As promised, I spent a significant proportion of today playing with Koikatsu to get a feel for the possibilities of the character creator, and a brief bit of time in the Studio. Both are very similar to Honey Select — the Studio app in particular is pretty much identical to Studio NEO from the Honey Select expansion — so it was fun to see what a difference the change in art style made from its more realistic counterpart.

The results of my day's work can be seen here:

I'm kicking around an idea in my head for a yuri VN based in an office, and figured out some preliminary character profiles earlier. Then I went into Koikatsu and tweaked things in the character creator until I felt like their respective "looks" went with the personalities and backgrounds I'd established for each of them. Then I plonked them into Studio and got them to pose. I'm pleased with the result, though I want to fiddle around a bit more with the myriad lighting options, since Koikatsu allows everything from the hard lines seen in this image to softer, more subtle transitions between light and shadow.

At some point in the very near future I'll experiment with making some actual character sprites using Koikatsu and seeing if they'll import into Visual Novel Maker. There's no reason why they shouldn't, of course — it's just a matter of if they look any good or not. And once I've got those basic assets in place, that's a brand new creative project I can throw myself into when I'm feeling at a loose end, as increasingly infrequent as that is these days.

Anyway, Koikatsu gets a hearty thumbs up from me right now. I haven't touched the main game mode at all and I'm already having a blast. This is what these pieces of software are really all about.

I picked up a copy of Koikatsu Party earlier. Well, more accurately I paid for a copy on Steam to assuage my conscience and then downloaded a pre-patched, modded version of the Japanese original, since there's more stuff in it.

If you're unfamiliar, Koikatsu is exactly as the title suggests: it is Honey Select Unlimited, but anime. In other words, it has the in-depth character creation and excellent Studio app from Honey Select, but eschews the more "realistic" art style in favour of anime cel-shading. And it looks lovely.

I haven't played with it enough to really have anything worth sharing yet, but I'm looking forward to fiddling with it some more. I haven't yet decided if Midori and Yumi will get an "upgrade" — I'm rather attached to their Custom Maid 3D 2 incarnations — but we'll have to see how things go. In the meantime, I'm interested to see if Koikatsu's output is sufficient to make convincing visual novel sprites, since I have a few ideas in that regard rattling around in my head, and a lack of art assets is always the thing I find the biggest roadblock in putting something together.

I have Monday off as a public holiday, so I'm going to spend the weekend chilling out, playing with Koikatsu (and doubtless some Flight Simulator as well) and just having fun, then I'll get the next couple of weeks' worth of videos done on Monday. I also have Thursday and Friday off from the day job that week, too, so that will be nice.

For now, after not sleeping too well last night, I think it's off to bed with me!

Been feeling kind of… I don't know, lonely I guess, lately, but I've been drawing some comfort from the visual novels I've been enjoying.

This particularly struck me with Nurse Love Syndrome, the precursor (but not "prequel" or anything) to Nurse Love Addiction, which I'm currently ploughing through for my bedtime reading. There's something about that specific work's writing that really draws the reader in and makes them feel included — and this is further supported by the excellent characterisation and voice acting, courtesy of some big names like Yumi Hara, Eri Kitamura and Asami Imai.

In particular I'm finding myself thoroughly enamoured with the character Yamanouchi, who in the context of the game is a more experienced nurse than the protagonist (who is fresh out of nursing school) and her senpai (who has been there for a year). Yamanouchi is a charming, somewhat tomboyish woman who speaks in Kansai dialect (or, in the English localisation, the usual "drawl" that this is translated into) and is the sort of person who makes you feel happy just by being in the same room.

Yamanouchi is frank and honest with our protagonist, and someone who puts across a wonderful "older sister" vibe without going down the "ara ara, oneechan" route. She's someone you'd want in your life just because she puts across the impression of being easy to talk to, supportive and kind, but also not afraid to give you some friendly "tough love" if you need it.

I'm actually not taking aim for her "route" in Nurse Love Syndrome right away because I also like the senpai character, but I'm very much looking forward to seeing what makes this charming young woman tick. I suspect there's going to be a lot of interesting things to discover, but we'll have to wait and see!

Anyway, on that note, I think I'm going to go sit in bed and enjoy some time with my nurse friends. Have a pleasant evening!

The wife is away for a week next week hanging out with Final Fantasy XIV friends, so I've also taken a few days off from the day job. The Monday is a bank holiday anyway, but I've also taken the Tuesday and the Wednesday off. I was hoping to get the whole week, but my team leader, who believes that every day is "ooh, manic, absolutely manic, we're rushed off our feet" even when there is so little to do that I can literally sleep through half of it, is panicking over some upcoming projects, so I said I'd take the two days (plus the bank holiday) and see how things went.

I don't have anything in particular planned for the days off, but it will be nice to just have some guilt-free time to do whatever I want to do. Catch up on Atelier, make some progress on Nurse Love Syndrome, play some Evercade games, record some videos, chill out with Microsoft Flight Simulator — all the usual stuff, just without the gnawing feeling that I should probably at least attempt to look like I'm busy, even if there is absolutely nothing to do.

I've been enjoying Microsoft Flight Simulator a fair bit recently. I haven't done anything super-substantial with it as yet, but given its nature, it is best approached as something of a "software toy" rather than something with any real objective. There are the regular Landing Challenges and some additional navigation trials to complete, but otherwise it's literally just do what you want to do, so long as it is in an aeroplane. In the last couple of days, I have flown over my village, followed the accurate, correct road system to the town where I went to school and landed in the car park of said school. (Said school is not modelled with 100% accuracy, it's built from the procedurally generated buildings due to being a low-detail area, but it was still recognisable enough to land there, even if the Technology block appeared to have become a shoe shop.)

I haven't tried all the aircraft yet but I'm already developing some favourites. I'll always have a soft spot for the trusty Cessna 152, of course, since I've been flying that since the Atari ST version of Flight Simulator II (the 8-bit version was a Piper Cherokee, if I remember correctly) but I'm very much enjoying the Savage Cub, if only for the fact it causes air traffic control to append the word "Savage" to your callsign, making for some delightful silliness. Savage FARTS, cleared for takeoff and all that. My only issue with the Cub is braking a bit too hard on landing and causing the stupid thing to go arse over tit, but I'm sure I'll figure that out eventually. The frankly terrifying acceleration from a dead stop when taking off is more than enough to make up for any difficulty actually bringing the thing to a halt.

Anyway. Couple more days of this week to make it through, then a nice super-long "weekend" to enjoy. Looking forward to it already. Hope the rest of your respective weeks are tolerable!

So I bought a new TV. Repairing the old one was — and still is — a possibility, but with the amount of time it was going to take for parts to arrive thanks to the age of old TV, I preferred to just replace it.

I'm impressed by quite how much the prices of these things have come down. I paid over a thousand quid for the one that's just broken, whereas my new one, which is better, was less than £350. The new one is 4K and has a brighter, more vibrant picture, whereas with the old one I suspect I was paying for the Samsung brand. (The new one is a Hitachi, which is not nearly as prestigious, but if these things are going to crap out after five years I don't want to drop a grand on them every time!)

I was especially impressed with Argos' service. I ordered the TV and it arrived the same day, within about three hours of me ordering. I could have gone to collect it and have it immediately, but we weren't sure if it would fit in my car, so we dropped an extra four quid and got it delivered. Fantastic service, would do again.

So yeah. I've entered the 4K age. Not that I actually possess anything that outputs 4K (apart from my PC, but I don't really want to set that to 4K as I doubt anything would run that well at that resolution with my current setup!) but still. I am ready for a bold new, tiny-pixeled future!

Don't you love how technology has a mind of its own, and decides to break at the least convenient moment? Okay, in this instance it hasn't exactly "broken" — not completely, anyway — but it has decided to start playing up just as I spent a bunch of money on new computer parts.

It's my TV. My TV is about 6 years old now — which apparently is the lifespan you can expect from tech these days — and I've always rather liked it, despite never, ever, ever using its "smart features". It's a 55-inch Samsung with an LED display, it does 1080p, it looks nice and it fits nicely in the space it has available.

It's also started displaying a dark, hazy stripe across the middle of the screen. It's not distorting or corrupting the picture or anything, it's just noticeably less bright than the rest of the screen. And once you're aware it's there, you can't help but keep noticing the damn thing.

It's not the end of the world or anything, and Andie is going to try replacing the internal ribbon cable to see if that helps matters, but chances are I'm going to have to pick up a new TV at some point soon. Thankfully, prices have come down considerably since I acquired this one; less thankfully, that still means at the very least £350 or so for an equivalent model to mine. Right after I have, as I say, spent about that much on new computer parts.

Oh well. At least Microsoft Flight Simulator runs nicely now.

I upgraded my processor and motherboard today. (Well, Andie did. She is better at fiddling around with electronics than me.) It was a painless process, so naturally I had to test it out with some Microsoft Flight Simulator. It was the reason for the upgrade, after all!

It runs way better. No more stuttering! Frame rate is a little variable at times, but that's expected for this sort of software, plus my video card is a few years old now. That'll be the next upgrade, then, but not for a few months.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some pictures from pissing about in the simulator this evening. These are all taken at Medium detail level, if you were curious.

I flew into London to see how my new specs would cope with a "busy" area, and the answer is "just fine". I'm a little below 30fps there, but it's still perfectly playable.

One of the best things about Microsoft Flight Simulator is the combination of Active Pause, which causes your aircraft to stop dead wherever it is, and the Drone Camera, which can be freely positioned. Wanky artsy photos ahoy! This is my Cessna, as seen from the roof of the Tower of London.

I attempted to fly under Tower Bridge, but discovered in the process that Microsoft Flight Simulator appears to treat this as an entirely solid object, even if you turn crashes off. Consequently, my Cessna became a boat for a short period.

Undeterred, I tried again. This can be filed under "photos taken moments before disaster".

I then slewed the Cessna up to 20,000 feet, because that's what you do in Flight Simulator. I managed to get down to a safe altitude without ripping the wings off or anything.

By fortunate happenstance, my slewing north of London had put me in the vicinity of the small airstrip near where my parents live, so I landed there. I then taxied onto the road and decided to drive the Cessna into the village to see if I could find my parents' house.

It is indeed possible to drive a Cessna on British country roads, though do take care not to send your wings slicing through someone's lounge windows.

Since the ground detail is based on satellite photography, bits of road that are obscured by a canopy of trees can prove troublesome. I got a little lost here.

But I safely found my way home just in time for my Mum to put the kettle on. Okay, the house is wrong and the detail is blurry as all hell, but I wasn't expecting anything more for a little rural village like this. The fact that there was just enough detail to pick out my parents' driveway and the cars sitting there is impressive enough to me.

I sent out a drone to survey the surroundings and discovered on the day the satellite photography for this area was taken, someone from the local gliding club was obviously up in the sky. Now they are immortalised in the texture for this field.

And we close with a nice aerial shot of where I grew up. This is fun!

I say that as my title, but it's been relatively uneventful. I played some Atelier Rorona, recorded a podcast with Chris, recorded some footage ready to include in said podcast tomorrow, and now I'm sitting here considering going to bed.

I have also taken a chance on a new retailer that I haven't used before, but which I found reasonably good reports for online. After enjoying Nurse Love Addiction so much (and now starting to enjoy Nurse Love Syndrome, too) I decided I wanted to pick up Kogado Studio's other Switch visual novel Yumeutsutsu. Play-Asia had an Asia-English version a month or two ago, but it seems it was very limited in quantity and is no longer available. It seems this version is still available via NintendoSoup, however.

NintendoSoup is a peculiar website, in that it's both an online store that sells quite hard-to-find stuff (a lot of Asian imports, for example) and a traditional gaming site that some people don't seem to find all that reliable when it comes to the news. Judging by a look at some Reddit threads and a few other reviews, though, their store seems to be legit enough — the main comment is that their shipping can be a bit slow at times, and is especially likely to be slow during the current COVID-19 situation.

Still, that's fine with me, because they do free worldwide shipping and I'm in no hurry to read Yumeutsutsu — I would just rather like to have it on my shelf. So when it comes, it comes — along with all the other outstanding limited-run stuff from various boutique publishers I have waiting to arrive, too! (I ordered fault milestone one from Limited Run Games today, too.)

Ah, gaming. How easily you part us from our cash. Not that there's a whole lot else worth spending money on right now anyway!

Chris and I are recording a podcast tomorrow. It'll be the first of probably several episodes we do on the subject of the Evercade handheld, and it's going to be a ton of fun to talk about this system, its cartridges and the myriad unusual games contained therein.

Amid all the cynicism about modern gaming, it's nice to have a system that is just so suffused with enthusiasm and positivity. This is a system about celebrating games — and not just the games that we've all played a thousand times over in all the Sega Mega Drive collections that have been released over the years. The games that, in some cases, have never seen a rerelease — certainly not outside Japan.

We'll talk more about this on the podcast itself (which should be out on Monday, all being well) but one of my favourite things about the Evercade is discovering things I've never heard of, and finding out that they're wonderful experiences that I wish I'd known about sooner. So far, this has happened pretty reliably with everything on the Namco cartridges in particular — Star Luster, Warpman and Dig Dug II are particular favourites of mine now, and there are still plenty, plenty more games from the various collections that I'm yet to explore even a little bit!

I'm super-hyped for the two Lynx collections in particular. I love the dear old Lynx and I regret selling mine a few years back — even if I'm certain its LCD probably wouldn't have survived until now. To finally have a way to enjoy these games through an official rerelease will be just lovely — and there are some games among those collections I've never played before, too, so that will be exciting.

Anyway, as I say, we're recording tomorrow, I'll be editing on Sunday and the new episode should be out on Monday. If you've found any particular highlights from the library, be sure to let us know, too!

Flight Simulator arrived! I spent much of the day installing it from its 10 DVDs (and then the 16GB download it also needed), but it is now safely installed on my computer and ready to fiddle around with at a moment's notice.

So far I've taken a thoroughly unprofessional flight from Southampton Airport (my local airport) to the tiny grass airstrip in the village where my parents live. I didn't crash or anything, though the Cessna I was flying was getting battered around a bit while I was up in the air — I guess it was a bit windy. The whole thing took about an hour and, in theory, was rather boring, but I enjoyed myself.

It was fun looking out the window and trying to identify the areas I was flying past — I subsequently discovered you can turn on on-screen "city markers" to assist with sightseeing — and, when I finally set down on the grass strip, it was also enjoyable getting out the Drone Camera and flying off into the village proper to try and find my parents' house. I think I found it, though the detail is a little lacking in rural areas like this, so it was only a rough approximation; by contrast, my own house is completely recognisable — you can even see the big tree on my driveway and our extension out back!

My PC is only around the "recommended" specs for Flight Simulator (as opposed to the "optimum" specs) so it doesn't run amazingly on my machine. There's a bit of stuttering when it's streaming stuff in as you reach new areas — particularly if you're low to the ground — but once you're in flight things work perfectly fine. I have to play on "Medium" detail, but it still looks very nice indeed. And, having grown up with earlier versions of Flight Simulator, I'm very much accustomed to janky performance at times. I still just marvel at the fact it does what it does so well.

It's exciting to live in an age where something we looked forward to back in Flight Simulator 5 is finally a reality. A fun gimmicky feature in FS5, which was the first of the series to feature texture-mapped graphics based on satellite photographs, was the fact that you could zoom the "map" out so far that you could see the whole Earth from space. The game didn't model the whole Earth in detail — in areas where there was "no" scenery it simply had a generic patchwork texture — but the fact you could zoom out that far and the, in theory, go anywhere on Earth was an exciting possibility. Now, it's finally here; the whole world really is in this game, and you can go anywhere.

I'll write more or make some videos or something in the near future; I need to spend a bit more time with it first of all to get my head around everything it's doing. The daily Landing Challenges are fun, though!