Derik Badman's Journal

Spent some more time coding on the website, adding a nav/action toggle for smaller screens, so those areas don't take up so much space, and various other refinements to the code. I'm slowly getting everything in place for how I want it I think. Also worked out a way to tag paragraphs rather than whole entries so that the tag archives will only show the specific tagged content rather then the whole entry.

And I've been spending probably too much time on Greedfall on my playstation. It's Dragon Age influence is pretty clear in how it handles party members and a less open world that is made up of large zones to wander around in. Some of the UI is not totally clear, but play has been pretty smooth. The most annoying thing so far is how conversations are handled, particular with party members. The game tracks a metric of your relationship with party members and various factions. Actions you take positively or negatively effect the relationship. Much of the time this is fairly clear: help an npc or faction with a mission, the relationship improves, but sometimes just picking a conversation option will negatively effect the relationship and every time that's happened I've found it completely unclear or unexpected. It feels like there's no way to even gauge how the npcs will react. Another weird thing was a plot point that happened, when I progressed on one of the main missions that caused me to lose a bunch of side missions and one of my party members. The order I should do missions and if there is any time restrictions on them isn't clear (an issue Dragon's Dogma had too).

Otherwise, I am finding the story interesting and the world building is detailed enough to be engaging. The 18th century-esque colonial setting is also effectively done, and the conflict between the colonizers and the natives is so far handled in a suitably complex manner, with a good story twist fairly early on that adds mixed motivation for the main character in how to deal with it.

Went with █████ to the Phillies game last night. Driving down at rush hour for Thursday night game was something I was anxious about for basically the whole week. Every time I vow never to do that again, and then somehow I end up doing it again. At least the game itself was exciting, and the Phillies won. We had seats in the "Hall of Fame Club" area which are more expensive but it was really nice: seats are bigger, the restricted access area behind the seats had various food vendors conventiently located, ditto on much nicer bathrooms. Not sure how much more Lianne paid for the tickets, but it certainly felt worth it. The view from the first base side was excellent.