Back in Town! (with Treats, too!)

  - Date Posted: 11/05/2023

Post Type: Blog-Related (Update)

                  Where have I been...again? 

                  Found the milk!

                  Alright, I apologize for that pun.

                  Long story short, (relatively) soon after making the announcement that I was collaborating with Bo Wei on Tower of Trample.... That collaboration actually came to an end. To keep it diplomatic for now, we'll just say "Creative Differences" and be content with that (I might've spoken a tad bit more about it on the F95 Off-topic Thread of the game, but I'll just leave it at that).

                  Since that happened around Summer, I decided to essentially take a break, get my own stuff back in some form of order, etc. etc.... Well, that sure went on for a while, didn't it?

                  Regardless, I'm back now! I'll start posting again regularly, and maybe do something more while at it, if time (and my IRL life) permits for it. Wish me luck on that! (vague as it might sound)

                  Fruits of Past Labor (my work on Tower of Trample)

                  I'll mention here, that in that collaboration, I did manage to make both a stable build for SCp3, and even work and manage to iron out a Merger Patch (that merges SCp3 with the current Main Build (that is, v1.18.0.4)). The Merger Patch was heavily (I mean immensely) aided by Fvlaenix's help with his Utility program in merging VX Ace games (sped up a lot of the manual work, leaving me to then manually take care of all the edge cases between the 2 games, such as with Assets conflicts and whatnot). Both of them I have also posted [on my Patreon]:

           - [The SCp3 Build] I put on my lowest paid tier (the 1€), I'd say that's the least I could manage for myself (whilst not giving it for free to cause issues for Bo Wei). If you're interested in the build, love Ves in particular, or simply want to see if the Merger Patch has any potential, you know where to get it now!
           - [The Merger Patch] I decided to have it as Free on the Patreon, considering the help I got in making it, and just my personal choice in general. Of course, this Patch does not include the 2 games that it Merges (the v1.18.0.4 Main Build and the SCp3 build) for obvious reasons, you'll have to get those from Bo Wei or me, when it comes to the SCp3 Build.

                  As an FYI, I do also plan on posting more on the Patreon pretty soon, to justify its existence a lot more (aside from the nice benefits of a Discord server, alongside the other possible requests blog-related that are so far avaliable on it). This also means I'll most likely post for the paid tiers, too (mainly the 1€ and 4€ ones, I mainly want these ones to be the Value ones, with the other 2 being for more Dedicated Fans (with more personalized perks to accompany them)).

                  The Treats!

                  I couldn't just come back like that empty-handed now, could I? (Regarding the blog, at least).

                  Indeed, I was still quite active around these parts. Not only on the Forums (I do try to keep active, help people at random whenever possible if I can etc.), but recently on the Blog, as well. This specifically was to add SOME NEW FEATURES BABY!! What are does features? Well:
           - Quick Files Links: No more will you need to enter each Post, then scroll to the Table of Contents to press the "Files" option, to be able to reach the Files section of the blog. You can now do this much faster with the "The Files (skip to them) button at the beginning of each post! Also avaliable in the Post list (which automatically opens the post for you, right at the position of the Files). I also made the Files link much nicer, now being an actual Button (and added the "Pass="DRLF4" specification to it, just to be safe).

           - Relative Save Folder Location Shortcuts: Previously, I was writing down, in text files, the Path at which you'd need to place the Saves of a game, in cases of the games with Save Folders in the "C:" drive ("AppData" / "Roaming" / "Documents" -type locations). Now, I can simply make a Relative Shortcut that works on any PC, regardless of your PC's username! (it uses Windows inbuilt path variables, such as "%User_Profile%" and whatnot). Simply put, it's now way easier on your end to use those Save Folder directly through my Shortcuts. I did update all my previous Save Files (that could use this upgrade).

           - Faster-loading Blog Images: So, I was naively using ".png" format, like a complete utter noob. However, with time, comes experience.... (I randomly stumbled upon info on the ".webp" format). Regardless, this format it's MUCH more efficient, consumes a LOT less space, and therefore loads extremely fast by comparison. I'm using this format from now on, hopefully it makes Blog Post Pages load a tad bit faster! (and yes, I did update all the other posts, converting their images to the new format; yes, that also took a while)

           - ADVANCED SEARCH!!!! One of 2 very-much-desired features by me for the blog. No longer will you need to think of following my previously-provided Blog Usage Guide that details how to search for Multiple Tags, you can now use the dedicated page for it! (check out the button on the side, right under the Search Bar). You get to choose and mix what Tags to Include, or even Exclude, from your custom search! Cool stuff all around.

           - Misc: Added some new Tags (quite a number of them in fact, by the end of it; but I'll still need to get to having to use them, too!) that could be useful. Also updated the Useful Tools with another Cheat Tool for Renpy that I found (with links to its proper thread). Also some other miscellaneous fixes around the blog. 

                  That being said, we'll restart this whole thing, better than ever too!

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