 to this day, so I want to see if I can nab them quickly if I want to preserve those memories. However, over the years, my brother's 360 is falling apart, not only did the cooling fan practically stop working but it seems that the wireless controllers don't seem to connect anymore(granted it might be the controllers, but who knows?)

Here's another thing; I actually remember browsing the Xbox LIVE Marketplace a few times. I scrolled through multiple indie games (before Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition, many Mineclones flooded the Xbox LIVE Indie Game section, so that's fun), as well as many Xbox LIVE Arcade titles, and even Avatar items. Part of me REALLY wanted to buy those Avatar items as they're all based off popular IP's, some of which never even gotten an Xbox 360 release, and I'm sure many fans of those IP's would've loved an Avatar item of their own based on those. I think I remember seeing some Avatar items based on Beavis and Butthead, which are always a treat.

Since then, I've still been playing on Xbox, but unfortunately I was late to the party, as I got my Xbox LIVE Gamertag "SuperSwagBro98" back in 2016. Yes, I still cringe at that name today. As much as I really wanted a Gamertag on my brother's Xbox, I still felt like it was unnecessary to sign up for Xbox LIVE on my brother's Xbox, even though he was more than likely okay with it. But alas, I was still a hardcore Nintendo fanboy, at the time I'd rather barf than play on anything other than a Nintendo console my whole life.

Anyway, after nearly 19 whole years of the Xbox 360's release, it's time to say our farewells to those digital downloads that'll be lost to time. They had a good run, but it's best to just move on and embrace the present. Besides, we still have a few backwards compatible titles on Xbox One and Series now. (despite some of them being delisted already, bleh) So you just gotta get what you can. Plus, even if this were the case, I still prefer physical copies anyhow.

If you have made it this far without skipping a few words, I'm just gonna say thank you for reading my eulogy for the Xbox 360 Marketplace. It's set to be discontinued in the next two days. But! You can always download the games you've already purchased, if you're lucky enough to not run into any errors. The servers for the Xbox 360 are over 20 years old anyway, they're probably destined to deteriorate within a matter of time.

This has been week 10 of my weekly journal. Enjoy the Xbox 360 Marketplace while you still can, and have a wonderful day. Toodles!