My goal was to add some more images to the website... but I got side-tracked with side-quests.

Instead, I (kinda?) got DMW3's font, which... is an absolute mess when compared to the previous game (though it did save some internal memory in doing so, considering the game's length), as both english and japanese characters are mixed together. Plus some special characters... for other languages? Huh. Which ones??

Jokes aside, I didn't get much done; but a friend might join in the fun of making websites, so I am excited for that prospect. If they end up going for the retro videogame style, I have plenty to help them with! Maybe I can even make ANOTHER cool font... super exciting.

I mean, after all, it's no secret that my own website needs a Silent Hill shrine too.

Image support added!

Much easier to implement since the base animation is already done... Now I just gotta fill these entries up with colors.

Other than that, I'm happy to announce that my (improved) sprite rip has been approved! Now I just need to update DMW 1 & 3's fonts. Also, my diary entries might end up becoming a huge list in my HTML... much like my internal diary system, I might need to test/improve this aspect, since it's part of repth's original code. This is purely so that I may have even less work in making these (simply writing the entries themselves and posting them, as opposed to categorizing them every time). May or may not be implemented today...

Feeling very tired from my lack of sleep, though, so I better go to bed soon. Which means I might end up adding everything another day.

For my triumph, here is the very first image that was posted inside these entries..:

Everyday I find a new tool to torture myself with.

I got a bit too deep into spriting and now I can't stop. And by "can't stop" I mean I can't stop spawning 100 copies of the same art piece with slight alterations, that most likely only I will notice.

Is it fun? Of course it is. Look at how much fun I'm having my hoarding all this data! I kid, it is fun, but it can be frustrating to update Mugen just to change the file seconds afterwards because I spotted a "mistake". Be it shading, a dot I missed to color in, placement... it makes me anxious to see a mistake when, in theory, it's usually an "easy" fix.

I wanted to dive into vram again in hopes of ripping a decent background, but... I didn't. I'm highly occupied with tinkering new sprites for Mugendramon in DMW1's superior design.

I FOUND IT!!!

I gave vram another go and ended up finding ALL of the letters from the original game!! Now I can ACTUALLY archive them properly, as opposed to my near-guesses and hand-drawn accuracy.

As promised, I took my time to work on a sprite, too: an updated look on Gomamon, because the poor thing was not looking like its reference picture. There is another one I want to work on, namely Mugen, but I may or may not start it first thing in the morning.

Afterwards, I kind of got distracted and tried executing PSVrammed with Visual Studio. After a couple failures (because apparently there IS an incorrect way of extracting files, of all things), I was able to build it! Which... was a bit underwhelming, admittedly, as it didn't really bring me much farther in my research. It did, however, show a possible solution to my color palette dilemma from days prior... Since it loads specifically the images from the save state (and not the whole other areas, too, like vram does), I am able to pinpoint which areas belong to which colors. I can also zoom in, which is a feature I miss dearly when looking for such miniscule pixels (looking at you, vram)...

Just a couple of hours earlier, I archived the font used in DMW2. I do ask myself if the staff will be annoyed at me for updating it so quickly again, buuut if I'm able to extract some other things along with the font itself, I believe I can be forgiven. I finally have the actual, canon symbols used (and no, this does not include ANY parenthesis... dammit!), so I can go ahead and build an accurate font directly from the game itself! Well, not that I hadn't done that earlier already, but now I can really, REALLY check for any mistakes on my behalf. For now, I am leaving the website's (both) fonts as they are. Once I am able to crack this code, I'm updating both. It will mean "checking each letter individually with Aseprite again because Photoshop distorts my fonts", but hey, it's progress. The spriters-resource variant will be much easier to execute because it will only have me clean up the background, as the words are already organized in a neat little list. Just like scientific research, I'm noting down all of my findings. Huhuhu

I'm still gonna be using special characters on my personal website, though, so a few letters and symbols will be unique to it. I bashed my skull open and used my blood to write each letter. I'm keeping them!

I'll give you a single chance to guess at what hour I went to sleep.

Anyhow... I need ideas for the staring page UI. I know, I still have that whole plan with the Digi-Beetle for my homepage, but I figured I should build a "forewarning" of sorts for the folks that have certain scripts turned off (among other things).

Thing is, this will most likely require for me to actually get the ripping tool to work... which I have put off/procrastinated because, well, it is very time-consuming! Using it for the main/intro page may or may not be easier, though. As one would figure, I have instead put that off to make a decent archive of the font and upload it as a .png for folks to enjoy (once approved, of course). I was double checking it and found out... huh, the ":" is placed incorrectly (when compared to the real game files/screenshots). This is now fixed, as reflected by this very page's UI. It was a bit of a hustle to get it to work, because apparently importing a TTF on its own doesn't let me make changes and quickly upload it again... which, uh, kinda makes sense, if you consider that that would allow anyone to overwrite credits and such, I guess? Or maybe it's a bug. I had to go through past WIP files and change it from there. I have so many versions that I don't quite remember if this is the correct one or not... but I did modify the UI with big numbers again, so both have matching symbols. In theory. In practice, well... look, I want to move on already!

Those with keen eyes probably noticed the sweet addition on the bottom right corner: Mugendramon aka Machinedramon in all his glory! Until you click him, that is. The animation itself is inspired by the very same effect/attack in DMW1, which turns your 3D mon into a weaker sprite version of itself. It's what I worked on instead of sleeping AND ripping Seadramon's animation dance, lol.

That's all for now. I gotta figure out the warning page thing before starting work on the homepage (which might end up with me working on it nonetheless)... For now, I'm gonna archive the font and work on some pixelart.

Adiós! < yes, I did this on purpose.

As much as it pains me, I need to start sleeping earlier... URGENTLY.

I updated the Dialogue's (font) symbols and ""cleaned"" the code, yet I feel like there are def spots that I missed which repeat the same function unnecessarily...

I don't really plan on updating it, though, at least not often (like the main page), because the only other thing I kinda need for this diary is the ability to add clickable pictures. It will make the walls of text a tad less boring for those with an attention deficit (such as I). Besides, well, it is a documentation of sorts, so I would like to provide visual proof, if possible. The entries will eventually be updated with those, just not yet.

Before catching up on my beauty sleep, however, I need to rip Seadramon's animation dance. I love that creature.

One of my masterpieces is compleeete!!

Though the accuracy is around 90% and not 99%, as I had previously aimed for, yesterday's updates were essential! I fixed the diary entries' drop shadow, some UI flaws, colors (to the best of my current abilities, given my lack of sleep), text placement, etc. I took some screenshots to document my progress, though the arrow animation is missing an additional color...

Did you know? The first time you click "Slot 1", it plays the "selecting (menu)" SFX, but afterwards it's exclusively the "back (menu)" one, as if returning from the entry itself. Would've been useful when selecting the wrong save state in the original game, for sure... Also, the top menu's SFXs and save state entries' SFX are different.

All in all, I am super pleased with how everything came out! As of typing this, I am currently in the process of fine-tuning/checking if the font works. I gotta add some symbols to it and think of a layout for the download page...

I am adding my nitpicks to a TO-DO list, but it will stay as is for a good while still. After cleaning up my code a bit (so it doesn't look too messy) I will start working on my main (!!!) page. Digi-Beetle, here I gooooo!!!! (Speaking of beetles, I wish mine was designed after a Hercules beetle...)

Apparently my BIOS hadn't been updated since 2023. Oops.

Though there is a lot to share, I have more important matters to attend to; so let's summarize it by revealing I had a great time and now my monitor has new colors and oh my fucking god I need to redo all the assets. Yes, the colors bother me. A LOT.

But I am more than excited to finally have some time for my project again! What a lovely feeling it is to obsess over creation.

I tried waking up early but ended up 2h longer in bed. Ha

I did go to bed in the early morning, though, so that's on me! Sadly, I won't be able to work on my little project any further this weekend because I will be spending time socializing.

It'll probably do me well to stay a bit away from the computer; as much as it brings me comfort, I can't eat yummy hand-made noodles at home (not by an asian-owned business, that is...). And I am well aware of the effects of taking a break after countless hours of laser-focus on something: you're able to see new details and, well, mistakes that need correction.

As is, the Diary website is practically complete! When you first click on "Slot 1", it plays the "select menu" SFX as it opens up the diary entries, and any future clicking on it will play the "return from menu" SFX, just as it does in-game. The diary (save slot) selection has its own SFX, and clicking any entries plays the "save file selection" SFX accordingly. I made the entries "001" instead of just "1" because I want to have as many entries as humanly possible without ruining my layout...

I will have to double-check the real game later, but I am fairly certain that's all I had to take care of! All that's left is refining stuff, such as the font (as well as any other placements I can think of). Placing new entries is a breeze, so I am glad I gave myself the extra struggle so that future Goma could rest easy about that, lol. I can't wait to begin production on the main page, which I challenge myself to do without a template (since... well, it's kind of too unique to have one anyways). Bis denne!

An early entry today because once I start working on this, I know I won't stop.

I am very serious about archiving DMW2's assets. They exist literally nowhere online, apart from the sprites easily within reach, and no one has bothered to rip the (admittedly) annoying background elements and UI.

My website will consist majorly of these sprites, so, naturally, I want what's best for it; which are HD, pixel-perfect sprites, along with an accurately measured font.

However, before I even begin to think about going through that process again, I will be focusing on building the necessary wireframe first. I need a base. Y'know, "create it first, make it perfect later", all that jazz. The project is coming along really well, and I am super happy about it! But I also cannot wait to get my hands on the three elements that compose the diary's bg, which are these square-shaped spots that light up, the symbols and the main bg. One day, day one. It's a bit ridiculous having to find a needle in a haystack, which is literally the last step necessary (the correct color pallette)... But I am excited at the prospect of it. I'm still deciding where I will be putting that up for grabs, though, other than "the spriters resource". I guess it'd make the most sense in an "Item Shop" kinda page? Wait, I think Digimon World 4 had a gallery... that could be used for my personal art... Ahem, soon! Soon.

It IS kind of funny that my emulator's settings are fitted to my screen, else the rips would already be pixel-perfect by themselves. Those looking for shortcuts end up doing double the work, they say...

I was beating around the bush whether to update the UI again or not, but I decided to bite the bullet and fix the entries from scratch.

What a major pain in my ass! I did this to myself, sure, but damn!

On one hand, I am super glad I switched everything up. Since the basis was already "manageable", it didn't take too long to organize the layers. On the other... This means I need to rip/recreate some other UI I hadn't prepared for. But everything is working just as I envisioned, so I really can't complain... I thought about incorporating the "loading" screen, but that one annoys me as much as it does in-game. I like accessing information fast - patience is something I used to have as a kid when my PC used to be pure trash. "Laptop da Xuxa" as we'd call it. Thankfully those times are long past me now...

I did spend time working on this (days prior), but writing was condensed to coding instead. A good chunk of it was fixing previous code and formatting everything better. I am so, so close to wrapping this up... I just can't wait. I think working on my main page will be TONS of fun and I want everyone to see what I got in mind. There will be lots of empty pages for a while, until I come up with further layout ideas... but I do know that there is a lot about DOTA, OFF and DIGIMON that I want to write about. Oh, this page also needs some automatic formatting for any images I plan on uploading... so that's another item added to the list. There are quite a few images (such as WIPs and progress screenshots from this project) that I want to document.

05:08am update: The font's shadow is a pixel-perfect 1:1 recreation of its source material lol

Another update on the site's layout!

Yesterday, I finished mapping the base font from the internal UI, screenshot my game screen and made the layout's bg transparent (+ fixed some of it today - ie added a drop shadow and made them symmetrical). You can check their current versions by searching them in my code - I think this is vers. 10 or so?

I finally (finally!) fixated the top and bottom bars, so now I just gotta figure out how to add an interactable text just above 'em (with an animated in-game arrow...). Oh and two little arrows were added to the diary's internal space! They are also present in-game, I just noticed them today while checking/looking up references. I captured a mon around 2 to 3 times just so I could type its name using every single letter of the available alphabet... by checking on them in my Status tab afterwards, I'm able to measure the exact letter's height (pixel-wise). Not sure if much else can be done for the day.

Started reading Stephen King's 'brief' tale: 1408. It's my favorite horror movie ever, so I had to take a look at the source material.

So many new words noted down... At this rate, I will be done with the book by next year (cackles). Witty humor and charming characters; I really like it thus far. Let's hope Mike's psychological horrors aren't as harsh on him as his live action counterpart.

Updated the (now "officially" labeled) Dialogue font! Due to personal preference, some symbols are not quite like others. That is to say - their spacing differs and isn't entirely precise. I am quite fond of "optical refinements", you see - the very same logic applied during the Parthenon's construction. My pentelic marble is composed of little dark-grey pixels. Despite being a Gemini, though, I lack both Ictinus' and Callicrates' genius, so my final result is the mere illusion of a working font. But it suffices. To me.

Ok, I finished "drawing" the original game's font! Wait, the positioning is incorrect. Wait, what do you mean it also looks like that in-game?!

It's so... quirky. At the same time, it's kinda hilarious that both me and the translation team from back then did the same mistake. Silly us! And it's uhh... The wrong font. The one the game uses for the smaller text is different. Back to work I suppose...

I also added a timestamp, so it kinda looks more like the OG save-file. Huge thanks to Neo for suggesting PixelForge (super easy to use and export) as well as sn0w for helping me with my (then) ultra laggy background!

I love parallel play!

Quite some progress on editing this page so far! I fixed some ripped sprites (the moods.png come all from DMW1 - Monochromon's shop; I just separated them and made them transparent), as well as recorded my own game's footage for the background (from DMW2), aligning and looping + editing it on Adobe Premiere to stretch its size a tad bit. I would've preferred to remake it in pixel-perfect form, but alas, there is a reason no one has attempted to rip the background elements in that game so far. I came close, but I still need to find the correct color palette...

I also separated and animated the Favicon's sprites! Very thankful for all open resources when it comes to those. Honestly there isn’t a whole lot left to do, but at the same time, there are quite a few things indeed... Hopefully by the next update I'll have finished all borders. The font will probably take me the longest... maybe! Shoutout to Word for fixing my typos.

Oh my fucking god, I suck at coding. I remember this being much easier back when I was 13yo.

It's bc of those damn phones, isn't it?

Whatever. I have decided to study and research more. There are tons of tutorials online, so I just have to put some effort into it. Plus, some of these folks are super talented! I should be able to recreate my visions with some inspiration.

For now, I'm writing down some thoughts! First time in a while. Maybe it helps (by feeling productive). This also means the previous entry was written today.

Finished reading N0tail's autobiography.

Not much to say, really. I highlighted some bits that were cool. The book's written in a super simplistic - and at times, sloppy - manner (due to the rushed translation, I presume?), so one could easily go through it in a single sitting. Regardless, I am actually a little happy that I managed to finish reading something I own physically...

I admire Johan. I've been watching him play DOTA 2 for years now and he's been through some quite complicated interpersonal relationships, so I kinda get his pain there. Karma's got his back, though!