Friday, July 03, 2020

Blog: Games of June 2020


June was a bit weird. I spent most of it happily playing Animal Crossing and trying to find cool stuff to fit in my other time. I had some work I needed to get done, so I didn't really sink into any "funemployment".

My top five games (by play time) for June were:
  1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Generally the games that get at least a little bit of play time each day end up pretty high on my play time list. AC:NH is a good example of that. It's been really nice to play slow and enjoy the daily play. I think the game could use a few more features, to catch up to New Leaf and also just to give you more things to do each day.

    Screenshot, Villager standing on beach watching shooting stars
    A Beautiful Night on the Island


  2. Europa Universalis IV - I decided to pay for the DLC subscription, so I'm spending my current play time realing from all of the things that don't totally make sense. I'm still not sure how I feel about the newest DLC, but I'm still having fun. Currently France keeps throwing me into wars which eat all my man power as Castile, but I'm learning.

    Screenshot showing Isabella becoming the Queen of Catile
    A New Monarch


  3. Wargroove - I skipped out on Advance Wars despite it being a game I would probably have liked. Wargroove has proved to be a great game to pick up and play even if I'm finding the "normal difficulty" a little punishing. The style is great and it's fun.

    Screenshot of Caesar's Victory (Ranked B)
    A Good Boy's Victory


  4. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I assume I explain this every year, but Secret of Mana is a game you should play in summer. So I am.

    Screenshot of the Heroes in King Truffle's Palace with Flamie
    A Confident Moment


  5. Xenonauts - I wanted some slow tactical gameplay to enjoy, which Xenonauts does give. I'm finding the whole thing needs a little boost to be interesting but generally it's still fun if you want to very slowly march some soldiers across a bunch of squares. I did spend a bit of time looking at the mods and I'm facinated and frusterated by how many popular mods there are to "remove all women from the game". Definetly feeling like that's not a community I want anything to do with.

    Screenshot of the world map with 2 early bases
    Almost before anything goes wrong.

Here's my total play time chart for MONTH:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Thursday, July 02, 2020

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites - Lucca

Not even a year later ... I finished the next sprite in my Chrono Trigger Perler Sprites. Everybody, let me introduce Lucca.

A sprite of Lucca from Chrono Trigger made from fused perler beads.


I managed to work on Lucca much more quickly than I did on Marle so I actually managed to build a bit of a process. I'm hoping I'll be able to quickly move through the rest of the cast. I also got to get a little better at using The GIMP and Omnigraffle, so this feels like a productive project.

The Lucca Sprite


I started by determining all of the colours in the sprite and which sprite colour of Perler bead I would use to match them. I did this by taking the original sprite from The Spriter's Resource and then making a new layer for each colour in the sprite and removing all other colours. I also compiled those colours into the grid below. (I gave them names, but they weren't great names, so I think I'd just use the hex codes next time).


Colour Blocks labeled with the Hex colour codes from the sprite

Colour Blocks labeled with the Perler bead names from the sprite


There's a few cases where I don't have a bead that's a perfect match. Particularly, the Dark Green should probably be Olive and the Bright Green, Fern. Apparently it's about time I put in a new order of beads. I also beaded a test block in the same pattern so you can see what does or doesn't match.

Perler beads laid out in a grid matching the two above



I've broken out all the details below so you can see which colours are which parts of the sprite and how I matched them.


Sprite PartHex ColourPerler ColourNotes
------The Original
#302838PurpleAgain I'm using purple for the "deep shadow" parts of the outline.

#281820BlackThe main outline of the sprite.
#B86817ButterscotchThe (single pixel) highlight on the blaster barrel.
#482830Dark GreyMost of the shading.
#F8F867YellowThe (again single pixel) bright spot on the blaster barrel.
#F8800FOrangeHighlights in Lucca's outfit.
#F8E0A8RustThe leather bits of Lucca's outfit.
#F89868PeachMain skin colour
#801800CremeSkin highlights
#586029Dark GreenHat and sleeve shadows
#F8C028Bright GreenHat and sleeve high lights
#f8f848GoldLeather High lights.
#ffffffWhiteHighlights and her glasses.
You can also download the my .xcf file.

Process

As with the Crono and Marle sprites I decided to do a little addition to make sure that the fused sprite would be sturdy. I also levelled the bottom so that the sprite would stand up right. The only big change that was needed was filling in a couple of sprites on the right side of her face. I wonder if those were a glitch somewhere in my process or even in the sprite.

Lucca sprite, laid out, with two beads by the head highlighted and a wedge to level the bottom.
 

The sprite was pretty easy to build. I did make a good choice in laying out all the necessary beads in the same pattern as the blocks above in a project box.

Perler beads laid out in a bead project box in the same pattern.


I found the easiest way was to work from the top down doing a few beads of each colour at a time. 


Lucca's hat started. Lucca's head finished. The full sprite.


Success of the Sprite

I'm exceptionally happy with how this sprite came out. Part of that is the improved process I've used, so I managed to go from sprite to fused within a week. That definitely kept my the whole project in brain which made it much, much easier. 

The finished Sprite


I definitely need to put in an order to get the beads I'm missing. I generally think Lucca looks good, but a little bit off from how she'd normally look. Olive and Fern beads might have helped with that. Overall I don't think she looks completely off from the other two though.

The one thing I'm not sure about is using purple as that "deep shadow" colour. Given that I *have* dark grey beads now, it seems like it might make more sense to use those in the future. I started with the purple for Crono, which I think worked because there were fewer deep shadow pixels. I'm going to keep on with the purple / black arrangement for the rest of this batch and then I'll come back for a second and see what overall changes I made.

Perler sprites of Lucca, Marle and Crono


The next sprite is Robo and I'd like to wrap it up by July 15, 2020. (I was thinking Frog, but I'm going to wait until I buy a few more green beads.)


The Video Games I Played - February 2024

This is the second new monthly games post . I'm not feeling very settled in what anything means. The book posts have some basic stats...