Let's Play To the Moon: It's like watching a trainwreck

Woops, I didn’t record what happens if you don’t deflate the beach ball with Eva. I guess I’m rerecording some stuff sooner than I thought. I’ll get to it soonish, I need to finish my short story for the short fiction thread first. I also owe you guys a second update since I promised I’d do one a week, and I think I missed one last week. I’ll get that up this week in an effort to keep on schedule. :heart:

Eva would be a…is Fire Monk a thing in DnD? Cause if so she’d be that

and if it’s not a thing in DnD then consider my desire to ever start learning DnD dead

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Given her moveset, there’s an Earth Wind and Fire joke somewhere in there, but I don’t know enough of their songs that aren’t September to make one.

I feel like Eva would be the person who defaults to a human warrior in her first campaign, and in all subsequent campaigns she’d play a variety of different races. All of them would be mages, though.

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I’d like to think that, if this were Pathfinder, Eva would play a Lore Oracle with the Blackened Curse (because fire) because she’s a huge nerd who wants to know and learn everything.

Meanwhile Neil would roll a Mesmerist, take the Psychic Inception ability, then seek out the Tarrasque and spam major mind swap on it until he became the Tarrasque.

When I was in university, I used the Sonic drowning music as my alarm during exams. I was never late. I think you’d also appreciate that my normal ringtone for years was Sonic dropping his rings, which sounds like a normal phone ring to people who don’t know it.

I think Eva would be the DM. She would half expect her party to derail the plot, though, and would always make a bunch of NPCs to try and and get them back on track.

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I’m worried about Eva’s in game build though, due to her focus on fire and earth magic will she have enough healing spells to solo tank should we face a threat greater then the first boss? and i’m sorry but with the kids growth stats I don’t think they will pull their weight.

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Hey, I’m still doing this LP I have just had so much going on in my life that I haven’t had the time to sit down and do an update. But I’m gonna try to get back to regularish (weekly or biweekly updates) here soon.

I just wanted to bump this to let everyone know this is, in fact, still happening and also…
##THIS GAME IS CURRENTLY ON SALE ON STEAM FOR $1.99 AND YOU SHOULD BUY IT IMMEDIATELY.

I’m going to try, try, to update this on Tuesday. I’m also going to fix some old posts as @TrenWolfman hooked me up with a sprite sheet forever ago.

I promise I will finish this LP.

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I lied I’m updating today and I might also update Tuesday (60% chance!)

Episode Five: Edge of Tomorrow


(Theme: Uncharted Realms)

: “Disable speech for all except Johnny.”

: “Done, let’s get 'im.”

[While inside the memories there’s this cool distortion/rolling static effect on the screen.]


[K: It’s also in sepia tone.
J: That is how one knows they’re in the past. But actually the color fades in and out.
You can also see that the pictures in the bottom left are blank, we haven’t jumped that far back so that means they’re fairly recent.]

[Here’s a gif of the color phasing effect because it’s really cool, a lot of work went into this game which is currently on sale for $2 on Steam and you should buy it.]


[But enough dawdling, we should head up to the lighthouse.]


(Theme: Having Lived)
: “Yes, John.”

: “…I suppose I had a good run.”

: “Not good enough, it seems.”
[Geeze!]

: “So, can you do it?”

: “Can you take me to the moon?”

: “We can’t, but you might be able to.”

: “Why do you want to go there?”

: “I don’t know.”

: “It’s fine, you can tell us. It’s essential for helping us to get you to go there.”

: “Do you want the fame? The money?”

: “You’ve got to have a motive.”

: “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know.”

: “I just…do.”

: “Nevertheless, Johnny, here’s what we will do…”
(Theme: Uncharted Realms)
: “We need to get to your childhood, but it is too distant to do so in one memory hop.”

: “Thus, we will need to traverse through your memories with gradual backward leaps.”

: “Which you’ve given us permission to do in the relative future.”

: “Once we lay down the waypoints in your childhood memories for direct access, we will return here.”

: “That’s when you’ll need to help us influence the childhood you to become an astronaut.”

: “…Or get on a giant catapult.”

: “The point is, you’ll need to have more to say than just ‘I don’t know’.”

: “As long as you can take me to the moon, I will cooperate in any way possible.”

: “Good.”

: “We’ll need to prepare this memento first…”


[Preparing the memento requires doing a kind of sliding puzzle that I’m not the best at.]


[Go me.]


(Music stops here and is replaced by the wind and surf sound effects I’m still too lazy to record.)

: “Wait, what about my privacy?”

: “We’ll try not to violate what we can avoid.”

: “But in most cases…It can’t be helped.”


(Theme: A distorted version of For River that isn’t on the soundtrack and that I’ll record and edit in later. Then it segues back into Uncharted Realms.)
[That’s all for this update, my apologies if it’s a little short. See you next time when we start Quantum Leaping all up in Johnny’s memories. It’s all in a days work!]

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Episode Six: Lost and Found

(Theme: Uncharted Realms)


[So, how this works, we wander around the home and find important objects which will give us memory fragments so we can access the memento and continue jumping backwards through Johnny’s past.]


[Investigating the clock nets us another memory fragment and a note about it…I should really update that portion of the OP. I’ll do it after this update.]


[The umbrella here is the memento we need, it’s shielded so we have to find the rest of the memories first.]

[When we get upstairs the memory shifts.]


[The next memory is these wildflowers.]

: “Don’t tempt me.”


[The backpack is not a memory but we get dialog.]

: “What is this, a million years old?”

: “I guess we’ll find out.”


[Here’s the next one.]

[The last one is the jar in the upper right part of the room.]


[Delicious and ugh I didn’t manually crop it right, I’ll fix it later. I need to learn how to use irfanview.]

: “Peh, I hate this stuff.”

: “What’s to hate? It’s pickled olive!”

: “…Exactly.”
[With all the memory shards we can now bust down that barrier and leap through the umbrella, like so.]


[Did this one slow for you all and definitely didn’t get confused for a moment.]

: “I don’t mind it regardless.”

: “Seems like these memory hops only span a short period of time…”

: “We need to find a leaping memento or it’s going to take forever.”

: “Meh, just enjoy the scenery.”
[New memory new shards to collect let’s get started.]

(Theme: Silence)


[Johnny has such a strong connection to this stuffed platypus that it actually gives us two memory shards.]

: “Honestly, I just don’t think this animal has the right to exist.”

: “The world’s not big enough for two of you.”

[We could check out the lighthouse but…]


[No dice, also I screwed up this screenshot too. Only the highest quality LPs from Jenner.]


[The third shard is this gravestone.]

(Theme: Moonwisher)

: “Like you, I’ll be able to watch over her every day.”

: “…She won’t be alone anymore.”
[The screen pans up, Johnny closes and reopens his eyes.]

: “I might never understand why but I stayed true to your wish.”

: “I’m sure Anya is grateful to you, too.”

[Johnny closes his eyes]

: “But when I’m gone…”

: “…Who is going to watch over us?”


[We get a note on Anya once we fade into the lighthouse]


[Time to climb the stairs again.]

: “What were you doing?”

: “Enjoying the scenery, what else?”
[Eva looks around]

: “Any luck here?”

[Neil walks away and looks towards the lighthouse light]
: “Big luck. Huge. Dinosauric.”

[Eva approaches him a few paces and looks out the southern window]
: “Huh, this place looks pretty empty.”

: “It’s a lighthouse. What do you expect?”

[Neil approaches the stuffed platypus and speaks.]
: “Anyway, I’ll catch you on the other side. Have fun breaking the barrier for yourself.”
[Neil leaps through the memento and leaves Eva to herself.]


[Next shard is the light, which is broken and leads into…]


[This memory of Johnny crying in the lighthouse, which is our final shard. Let’s blast this puzzle!]

(Theme: Lament of a Stranger but less sinister.)

: “Just enough.”

: “After we pay for your operation we’ll have just enough left for it… So don’t you worry.”

: “…White lie.”

: “That’s what you call it, right?”

: “No, I’m sure we can jus–”

: “Stop it.”

: “…I don’t like it when you lie.”

: “I calculated our finances, I know how it’s like.”

: “Why do you try to convince me against my will?”

: “We need the money for your medical bills, River!”

: “I understand that Anya means a lot to you but this… This is just too much.”

: “I mean, she-…She isn’t even–”

: “Do you know what makes me happy, Johnny?”

: “…What?”

: “Do you?”

: “Well, I do.”

: “I just…hope you can help me with it.”

: “River…”

: “When the papers for my treatment get here I will not sign them.”

: “What you do with our money is up to you,”

: “But if you would grant my wish, I want you to use it to finish building that house.”

: “…And then for every day you live there I want you to watch over her.”

: “Visit her. Speak to her. Comfort her.”

: “…I don’t want her to be alone anymore.”

: “And what about you?”

: “…Happy.”

: “I’ll be happy.”


[Johnny starts playing the piano, it’s For River (Johnny’s Version) Neil approaches Eva.]

: “Who is this ‘Anya’ they were talking about?”

: “If she’s so important, shouldn’t we have seen her in his late memories?”

: “I guess he didn’t keep that promise after all.”

: “Unless…”

: “Unless what?”

: “Nevermind.”

: “Hey, that’s the same song the kids were playing earlier, huh?”

: “I guess he taught them.”

: “Y’know what, I’m too manly for this. I’m heading on.”

: “I already got my memory links; you wanna hitch a ride or look around yourself?”


[Of course we’re staying and exploring.]

: “Go on ahead, I’ll catch up with you.”

: “Don’t you miss the days when memory-audio-to-MP8 conversion was legal?”

: “I think I brought home over two thousand songs during my first year on this job.”

[Neil fades out, leaving us to our own devices. Which we’ll get to next time! See you then! (Hopefully it won’t take me a solid month to update either!)]

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Gonna learn how to use an image editing program tomorrow from @heyboots and then edit this post to be an update.

Additionally learning how to use this program should make updating this less of an ordeal and ideally speed up updates to more than once a month!

Yeah, you told me about her workflow and it was just about as bad as it could have possibly been. I think my exact words were “that’s dumb as hell why”

Friends, let me paint you a picture of the horror that was Jenner’s workflow.

Record footage of To The Moon with unregistered Hypercam

Hypercam horribly desyncs the audio/video, causing the video to play at like 4x speed on normal playback: load video into VirtualDub to resync and make play at normal rate.

Resize video output in virtualdub to non-whole number value to make bigger.

Take full, uncropped screenshot of VirtualDub, paste into ms paint, crop manually to remove everything that’s not a screenshot of the game. For. Every. Image.

???

Manually create gif by using gifcam (after manually resizing gifcam window and moving it on top of virutaldub) to record footage playing back from virtualdub

???

Post update on LP Zone.

:psyduck:

I am committing LP crimes no longer. Or, at least, fewer of them.

I didn’t realize how hard I was making it for myself but this is why everything has been taking forever. Working on a new update with my New Amazing LP Skills right now because MY SLEEP SCHEDULE IS COMPLETE ASS.

Episode Seven: Origami

(Theme: For River (Johnny’s Version))

[We’re left to our own devices, so let’s explore.]


[Here’s what we need to unlock.]


[First off this note, which reminds me I need to update the notes and items portion of this LP. I’ll get to it… :skull:]


[This book is two memories.]


[Another note, I promise I’ll update that portion of the LP.]

: (…Someone really likes these.)
[Another memory here.]

[Walking down activates a conversation]

Nicolas: “I’m telling you there’s just no way.”
[I don’t have a sprite for Nicolas… :sweat:]

: “What if we take it apart?”

Nicolas: “Look at us, John. We aren’t exactly at the ripe age of piano moving.”

Nicolas: “You know what, if this means that much to you, I’ll pay for the professionals to do this.”

Nicolas: “…I can’t help saving that house for you, so this is the least I can do.”
[This conversation gives us a memory and…]


[The final memory is here. It’s blasting time.]

[Oh boy, it’s puzzle time.]

(Theme: Wind and surf sounds which I still haven’t recorded)

[We walk down a screen.]

: “I bet they saw this cliff, and thought it was not dangerous enough without people living on it”

(Theme: Lament of a Stranger)

: “I brought you pickled olives. They’re your favorite right?”
[This is Isabelle and she drops some olives.]

: “…I heard about River.”

: “Will she be okay?”

: “Her illness was just diagnosed in its late stage. Fortunately, it’s treatable.”

: “But the medical bills…”
[:us:]

: “We can’t afford to finish building this house, Isabelle.”

: “We can barely afford to pay for her treatment.”

: “I’m just relieved she’ll be okay, but…”

: “You don’t know how much this place means to her.”

: “She’s going to be heartbroken.”

: “…I’d help, but Ted and I have been barely getting by since the market crashed.”

: “What are you going to do now?”

: “I’m… I’m going to tell her we can make it.”

: “I’m going to tell her that we can afford everything.”

: “…I don’t want her to do anything crazy.”

: “You shouldn’t lie to her.”

: “You don’t understand, Isabelle.”

: “If she found out i’m not sure which she’d choose.”

: “So what?”

: “If she chooses not to save herself for this place, then so be it.”

: “It’s what she really wants.”

: “I really dislike when you neurotypicals think you know what’s best for others.”

: “…I hate when you call me that, Izzy.”

: “Do you think this is all about her?”

: “What about me, Isabelle?”

: “After all these years, am I not allowed to be selfish even once?”

: “…I don’t want to be alone, Isabelle.”

: “I’m not going to let her die.”

: “That’s arrogant.”

: “I don’t care.”
[John stands up and starts to walk away.]

: “Where are you going?”

: “I’m going to pick something from the cliff to bring back to her.”

: “It’ll at least give her some comfort.”

: “That doesn’t make what you’re doing any less wrong.”
[Izzy drops a music box]

: “Nick wanted me to give you this.”

(Theme: Everything’s Alright (Music Box))

: “He said it’s called, ‘Everything’s Alright’.”
[Johnny continues to walk away]

: “…It isn’t.”


[The music box is a memory.]


[So is walking through the truck.]


[And walking into the house.]


[And then up to the cape is the final pair.]

[It’s puzzle time again]


[We also get the note for pickled olives.]
(Theme: Moongazer)

: “Yep! The construction is starting in just a few months!”

: “It’s a bit of a squeeze; we had to split the payment.”

: “But with financing, we’ll make due.”

: “How wonderful, having your dream house built at such a beautiful site.”

Nicolas: “You had your wedding at that lighthouse near there all those years ago, didn’t you?”

: “That’s not all that’s special about it.”
[John looks over at River.]

: “We have a long history with that place.”

Nicolas: “Well, it’s good to have some good news at a get-together for once!”

Nicolas: “Cheers and congratulations, ya two!”

: “Hey, cheers.”

: “Be right back, I’m gonna get some fresh air.”

: “Me too.”
[The two women leave.]

Nicolas: “Well buddy, it’s sure been awhile.”

: “Hasn’t it? Who knew how hard it is to get across a few cities nowadays.”

Nicolas: “That River, still so quiet, huh?”

: “Eh, she’s actually been talkative at home, and with Isabelle.”

: “I guess she’s just not used to you.”

Nicolas: “Hahah, so I’m the bad guy here, huh?”

Nicolas: “Oh hey, did you tell River that thing from back then?”
[Vague.]
(Theme: The music stops and its just creepy atmospheric sounds now.)

: “I did.”

Nicolas: “So, how did she take it?”

: “For the most part, she took it well…”

: “…But something bugs me.”

: “Ever since the incident, she’s been making these strange rabbits out of paper.”

Nicolas: “Origami rabbits?”

: “Yes. Lots of them.”

Nicolas: “Hah, I used to fold origami animals for my daughter all the time.”

Nicolas: “What’s wrong with that?”

: “I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

: “She’s been doing nothing but making the same rabbits, day in and day out.”

: “…Our house is literally filled with them now.”

Nicolas: “Didn’t Isabelle say something like that is a common trait with River’s condition?”

: “Yes, but something doesn’t feel right this time.”

: “When I ask her about it, she never answers.”

: “Instead she gets this distant look in her eyes… It’s almost as if she wants something from me.”

: “And the strange thing is… I feel like there’s something I owe her, too.”

Nicolas: “Have you asked Isabelle?”

: “Yes. She said she talked to her about it, but got nothing.”

Nicolas: “Well, I’m certainly not one to inquire, but I’ll tell you this:”

Nicolas: “I’ve known you since middle school, and you’re notorious for overthinking.”

Nicolas: “You’re probably just imagining things, there’s no need to get too worked up.”

: “Usually when someone says that, something’s always wrong.”

: “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt… You’re probably right.”

Nicolas: “Probably? I’m always right, John.”

: “Forget about the stupid rabbits, we’ve got bigger problems.”

: “It’s a confined memory, and there’s no mementos anywhere.”

: “Don’t worry, we can probably draw one out from him.”

: “How?”

: “Leave it to me. I just gotta give the bartender a quick visit first.”

(Theme: The Bestest Detectives in the World)


[During this scene when Neil resets the bartender the music restarts from the beginning.]

: “Yeah. Are you a fellow olive lover?”

: “Indeed I am! Just got a fresh bottle of them myself!, in fact”

: “Mind if I join you?”

: “Sure, why don’t you grab a seat? We’ll down a bottle together.”

: “Oh…Yeah, that sounds just swell.”

: [“Oh Neil, I don’t think I feel like it.”]

: ["…I’m so gonna get you back for this."]

: “How were the olives, Neil?”

: “Oh shut your mouth.”


[This game is beautiful.]

: “You aren’t Australian.”
(Theme: Spiral of Secrets but more upbeat.)
[I really wish the soundtrack had ALL the music.]

: “Who cares?! We’re like 20 billion nanometers off the ground and standing on a damn flag pole!!”

: “Just jump down; it’s not like you can be hurt here.”

: “Are you kidding me? It’s a fricken sky-dive!!”

: “You can’t stay on here, you can’t get off, God, I hate it when this happens!”


(Theme: Born a Stranger)

: “I suppose she’s just no longer needed.”

: “No longer needed…?”

: “By ships, I mean.”

: “You know how it is, now that everything has GPS and all that.”
[River turns away and stares at the lighthouse.]

: “Look, River,”
[Johnny walks up and snatches the paper off the door.]

: “This place means a lot to me too, and I’ve been thinking…”

: “In our current state, things have been pretty stable,”

: “If we save well, in a few years, we could afford to build a house on top of here.”


(Theme: Moonwisher)
[See you next time when we explore this memory. PS sorry for the missing and otherwise poopy sprites. The sprite sheet doesn’t have everyone. (https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/tothemoon/)]

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I’m glad you’re having an easier time now.

Audio is desyncing in video and I have no idea how to fix it, this LP is cursed.

This LP might be dead because I am just the fucking worst and I’m so so sorry.

This game deserved better and y’all should play it.

I will try to revisit this once I’ve stopped being terrible but I can’t make any promises.

In the meantime, there’s a sequel in the works and I’m hype.