hunting and other things necessary for survival

(A word of warning if you plan on playing Lost in Blue and want to figure everything out yourself--there are some spoilers below, but they're pretty minor and generally involve things that are pretty easily figured out, unless you're me...)

I just killed my first deer in Lost in Blue. And then went right back and killed another. It had to be one of the saddest things I'd ever seen or heard in a video game. Yes, there is an accompanying sound effect to let you know that there is a trapped animal you can shoot.

It all started when Skye (the girl character you don't get to play until you complete Keith) suggested that I make a jerky drying rack around game day 50. Great, now I can make jerky. Except that when I asked her to do it--because that's how things work in this game. I can only hunt, gather, and fish--she cooks and tends the fire and makes stuff--when I asked her to do it, she said I didn't have the materials. I had a couple of fish and a coconut at this point, so I thought to myself, I guess I have to actually hunt now. I had avoided it for over 50 days, preferring to mine the bass and carp spot I'd found by our cave. (Yes, Keith and Skye live in a cave together--in separate beds.) I had half-heartedly set a couple of traps, made a few bows, and a bunch of arrows, but I'd never caught anything, and it seemed like too much work to actually check the traps all the time when disappeared after a while anyway.

But then Skye said I didn't have the materials to make jerky. And I'd just built this jerky rack that fit nicely over the fire, too. (oh yeah, Keith builds the furniture, too.) So, I decided that I had to hunt something to make into jerky, even if it was just a small rabbit or bird. (These don't require traps, just the bow and arrows.) It's a trek to the plains, so I quicksave once I get there in case I don't catch anything and need to go back. Besides, I'd just stocked up on food and water in the cave, so Skye would be okay for a while without me (yes, she really is that helpless when you play as Keith).

I chase after rabbits and birds all day, shoot (but don't kill) a couple deer and goats, and have to restart, because I didn't catch anything. Repeat about fifteen/fifty times.

Finally, I decide to go online and find some hunting advice, because dangit, I wasn't getting off the plains without catching something, and this was getting ridiculous. I find some information about the best ways to use the traps, and I decide to go back to my last save point (that morning, since you can only save when you go to sleep) so I don't have to walk all the way back.

That morning, the morning this all started? I hadn't built the jerky shelf yet. Or the chairs that I'd just gotten enough logs for the night before. I build them again. And again, because I forget to quicksave and needed to reset my traps. And again, but I don't remember why now. Building furniture is actually one of my favorite parts of the game, I just don't like having to build the same thing over and over again, because at the end you go into "movie mode" where you lose control of the characters and Skye makes some comment about the thing you built.

So anyway, I set off, computer open in case I needed additional advice, and after a few false starts, managed to see the scene described at the beginning of my post, complete with struggling deer. At least I didn't have to skin it. Apparently, after you kill the deer in hunting mode, you get convenient pocket-sized bits of lard, fur, and meat (not like Oregon Trail hunting where you can only bring back 200 pounds of a 600-pound bison).

After all that, I ask Skye to make jerky again. And I get the same response. "Sorry, you don't have the materials." What? Didn't I just restart my game a bajillion times so that I could have these two pieces of deer meat to make into jerky?

I check the jerky shelf. Oh. I have to put the meat there first. For the record? Fish works, too.

just a note

I'm lost in blue and looking for trace memories. On two different desert islands. It's been a while.

frog pond

frog pond
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

Here's the cover of my book, complete with spine and (fake) ISBN:

deadlines

I'm really bad with deadlines. My freshman year in college, I think I turned one paper and about half of my daily homework assignments in on time. The rest of the time I got extensions or had questions for the prof that they didn't get a chance to answer before it was due... Somehow, I made it through another three years after that, with about the opposite number of extensions, more or less. Taking easier classes helped, even if it seems backwards to do so after the first year.

In the last two days, I had two "deadlines," kinda. I thought my model was due, basically tomorrow, and I really wanted to get it done so I could move on, so I told myself I would work on it as much as I could even before I heard from my instructor whether we were going to set them up on Sunday. I knew I had to get it done eventually, so why not now?

Because I needed to get my novel formatted for lulu.com before, uh, today. So I ended up working on the model basically all weekend and didn't really get started formatting the novel until today. I did finish in time to make the nanowrimo offer deadline, but I didn't get to do as much editing as I had hoped. The plot itself is still kind of a mess, especially at the end. The problem is, I don't know what to do with it. I knew basically where it was going to end before I started, and I got there, but at the end, there were a bunch of loose ends that I hadn't worked out yet before I got there. I know where it's supposed to go after this, but I don't know if I have to work out all those loose ends before I can continue. I suppose I'll see what I feel like writing once November rolls around again. At this point, I think I would write a sequel just so I don't have to come up with new characters, but a lot of their backgrounds have become kind of hard to follow. I guess that's what comes of making up stuff as you go along instead of planning everything out ahead of time.

Still, I can't wait to see the actual physical book :D

crap

Tomorrow is January 16th. I haven't even started editing or laying out my novel yet. I am done with my model, though. Guess I better open up that 528kb Word document again. Also, I really shouldn't have caffeine.

i promise i'm not a stalker

I like randomly clicking through recent flickr photos and looking at the blogs of complete strangers. Apparently, a friend of one of these complete strangers happens to be a froshie at Yale. And is in Calhoun, according to her lj entry detailing a conversation with her dean, formerly my dean. It's a strange sense of deja vu, because people I know may know her (other than my dean, who I already know knows her, obviously). And I only clicked on her lj because it sounded like one of someone I actually knew, and I was wondering if it was an alter-ego of sorts. Really.

new year

For someone who is mostly just bumming around, I have a lot of things I need to get done in the next week or so. My entertainment space model for my enviro design class that ended a month ago needs to be finished by Sunday. Sometimes it feels like it's almost done, sometimes it feels like I'm far from finished... I also need to edit, layout, and design a cover for the novel I wrote back in November for the free book promotion from lulu, a self-publishing site that is giving all nanowrimo winners a free copy of their book if it is uploaded by January 16th. I've been putting it off basically since I finished at the end of November, so now the editing may not be quite as extensive as it could have been, but it'll probably still look pretty :) hopefully.

sick

It seems to be tradition in every version of my blog to have entries like "tired" and "sick." I couldn't let the new year come without making a "sick" entry, as I've now admitted to myself that I am sick. (Actually, I admitted this to myself yesterday, then spent most of the afternoon in bed.) I do feel a bit better now, but my throat is swollen and makes it hard to breathe normally.

I suppose I should do a catch-up of the last month, since I disappeared for a while... The first two weeks were spent "finishing" my classes at Art Center. "Finishing" in quotes because I still have a model due mid-January that's going to be displayed at the main campus when we're done. The last half was spent hanging out with Mich and generally relaxing, catching up on sleep and then just sleeping too much. I did a lot of knitting and crocheting for Christmas presents this year. Esther came to hang out in Torrance after missing the last train back to Claremont from Universal Studios. (We ended up going to see a taping of "Twins" instead of going through the park, and we didn't get back until 9pm.) On Christmas, my family and I drove up to Monterey, so I've got pictures from that I've got to post.

I've gone through a bunch of animes: Prince of Tennis, which is much better than it sounds, even if the end is different from the manga; Neon Genesis Evangelion, a classic; Full Metal Alchemist, which I'm almost done with; Wild Striker, which I'm still watching with Jo, which is basically the soccer version of Prince of Tennis; Rurouni Kenshin, which we're netflixing; Haibane Renmei, which we netflixed. Basically, I watch these instead of TV or movies now, even though I still follow the news on IMDB. I think I'd need cable and cartoon network to change my viewing habits at this point, because network TV just doesn't do it for me... But. The first season of SeaQuest just came out on DVD, which, like The Pretender, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain, are my favorites from elementary/middle school. So, I will return to American TV just for those when they come out on DVD.