Status Report #25: 08th of March, 2026
Good morning, friends of the sun!
Captain Casual reporting in, with Michael on the vox.
We've had a fairly eventful couple of weeks, so let us tell you about it, starting as always with our.....
Active projects!
And it's mostly good news, this time around!
Our next tune is making pretty good progress. It's firmly in the "production"-phase now, and while we didn't have -many- sessions, each session we've had lately has been big, long and productive!😀
Actually, we're looking to have another one of those later on today. 😉
There's also some good news about Casualia Parks, in that the gameplay for chapter 5 is progressing nicely. It's shaping up to be a big chapter, with some cool, high-ticket stuff coming to fruition!
However.
We've also come to the decision together that chapter 5 of Casualia will be the final chapter of that series. I know, we had much bigger plans for the project, but it really feels like we should bring the series to a conclusion.
There's a few compounding reasons for that.
For one, Planet Zoo itself. We didn't know this when we started, but as it turns out, once you have a big enough Zoo, unpausing the game just means you'll get swamped micromanaging all kinds of little things, chiefly animal populations. Soooo many animals overbreed, and then you regularly need to "cull" the population because they run out of space, their social order gets messed up or they all start inbreeding.
So yeah, at this point, it's getting to that point where the game consists of pausing to build stuff, or unpausing to take care of the million little issues that arise because the game lacks some automation features. That "sit back and watch"-magic is starting to disappear, and it's hurting our motivation to play.
Speaking of which, that's another thing. We just kinda wanna play other games, too. Had a good time playing PlanZo and making a little blog-series about it, but yeah, we don't want it to turn into an obligation for the next year or two.
And more specifically, we want to blog about other games, too! We've got a whole bunch of old games we wanna (re-)visit, play and write about, and Planet Zoo is kinda taking up all of the time we'd normally have for that kind of thing.
And finally, while we're quite thankful to those of you who stuck with the series and followed along, it -is- going to be entertaining for fewer and fewer readers with each chapter, because reading about us expanding a virtual zoo over and over is just not as interesting as reading a post about something fresh and new.
So, with all that said, yeah, it feels like a good end-point for the series. Our motivation for it is still there, but it's just starting to tip, and looking at the gameplay for chapter 5 so far, we think you'll agree that it'll end on a satisfying high note.😌
Other'n that, Amalia's been taking up a decent bit of our time last week with her private project, like so:
.png)
She's felt inspired to do some self-representation! In a rather fancy way, too!
Some of her stuff is fairly private and not really appropriate to share (don't judge us too harshly😛), but we might share some of her more presentable works, here and there.
Speaking of Amalia, she's also thinking quite heavily about finally writing her part of the "Facets if Tulpamancy"-posts.
So that's another project that should hopefully see fruition before too long.😉
Oh, one more thing that's just occurred to us! Today happens to mark the day of the final Teardown Short video release! Yes, those were still coming out. Told you we made a lot of 'em.😜
But yeah, if you haven't seen them yet, here's the complete YouTube playlist! It's also on Instagram Reels, if you prefer.
Or, if you just want to see the most popular one:
But yeah, with that, i think we can move on and talk about...
Non-project stuff!
Well, lemme start out by saying that this past week, we've been having -the- most annoying illness in the world.
It's another cold, you see. Bit of a run of bad luck, second time this year already. But! This time, it's quite light, so that we're physically and mentally at say, 80-90%. So we're doing reasonably well.
Except!
Our nose is being incessantly runny! We're basically constantly operating on a single nostril and occasionally have to annihilate a tissue paper!
Despite feeling quite decent, otherwise. No need to call in sick at work or anything.
So it's business as usual, except for our nose, which insists on acting like we're super-ill. Properly irritating.
Bah. Bah, i say!🤒
Oh well. It could quite easily be worse, i suppose.
Beyond that.... oh, we finished watching the original MacGyver series and both of the TV movies!😀
The show was great. Possibly even our favourite, at this point. You just never knew what a new episode would bring, but it would usually be interesting. Plus, MacGyver as a character is just a joy. Definitely the best role-model for the young'uns of that time, we'd say.
The movies....... eeeh, the Atlantis one was a decent watch, but Trail to Doomsday felt like it was written in a bit of a hurry. Not a lot of attention to detail, many moments of "wait, what?".😕
Anyway, we're watching something completely different, now.
It's.....
But i mean, it's Monty Python. Kind of like -the- reference for all comedy, no? It's like a yardstick by which we can measure the funniness of things!
So yeah, we're rather enjoying that. It doesn't have the substance of MacGyver of course, and we've seen like 90% of it before, but it's good to give it a nice rewatch.😉
So, beyond all that, there's our obligatory mention of DCS. Well, this week, Amalia's more or less talked us into being interested in the Eurofighter Typhoon, afterall!
We kinda weren't, focusing our attention to the Rafale, but eh, that's likely a good for years away. So next year, when our resolution for this year is fulfilled, our shopping list is likely to be: Tornado, Bo-105 and Eurofighter, none of which are out yet, but all of which are -sort of- likely to come out in 2026? Consider it a wish- and shopping list combined.😜
In terms of actual flights, we've been doing some air-to-ground practice in the Tomcat, and weirdly, we really enjoy it! Kinda nice having just..... bombs. Not a million different precision weapon systems to learn like on the F-16. Just bombs. Mostly dumb ones, though you -can- also carry a pod and work with your RIO to drop and self-lase Paveways, which is still fairly simple and actually quite fun.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, we had a fairly cool Apache mission with the Retribution dynamic campaign engine. Blew up some tanks, which unfortunately included a Leopard 2.
I tells ya, that Longbow FCR, with it's automatic target identification and prioritisation is powerful stuff, but with absolutely no IFF for ground targets, it's a real blue-on-blue enabler.
I suppose it teaches us the importance of identifying targets properly before firing, even with the radar going "Okay, there's a tank down there! I've already locked it up for you! All you have to do is press the button! Go for it!"
But yeah, aside from that..... "incident", the mission went quite well. Long flight to and from target area, proper ATC comms, no aircraft handling mishaps or technical issues. And visibility was great, too!
..... actually, that was a bit of a shame, because for the parts where we weren't stuck in the fog, the Cold War Germany map did it's thing and just looked stupidly gorgeous:
I guess DCS is more of a niche product for nerds. Oh well, we'll take it.😜
But yeah, enough blushing about flight sims. We should probably call it here, really. This is a pretty long report. I guess we felt kinda talkative!😉
So yeah, until the next report (or another post before, if things go well!), stay safe, watch out for those gung-ho Apache pilots hiding in the fog, and have a good one!
Comments
Post a Comment