I can get a bit grumpy when playing TFT and go on rants, but the rants help me feel less tilted at the game and when I can say what I am doing without bitterness in my voice, it's a wonderful thing to do.

And, hey! We reached a new high tonight!

Still not at Platinum, but we're at Gold I again, at 38 LP!

It's mostly been off the back of Academy comps with a side of Yordle comps. Now, I'd like to emphasize: I don't try to force those comps. In fact, I prefer not to, because I know that they are highly contested. It's just that often, I legit don't have any other choice.

I've had absolute garbage luck at rand'ing Void mutants and the few times I did, I either didn't have the items for Cho'gath or couldn't get mutants on my bench early enough to run it so was forced to run other things.

Because if given the choice, I would run Mutants every game just because they're my favorite comp.

I've also had a lot of rotten luck in general mind you, but not running my favorite comp is among the least of the unluckiness I have had.

Still, tho, new high is exciting!

I've fallen down in the latter in spite of it being a new high tho.

I was in, what, top 5% before?

Now it's top 9% in spite of being at a higher LP--because it took me too long to get there.

We'll see if I can get into Platinum and if that helps me.

​But that'll wait until tomorrow. As it's 7:30, I need bed.

Probably still won't be much of a blog but that's more due to the fact that I'm not really sure how to make the thoughts into my head become a proper blog, but hey, at least it's already better than yesterday!

Anyway, today went quite well. Work, I didn't feel incompetent but I do know that I can become more competent than I am. After I came home from work, I worked on my Civ 3 mod. I went from ~40% finished on the second era tech tree to maybe-possibly-100% done on the second era tech tree? (It's hard to tell for sure, and will probably require more tweaks, especially in positioning. Techs' appearance can change based on the civ being played thanks to what units they get.)

It seems like it's mostly flowing as I want it to (although there's a couple spots that are basically impossible to rectify so I will need to figure out how to edit the background of the tech tree to put in the arrows in the needed places).

I think that I got the units placed in ways such that while it's not necessarily mandatory to get the prerequisite unit, it is far easier and earlier to get. That having been said, I do need to tweak the tech tree's technology cost, because right now it's fairly universally the same value which may be too high or too low, I honestly don't know.

This actually puts me within striking distance of getting the tech tree entirely finished though. (Well aside from detail work like exact pixel positions, technology value, etc.)

Since I am updating the buildings and units as I am creating the tech trees due to needing them there to help visualize the optimal layout for the techs (I'll obviously need to double-check this though to make sure they're accurate), that means that when I complete the tech tree, 1/3 of the hardest parts of the mod will be complete!

Now, granted.

The hardest-or-second-hardest (hard to tell if it's the hardest or the second hardest), building the map, might spell the death of the project if my idea for how to build the map ends up not being something that I can actually do. (My basic plan for the map is to start the geography looking close to the Rome scenarios, but modifying it to accommodate for all of the cities from all of the scenarios--including making room for cities that are identical but owned by two different civs in two different scenarios, e.g. Londinium being at least a few blocks from London. There will be some limits to this, obviously; the Turks aren't going to have Istanbul next to the Greek Byzantium/Constantinople for instance. But by and large, mostly, I want to have all the civs have all their cities from scenarios, within reason.)

Even if that doesn't kill the project, the second-hardest-or-hardest very well could. The civilopedia will need a complete and total overhaul, top to bottom, of literally everything. And I do mean, everything. Every Wonder/Building/Unit will need to have entries created (not to mention, have their BLDG/PRTOs adjusted from their current defaults into actually more suited ones).

But it doesn't stop there.

Governments need to have their entries be accurate.

Resource pages need to have their values be correct.

And then every concept needs to be updated, with some outright created.

The map is a daunting, perhaps impossible, task, of making a map that actually manages to encompass the entirety of what I am hoping to create.

But the civilopedia, the thing needed to make my mod actually playable without being the mod's creator (and even then I often have to refer to my notes and am not entirely 100% positive), is definitely going to take me the most time.

This mod as a whole, I've been working on for a couple months by now, probably have sunk like ~30-60 hours on it so far.

The civilopedia work will at least double that if not triple it before I get close to finished.

Of course, once I get the civilopedia work finished, the mod is actually in playable format. It could use a lot of detail work to do. I want to, for the first time ever, put in the art for the buildings so that the building art is what it should be. (I think I know how to do this in theory, but I was really hoping that I could be lazy and just copy someone else's work, like I did for the "all resource icons" one. Alas, no such luck.)

I need to figure out how to do the Science Advisor's Tech Tree descriptions.

If I can, I need to figure out how to modify the opening screen message that you get. (I never could figure that out before.)

I believe that, as this is technically a modified Rise of Rome, my advisors and units-with-multiple-eras are all set to have their ancient era art for all four eras. I need to modify that to be my intent (ancient, medieval x 2, then final era as industrial art).

And I want to add in extra music. I want normal-vanilla-game ancient-era music in the rotation for the ancient era, for the Medieval Era to have the Medieval Era scenario music but to keep the ancient-era music (including the general Conquest theme song) in the rotation and add in the standard Medieval Era music from the normal vanilla game, and to have the final era have the extra music beyond that.

That aside from how I have a couple of easter eggs that I want to program in. One, a near-impossible unit to achieve, something theoretically buildable but which is pragmatically nearly impossible to pull off, and yet it being basically an instawin cheat code for anyone who does go through the ridiculous trouble of getting it to actually work.

The other, 2-4 barbarian encampments which have 5 (slightly nerfed in bombard range as a precaution) elite-experience versions of said easter egg unit, each. As in, 10/20 total, on barbarian huts at the corners of the map, surrounded by ocean (as to make sure the barbarian units cannot actually leave their encampment), designed to be raid bosses of sorts.

The units in question have maximum bonus health, maximum attack, maximum defense, maximum bombard, maximum bombard rate, maximum movement, long bombard range, blitz, lethal land/sea, and enslave (with enslave creating a copy of themselves), making taking so much as one down a fairly hard feat (at least in theory, it might be easier in practice than I give credit for).

So the mod is progressing along quite nicely, but it's still far from even 50% complete I'd say.

If I got the map complete, including all civilizations with all their cities and all their city improvements/wonders and all their starting units and the tech tree values appropriately set? I'd call the mod probably ~50% complete.

But as-is we're probably less than 25% complete.

Still, tho. Is fun to work on it and if I keep it up, if the big hard-to-achieve things don't kill the mod, it will get done, and it will be something that I will then proceed to show off.

I am, after all. A streamer now.

I have a streaming schedule and everything!

Now, granted.

I'm a variety streamer and that means I get 0 viewers because streaming variety is not the way to grow your channel.

And I stream at a time that nobody else is awake, meaning even the people who normally might want to (friends, associates, etc.) literally can't because they are asleep. Meaning 0 viewers because streaming at a time nobody is awake is not the way to grow your channel.

My hope is that, eventually, I can settle into mostly doing a single viewer-dense but streamer-light game that I genuinely have fun playing, which would then set me up for success big time because if I am doing the same thing, at the same time, every time, and am streaming at a time nobody else is streaming, then that means I have a fairly high chance of viewers stopping by and maybe staying because the few viewers who would be awake at that time would want to find the game content they're looking for. (Dead by Daylight would be an amazing game for this as, me following basically every DBD streamer, I know for a fact nobody streams DBD at that time because literally all the DBD streamers are either asleep at that time or streaming a non-DBD game at that time. Alas, I don't own DBD and I'm not even sure I'd have fun playing it even if I did.)

But for now, lacking that, I do whatever I want. I streamed me going through my blog twice! And recently, have streamed pretty heavily TFT.

Speaking of which...I was within striking distance of Platinum IV as of my last stream (Gold I 29 LP), but then I played yesterday and...well, let's just say, I ended up falling to barely Gold III. (21 LP if I recall correctly.) Well, another reason I feel pretty good today is that I've mostly recovered. I'm not quite back to where I was (still Gold II but at like 89 LP or so), but I got basically exclusively wins today which was much-needed since yesterday was basically nothing but losses.

I'm not going to make it before Tuesday, so there might be a patch requiring me to re-learn everything. (This was why I even played on Sunday to begin with: I wanted to get into Platinum IV before the new patch, so that I could spend time learning the new patch without tanking my rank. Alas, if the patch is tomorrow, that's not happening. It might not be tomorrow, mind you, depends on Riot Games' schedule honestly, but if it is I failed. If it isn't, still got plenty of time, but we'll see after I'm home from work tomorrow.)

Still tho. While it's at least 1-2 more wins away than it was when I last streamed, I still consider myself within striking distance of Platinum IV. And even if the patch is tomorrow, there's no guarantee that the comps I best know how to run get hit. I'm afraid they will be because I am a dirty filthy Mutant spammer in 60-80% of my games (Void makes every Mutant a carry; Omnivamp makes your whole team a carry; the increase in combat makes all mutants carries; the increase after allies die makes all mutants carries; the only times I don't abuse Mutants are the Cybernetic mutants which limit carries to Kai'sa and Kog'maw with a side of Mundo, and the mana-reduction which gets the most mileage out of non-mutant units having 20 less mana e.g. Lux + blue buff + mutant) so I imagine the mutant comp is going to get gutted when the next patch rolls out.

But if it doesn't, then hey...I might actually be better off. If the strategies being used at the highest level aren't the strategies *I* am using, then I am probably fine.

We'll have to see.

​Anyway, I've gotta eat dinner and then go to bed so wrapping this up now.

I got the entirety of the Rise of Rome era done in my Civ 3 mod and am ~40% done with the Middle Ages section of it (a lot of the specifics for units needs to be set and ordering the techs is also something I need to figure out so it'll take me some time to do), although it comes with the caveat that I also need to look into how long each tech takes in my inspiration for them, so that I can set better times for all the techs. (Mostly middle ages, but a couple in Rise of Rome may need tweaking, too.)

And I streamed! For basically a record length for me. I also continued to climb in TFT, and am within striking distance of Platinum IV! (Gold I 29 LP as of my last match.)

I also did a lot of stuff right.

I will however be failing at setting a good schedule as it is almost 9 am, and this being Saturday, I go to bed early on Saturday meaning I basically have zero time tomorrow. Plus probably won't do much hygiene care.

Whoops!

Ah well.

Also, I beat Kingdom! That was also a thing, survived all 100 days, then destroyed the last portal.

Good times to be had, and productive, just...well, not perfect. And I DO need to be better.

Just, not much. I've been feeling both short on time and dead tired for the last couple of hours, even though it's only now 3 am.

I've put in some plans for things, done a little bit here and there, but not committed to doing much of anything.

I did some work on my civ 3 mod again, tackling the tech tree. It's, well...right now a total mess, because restructuring everything to get it right will take a looooot of time.

Restructuring the tech tree is probably the third-largest part of the project, behind updating the civilopedia (second) and building the map (number one). So, it's...going to take a long time to actually get right. My notes are reasonably good, but not perfect, and I need to refer to the base scenario for some better idea of unit placements with me keeping things to where they should be.

Probably best to tackle that after sleep tho, so did as much as I could tonight, and probably going to bed.

Was it four or five days that I went without blogging?
I only have excuses for four.
Yesterday, something I thought would take like 15-30 minutes ended up taking 1.5 hours and I still didn't get it perfect (I gave up on making it right and just posted it as-is in spite of the errors within), when my plan was very specifically to go to bed early so that I could wake up early enough to take a desperately-needed shower. (Which I did, it just meant that I went straight to bed.)
Saturday, I went to bed before midnight because I need to get up early on Sundays for work. Really early. Like, need to go to bed at 9 pm (10 pm due to daylight savings time this week) to get up at like 5 am or so, which meant no blog then due to poor time management.
Friday, well, I watched the entirety of the League of Legends Worlds 2021 final live. (Well...except for the postgame. When Damwon lost, I just left immediately. Nothing against EDG, they earned their win; on the day, there is no question that they were the better team. But like, I really wanted DWG to win, so when they didn't, I just lost any interest in watching the aftermath.)
Thursday, I streamed Kingdom but while I ended my stream due to my parents getting up, I kept playing until 8 am. (Whoops.) "Just...one...more...night..." applied.

Of course, stuff has happened!

I got the answer I was looking for on the character from Phyrra and Cyrus. (The term I was looking for which applies is Gender Non-conforming.)

I came up with THREE horror stories on Sunday!
Two of them formed instinctively in my brain when I had the idle thought of, "what would an inverse-Freddy be for horror?", and my brain quickly, automatically, gave me the answer in the form of two fully fleshed out takes that both qualify as being inverting the mechanics of Freddy.

The first, a story I am conditionally calling, "The Darkest Sleep", I can best describe as "Inverse-Freddy meets Final Destination meets Alan Wake". Basically, in a small town, a darkness comes upon the citizens, a darkness that brings their nightmares to life, with the nightmares able to hurt everyone, but hunting down to target the source of the dreamer.

​In other words, every time someone goes to sleep (making sleep dangerous), instead of the danger being in their dreams invisible to the real world but capable of hurting them, the danger is visible to everyone except the dreamer, and very much real. Being manifested from darkness, they are weak to light, but they are very much capable of killing multiple people and even in some cases outlasting the dreamer's nightmare. (For instance, a zombie apocalypse doesn't go away when the dreamer wakes up, at least not entirely. It's weakened, it's lessened, but not removed altogether. A tornado might start to dissipate when the dreamer wakes up, but doesn't suddenly vanish in an instant.)

The story would cover the outbreak, covering multiple characters and what happens to them and how they eventually manage to fight the darkness/dreams.

​The second, a story I am conditionally calling, "Don't Wake Up", I actually lowkey think would be better as an actual horror game, but I still think it's definitely writeable as a novel.

The basic premise: a family in a car uses a 30-year-old map instead of their GPS, taking a turn onto an old disused road instead of the main path because according to the map, it was a more direct route to their destination.

Predictably, this does not go well.

Their car takes a beating, and ultimately, it just barely manages to limp its way into a town;
Farmville, a town with the slogan "Where Dreams Come True".

But immediately, things are a bit eerie. The town appears to be basically a ghost town. Everything is 25 years old, dated, beaten, worn, etc., and yet the town still stands in spite of the disrepair. If it were fully abandoned, things like foliage should've taken over, buildings should've collapsed, etc. But while the town is in a state of disrepair, with basically no technology working, the buildings are still intact. Beaten, but not broken.

Around the town, there are a bunch of "graffiti", red words spelling out things that mostly just look like nonsense, naysayers, paranoia, "end of the world" talk, propaganda, etc., to an uninformed individual's eye. Messages like "There Is No Escape", "Don't Trust The Farmer", and such are strewn about.

And the family of four comes across a Farmer. Wielding a shovel, wearing a straw farmer's hat on his head, in blue overalls with a plaid/red shirt, big brown boots and gloves, the full look. He smiles at them, acts friendly, and gives them the suggestion that they can get help by waking up one of the denizens inside a building he leads them to.

After they do what the helpful farmer asks them to (you can guess where this is going), the citizen woken up goes "Oh no...", and the farmer reveals his true colors.

The protagonist, the older child, manages to flee, while his(well, ambiguously-his, this story is written in first person, protagonist is named Ash, is masculine, but is not actually strictly speaking gendered as I want to leave it open but for the sake of the narrative I use 'he' for the protagonist here as the main reason for the ambiguity is the potential for gender-flex if made into a game because before I had the idea of it being a game he was just a young teenaged guy unambiguously) younger sister faints as the three present (their parents and the woken up person are slaughtered).

​So how does this inverse-Freddy work?

In the town of Farmville, The Farmer is an immortal serial killer. He cannot be killed. And he is out to murder everyone. However, he has certain limitations. He cannot leave the boundaries of the town, permanently trapped in Farmville. And secondly, more importantly, he can only appear when someone is awake within the city bounds of Farmville. If nobody is awake, he disappears, he vanishes.

When someone does wake, he spawns in the town center, and from there, knowing someone is awake, he attempts to hunt them down.

Of course, things aren't as easy for him as they might seem, and not as easy for the denizens of Farmville, either. You can see some obvious loopholes he could try to exploit and some obvious loopholes they could try, but as it turns out, there's more rules to The Farmer's "Game".

The citizens of Farmville are themselves trapped inside the city bounds. They are just as trapped with The Farmer as The Farmer is. They can't just leave. 

​However, when the citizens of Farmville go to sleep, they are completely immune to any form of harm. They cannot be harmed by any method. And The Farmer is incapable of waking them up, by any method. He can't do anything to harm them or wake them up...if they are sleeping.

That, aside from the fact that if everyone is sleeping, he vanishes into nonexistence.

The rules partially apply to visitors, but visitors don't work identically. The Farmer still spawns if visitors are awake, and still despawns if those visitors go to sleep, but visitors do not get the perma-sleep that the natural citizens of Farmville do. They will wake up. They don't have total immunity while asleep, but do have partial immunity while asleep. The Farmer can't hurt a sleeping visitor. The Farmer can't force a visitor awake, either.

So, visitors sleeping get more safety, and if everyone is asleep even visitors, The Farmer despawns.

But, visitors, unlike the citizens, can and do wake up.

The citizens can only be woken up by force by the visitors (think kinda like Inception style with a "kick").

And with Ash's family entering Farmville, The Farmer began the latest round of his sick game. With Ash trying his best to survive/escape with his sister.

There's a little bit of extra.

Every individual killed by The Farmer doesn't leave a body--they dissolve, and then their dissolved form takes the shape of red letters...which record their last thoughts. "What's going on???" "I don't understand..." "They've doomed me!" are red letters that Ash sees when revisiting the building where The Farmer revealed his true nature to Ash's family--visitors leave red stains just the same as citizens do.

​This has been going on for 25 years, but the government didn't ignore things altogether. They investigated Farmville, and were able to, eventually, verify the supernatural nature of the ongoings there, and discretely took action, removing Farmville from the map, creating detours around the city on all four sides, but also did their part to try and help the citizens, by dropping in a bunch of equipment for forcing sleep. (Taking the form of needles to inject, forcing immediate sleep.)

The fewer knowing about it, the less there'd be idiots going "Don't go there? Pfft, yeah right! I'm going there!!!". Including some idiots in the government because if it were widespread knowledge in the government then it need not be a citizen going there, it could be someone who has the information but doesn't believe it all and wants to see it for themselves.

So instead of a hard-quarantine where they blockade it off, they took the much subtler route of making the old road be, well...an old road, that basically nobody would go on, and made it as hard as possible to stumble upon Farmville. This has a very high success rate, albeit not foolproof, as proven by Ash's family.

The less it looks like the government was trying to hide something, the less it'd be investigated, basically. So with it not looking like the government was hiding anything, nobody investigated, so the government kept the world as safe from The Farmer as possible and the denizens of Farmville as safe from harm as they could. Knowledge of what happened there became strictly need-to-know, with basically nobody in the know.

The denizens of Farmville did their own part as well, trying to create hiding places, stashes/caches, etc., where The Farmer couldn't find individuals, couldn't destroy their equipment, etc.

So Ash has been given the tools, from the sleep serum to the hiding spots, to survive, but it's still...well. Not easy, because The Farmer has been hunting the area for 25 years and knows when something is amiss, knows when something has been disturbed, knows when something has changed, having stalked the entirety of the town over the 25 years and scoped it out.

He doesn't know every nook and cranny, but he's found some hiding spots, some things, just by time. He's got very good knowledge, but also a disadvantage of not instantly knowing where the waking person is. He has to guess. And even if he guesses right, there's travel time from the town center.

Which gives Ash the fighting chance needed.

​The third horror story is a short story about a possessive tool coming back, not as well fleshed out but basically, person finds tool, tool is useful, keeps coming back...but then won't leave and can cause harm to others. (A bit more cliche admittedly.)

And in more recent news, today I basically made a friend! I don't want to share details because details are details that go beyond what should be shared publicly, but saying I have a friend now is still okay, so like. I have a new friend! That's legit something I've not made for YEARS. And it is AMAZING.

...But once more, I know the cause to be basically entirely my addiction to the newest tft set.
Continued opinion: Mutants are OP especially Cho'Gath in most games (some Mutant bonuses are lackluster).
Scrap can actually be REALLY strong, if you get the augment for extra item components, but otherwise is mostly worthless.
Since I've mostly been spamming those two comps, that's about all I have to say there.

But anyway, should be trying to start a stream soon. Just need to hit 'post' and then make sure my stream info and setup is good to go.

I was devoted to a stream until 11:30 pm and after that began to play the newly released set of tft since I like to start playing before people figure out the meta and dive straight into ranked.

Initial impressions: Mutant Void = OP af. Yordles are generically fairly good, too.

Tanky comps tho seem a little underpowered (I literally had a tank comp with bodyguard 6 academy 4 and my tanks just...well, weren't and this was with a three star Leona so like, if a 3* Bodyguard6 Leona isn't actually tanky...tanks are probably​ weaker than they should be), unless you count bruisers as tanky but bruisers just get HP and the thing making bruisers strong is that their abilities actually give very strong effects (thinking of Cho'gath namely).

Beyond that tho, still figuring things out as I've only played four games.

I didn't really do anything in spite of having basically 10 hours of free time, but hey, I did get through the entirety of the League of Legends semifinal today and I'm going to be going to bed very early today and probably getting a shower tomorrow as a result. (Something I desperately need as I skipped out on one on Saturday.)

​So like. Not the best most productive of days, but also has silver linings.

So like...I got all of the units in my Civ 3 scenario, but this is a process that took literally weeks of work, doing hours of work each day I worked on it. Probably in the realm of 100-200 hours' worth of work to get the units in.

...I finished the buildings AND wonders in less than 48 hours, across two days where I didn't spend much time on it.

I legit have no clue why the process for these is so much faster.

Now, granted.

I will need to do a second pass on all units/buildings/wonders once I get the tech tree done. (Which is what I am doing next. Tech tree, governments, can be done in either order but tech trees first makes more sense to me now.)

And then a third pass to make each have a unique civilopedia entry so that it's actually possible to know what each unit and building actually does without my creator knowledge.

But the initial stage is there.

So like.

I'm definitely making a lot of progress there.

Did a lot of work on my Civ 3 mod and started playing Kingdom: Classic (I didn't realize it was actually a hard​ game!), so not much accomplished, but hey, I do be doing things!