Things are...okay.  I wasn't feeling so hot today, so I spent a little time on self-care.  I think it seems to have a helped a bit, maybe?  I read a letter from The Past (with a capital P) and then lied down in a bath for a while.  There have been various thoughts going around in my head, about things, about The Past, about people and different perspectives on things, about self-expression or the lack thereof, as well as just about what I want; what would make me happy.  Just, stuff.

I've got a week more of letters to write, and then another week after that to work hard.  Or, maybe I shouldn't look at it that way.  I've got my next thing to work on for Rhythm Quest as part of my (potential) graphics makeover, which is putting all of the level graphics onto a combined spritesheet (as in, authored as a combined image) rather than just single images that are later combined automatically.  That will let me author all of the graphics (and palettes) for the level at once rather than editing each individual image.  Not really sure why I didn't do that already (or maybe I had at one point??  I don't even remember, really...).  It's sort of more of a "busywork" task than any actual creative challenge, but honestly I feel like a lot of what keeps me making forward progress on this game is breaking down all of the work into small enough little bits that all seem like they're more or less straightforward.  It's way easier to stay motivated when the task ahead of you seems really simple; it helps avoid operational procrastination...

Well, tomorrow I get to pull 3 heads off and then attempt to turn some bodies inside out.  So maybe that will be fun?

Mega Man: Super Fighting Robot

This is the latest Mega Man fangame that I decided to play through.   This one was quite enjoyable!  All the standard stuff is there -- you know, 8 robot masters, NES-style music, etc etc etc.  Physics and movement felt just fine, although one nitpick is that you can't shoot additional buster shots if a half-charged (not fully-charged) buster shot is on screen, making that by far the worst level of charge to use against normal enemies.  Normally in most Mega Man games, the small charge shot can still be fired in tandem with normal pellet shots.  Eh, again, just a minor nitpick.

I played on Normal difficulty -- I tried hard difficulty briefly and it seems like it basically doubles the damage that you take(?).  Normal difficulty was actually a bit easy for me, I only had to retry a stage once or twice and I hardly ever had to use e-tanks at all.  Part of this may be because of the game's upgrade system, which lets you purchase minor upgrades to several facets of Mega Man, giving you a bit of damage reduction, better charge shots, and even faster movement and slightly higher jumps (!).  Granted, there are bonuses/achievements for not using any of the upgrades.  Maybe I ought to have played on Hard instead?  It's hard to say whether the extra damage would have felt difficult in a good way, or whether it would have just felt annoying.  I can't really fault a game too much on its specific difficulty level, especially given that it has added challenges and hard difficulty, but I did find it a little too easy, just as a personal experience.

Besides that, this game does a lot of things right.  The music might not be as "catchy" as some of the classic MM tunes, but it's certainly good (and honestly, it's hard not to be biased since a lot of us have played the old MM games multiple times).  The enemy designs are very good and the levels are all both interesting and challenging.  The challenges feel very fair for the most part as well, and even if you lose a life due to a "gotcha", the rest of the game is forgiving enough that it's sort of within my quota.  The weapons are all very unique, and the bosses are fun to fight as well, though again, a bit on the easy side sometimes.  Maybe I'm just miscalibrated from playing other (harder) fangames...

All in all, it was a good time!  I got through it pretty quickly, and decided not to pursue any of the additional content (I'm not really one for replaying stuff).

I dunno what I'll play next...maybe I ought to try out Emperor?