Stormblood [4.0]: Post may contain potential spoilers.
The Doman Enclave
I sort’ve forgot that the place existed to an extent. That seems to be a theme with some of these areas. It took me a moment to spatial determine where this place was located along with the rest of Doma. Its not that far and I might be able to get a shot for tomorrow.
So lets talk about the shot as a whole. Firstly, I had to wait 10 minutes for the rain to go away. Another thing to make note of is that I was surprised by how many people were here. I mean the Doma Restoration stuff was right on the side, but I had no idea that it was still fairly popular. Makes me want to try and do it myself.
Secondly, the clouds adds a mystical ambiance almost. This is one of the few instances where the low hanging clouds actually look neat. Oh yeah, I find it interesting that there’s only one side the lamps are stationed at. I wonder if there’s any specifc reason. The only other thing that I think is noteworthy is the building straight away. Unfortunately, I don’t recall its name at all. From what memory tells me. The place has some importance during post-Stormblood MSQ. Beyond that, I got nothing.
250 Milestone
Today is the next “major” milestone with this blog. I’ve reached the halfway mark for post 500. I plan on making 500 to be this ultimate post of sorts. Atleast I would like to. To be frank, this today’s milestone is a bit of an arbitrary one. The real milestone of sorts is going to be when I hit the one year mark with this blog. (Technically, this blog has been around longer than that, but “July 8th” is the time when it became active.) I’m not really certain on what to say for today.
Although, I do have a screenshot to show.
For those unaware, this is the next video for the Hydaelyn Preservation Project. I’ve gotten all of the footage for “The Fringes” zone. Although, I made a few tweaks on my recording decisions. (Oh yeah, I have Baelsar’s Wall there twice because I was planning to make it the last scene to show on the video. The first one will be removed at some point.)
Next Video
To be more exact, I shrunked down the length of each clip from 7 1/2 minutes to 5 minutes. The main reason being that there really wasn’t much need to an area for that long. The only reason for not making it shorter. Is that it would start to defeat the purpose behind my other (in the works) project. Exploring the Realms. Also, I don’t plan on releasing the video today since it would take hours to edit, process and upload. It may come out tomorrow, but depends on what happens in the near future. More specifically, I might get myself invested into another game called Dwarf Fortress.
Dwarf Fortress
You know what? I would love the idea of doing a journalistic style post detailing the events of what happens to each fortress I make and how it eventually fails. The only slight problem is that I hardly played the game in the past. I use to play it 8 years ago with its good old ascii art style (or an community created one). However, I generally struggled in the control scheme and never had played it enough to become use to it. Nowadays, I probably could adapt to it and may even enjoy it. Although, the main focus for me in playing the game now is for the stories that it can create.
In fact, this would be a wonderful opportunity to get back into the storytelling game. However, I don’t want to find myself facing another snag like last month. As such right now I want to focus getting myself back into the game with the “Ambiance” videos. Those are on a strict deadline since 7.0 will be changing the look and possibly the feel of the game. Another thing that I want to focus on is the blog itself.
Potential Improvements
Due to this renewed focus on my blog. I want to make some “drastic” changes to it. As mentioned in one of my previous posts ( https://blog.solitem.net/posts/ssadffxiv246/ ). I want to improve the backend specfically with the images. Not only that. I want to also make some changes to the front page. As it stands the front page is fairly plain. When I started the screenshot series. I felt fairly comfortable with that idea and decision. Then again, I did show some signs of me wanting to make changes like with this example ( https://blog.solitem.net/posts/ssadffxiv11/ )
Actually, I can just show the image that I mainly wanted to talk about.
Essentially, I wanted to present a far more interesting look to the website as a whole since what I got now is very bland. The problem with image you see above is that its too noisy on the left comparison. I did add a blur filter, but when I had asked some people opinions. Unfortunately, the first person confirmed to me that it was noisy. (No one else responded. That’s what happens when you message a group chat at random.) This resulted in me putting this idea into the recycle bin, until very recently.
I actively use Linux on the daily basis (Fedora is the current Distro I’m using). I also have a Steam Deck and actively check compatibility on any game from ProtonDB (https://www.protondb.com). What I had realized while checking compatibility with Dwarf Fortress. Was the background image they use (https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 ).
They muted the image a bit and they seem to have added a fade out effect on the edges. It doesn’t have the same level of noise that I had originally achieved.
I think alot of what helps in that regard is all of the reports are pressed right next to each other to help prevent an unnecessary level of noise. It could also be the fact that my method had the background image take up too much space. There’s a lot to consider, but I want to see if I can try to imitate what they had done. Mind you, I’m not going to copy it one to one. I mainly want to use their idea and try to make a background image that isn’t too distracting.
Conclusion
I wasn’t expecting this amount of words with this post today. It must really do wonders on the fact that I have time to make a post and not be concerned with the deadline every flipping second.
There’s a lot for me to achieve right now and I don’t know if I can keep it consistent. Time is the only way to find out.
I hope you folks have a good day/night!