weekly write up 8/4/2023
Aug. 4th, 2024 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trainerlyra we made it through another week! let's get to it. this is a long one LOL
monday: it was a shockingly busy monday... mostly self inflicted. a good friend of mine, remi, has been really obsessed with this japanese only rpg maker game called cell of empireo. i've been looking for some new rpg maker games, and i'm quite savvy when it comes to live translation software from previous visual novel playthroughs, so i decided to give that a go. i was not expecting it to be rpg maker 2003, which kinda threw a wrench in my plans of "doing this extremely simply" since textractor doesn't LOVE rpg maker 2003, but i got it working without too much fuss. yes, there's a youtube playlist with the entire game translated... but i have a lot of trouble with let's plays? i just get too distracted. i like to play things myself, and i've been such a big fan of rpg maker games since vgperson's first few translations, so i was happy to actually play it... as it stands, i got through chapter 4 so far! i like it a lot.
i also finally started case file compendium, and i'm still not sure how i feel about it - i was expecting to really love it, since i'm very much a fan of those dead dove style danmei romances and i LOVE 2ha, which is the same author, but so far it hasn't been clicking with me.... i just really dislike the love interest ex doctor guy so far lmfao. i like he yu just fine though. we'll see how it goes! i have volume 2 already also so maybe by the end of vol 1 i'll just want to speed through it...
it was also announced there was a two-ish week extension for july break bingo, which is great, bc i haven't been much in a writing mood the last week LOL. partially bc my keyboard on my laptop is slowly starting to go... my e key especially, which is what i get for being a childe main in genshin lmfao. bc of that tho, kyle downloaded zzz for me on his pc so i could play on it instead, which is great, bc his pc is not only like about 10x stronger than my (once) high end laptop, but his monitor is also SO much nicer than mine lmfao. i should know, i bought it for him a few years back. but it was really cute honestly, he set up a whole desktop for me to play:
animated wallpaper and all! i REALLY love zzz still, and i'm no longer mad about it. i just want to play it all the time. also on monday i cooked a banger meal, trying out these pre-cut carrots with a brown sugar glaze. they were like THE easiest things ever, and i will be getting more of those every grocery run from now on. also, i love farro lmao:
he also finally sent out his price raise email, which like, about time. man's been undercharging for his business since he started it. he was so concerned that his clients weren't going to be able to shell out for it, and i was like... dude you're raising the price by $5 for a service that most people are charging $20+ MORE for........... if they don't like it that's on them at that point....... anyways. so he sent out the email to basically say "yeah things are too expensive. we spent like $600 on groceries a month and my wife's health is bad enough she can't return to full time work at the moment and likely for the foreseeable future" which is... mostly true.... i AM looking but only for strictly remote work and it's just gonna take time. but instead of being upset, almost all of his clients said it was more than fine and all asked about me and wanted to be sure i was okay, which was just. so sweet :') i love his clients, truly.
tuesday: the day itself was fairly chill, despite the disgusting heat & humidity combo refusing to get any better... i seriously cannot remember a summer THIS bad. we always get a few days in the like upper 90s, but not so CONSISTENTLY. i hate it here. boston was not built for this LMFAO. but then i remembered... it's session 0 night! of the my hero tabletop jason is running! oh boy! i had to quickly become a person again, aka get dressed. i wanted to do my usual himekaji but it was just too damn hot so shorts and a band shirt it was lmao. session 0 went rather well, i still have to finish my character sheet but it's only one thing i'm unsure about so i think that will be fine... but yeah it was fun. it's going to be j running it, which is great, because he used to literally be a professional game master haha. he worked at this board game bar... i miss that place.... would like to go back but poor j hates it there now LOL. anyways, j is running it, it's a homebrew system built off of the sentinel comics rpg rules. it'll be me and j's roommates/my close friends matt, aria, and hatch, so i expect it'll be a ton of fun. i'm by far the least experienced with ttrpgs in the group, but i trust jason to make it easy for me lmao. we had a nice time though just hanging out and discussing how things were gonna go and doing some initial chats about what we want out of the story etc. half of this done once it got very dark on a walk to and from 7/11, which disappointingly has NOT gotten the rice balls yet........ but i did get some bubble tea:
honestly, sometimes i prefer the canned bubble tea to a boba shop LOL. anyways, also excitingly, kyle finally fixed the bathroom door while i was out!!!!
that paint i will remind you was EYEBALLED FROM MEMORY...... truly i terrify myself sometimes with my memory for color lmao. anyways, i ended up staying over at j's until almost 1:30, so he was kind enough to drive me home so i didn't have to take an uber by myself at that time. also to save me money lol. oh, and before i went over to j's i did reorganize and clean my bookshelf!!! finally!!! i will have to take a picture for next week's since currently there is a table in front of it and i am too nauseous to move it lol
wednesday: also a busy day... i finally had the courage to call my insurance/therapist's office about wtf to do with regards to my very unfortunate and mildly insane billing situation...... my insurance was absolutely zero help, unsurprisingly lmfao. they don't do the superbill system for OON providers, and they also have zero OON benefits whatsoever..... so they told me the best they could offer was i could put in paperwork to do a OON exception, which i... still have to send to my therapist..... which i will do..... tomorrow........bc damn i really need a session i did not realize going a week without would screw me up so badly lol. anyways, i called the therapist office as well to be like uhhhh your billing dept....has not called me.......i have no job..........please help.........and the woman was thankfully SO helpful and not only bumped my request (though they still haven't called me lmfao) but also pushed all my bills out by a month, so i don't have to worry about them until something is figured out.... thank god lmao. i also set up a new psychiatrist appointment for next tuesday, so fingers crossed that person doesn't suck.... i've been burned so many times but i like desperately need a change to my dosage and probably something else to supplement it..... anyways. since it was the end of the month, i got my spotify monthly stats as well:
literally none of this is a surprise hahahaha. anyways, a lot of wednesday was also spent editing like a madman to finish more of the insanity that was sapphy's birthday week... which for the record turned out great! lmao. but anyway, will also came over. he's been struggling a lot the last few weeks emotionally, which is pretty rare for him, so kyle has wanted him to come over so he doesn't feel quite so isolated. which, like, totally! so he came on over. took kyle to chipotle while i cooked this new recipe i was trying of sweet potatoes and a chickpea tomato sauce, which is SUCH a banger i'm obsessed:
played a bit more cell of empireo, but then i was struck with a thought - the last time i used textractor, it wasn't quite so advanced. forget searching for hooks, that was basically an instant crash....so i was like, what haven't i played that i've wanted to..... little did i know that would be a VERY dangerous path to go down, but more on that later..... you will see why it is very dangerous for me to hyperfixate on a coding problem.............
before that, though, wednesday brought two very different emotions also. first was i had a wicked good conversation with a medical study i was a candidate for, and they agreed to set me up with the next stage of interviews to participate in on friday. which, like, cool! not could it actually be helpful (it's specifically studying a treatment for suicidal ideation found in people with BPD, which, uh, hello) but it also pays out $500 for three days of in person study. so like. cool! i could use the money. but my dad ALSO called and told me he had another blood clot in his leg - his, what, third? fourth? in the same spot in under a year - and it was bad enough they were having him come in for surgery on friday, which. ugh. i did not like hearing that! my dad is older, but i don't really like thinking about it. so that kinda sucked to find out! but more on that later too.
thursday: more editing! i also felt like making a few icons, which i'll upload here on a later date when i've got a few more finished. but indeed, the icon for this post is one of my new ones! but yeah, it was really mostly finishing mep parts and cleaning/doing laundry etc and playing zzz until later in the afternoon. kyle decided he was finally FINALLY going to sell the old car, thank fucking god, we need the money and it's such a damn waste to have it sitting there uselessly.......... since i don't drive lmao.............. anyways, so he was out doing that, which turned out to be a good day for it bc red, the wonderful angel he is, bought kyle and i cheesecake delivery :')
which was just the pick me up kyle needed after fighting with dealerships about a good price to sell LOL. the cheesecake was absolutely delicious. bc kyle was out selling the car, jason was kind enough to come over instead of us going there like we were supposed to, and it was a very delightful night. for the first hour he needed to do an apartment app for him + roommates, bc their lease expires at the end of august and he was getting REAL anxious about it. but after that, we hung out, went and got pizza and fries, and watched some more demon slayer, which i'm still enjoying quite a bit. he stayed after kyle went to bed at ~12 to talk to me about the mha final chapter & jjk leaks, so he ended up leaving at almost 2.... which means i didn't start laundry until almost 2...... but what else is new, i've been going to bed at 4am so lol.
friday: friday morning, kyle left early to finish the car sale!!! woo!!!!! he got enough out of it that it paid off the rest of his loan on it and we still ended up with $4k, which considering how beat to hell and back that thing is and at almost 55k miles.... i'll take it! lmao. fuck that thing. we're never buying a ford again, for sure. so i got to have the honors of cancelling the insurance on it lol. i also unfortunately had the honor of fighting with xfinity support for charging us the old rate even though we switched our plan............... but thankfully that worked out okay and we will pay literally $1 next month so lol. finished my trc reread too! so next up on the agenda is the clamp school series, which leo is very excited for me to read, as they're the clamp series i'm least familiar with.
friday is also when i had my zoom interview with the doctor conducting the medical study, and he thankfully determined i was a great candidate so i should be getting scheduled monday! which should've been great news but unfortrunately it was also the day of my father's surgery to remove the clot.... which did not work. the clot was too large and they weren't able to do anything from the angle they went in at, which. well! i'm very not happy about it! my dad is 75. he'll be gone a good 10-15 years earlier than all of my friends' parents will be, and he's also the only person in my family i talk to. i simply do not talk to my sisters, anyone really from his side of things, and i haven't spoken with anyone on my mother's side since i was 16. so he is literally my only family, outside of kyle & my in laws. so i was... very distraught. i am very not ready to face my father's mortality. especially with how screwed up my head has been lately. so that! really just sucked! the clot is. REALLY large it's basically up through a lot of his upper left leg. they sent him home with heavy duty blood thinners and an appointment for wednesday to check on things, but he's scheduled for a second surgery next friday...... i really hope he won't need it, but i'm not very confident unfortunately. i really really hate it here :') so i needed a good distraction....
distraction one was finishing sapphy's birthday week out with the joke mep for them, where we drew stick figures/used really low res screenshots of their niche otps, and also edited them extremely poorly. i downloaded a phone editor for this specifically and i gotta say. i will literally never fucking do that again LOL. i have such a respect for phone editors these days.
distraction two was. well. kyle was out with will - he offered to cancel when i called and told him about my dad's surgery, but i needed alone time to distract myself before i was quite ready for that - so i was like. what other games should i translate now that i know textractor works so well? oh yeah, there's that ancient x game for the wonderswan... it's a card game.... but it has a story mode (ish) with conversations...... i've never done wonderswan modding or hacking before, so this might be fun...... little did i know. the hole this would lead me down. so i hunted down some emulators and tried my hand at getting it to hook in textractor. i tried getting the VN ocr to work. i tried getting it to hook via translator++. i tried other on screen readers. but bc it was going through an emulator, it was proving to be very difficult........or so i THOUGHT that was the reason...........so i was like, deep sigh. i guess maybe i'll have to hex edit.
oh, importantly, ATL released their rerecording of dear maria count me in and i cried a lot. i love them. favorite band forever and ever.
saturday: kyle worked this morning so after a bit of zzz, i was like huh. better get into looking for how to play the x card game that absolutely nobody but me cares about. so i got into it. first i started looking at the hex code but i was like lol this was miserable back on fire emblem fates so i will avoid this if i can. what else can i do. oh, i could extract the script itself by dumping the rom!
hahahaha. hahahahahahahaha. wonderswan is such an obscure console that nobody cares about except for like 10 people that there's very little public documentation and practically zero tools for it. this isn't like 3ds or vita hacking, in which there's a plug and play guide that does everything for you... which is fine. i've modded many a console and done many a rom hack. i'm no stranger to some code. so first i try a few of the basic things i'm familiar with but i'm quickly realizing none of them are working.... so i'm like. deep sigh. okay. maybe there's some ocr that i'm not thinking of? a way to extract the script that someone has posted somewhere maybe? i am going crazy doing research on the fucking wonderswan........
kyle has me take a (much much needed) break to help him with some billing stuff for one of his clients, which like, thank god lmao. i actually missed doing those kind of tasks and it is SO much nicer when there's such little pressure since it's just me nd him.... anyways that was a good use of an hour, bc it took a bit to figure out the situation but also took a bit to explain it back to him since his brain does NOT work in that way. lmao. but after that was done, he was like, okay my turn. i know i know NOTHING about modding and hacking and code but maybe i can google something you haven't found yet. alas, that was not the case.... at one point it got to me looking at some code documentation from TWO THOUSAND AND TWO to try and piece together how to decompile a .wsc rom............... i had work the next morning at my every-other-weekend part time job, but i was up until almost 1am looking through the hex code and ready to tear my hair out lmao. finally i called it quits and head to bed....
sunday: but never fear, even at work i couldn't be stopped. kyle was kind enough to drive me in this morning, which was nice, but even BETTER were the fact that the phones were broken. it was genuinely the most peaceful shift i have EVER had in my entire life lmfao. i spoke to maybe 4 people and had no calls. pure and utter bliss. my dad and i talked for a bit on my cell bc he was confused as to why i wasn't picking up the work phone haha, and he seemed to be feeling... well, exhausted, and not great, but somewhat better than friday. so i ordered myself starbucks, and got back to work................
on the wonderswan conundrum. at this point, would it be easier if i were to just hold my fucking phone up to my screen and manually record a translation that way? absolutely. no question. but now i'm DETERMINED to make it PLAYABLE IN ENGLISH. so i continued my trek. my trek ended up bringing me to some python scripts, which is a language i've used like twice for extremely basic organizational tasks at work lol. my knowledge of python is truly garbage. but i was like. well no time like the present to learn! so i. started learning python. to run some scripts i found that one of the guys behind AGT put up. they were not what i, personally, was looking for, but after MUCH trial and error......... i did actually get all of them to run? i have always picked up on coding very quickly, my brain just works like that, but man python was a lot easier than i expected after i understood the environments and commands.
so this was. like literally my whole work shift. my uber back was awful and i am still feeling sick from it, i get motion sick so easy these days, but that's okay. will was over for a bit again when i got home, which was fine since i wanted to dive RIGHT back into figuring this out, and that's when i finally got the scripts to run.... will bought me candy as encouragement, which was very kind of him lol. kyle also finally fixed the dishwasher seemingly!!!!!! thank fucking god!!!!!!!!
so anyways, i've come to three possible solutions to my wonderswan conundrum.... so i will continue to work until all options are exhausted. it's really a shame that RHDN is shutting down, or becoming more or less archive only. at least the forums will still continue to run...... i have a feeling i will be using them QUITE frequently over the next few days.............. see, when i get interested in a video game coding project, i literally do nothing else until it's finished. so let's hope that i figure it out soon or just decide to translate it by actually playing the fucking game in its entirety in japanese and have a text file next to it to record the script lmfao. back during the FE fates days, i spent a week brute forcing hex code to change the marriage options for a couple of characters, make lucina a playable unit, and added in a lucina & laslow C-S rank support as lucigo is, of course, my fave FEA ship. it was brutal!!!! but it worked out in the end. so we can hope for the same this time.... and that at some point in the near future the world will be able to experience the bizarre x card game on the wonderswan in english..................... other things, i signed up for a few of the writing exchanges i've seen around on DW - namely the pine4pine and jealous/obsessive ones! the pine4pine already had seisub nominated before i got to nominations.... which i was real happy about haha. anyways, what a week.
last week's goals? well, i cleaned my bookshelf........
hopes for next week:
monday: it was a shockingly busy monday... mostly self inflicted. a good friend of mine, remi, has been really obsessed with this japanese only rpg maker game called cell of empireo. i've been looking for some new rpg maker games, and i'm quite savvy when it comes to live translation software from previous visual novel playthroughs, so i decided to give that a go. i was not expecting it to be rpg maker 2003, which kinda threw a wrench in my plans of "doing this extremely simply" since textractor doesn't LOVE rpg maker 2003, but i got it working without too much fuss. yes, there's a youtube playlist with the entire game translated... but i have a lot of trouble with let's plays? i just get too distracted. i like to play things myself, and i've been such a big fan of rpg maker games since vgperson's first few translations, so i was happy to actually play it... as it stands, i got through chapter 4 so far! i like it a lot.
i also finally started case file compendium, and i'm still not sure how i feel about it - i was expecting to really love it, since i'm very much a fan of those dead dove style danmei romances and i LOVE 2ha, which is the same author, but so far it hasn't been clicking with me.... i just really dislike the love interest ex doctor guy so far lmfao. i like he yu just fine though. we'll see how it goes! i have volume 2 already also so maybe by the end of vol 1 i'll just want to speed through it...
it was also announced there was a two-ish week extension for july break bingo, which is great, bc i haven't been much in a writing mood the last week LOL. partially bc my keyboard on my laptop is slowly starting to go... my e key especially, which is what i get for being a childe main in genshin lmfao. bc of that tho, kyle downloaded zzz for me on his pc so i could play on it instead, which is great, bc his pc is not only like about 10x stronger than my (once) high end laptop, but his monitor is also SO much nicer than mine lmfao. i should know, i bought it for him a few years back. but it was really cute honestly, he set up a whole desktop for me to play:
animated wallpaper and all! i REALLY love zzz still, and i'm no longer mad about it. i just want to play it all the time. also on monday i cooked a banger meal, trying out these pre-cut carrots with a brown sugar glaze. they were like THE easiest things ever, and i will be getting more of those every grocery run from now on. also, i love farro lmao:
he also finally sent out his price raise email, which like, about time. man's been undercharging for his business since he started it. he was so concerned that his clients weren't going to be able to shell out for it, and i was like... dude you're raising the price by $5 for a service that most people are charging $20+ MORE for........... if they don't like it that's on them at that point....... anyways. so he sent out the email to basically say "yeah things are too expensive. we spent like $600 on groceries a month and my wife's health is bad enough she can't return to full time work at the moment and likely for the foreseeable future" which is... mostly true.... i AM looking but only for strictly remote work and it's just gonna take time. but instead of being upset, almost all of his clients said it was more than fine and all asked about me and wanted to be sure i was okay, which was just. so sweet :') i love his clients, truly.
tuesday: the day itself was fairly chill, despite the disgusting heat & humidity combo refusing to get any better... i seriously cannot remember a summer THIS bad. we always get a few days in the like upper 90s, but not so CONSISTENTLY. i hate it here. boston was not built for this LMFAO. but then i remembered... it's session 0 night! of the my hero tabletop jason is running! oh boy! i had to quickly become a person again, aka get dressed. i wanted to do my usual himekaji but it was just too damn hot so shorts and a band shirt it was lmao. session 0 went rather well, i still have to finish my character sheet but it's only one thing i'm unsure about so i think that will be fine... but yeah it was fun. it's going to be j running it, which is great, because he used to literally be a professional game master haha. he worked at this board game bar... i miss that place.... would like to go back but poor j hates it there now LOL. anyways, j is running it, it's a homebrew system built off of the sentinel comics rpg rules. it'll be me and j's roommates/my close friends matt, aria, and hatch, so i expect it'll be a ton of fun. i'm by far the least experienced with ttrpgs in the group, but i trust jason to make it easy for me lmao. we had a nice time though just hanging out and discussing how things were gonna go and doing some initial chats about what we want out of the story etc. half of this done once it got very dark on a walk to and from 7/11, which disappointingly has NOT gotten the rice balls yet........ but i did get some bubble tea:
honestly, sometimes i prefer the canned bubble tea to a boba shop LOL. anyways, also excitingly, kyle finally fixed the bathroom door while i was out!!!!
that paint i will remind you was EYEBALLED FROM MEMORY...... truly i terrify myself sometimes with my memory for color lmao. anyways, i ended up staying over at j's until almost 1:30, so he was kind enough to drive me home so i didn't have to take an uber by myself at that time. also to save me money lol. oh, and before i went over to j's i did reorganize and clean my bookshelf!!! finally!!! i will have to take a picture for next week's since currently there is a table in front of it and i am too nauseous to move it lol
wednesday: also a busy day... i finally had the courage to call my insurance/therapist's office about wtf to do with regards to my very unfortunate and mildly insane billing situation...... my insurance was absolutely zero help, unsurprisingly lmfao. they don't do the superbill system for OON providers, and they also have zero OON benefits whatsoever..... so they told me the best they could offer was i could put in paperwork to do a OON exception, which i... still have to send to my therapist..... which i will do..... tomorrow........bc damn i really need a session i did not realize going a week without would screw me up so badly lol. anyways, i called the therapist office as well to be like uhhhh your billing dept....has not called me.......i have no job..........please help.........and the woman was thankfully SO helpful and not only bumped my request (though they still haven't called me lmfao) but also pushed all my bills out by a month, so i don't have to worry about them until something is figured out.... thank god lmao. i also set up a new psychiatrist appointment for next tuesday, so fingers crossed that person doesn't suck.... i've been burned so many times but i like desperately need a change to my dosage and probably something else to supplement it..... anyways. since it was the end of the month, i got my spotify monthly stats as well:
literally none of this is a surprise hahahaha. anyways, a lot of wednesday was also spent editing like a madman to finish more of the insanity that was sapphy's birthday week... which for the record turned out great! lmao. but anyway, will also came over. he's been struggling a lot the last few weeks emotionally, which is pretty rare for him, so kyle has wanted him to come over so he doesn't feel quite so isolated. which, like, totally! so he came on over. took kyle to chipotle while i cooked this new recipe i was trying of sweet potatoes and a chickpea tomato sauce, which is SUCH a banger i'm obsessed:
played a bit more cell of empireo, but then i was struck with a thought - the last time i used textractor, it wasn't quite so advanced. forget searching for hooks, that was basically an instant crash....so i was like, what haven't i played that i've wanted to..... little did i know that would be a VERY dangerous path to go down, but more on that later..... you will see why it is very dangerous for me to hyperfixate on a coding problem.............
before that, though, wednesday brought two very different emotions also. first was i had a wicked good conversation with a medical study i was a candidate for, and they agreed to set me up with the next stage of interviews to participate in on friday. which, like, cool! not could it actually be helpful (it's specifically studying a treatment for suicidal ideation found in people with BPD, which, uh, hello) but it also pays out $500 for three days of in person study. so like. cool! i could use the money. but my dad ALSO called and told me he had another blood clot in his leg - his, what, third? fourth? in the same spot in under a year - and it was bad enough they were having him come in for surgery on friday, which. ugh. i did not like hearing that! my dad is older, but i don't really like thinking about it. so that kinda sucked to find out! but more on that later too.
thursday: more editing! i also felt like making a few icons, which i'll upload here on a later date when i've got a few more finished. but indeed, the icon for this post is one of my new ones! but yeah, it was really mostly finishing mep parts and cleaning/doing laundry etc and playing zzz until later in the afternoon. kyle decided he was finally FINALLY going to sell the old car, thank fucking god, we need the money and it's such a damn waste to have it sitting there uselessly.......... since i don't drive lmao.............. anyways, so he was out doing that, which turned out to be a good day for it bc red, the wonderful angel he is, bought kyle and i cheesecake delivery :')
which was just the pick me up kyle needed after fighting with dealerships about a good price to sell LOL. the cheesecake was absolutely delicious. bc kyle was out selling the car, jason was kind enough to come over instead of us going there like we were supposed to, and it was a very delightful night. for the first hour he needed to do an apartment app for him + roommates, bc their lease expires at the end of august and he was getting REAL anxious about it. but after that, we hung out, went and got pizza and fries, and watched some more demon slayer, which i'm still enjoying quite a bit. he stayed after kyle went to bed at ~12 to talk to me about the mha final chapter & jjk leaks, so he ended up leaving at almost 2.... which means i didn't start laundry until almost 2...... but what else is new, i've been going to bed at 4am so lol.
friday: friday morning, kyle left early to finish the car sale!!! woo!!!!! he got enough out of it that it paid off the rest of his loan on it and we still ended up with $4k, which considering how beat to hell and back that thing is and at almost 55k miles.... i'll take it! lmao. fuck that thing. we're never buying a ford again, for sure. so i got to have the honors of cancelling the insurance on it lol. i also unfortunately had the honor of fighting with xfinity support for charging us the old rate even though we switched our plan............... but thankfully that worked out okay and we will pay literally $1 next month so lol. finished my trc reread too! so next up on the agenda is the clamp school series, which leo is very excited for me to read, as they're the clamp series i'm least familiar with.
friday is also when i had my zoom interview with the doctor conducting the medical study, and he thankfully determined i was a great candidate so i should be getting scheduled monday! which should've been great news but unfortrunately it was also the day of my father's surgery to remove the clot.... which did not work. the clot was too large and they weren't able to do anything from the angle they went in at, which. well! i'm very not happy about it! my dad is 75. he'll be gone a good 10-15 years earlier than all of my friends' parents will be, and he's also the only person in my family i talk to. i simply do not talk to my sisters, anyone really from his side of things, and i haven't spoken with anyone on my mother's side since i was 16. so he is literally my only family, outside of kyle & my in laws. so i was... very distraught. i am very not ready to face my father's mortality. especially with how screwed up my head has been lately. so that! really just sucked! the clot is. REALLY large it's basically up through a lot of his upper left leg. they sent him home with heavy duty blood thinners and an appointment for wednesday to check on things, but he's scheduled for a second surgery next friday...... i really hope he won't need it, but i'm not very confident unfortunately. i really really hate it here :') so i needed a good distraction....
distraction one was finishing sapphy's birthday week out with the joke mep for them, where we drew stick figures/used really low res screenshots of their niche otps, and also edited them extremely poorly. i downloaded a phone editor for this specifically and i gotta say. i will literally never fucking do that again LOL. i have such a respect for phone editors these days.
distraction two was. well. kyle was out with will - he offered to cancel when i called and told him about my dad's surgery, but i needed alone time to distract myself before i was quite ready for that - so i was like. what other games should i translate now that i know textractor works so well? oh yeah, there's that ancient x game for the wonderswan... it's a card game.... but it has a story mode (ish) with conversations...... i've never done wonderswan modding or hacking before, so this might be fun...... little did i know. the hole this would lead me down. so i hunted down some emulators and tried my hand at getting it to hook in textractor. i tried getting the VN ocr to work. i tried getting it to hook via translator++. i tried other on screen readers. but bc it was going through an emulator, it was proving to be very difficult........or so i THOUGHT that was the reason...........so i was like, deep sigh. i guess maybe i'll have to hex edit.
oh, importantly, ATL released their rerecording of dear maria count me in and i cried a lot. i love them. favorite band forever and ever.
saturday: kyle worked this morning so after a bit of zzz, i was like huh. better get into looking for how to play the x card game that absolutely nobody but me cares about. so i got into it. first i started looking at the hex code but i was like lol this was miserable back on fire emblem fates so i will avoid this if i can. what else can i do. oh, i could extract the script itself by dumping the rom!
hahahaha. hahahahahahahaha. wonderswan is such an obscure console that nobody cares about except for like 10 people that there's very little public documentation and practically zero tools for it. this isn't like 3ds or vita hacking, in which there's a plug and play guide that does everything for you... which is fine. i've modded many a console and done many a rom hack. i'm no stranger to some code. so first i try a few of the basic things i'm familiar with but i'm quickly realizing none of them are working.... so i'm like. deep sigh. okay. maybe there's some ocr that i'm not thinking of? a way to extract the script that someone has posted somewhere maybe? i am going crazy doing research on the fucking wonderswan........
kyle has me take a (much much needed) break to help him with some billing stuff for one of his clients, which like, thank god lmao. i actually missed doing those kind of tasks and it is SO much nicer when there's such little pressure since it's just me nd him.... anyways that was a good use of an hour, bc it took a bit to figure out the situation but also took a bit to explain it back to him since his brain does NOT work in that way. lmao. but after that was done, he was like, okay my turn. i know i know NOTHING about modding and hacking and code but maybe i can google something you haven't found yet. alas, that was not the case.... at one point it got to me looking at some code documentation from TWO THOUSAND AND TWO to try and piece together how to decompile a .wsc rom............... i had work the next morning at my every-other-weekend part time job, but i was up until almost 1am looking through the hex code and ready to tear my hair out lmao. finally i called it quits and head to bed....
sunday: but never fear, even at work i couldn't be stopped. kyle was kind enough to drive me in this morning, which was nice, but even BETTER were the fact that the phones were broken. it was genuinely the most peaceful shift i have EVER had in my entire life lmfao. i spoke to maybe 4 people and had no calls. pure and utter bliss. my dad and i talked for a bit on my cell bc he was confused as to why i wasn't picking up the work phone haha, and he seemed to be feeling... well, exhausted, and not great, but somewhat better than friday. so i ordered myself starbucks, and got back to work................
on the wonderswan conundrum. at this point, would it be easier if i were to just hold my fucking phone up to my screen and manually record a translation that way? absolutely. no question. but now i'm DETERMINED to make it PLAYABLE IN ENGLISH. so i continued my trek. my trek ended up bringing me to some python scripts, which is a language i've used like twice for extremely basic organizational tasks at work lol. my knowledge of python is truly garbage. but i was like. well no time like the present to learn! so i. started learning python. to run some scripts i found that one of the guys behind AGT put up. they were not what i, personally, was looking for, but after MUCH trial and error......... i did actually get all of them to run? i have always picked up on coding very quickly, my brain just works like that, but man python was a lot easier than i expected after i understood the environments and commands.
so this was. like literally my whole work shift. my uber back was awful and i am still feeling sick from it, i get motion sick so easy these days, but that's okay. will was over for a bit again when i got home, which was fine since i wanted to dive RIGHT back into figuring this out, and that's when i finally got the scripts to run.... will bought me candy as encouragement, which was very kind of him lol. kyle also finally fixed the dishwasher seemingly!!!!!! thank fucking god!!!!!!!!
so anyways, i've come to three possible solutions to my wonderswan conundrum.... so i will continue to work until all options are exhausted. it's really a shame that RHDN is shutting down, or becoming more or less archive only. at least the forums will still continue to run...... i have a feeling i will be using them QUITE frequently over the next few days.............. see, when i get interested in a video game coding project, i literally do nothing else until it's finished. so let's hope that i figure it out soon or just decide to translate it by actually playing the fucking game in its entirety in japanese and have a text file next to it to record the script lmfao. back during the FE fates days, i spent a week brute forcing hex code to change the marriage options for a couple of characters, make lucina a playable unit, and added in a lucina & laslow C-S rank support as lucigo is, of course, my fave FEA ship. it was brutal!!!! but it worked out in the end. so we can hope for the same this time.... and that at some point in the near future the world will be able to experience the bizarre x card game on the wonderswan in english..................... other things, i signed up for a few of the writing exchanges i've seen around on DW - namely the pine4pine and jealous/obsessive ones! the pine4pine already had seisub nominated before i got to nominations.... which i was real happy about haha. anyways, what a week.
last week's goals? well, i cleaned my bookshelf........
hopes for next week:
- genshin summer event.
- clean my back hall book piles.... at least put them in easier piles to work with, one of them is literally taller than me now though that's not hard to do...........
- try and finish this fucking wonderswan project, or at least have a clear thing i'm working on w it lmfao
