Sylvan Glade Tea Party

@ThePlumbob

Sure, in theory someone could right click and go view an image in full screen in a separate tab, but I doubt anyone does that.

I do!

@ThePlumbob

I know you can do that in theory, but most of the image hosting sites I'm aware of won't keep the images indefinitely - all I have to do is go look at my old legacy thread, half the old imgur embeds that I used as chapter teasers are gone. So I don't really want to rely on those, because I don't trust them longterm.

This scares me, and I know a lot simlit writers use hosting sites. I have been pretty lax about uploading pictures and I just figured once my storage space was maxed I'd just use a hosting site, but now I don't know if I want to if it eventually purges all your images. I only use imgur for posting pictures on the forums. And I am lazy and just drop my pictures in without converting them to jpeg, but thanks to everyone's insight :) I will definitely start converting them to jpeg. I'm at 30%, so yeah, need to start converting to jpeg.

@mercuryfoam Let me know what step of the installation confuses you and I can try to help. I know that it is a little confusing and there are a couple of steps to follow. It's mostly downloading the files in the order listed and placing them in your Bin folder and placing the downloaded shaders into the reshade-shaders folder within the Bin folder. I only use lightroom, tonemap, vibrance, SMAA (anti-aliasing), and MultiLut (with the desired Lut setting from the drop-down menu) shaders. Most of these just fix the color, saturation and light. There is a readme about the different Lut settings (for location and inside vs outside) and right now I'm using Hydrae for Sulani. But I kind of just clicked through the different ones and figured out which one I liked best.

If you use MXAO (from what I understand it darkens certain areas and gives more depth to the final picture) then there are a couple settings you have to change in-game under the reshade MXAO settings. The original Clear Bloom also uses adaptive fog, MXAO (both these really bog down my computer and I don't use), and a couple others. I turn off both edge smoothing and post-processing in my game settings (but you don't have to turn off post-processing according to the tutorial and can change a certain script in the graphics rules file). Hopefully some of that made sense, but if not I can break it down further or take screenshots to explain it better. That's just a quick and dirty explanation.

For my first story I used RemusSirion's reshade #6, and it's an ini file that you place in your Bin folder. But there are lots of other presets out there depending on your preferences.

"lone_cat;c-17626712" wrote:
Let me know what step of the installation confuses you and I can try to help. I know that it is a little confusing and there are a couple of steps to follow. It's mostly downloading the files in the order listed and placing them in your Bin folder and placing the downloaded shaders into the reshade-shaders folder within the Bin folder. I only use lightroom, tonemap, vibrance, SMAA (anti-aliasing), and MultiLut (with the desired Lut setting from the drop-down menu) shaders. Most of these just fix the color, saturation and light. There is a readme about the different Lut settings (for location and inside vs outside) and right now I'm using Hydrae for Sulani. But I kind of just clicked through the different ones and figured out which one I liked best.

If you use MXAO (from what I understand it darkens certain areas and gives more depth to the final picture) then there are a couple settings you have to change in-game under the reshade MXAO settings. The original Clear Bloom also uses adaptive fog, MXAO (both these really bog down my computer and I don't use), and a couple others. I turn off both edge smoothing and post-processing in my game settings (but you don't have to turn off post-processing according to the tutorial and can change a certain script in the graphics rules file). Hopefully some of that made sense, but if not I can break it down further or take screenshots to explain it better. That's just a quick and dirty explanation.

For my first story I used RemusSirion's reshade #6, and it's an ini file that you place in your Bin folder. But there are lots of other presets out there depending on your preferences.

Thanks for RemusSirion's shade. I have his other one that makes my world look like an apocalyse happened. I like this better! :joy:

Oof okay. So I gave it a go and I think I messed up the installation steps again lol. I've got 3 shaders not working now (qUINT_MXAO, MartyMcFlyDOF and MatsoDOF) which I'm bummed about because I use Matso and Marty a lot :cry: I'll troubleshoot a little more and see if I can get them working again.

MXAO and Adaptive fog slows down the fps for me too! It's still in the tolerable range because I only switch these on for photos and revert to a simple preset for gaming. The one that sends my pc back in time is CinematicDOF. Beautiful, but deadly. :sweat_smile:

Ok wait, I'm testing this out as I write this so new revelation. Those shaders are only broken for Clear Bloom and is working for my other presets. Phew!! So I did mess up the installation. No biggie. I'll retry the tutorial.

*rocks up to the tea party*

*sees @mercuryfoam and @lone_cat exchanging random assortments of letters and acting as if that totally makes sense*

Since you guys clearly seem to know what the other one is talking about, I'm going to assume the random letter variations are in fact not one or both of you having a seizure and leave you to it :D

"ThePlumbob;c-17627303" wrote:
*rocks up to the tea party*

*sees @mercuryfoam and @lone_cat exchanging random assortments of letters and acting as if that totally makes sense*

Since you guys clearly seem to know what the other one is talking about, I'm going to assume the random letter variations are in fact not one or both of you having a seizure and leave you to it :D

I'm totally sitting here nodding and haven't a clue.

"SnuffyBucket;c-17627310" wrote:

"ThePlumbob;c-17627303" wrote:
*rocks up to the tea party*

*sees @mercuryfoam and @lone_cat exchanging random assortments of letters and acting as if that totally makes sense*

Since you guys clearly seem to know what the other one is talking about, I'm going to assume the random letter variations are in fact not one or both of you having a seizure and leave you to it :D

I'm totally sitting here nodding and haven't a clue.

Yup. Just smile and wave. Works every time.

@mercuryfoam Ah, okay, I thought you hadn't installed it yet, so I won't be much help in troubleshooting the different shaders that aren't working. It messed up a couple of my shaders when I first installed it, and I had to delete everything and start over (hopefully you don't need to do that).

@ThePlumbob @_sims_Yimi @SnuffyBucket Haha, it's a bunch of Reshade jargon. Sorry to go off on a tangent. That probably made no sense. :D MXAO adds shading and depth to the picture, and anything with DOF at the end stands for Depth of Field. Basically, it blurs things that are in the distance and sharpens objects in the foreground. LUT fixes the color (it probably does more than that, but this is just my understanding of it).

Question. I might have asked this question to some of you already, but how do you all prepare your chapters? Do you write first, and take pictures after? Or take pictures first and write after? How much do you plan out what happens in the chapter? Bullet points? A detailed schematic? Doodles on a napkin? Or is it all strictly in your head?

@_sims_Yimi
Ooh, great question! And I can actually answer this one!

I started with an idea that just wouldn't die, so wrote a very brief plot outline. Then I went through the whole story in my head and wrote bullet points. Then wrote around each bullet point until I pretty much had a novel. Then I added page breaks where I thought chapters should be (these are prone to change), printed them all out and muddled them up, generally trying to make the story as tangled, complicated and frustrating to write and read as possible. ;)

Then I started playing the story. I haven't finished that part, yet. Sometimes, something will happen when I'm playing that I'll add in, and sometimes I get a random idea and throw that in, too. But generally, the writing is done. This is not a method I recommend, but is one I seem to be repeating for part 2. :D

"_sims_Yimi;c-17628843" wrote:
Question. I might have asked this question to some of you already, but how do you all prepare your chapters? Do you write first, and take pictures after? Or take pictures first and write after? How much do you plan out what happens in the chapter? Bullet points? A detailed schematic? Doodles on a napkin? Or is it all strictly in your head?

Right, how much time do you have, because I could go on for a while?

I'm very much a notes person in general, so I have pages on pages of story scribbles on papers and post its all over.. even though sometimes I don't use them.

I started off with a very rough theme/idea that I was just going to play out for myself, but decided to write the beginning/initial backstory out, which is basically what the first two chapters of my story are. I was then just going to wing it, but around chapter 4 or so I had an epiphany over the overarching plot that fleshed out character backstories and a decent idea of how it all ends (well, how the first season/story/book or whatever you want to call it ends).

From there I did a rough outline that is a few pages of handwritten gibberish with loads of arrows in a nonsensical order that would not make sense to anyone (I have also changed most people's names since then). Then I typically do a slightly more detailed outline for the next 5-10 chapters I'm writing, but I do already have this for the last few chapters towards the end, so I guess I'm kind of working towards closing that gap now.

I generally get random conversations between characters (that aren't going to happen till way in the future) cropping up so I try to jot them down (or at least the gist of them) if I can as anchors for future reference, although I sometimes don't use them if they don't feel right by the time I "get there."

All that being said I do actually play/screenshot before writing the chapter, so sometimes I might go in with notes and the chapter plays out slightly differently, although it's more changing aspects of what goes down and how I get from point A to point B, but it doesn't normally change what point A and point B are. It can occasionally happen though. Then, once I have my screenshots, I go to write the chapter based on the notes and the game, but I might still tweak the angle slightly there. This very commonly happens to me with tone of conversation, I might go into game with a set idea for how an interaction will play out, in game, my perception of the scene slightly changes, and then it might change yet again by the time I actually write the chapter. So I often go through three iterations of the same(ish) concept.

Anyway, I've been going on for ages. I think my story reads like it's a lot less planned than it really is, but what I wrote above probably sounds like it's a lot more planned than it really is :D I do let my characters surprise me and always try to reevaluate if the original concept makes sense, because it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine when character development gets overlooked in a story just because the author is too stubborn about their original idea. So while I have an ending in mind, it may yet change. That said, there are a lot of backstory elements that will come through flashbacks down the line (some of which you've already seen) or at least will be referenced, and those are set in stone pretty firmly, because they have already "happened."

Not sure if the above is particularly useful to anyone to know :D

I do hope you answer your own question @_sims_Yimi - I find this kind of stuff fascinating!