mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

estirose: A Kodak Brownie camera sits on a surface (Brownie Camera)
[personal profile] estirose
Trying to keep this spoiler-lite.

So as I noted in my Demo review, they moved things around, and this is (mostly) great because it makes this old game feel fresh and new.

Combat is a bit of a slog and if you're a veteran player you're going to have to re-learn fighting. They did nerf things a bit so that people new to the game are not spending ten minutes fighting the early ghosts - now others are complaining that this makes the game too easy. While I get being rewarded for skill and strategy, a lot of the professional reviews for the game remarked how awful the combat was/how tanky the first few ghosts were in early game, and I have to agree (it also doesn't help that the tutorial screens need to be clearer and maybe set a little earlier).

It could be that they have to undo some of the nerfing to keep the challenge up, or leave the nerfing to the easiest setting, story mode, to make those fans that love the strategy bits of the new mechanics happier. I don't care. Keep the lower chance of the ghosts suddenly getting really pissed at you, that's all I ask.

I'm adoring the new areas, and I appreciate not having to backtrack to the first location to get (story item) like I did in previous games. Also, slightly more room to fight (story item guardian), which I really appreciate.

Apparently there are some stealth mechanics involved. Can I state how much I hate stealth mechanics? I didn't enjoy them in Fatal Frame 3 either.

On the trivia side, there is a new-ish Itsuki scene just before Mio meets him. I say new-ish because it looks like a reuse of a bit from one of the Wii remake endings. (Shadow Festival ending, to be precise, my favorite ending ever!) The Wii remake endings got cut for this game, but at least a bit of Shadow Festival lives on!

Don't rely on AI coding.

Mar. 11th, 2026 05:35 pm
estirose: A pixel portrait of a woman (Default)
[personal profile] estirose
My audience probably isn't much into having AI help code software, but I ran an experiment just out curiosity. Basically, I asked 3 different AIs (ChatGPT, Claude, and Llama) code a Stardew Valley Content Patcher mod. I am very familiar with coding these things and can easily spot errors. None of them got the coding right.

What I asked for, and what the AIs had issues with )
estirose: (Moli & Didi)
[personal profile] estirose
Grab a paintbrush and follow me (508 words) by Estirose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 剑兰女探社 | Excellent Women
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Yang Moli/Yao Zhidi (Excellent Women)
Characters: Yang Moli (Excellent Women)
Summary:

Yang Moli after the events of episode 32.

(Slight deviations from canon)



Episode 32 is the most current episode; it looks like the drama will have a season 2 (which is already filmed). Also, part of the last scene irritated me so I made minor alterations to it, otherwise Moli would be in emotionally worse condition than she is in canon.

I really don't expect either of these fics to get many hits; they might be a F/F couple but they're an obscure F/F couple on an equally obscure Chinese Web Drama. I'll definitely be asking for this fandom for Yuletide just so I might not be the only writer for it.
estirose: An image of a ghostly girl holding a living hand (Crumbling Sae - Project Zero II)
[personal profile] estirose
So the demo for the 2nd Fatal Frame 2 remake (basically, there was the original, then the Wii remake, and now this one) came out and it works just fine on the Steam Deck.

The community has discovered that a great deal of the outside areas are available (but obviously all the buildings are locked). I haven't poked around because I'm more interested in the gameplay. Said gameplay is pretty much chapter 1 of the game - wandering around the first house and encountering a ghost twice.

Needless to say, now that I know it works on the Steam Deck, I've purchased the deluxe version of the remake for download and playing next week.

There's a new handholding mechanic that I love very much - I've always felt bad that Mayu, the sister, is always left limping behind you, and it makes so much sense to hold hands with her. (The healing mechanic does not hurt.)

Other things:
* There are minor changes to things - Sae is missing her dialogue outside the Osaka house, the newspaper article about Masumi is found in the Osaka house instead of the trail to the village, Miyako's ghost heads in a different direction than in earlier games, the flashlight is found in a different location, etc.
* Save points have item shops, like Fatal Frame 4. (Another concept that was a thing in Fatal Frame 4 also makes a return, but not in the demo - however, you can see it if you go into photo mode.)
* You now have willpower, which depletes when a ghost attacks you, and health. If your willpower goes to 0, then ghosts start draining your health.
* Miyako, who is essentially the tutorial ghost for this game and normally a fairly easy ghost, whipped my behind. I didn't die, but I came really really close. (I replayed both of her battles in this chapter.) She charges at you a lot, and if you're not used to it - especially early on in the fight - she will take a chunk out of you. Part of the issue is that you need to aim the camera in her face, and sometimes her face is a bit hard to find. Yay upgraded graphics?

(no subject)

Feb. 28th, 2026 07:02 pm
estirose: A boyish looking young woman in coveralls looks at something out of range. (Lin Fan - Youth With You 2)
[personal profile] estirose
I've been watching the Chinese web drama "Excellent Women" on IQIYI, because Lin Fan is in it. Did not expect a possibly lesbian or bi character to essentially be hitting on Lin Fan's character.

I posted on Tumblr with two sets of screenshots: https://www.tumblr.com/estirose/809851002507395072/i-love-this-exchange-from-the-chinese-web-drama?source=share

We'll see if she hits on anyone else, but so far it's only Lin Fan's character. (As of this writing, only episodes 1-6 are available to me of a 24-32 episode webdrama (I forgot I had IQIYI VIP, which gave me access to the entire run as it played out) - short episodes, at least, only about 15 minutes long plus credits.)

(Also, I guess the female cast sung the opening theme? And Lin Fan rapped!)

Small spoilers for episode 32 )

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