The Archives

Same Place, Different Universe chapter 4 WIP 2

It's recording time!...

Regina is back in serious mode! Did someone take the last snack, or interrupted her stream?

Same Place, Different Universe chapter 4 WIP 1

Kiah looking worried after Marcia ran out of stamina and crashed. However, she's ready to offer something that could help...

I Was a Software Developer... chapter 13 WIP

A new scene for a new chapter; there'll be a visit to a crafting shop!

I Was a Software Developer... chapter 12 WIP

It's time! After multiple chapters of preparing for her debut party, Valencia is on stage doing public speaking and a demonstration.

This is how she feels about public speaking... (from chapter 10)

Piper will also take to the stage and rock out to provide live music.

The sketches usually aren't this cleaned up since they'll be vectored over in the final drawing, but I really challenged myself on this!

Chapter 12: Wearing It Now Is Bittersweet As I Sacrificed That Path for Another...

Valencia gives her speech for her public debut at last and demonstrates some of her skills! Piper is in a supporting role but also rocks out on stage.

Published to home page: 7 Aug 2025

Chapter 11: Aww Yeah, It'll Be Unreal!

Valencia challenging Damien to public speaking for her rehearsal already sounds unreal (see chapter 10 or the sidebar now for how she feels about it), but Piroska is telling the truth about this challenge! Will Damien accept it?

Published to home page: 31 Jul 2025

Over the past few days, I updated several articles in the wiki with information from chapter 12 of IWASD, and I created the Archives page today to move the earliest updates from the front page to it to make room for new ones. With this update comes a WIP of an illustration for chapter 4 of Same Place, Different Universe which introduces Kiah (OS X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Capitán) into the Version 3 continuity.

Kiah has a boisterous attitude but tries to be helpful and always wants to be active with something. At the time this story takes place, she is the one of the newest members of Chariots of Colors but has proven to be successful after a rough start (Yosemite had significant issues at launch, El Capitán was a refinement that fixed them) She might seem intimidating to some because OS X 10.11’s namesake being a rock formation that is very difficult to climb. Two of her hobbies are mountain climbing and hiking.

Two more character articles are also almost ready to be published and I hope I can finish them today or within the next few days.

Chapter 12 of I Was a Software Developer... has been published, and Valencia makes her public debut speech in it! Her speech in this chapter give more worldbuilding details; she explains the ability that defines the Operating Superstars as a skillset. Their skillset reflects the flexibility of computers for programming and their graphical capabilities for various purposes. The "hobbyist and art movements led by them [OSes]" alludes to the Microcomputer revolution, which at the time was still ongoing.

The name of the guild she was in before she joined the PrDP is also revealed; they're called the Flying Crimson Warriors as a reference to the phrase "Flying Colors" having nautical origins, and a shade of red being one of the colors on one of the DEC logos.

Several updates to the project wiki will be coming up with information from this chapter.

Yesterday I published a worldbuilding article for the project wiki:

Debuts

I created this article to be linked from the character infobox to explain the significance of a characters' debut timeframe and to list which cycle every featured character so far debuted, in the Techlandian Calendar.

The infoboxes in each of the character articles will update the Debut field to the cycle they debuted, and the real world date of what they represent being released will be moved to a separate field in the Technical section. I haven't updated them just yet because I'm still thinking over what further details I could add.

One of them I considered is splitting up the Affiliation field into separate Team and Club fields which'd help distinguish them in the infobox. I also considered adding a Relationships section with fields for a character's first mentor, predecessor (when applicable), successor (when applicable), friends and rivals.

Another section will be added in the Debut article about characters that represent unreleased hardware or operating systems.

The first WIP for chapter 13 of I Was a Software Developer... as part of a scene I spent the past few days modeling and adjusting materials.

This WIP features a semi-final design of a desk I modeled scratch and it has a section behind glass panels to display more items. It uses a stylized glass material that is opaque to the viewers since what I wanted to do by showing off crystals and containers of beads behind a translucent glass material.

I even modeled beads and containers and made materials for them when I decided to just use an opaque glass material in the display because this scene already took a lot of time 🥲 I also modeled the cash register to make one that fit an aesthetic style. However there were some rendering errors and one of them I spotted is with how the material for the register rendered and another was with one of the patterned cloths.

If I can't fix them in Blender since my computer has started to get pushed to its limits with these renders, I can manually correct the rendered images.

From the latest update I posted on Mastodon:

Soon after that, I started testing an updated layout that had an extra section to showcase the latest chapters and to move the update log to its own row! This'll give some time to show off the current chapters before the next ones get published.

The first version of this homepage is live! I just made a few last minute tweaks to the CSS, moved To the Visitors... to its own page, and added some material to the sidebar.

I spent today and yesterday re-learning how to make CSS grid layouts. That step was frustrating since I got too rusty with my knowledge about them since I last coded one. I got stuck on some of the details at first, but when I found a great tutorial to follow along with (and was more awake), they clicked together and I could put together the basic layout!

After that step, I've been working on the finer details such as putting together a header image for the top div and tweaking the CSS for it to get it to fit just right, and tweaking the dimensions of the sidebar and the design of the menu.

Hello World! Look what I started throwing together, an actual home page for this project on Neocities! It's simple since most of the information is on the wiki, but it was about time I put together a home page here. I published it in May to publish a story that was meant to be an Easter egg to go along with the Stories page. That story is called To the Visitors that Wandered into the Construction Zone and has been moved to its own page. It also has an article on the wiki: To the Visitors...

Putting together this homepage was something I was wanting to do at some point in the near future. I started putting this together on the 27th and had a pragmatic reason for it: I wanted to publish another WIP on Mastodon that showed images, but the instance I use to publish updates had technical issues with uploading images that day.

This was a wake-up call that I should post updates in multiple platforms; there's also the Wordpress blog which has been *the* project site when it launched in 2023, but a webpage with nothing but HTML and CSS (there's no Javascript or anything else unless I have to use them for features I can't do with HTML and CSS alone) also fills a need for visitors with older computers or slower connections. I also have fun trying to make Old Web-style sites and customizing them, while learning how to modernize them.