DmWow Strikes Again

Again???

[the-dmwow]

anyway, today I did three things:

play Nier Automata (three months later and I still haven’t beaten route A…)

try to update my website, and fail

get my bots working again

I just want to get to the point where I can automate everything 😂

[the-dmwow]

Ok! How long has it been since I’ve been here?

(the answer is three months. whoops.)

in my defense, my SSH certificates expired and the bots were starting to leak, and it was a little too easy to put off fixing them.

but I still can’t seem to actually get myself to use social media sites, so this is still the easiest way for me to actually post updates every now and then. Whether or not I will actually be able to make a habit of it remains to be seen.

[the-dmwow]

I played more Nier Automata yesterday. I’m still not at all versed with how streaming works, so the actual timing of the stream is still random at best.

Anyway, Nier Automata moves quickly. We went to an amusement park and rode on a roller coaster, then killed a giant opera singer machine, and then we found a village of peaceful machines! and did a few fetch quests for them. and then a goliath attacked the city ruins, and the ground collapsed under its weight, and we found an abandoned alien mothership underneath the city. Also, our operator did a gay and was rejected by her crush, 2B and 9S are awful at emotional support, and I died by eating a mackerel that a lady named Jackass gave us. But it was delicious.

(Clearly I haven’t been documenting as much about this playthrough as I’d like, but it’s been fun. At some point, I should write a small thing about fishing in Nier Automata, because I want to talk about it.)

[the-dmwow]

Working on making another iris.

I’m using the new peel-away sockets from keeb.io for socketing the pro micros, which has had its own fair share of gotchas. It was surprisingly easy to accidentally separate a socket from its plastic backing before soldering it, which makes it difficult to keep all the sockets aligned.

For the other half, here’s what I think the ordering should be:

Solder the sockets first without trying to pre-insert diode legs. Peel away plastic backing.

Add pro micro, use diode legs as headers for the pins. Solder them onto the pro micro.

Pry out the pro micro with a knife or a thin screwdriver (the peel away sockets are much thinner than other variants I’ve used, so a knife might be the only tool thin enough). I ended up getting some solder through the holes in the pro micro, so I needed to use a lot of force to pry them loose.

Solder diodes and switches, then insert pro micro back into place.

[the-dmwow]

I think that’s the end of the chapter.

A ray of light, indeed.

[the-dmwow]

Uzziah sent like 50 gazillion monsters against everyone. So now the new plan is to use the Rayzor to defeat them.

I guess when you have mindless monsters swarming at you all the time, the optics of keeping and using army-leveling weapons might be a tad different than in real life…

[the-dmwow]

Definitely something suspicious happening.

Izumi is looking particularly secretive, so my inclination is to want Uzziah to win this battle so we can figure out what those secrets are.

But we are playing as Izumi. So he can keep them.

Interesting.

[the-dmwow]

Izumi definitely led them here on purpose.

Why is it that every game that I know of with demi-humans makes the birds the rarest / most attractive to enslave and/or purchase for whatever reason? Fire Emblem did the same thing.

[the-dmwow]

I don’t know what Uzziah’s deal is. But he’s pretty much spelling out this civil war plot here.

[the-dmwow]

Whaaa

I guess it’s notable that Uzziah is not a playable character at the moment. Is he a ghost? Time traveler?

[the-dmwow]

Oh, it’s this edgelord.

(Seriously, every time he’s appeared before, he just spits out monsters, says something cryptic, and leaves.)

I recall that he’s trying to stop the dragon’s resurrection or something. But whatever it is, he’s not very good at communicating.

[the-dmwow]

Sdorica fascinates me with its storytelling. A lot of battles and story beats are just ‘void monsters attack’ or ‘suddenly bandits’ but you also get realistic and reasonable negotiations, character-driven movements, and some really nice quiet moments.

This one reveals that she used to be close to her uncle, the king, and that she’s play hide and seek with him. He’s now trying to steal her throne, and she can’t hate him for it.

Casually revealing that she was trying to take the nuclear-power superweapon was not the smartest idea though, still.

[the-dmwow]

What.

Okay, I’m a bit confused now.

Context: the Rayzor is a giant weapon, akin to a fantasy nuke.

For most of the game, Angelia had been an optimist and a sheltered, naive princess, deciding to rebel against Theodore because he was willing to use such powerful weaponry (on Atlas, I believe).

The game has been toying with the theme of how trying to prevent loss can lead to defeat, and how Angelia’s idealism can hurt people — a lot of her development has been making her more pragmatic, if cynical (and I’m not sure how I think about that). But I don’t think I buy the idea of her wanting to use the Rayzor against the king. This seems like a very rapid departure from who she used to be.

Though, I suppose it could’ve been months since the previous chapter. This game is no stranger to long time jumps.

[the-dmwow]

New character time! At least, he would be, but I already had Izumi as a playable character for a while now. He seems to be friendly with Nigel and co, for now at least.

Also the Sol castle apparently crashed here and Nigel just turned it into his secret base, and somehow that seems fitting.

[the-dmwow]

Apparently Atlas was very warm before it exploded, and now, well, it’s covered in snow.

From what I remember, when the dragoneye gem was removed, a void opened up in Atlas and monsters poured out of it. I think the explosion might’ve also happened as a result.

Also the dragoneye gem is the closest we’ve gotten to a mention of dragons at all — which is impressive considering the game is named after a dragon.

Anyway, actual gameplay in this section was short — more generic void monsters, our heroes getting surrounded, and getting rescued.

But hey, Nigel’s back! Last we saw him, he was blowing up the Sun Kingdom’s flying castle.

[the-dmwow]

I also forgot that Elio (far right) was traveling with Angelia. I know from using him in gameplay that he’s demi human and has wings, but I don’t think he’s revealed that in story yet.

[the-dmwow]

So for a little bit of context, the Sun Kingdom is in a bit of a civil war right now between King Theodore and Princess Angelia.

Chapter 14 was…a bit of a diversion, so it seems like we’re back to the main players.

Also I don’t think I know too much about Atlas, other than that it was a big city once that is now entirely destroyed.

(I don’t remember why Angelia wanted to go there)