Blog: Games of September 2019

September wasn't too exciting. I'm continuing my march through Three Houses, (2 endings down, 2 endings left) and I've started playing a little Dragon Quest XI. Other than that I'm trying to find a good balance between productivity, gaming for relaxation and gaming for excitement.

My top five games (by play time) for September were:

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - It keeps going and going ... *Pink Rabbit Rolls Through Banging Drum*. This game could have turned into a total slog, but the actual game play has been fun enough that I've always been pretty happy to fire it up. Additionally the different stories for the three houses has made it really interesting to keep going. I'm planning one more play through now to finish the last ending. I'm also thinking of another play through to do some kind of 'perfect play through'.
   
   

   

   I think this is her problem summed up really.

   
   For my third play through I moved the difficulty back down so that I could play a little faster. I'm also playing the Black Eagles now, and I'm trying not to recruit any PCs from other houses (I did pick up a few, but just to ensure I have enough bodies on the field for the bigger missions). I really appreciate how different the Black Eagle story and missions are. I was a little disappointed with the similarities between the Golden Deer and the Blue Lions.
   


2. Dragon Quest XI - I'm really enjoying Dragon Question XI. It brings back a lot of the things I've enjoyed about other DQs and it's refreshing. I think Tim Roger's review sums it up best for me. This is a game you can play at an easy pace, and just drift into it. There's enough game to keep me engaged, but not so much that it requires my full attention.
   
   

   

   And I've never been happier.

   
   It has some nice quality of life improvements over previous games. The ability to run quickly is nice (as is the collection of speedy mounts you can pick up. I've ended up adjusting the combat back to pretty standard for Dragon Quest, but I appreciate their attempt to spice up the combat and further the fact that I *could* switch it back. I'm looking forward to this as a nice long story with some funny accents and swords and magic.
   


3. Super Mario Maker 2 - I haven't really gotten into SMM 2 the way I did to the first one. I'm not quite sure what I'm missing because they've made a lot of nice additions to the game. I think it may just be that my creative energy is pointed elsewhere right now. I also feel like the increase in quality of levels and the increase in styles/tools has resulted the levels feeling a little more standardized. I'm still enjoying it, but it hasn't been a must play.
   
   

   

   Fight!



4. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - Our weekend standard continues. We're thinking we'll substitute in New Horizons some of the time when it comes out, but Amiibo Fest has been an important part of our quite time.
   
   

   

   Checking out the scores.



5. Super Mario World (SNES on Switch) - This is the *weirdest* Super Mario Maker game. I think of the 2D Mario's this my favourite, but playing it again with the SNES online service, I'm struck but just how weird it is in comparison to all the other games. I've maybe played more of this game then any other (It's the very first game I bought for myself) and I've enjoyed picking it up again. In light of Super Mario Maker and a lot of common 'rules' for level development it feels very different, sometimes it feels unfair or weird, but generally I think it's fun. It's also a hefty dose of nostalgia.
   
   

   

   I'm amazed at how it feels like this game comes right out of the screen.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for September:

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

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Inexorable.

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Blog: Books Read in 2019

Passivity.

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Blog: Games of August 2019

We could just call this post Game of August 2019, because I've played a lot of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I got sick, and it turns out that the switch is a great game platform to bring to bed, play until the battery runs out then sleep until the battery charges up again. Also Three Houses is really good.


My top five games (by play time) for August were:

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - So yeah. I played 30 hours in a couple of days last month. This month I played more than a hundred hours. I've started on a third play through now. My first Golden Deer play-though was around 70 hours and my second Blue Lion's play-through was around 80 hours (there's a little discrepancy between my recorded time and what the save-game things I have recorded). The game play is compelling. My first play through was on normal, which was a little easy for a Fire Emblem game, especially when playing without permadeath. For my second play-though I moved the difficulty up to hard, which was a better feel overall, although some of the difficulty was in limiting repair of weapons rather than the actual tactical gameplay. The story is also very good and the different facets you see depending on which house you play and which support stories you build gives you a lot of reason to keep playing to understand more.
   
   

   

   To Battle!

   
   


2. Europa Universalis IV - It's been a little while, but I fired this up again needing a little break from Three Houses and I'm having a lot of fun. As usual (pretty much) I'm playing the Ottomans again, but the new mission structure is illuminating interesting things to do while playing.
   
   

   

   Decisions decisions.

   
   


3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - Honestly should have played this more. August is the best in game month.
   
   

   

   Sisters...

   
   


4. Opus Magnum - The game is still very approachable, but the late story missions are a little more work than I feel like putting in right now. The missions from the Steam Workshop have been a nice follow up.
   
   

   

   Be fancy. Make potions.

   
   


5. Pokemon Go - Didn't play that much what with not wanting to leave the house. I'm hoping to see the number for September be a lot higher.
   
   

   

   The summer.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

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

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Youth. Death.

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Blog: Books Read in 2019

Self. Understanding.

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Blog: Books Read in 2019

Self. Home.

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Blog: Books Read in 2019

Adventure. Love.

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Blog: Games of July 2019

July was the first month in a long, loong time where I was able to just relax. I spent a lot of it with old childhood favourites and sprinting around being Mario. It was a nice month. Then I got hit by what might be the best Fire Emblem ever and I'm not quite sure what's happens to all the time since.

My top five games (by play time) for July were:

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Oh wow. So I picked this up on July 26. I played 30 hours. It's pretty great. I have a few nitpicks on pacing and story, but both the actual Fire Emblem grid-based combat and the interstitial Professorial team-building phase are really fun. Played the first pass on normal, casual difficulty (party because I'm tired of how hard Awakening would kick my butt) and I've found it a touch easy. Overall this game has taken over my life a bit and it's pretty glorious being able to revel in it for a while. That being said, my students may be a little confused come September when I try to teaching them by fishing a bunch.
   
   

   

   Ah. What a lovely place for a nap.

   
   


2. Super Mario Odyssey - The more I play of this the more I love it. There's so much diversity in things to do and the motion and control is a lot of fun. I think it could have a little more to it, and I'm sad there wasn't any DLC, but I've loved my time with Super Mario Odyssey.
   
   

   

   There is more in this game than has been dreamed of in any 8-bit philosophy.

   
   


3. Opus Magnum - Zachtronics gets me. I loved SpaceChem and Opus Magnum is the new, fancy, more accessible version of SpaceChem. The missions feel a lot more achievable than some of the early Zachtronics games, and once you've achieved a working result, it's extremely satisfying to go back in an optimize those results. I think having spent a lot of time thinking about algorithmic problem solving for novice computer scientists really put me in the right frame of my to enjoy this game.
   
   

   

   It's not efficient but it is pretty, which this game lets you do quite happily. 



4. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I think this my be my game-of-my-lifetime. I bought the Collection of Mana mostly for the other two games, but I've spent more time on Secret of Mana and been extremely happy playing it again. I love the way the story flows, I love the big bright sprites, I love the controls and the combat. Of course it has its flaws, but it still makes me so happy to play. Incidentally I noticed a few things this time around. One is that the UK version has different controls and a different translation to the US version. The second is just how well the game prepares you for things. Most locations are mentioned several steps ahead of the story from the time they actually become important and I find it helps the game hang together really well.
   
   

   

   Take that, Wasp!



5. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I've started to play Seiken Densetsu 3 several times of the years and I've always played the first few hours and then trailed off. Mostly because I wanted to recapture my joy of Secret of Mana and play properly sitting on the couch. Trials of Mana is letting me do that and I have to confess I'm a little disappointed. I think the story is great and well constructed, but the flow and combat from SoM is missing and the game feels a little detached from my input (the way Legend of Mana on the Playstation feels). I'm wondering if the game didn't get brought across back in the SNES area because they knew it wasn't quite up to the standard of SoM. I think as a kid I would have been pretty disappointed with it (although my capacity to play through crappy games was pretty high back then).
   
   

   

   What a time to be alive.

Here's my total play time chart for July:

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

Project 1 & Project 11: Update I Didn't Write More

This post is just to finish off my updates for my summer of writing more. As it turns out, I didn't really want to write more, so I didn't.

As discussed in the yearly August post, I'm moving my focus elsewhere for now. That should mean more writing on the blog with more projects getting done. As for the fiction, I'm sure that will come again someday.

Updates:

Project	New Words	Total Words	Percent of Target
The Roofs	0	81	0.7%
Blogging	2645	6052	50%

Blog: Books Read in 2019

People.

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Project 12: The Chrono Trigger Sprites Live - Marle

Once again, I've made some progress on my Chrono Trigger Perler Sprites. This time I got Marle done.

It's been a long, long time since I started working on these. In that time I've moved at least 3 times trucking an unfused sprite around with me. A little while back I finally fused the Marle sprite, and now that I have a little time and space, I'm going to try to push on. I'd like to finish the 1-to-1 sprites before September and then I'll see if I still want to do the double sized sprites.

The Marle Sprite

Similar to the Crono 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.

The colours in the Marle sprite and Perler Beads colours

Thanks to the lessons learned on the Chrono Sprite, I produced a map for each bead colour in the form of a separate sprite image (and included the bead colour in the file name, which I really appreciate returning to these two years later). The table of those colours are below.

Sprite Part	Hex Colour	Perler Colour	Notes
	---	---	The Original
	#381838	Purple	Again I chose to outline the sprite in purple which gives a good definition to the outside. Might look a little better with the top and bottom filled in as well.
	#f8a838	Butterscotch	Highlights in Marle's hair.
	#584848	Dark Grey	Darkest shadows on the crossbow.
	#807060	Light Grey	"Metal" in the crossbow.
	#f86810	Orange	Low lights in the hair, belt and shoes.
	#488878 and #205040	Parrot Green	Two sprite colours into one perler colour. Largely shadows.
	#f8a8a0	Peach	Pinker skin tone.
	#80f8b8	Pearl Blue	Pants.
	#801800	Rust	Shadows and Crossbow Body
	#f8d8d0	Sand	Skin tone highlights, a little more beige than the true colour.
	#a0a8a8	Silver Perl	Crossbow highlights.
	#f8f848	Yellow	Hair highlights.
	#ffffff	White	Highlight pixels and filler for the crossbow.

Success of the Sprite

I made sure that the full bottom of the sprite was level all thew ay across. This allowed me to avoid the problems I had with Crono where he tips over if not propped up on the edge. Possibly not a problem in some applications, but if you want your sprites standing, then they need a consistent bottom row. I think here I added in a little extra purple on the bottom to make it stand (although looking at the purple pixels, I can't really see). I hope that me!from-3-years-ago knew what he was doing.

The other change I made was filling in the crossbow. It's technically empty in the real sprite, but for structural integrity I opted to fill it in so that the sprite would be much more rigid and robust. In terms of looking at the sprite in the real world, you barely notice and I think it still looks good.

I'm quite happy with the sprite. I have it sitting next to the Crono sprite in my office window and they look very good together. I am especially enjoying being able to see them from the garden outside.

The process of putting everything together was a bit rough. This project fell way down my priority list, so the couple of times I jumped back in there was a long figuring out what was going on period. On the plus side, I was much more organized about generating the sprite-part sheets, so building the sprite and putting together this post was fairly straight forward.

My next sprite is Lucca. I haven't started yet, but I'd like to have the sprite finished and the next blog post in the series made by August 23, 2019.

Project 1: Blog x 9

Happy August! Also happy blog end and start day (belated)!

As of August 1, I've completed the latest year of blogging and I'm going to lay out my plans for another year of blogging. Now, it's time to update the Blog as Project and the Blog as Blog again. Also it's time to sit in my garden and enjoy August.

I finally finished my PhD in 2019, which I hope will open up my time to work on interesting projects and write about them here. The last year was a little thin on those with the bulk of the posts being reading updates, with a few other posts sprinkled in. I'm starting to get some momentum up though and trying to use that to carry through and get things done.

Back in May I set myself a goal of writing 4000 words a month for the blog. This has been pretty largely a failure, but I think the tracking has been good for me. I've probably written about 2000 words a month and I think for now that's ok. My primary focus has always been to try to be doing more things, which means I think I should be putting my time to working on projects rather than writing about stuff.

So for the Ninth Edition of the Blog, I'm planning to get at least one project post out a month (which ties in nicely with my New Year's Resolution to finish a project a month). I'd also like to put in a few more video game thoughts posts, as I've been playing a lot of good games this year.

Let's go make something!

via GIPHY

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Identity. Independence. Intrigue. Initiation.

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Blog: Books Read in 2019

Plans. Love. Plots

I'm on Good Reads