Interipelli's Journal

2024-02-18

Raindare and I spent the weekend visiting an old friend who helped us out during pandemic times, lending a hand and serving good Taiwanese style vegan food. As with many post-pandemic reunions, I find that the occasion is not really marked by much more than showing up, saying hello, and trying to piece together just what exactly were we doing before then. At any rate, their business seems to have picked up, and I am no longer their most regular customer. All good things.

After another experiment with an e-ink display proved disappointing with assisting Raindare's blindness, we made an appointment to the Apple Store to try out their latest flashy bauble. The Vision Pro has a remarkable number of hand gestures to allow for blind navigation, but limited capability to interpret those gestures from slightly unconventional-looking hands. A fascinating case study in accessibility designs that don't always work.

Despite a rough showing at times, it has occurred to me that Raindare does look at objects in the distance by positioning her cell phone directly at the view, and looking at the screen up close, acting as a magnifying glass for life. It would seem that the Vision Pro would be perfectly serviceable at replicating the same, as the device itself is indeed a set of smartphones jammed directly up against your eyeballs. We'll see if the fruit company can accommodate her prescription lenses. It does seem to be a matter of trying to make the purchase, and then finding out from The Company if they can make those particular lenses on demand.

Thanks to an overwhelmingly friendly community, I seem to be spending more time at a Princess Maker Discord. Despite our collective experience being largely with the very good second game and its unreleased English translation for DOS, the community there has been welcoming on a scale that I don't usually see. If you do happen to see more Princess Maker content on the website in the coming months, that is certainly to blame.

2024-01-14

Raindare and I just finished Black/Matrix 00, one that we've been juggling for nine months between BUSIN 0. Great game. "God"(ly) game! Sometime we'll get to moving on to translating the stories and extended fiction from that game's official webpage with some of the concept art that's been harder to find.

I'll update the reviews page once I've figured out how to collect my feelings. It's a bit dominated by Wizardry games as BUSIN 0 made me want to jot down my feelings on the more interesting entries in the series to me.

We're starting to write Devil Children post-...armageddon? manga? reset?... fan fiction and I'm pretty proud with how it's coming along. Someone who's only familiar with the manga should be able to follow along. Heir to the Empire is first, Grocery Run is still in progress.

Quite a few stories are still in progress, come to think of it! The Stray Vampire recently wrapped up. Within a Tempest is still coming together, slowly. Vivian remains popular with Japanese artists, as a character design.

Not a comprehensive list of changes of course, but who wants to write that?

2023-11-18

Last week, I took a cross country ride by train to see America through the Empire Builder and Lake Shore Limited trains. I recommend it. It's a very good opportunity to see the cities, resort towns, company villages and meadows of the USA in the Fall and Spring months.

Future updates to this journal will likely be less centered on website content. There have been some bits that I've been particularly proud of lately. The Devil Children Red and Black Book Planner Q&A article went in some interesting directions as I've gotten into a habit of bidding on auctions for printed works and less online content.

To be honest, I'm not fond of "feeds" or update aggregators. I'd rather let people stumble upon these bits in their own time. Have faith in the lazyweb, get lost in a website.

At least, that's how I remember the web.

2023-07-01

I finally cleared out the boxes in my apartment! Wild that it took over five, maybe six years and a pandemic, but I've managed to eke out room for a spare bed and a separate room for Raindare, which she's been enjoying immensely. Farah the cat has been a bit fussy about the loss of boxes though she seems happier to be by her favorite human during most hours of the day.

The website has undergone a few changes, which I won't highlight this time, only because very few bits are "finished" and there's now a bit more of a push to show off works that are still in progress. I've not been as able to find the time personally contribute stories and content as work has been taking up more headspace and gym has been taking up more energy.

Black/Matrix 00 is amazing, but hard to relay in website form. The trouble is it's a 50+ hour strategy RPG structured as a visual novel, (very) loosely based on an 8 to 10 hour Game Boy Advance game. It is on the level of a Trails game to translate and effectively localize before even considering the alternate routes, the good endings and bad endings, and the mass of optional dialogue in town segments. I'm not sure how to make content for this game! A screenshot playthrough of Devil Children Red Book seems more feasible in the not-too-distant future. Maybe Black/Matrix 00 will get some pages recovered from the archived web, we'll see.

Raindare's KMT2 screenshot playthrough has mostly stalled on account of us playing Black/Matrix 00. We are about a third of the way through a Persona 3 in terms of running time and still on disk 1 of 2, for perspective. We're still working on website bits! It just happens that video games that clock in at above ten hours of running time are tricky to fit into adult lives.

2023-05-15

Life remains a bit busy, hoping to get onto a better project sooner than later. First there are some people issues to sort out and tempers to allay. Once that's resolved, I'd like to get back to writing.

In the meantime, Raindare made enough progress on her Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II romhack that she's willing to show off more of her work. To that end, she's cleaned up her notes on findings in the ROM itself and started pulling together a screenshot playthrough of what the game is like.

After taking a small break from Skeb requests, Otugei found the time to do a really amazing picture of Raindare's Vivian from the Witches and Artifice stories. We got a few appeals from other artists to do more art of Vivian since, which surprised both of us. I suppose we'll have to figure out a way to showcase that sometime!