Redwolf's Journal (continued)

*flop* Well, that was good. Was pressed for time getting suited up after a meeting ran long, but hey, it still worked out. Walked a few blocks downtown after work to see a lot of people out with their kids there. On the up side, the suit's wearable. The quality is good enough to turn some heads and win the office costume contest (not that there was high turnout there, but still). It's recognizably Mandalorian to those who know such things, and close enough to get a Boba Fett comment from those less into the fandom. Nothing fell apart. Getting sprinkled on wasn't a big deal. I definitely call that a success. Drawbacks? Well, it's a bit confining, limiting some range of movement. If I'm giving it another lengthy/serious wear, I definitely want to make some better vambraces. These were just thrown together with EVA foam, shaped, painted, and velcro'd pretty quickly and don't have any fancy features. And it doesn't take much to fog up the visor - not

Well, I did finally get myself back to work over the weekend. As I said when I started, it's very easy for a project of this magnitude to fall out of favor with me enough to get sidelined. The con (and now Halloween) are really the only halfway motivating "deadlines" for such a thing, making it seem pointless the rest of the year. Over the weekend, I adjusted and sewed a number of velcro patches. I did some final shaping of body armor pieces and got them painted with the gun metal base coat. I glued together the girth belt. Somehow, that doesn't sound like as much as it felt like. Last night, I got home from work and dove back in, managing to get the black coat on all the armor pieces before it got too dark. So what's left? Well... there are a number of things that need doing: - Red pattern paint on armor and clear sealant. - Webbing belt and attachment for codpiece. - Finish girth belt. - Boot accent work. - Pattern/cut/sew kama. If I finished those

Less fun than video games, I've been struggling a bit with my depression. Mind you, that's not to say the medication isn't doing its job still. I haven't slipping into one of my old spirals of dark questioning of... well... everything. But I have been experiencing a decided lack of motivation, particularly the last couple weeks. There are always things I could do. Perhaps "should" by some standards. But my weekend was some video gaming/online play and a lot of nothing accomplished offline. I've still got pieces of Mandalorian armor sitting in a pile, really needing attention if there's any chance of dressing up for Halloween, but finding the motivation to work on that, or anything, has been impossible. It's frustrating. Which sort of doesn't help...

So Warframe just released it's Plains of Eidolon patch. What is it? Well, it is not quite what the term "open world" conjures to me in an online multiplayer game. Technically, I guess it fits, but to me the phrase implies running around, crossing paths with other people, and doing stuff. Really, POE adds two main things. One is Cetus, a player-shared hub like the relays that already existed, though with a bit more NPC presence, including vendors and "bounty" (ie. mission) givers. The other is the Plains itself, which is a large open map with day/night cycles, periodic random events, new activities like fishing and mining for materials, and enemies scattered around in camps and patrols. The Plains are still instanced, however, so you only ever encounter players already in your squad. If anything, it reminds me of Guild Wars (1) maps. That's not quite the big, revolutionary thing that came to mind when I first heard about POE, but it is a marked difference f

Warframe is... impressive and infinitely daunting. I have to give the developers a lot of credit for the work they've done over the years. The game looks pretty good. Movement feels sound, the weapons and abilities are varied, and it just plays well moment-to-moment. The game continues to expand fairly regularly, with new weapons, warframes, and features. The game seems to have a pretty solid player base. And all this for a game you don't have to pay to play. Nothing's perfect, though, and there are some drawbacks. While there are variations, the map tilesets, enemies, and mission types are finite, so they'll start to feel repetitive at some point. Most of the game revolves around the mission of the moment, which very little in the way of story strung along between any of them. And probably the biggest "down side" to the game is the lack of explanation. I think I've logged over 40 hours in the game and I'm still probably a "beginner." I&#

So, having completed the story of the expansion, I have to say my previous feelings stand. This was longer, and definitely includes more map space, than a Living Story release, but it doesn't feel big/new/different enough to me to really be an "expansion." Expectations are a bitch sometimes. I'm sure I'll go back and finish more of the maps and learn more of the mount abilities in time, but I don't feel any particular rush to do so. I don't even really feel I hurried that much through the campaign (especially with work preventing play for a few nights last week outright). My biggest complaint, however, is (also) not new to the expansion. I feel the story instances are tuned too hard, with combat biased toward more than one player whereas the plot aspects are more suited to soloing. I ran these quests in full ascended-level gear that is perhaps not perfectly itemized, but you can't get much in the way of more stats. And at that, the fights ranged fr