Sweet jumpin’ jackelopes, I feel like I’ve cracked the Rosetta Stone. For a context reminder, I began this site with zero knowledge of web design. Everything you see, warts and all (mostly warts), has been the result of trial and error. I’ve had to scrap and rebuild upon discovering things that don’t work the way I expected them to, and if I ever found out why they worked the way they did, it was an exception. A lot of web design tools and tutorials operate under the assumption you’ll trust their logic wholesale without explanation. I am not that kind of person.

Anyway, big strides.

Site Updates

The Music Category

Music review imports are finally done. I didn’t import every single thing I ever wrote, as some of it just lacked substance. Still, I’m finished with importing the rest. It’s possible I find a review in the future that escaped importing, but that’s always been the case.

Only movie imports remain. There shouldn’t be as many of them, but they also aren’t as high of a priority for me, as Criticker used to restrict character count for reviews, so they’re relatively slight. I still like how punchy some of them were, so I don’t like to have them languish on Criticker. But, y’know, they’ll come whenever.

Reconfiguring Image Sizes

I hit full disc space, unexpectedly. I either need to upgrade my hosting, or get under my allotted disc space. I think an upgrade is inevitable eventually, as the site will keep growing, but since I’m tight on cash, I’d rather put that off.

Also, I’ve learned various things about optimization since starting the site, so there are a lot of corners that still need to be cut. A big example is a sitewide switch to .webp image formats. I originally opted for .pngs, since as a child, I was always irked when sites used lossy .jpgs. To an extent, I understand their pain, now. But I have one thing they didn’t have: .webps. These are minimally-compressed images that are nearly equal to .pngs in quality, but are like, 20% of their file size, if not more. I hate to have any quality loss, but I’m kind of up against the wall, here. Simply, .webp are the best compromise. Practically speaking, their downside is that not all browsers support them. It’s very uncommon that they don’t, though, so that niche audience will have a hindered experience. It is what it is.

You might think there’d be plugins to mass-convert my existing images to .webps, but what I need isn’t so simple. Every plugin I’ve looked at wants to have my original image preserved and essentially partitioned off. The justification for this is that if anything turns out poorly, you can just reinstate the original image. Normally, this is a nice feature. For someone like me, who’s over their disc space, that’s unworkable. My disc space increases, because the original image stays while new ones are being generated. The process can’t even be completed to where I can delete the originals afterwards, because they run up against the disc limit.

If there’s a plugin that deletes the original files as it replaces them, I haven’t found it. I guess none of them want to fuck around with accountability. Not to mention, you’re at the mercy of these plugins’ compression settings. The browser extension I use to save images as .webps is lossless, or to be more precise, it’s set to lose as little image quality as possible. Other converters might want to skim more off the top, compressing the image further to save a few more kilobytes. Overkill, in my opinion. Sometimes you can set a plugin’s compression to be minimal, as well, but I swear I’ve seen instances where they claim lossless compression, only to look worse than my browser extension, compelling me to replace everything manually. Remember what I mentioned earlier? So much of web design demands you take something at good faith, and I’ve reason not to.

Another issue—and likely the true cause of my disc storage suddenly running out—is image variants. When I started this site, I did not understand how variants worked. I’d upload an image, then set a block to display a smaller version of it, then the displayed image would be of worse quality. What gives? If I take an image and resize it in MS Paint, even, it may be smaller, but the quality is preserved. What is WordPress doing, then?

Recently, I put everything together. I know many reading this will slap their foreheads in disbelief, but again: I have no education in this shit. I grew up during a time when schools only taught you how to type.

Anyway, when you upload an image to WordPress, WordPress (or rather, your Theme), automatically generates size variants of that image and stores them out of sight on the backend. So, if I upload an album cover, regardless of that image’s attributes, WordPress will make (at minimum) thumbnail and medium size variants which match the resolution input in your media settings, while retaining proper aspect ratio. The reason for this is to decrease bandwidth, or the amount of data a visitor has to load. If I set a full size image to display at 300px, the full image is loaded, then shrunk down. It displays properly, but it loads the same file size as if it were displayed in its original, higher resolution. It’s suboptimal. If an image already at 300px was loaded, instead, it would be of a smaller file size and display quicker while using less bandwidth.

I understood that all along, but WordPress was confusing me because its variants are automatically compressed without telling you (at least, not upfront). To me, this was unintuitive, as smaller images already cut down on file size, because there’s fewer pixels to require storing information for. This was unnecessarily frugal, for me. I would have at least expected an option to turn compression off while also preserving the resized variants. My category pages would have a use for thumbnail variants, for instance, and they would load faster. I just didn’t want lower image quality. But no, it’s their way or the highway.

I gave up on understanding WordPress’s arcane magic and brute-forced my desired outcome. I set every image to display at full size, thus bypassing WP’s lower-quality variants, then, if I needed a smaller image for aesthetic purposes, I’d just set it within a “container” that was the resolution I wanted. This did what I mentioned earlier, loading the full image then just displaying it smaller. It worked, but it wasn’t optimal. I just put up with it, prioritizing product (article) quality over accessibility (load time). I didn’t see a way to have both.

Rewinding a bit, this is why disc space can unexpectedly balloon, as it did for me. Of the various image optimization plugins I’ve tried since starting the site, many of them offer the feature to set their own variants and override WP’s defaults. They functionally serve similar purposes, but they can, for example, allow for more variant types. Instead of the thumbnail, medium, and large sizes WP’s default theme generates, you could include a medium-large category and likewise set its own resolution, etc.

Every variant, default or otherwise, takes up storage space. It’s very subtle how much they take up, because even though they’re technically separate images, WP doesn’t “acknowledge” them on your backend. When I look at my media library, I only see the original image I uploaded. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. This decision makes sense, because having library clogged with five (or whatever) variants of the same image would be agonizing to scroll through. I think that’s fine, but WP really ought to make information on an image’s variants more upfront, like when you’re viewing an original image’s metadata in any context.

Whenever I removed an image optimization plugin, because they always dissatisfied me in some way or another, there was the potential they’d leave behind their proprietary variants. So, I’d have those taking up space alongside WP’s defaults. In extreme cases, I could have two variants of the same resolution! I’d only ever use one, even if I wanted to, and the other would just be taking up space like old cobwebs. Across thousands of images, this really adds up. I had multiple images where the variants took up more space than the original, even though the variants are far smaller. You can probably see how I was caught off-guard.

For a website that’s mostly just a landing and contact page, having a dozen different variants makes sense. You can have your site look as pretty as possible while loading the minimum file size for a variety of different user displays. If you have extra disc space, it just makes sense to do that. For a site like mine, which hosts a lot of content, that’s not very practical. I basically only want a thumbnail for any lists, like my category pages, and then a full size image that’s roughly equivalent to what I set my article’s featured image to display at. I think I have that at 600px or so? You get the idea, anyway.

There are plugins designed for bulk-cleaning unused variants, and I looked into them, but I’m not comfortable with running any at this point. For one, they all recommend backups, which, far as I’m aware, I don’t have the disc storage to even make. Also, they seem to have limited ways to recognize unused variants. If I reupload an image to my site, WP automatically generates new variants. Ordinarily, this is useful if I were to change my media settings to have variants set to different resolutions. WP doesn’t regenerate variants when you change those settings; you have to manually reupload an image.

But at the very least, I confirmed WP’s regeneration culls any unused variants. This is more reliable than hoping a plugin is able to determine which variants are unused. I was about to run one, and I noticed it was set to preserve “medium-large” variants from an old plugin. I had no way to tell it to delete those, too, but WordPress did upon a manual reupload. So, it looks like my best option is to do manual reuploads.

Whiiiich ropes me back around to my original point. If I’m manually reuploading things, then I should find a way for WP’s smaller-size variants to be generated with no compression. Better sooner than later, or I’d have to reupload a second time for different variants. I tried asking on Reddit for help, and I received code that seemingly disabled compression on resize, but then the smaller image would have a larger file size than the original image at a higher resolution!

I don’t fucking get it. I’m about ready to just give up. Original images are .webps, and if the thumbnails for lists are lossy, then fucking whatever. For now, I might have to accept that I don’t understand the logic behind image compression and file size. To me, a lower resolution of an image with the same file type should always have a smaller file size. Apparently not. I don’t know.

Even as ignorant as I still am, I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about how WP functions on the backend. I’m pretty happy about that. So much regarding images on WP has been confusing to me since day one, and a lot of that is starting to clear up. It’s a big weight off my shoulders. I love it when things finally click. It may have been obvious to you, my reader, but it wasn’t to me. I don’t care about being stupid, so long as I’m less stupid than I was the day before.

So, I’m going to continue replacing my images with .webps. Obviously, I’ll prioritize larger images. I want to at least get under my disc storage limit, since that breaks some site functionality. It’s slow going to manually replace one image at a time, but it’s better than trusting my fate to some plugin or another. Far as I can tell, anyway. At least I won’t repeat all of these mistakes going forward.

Archive Display Order

It’s finally fixed! Thank the flippin’ lord. I temporarily switched back to my old plugin so A-Z ascending order would work again, but I didn’t like doing that, as it was an out-of-date plugin that potentially had security holes. Now, I’m modernized!

I haven’t spent too much time making my new archive list look pretty, as I wanted to ensure functionality first, but with that out of the way, I’ll be considering adjustments. At the very least, I did bite the bullet and set my category images to be thumbnail variants, as opposed to my old method of them being full-size and then fit within a smaller container. Things should load faster without looking too much worse, thanks to WP’s variants now being .webps as opposed to the clown makeup that is .jpg compression.

With this plugin working properly, another thing I’d like to do is implement a dark theme toggle. The dark theme would be similar to my current color palette, so I’d basically be adding a light theme, then viewers could switch between them with a button. No ETA on that, as I have a ton on my plate.

New Site Content

I’ve been pretty thorough about adding new guides for every game I complete. They’re not all equal in scope, and none of them are full walkthroughs. Instead, I talk about things I think people would especially want to know or might struggle with. I feel like comprehensive walkthroughs are kind of a dated concept. There will always be a need for them, but the average person probably just looks up specific things they struggle with, or general questions, and what they want tends to overlap.

If someone’s compelled to need help on a specific boss, they’re probably not the only one. In that case, why write about how to beat a boss no one ever needs help with? I know that there’s always someone in need of help on any part of a game, but if someone is finding it difficult to beat the first Bowser fight in Super Mario Bros., they’re probably more in need of fundamental advice than a specific strategy.

Anyway, yeah. Guides. Check ’em out. Or not.

I also wrote a new editorial about article paywalls, or more precisely, the shitty attitude people have towards them. It’s fine to think they’re annoying, but the belief that people are entitled to someone’s writing efforts for free really gets my goat; especially when it’s a millionaire propagating that idea. The article says it all. I think it’s a good one, personally. I should’ve charged for it. But then the people who need to read it, wouldn’t.

New Off-Site Content

The special 50th issue of Old School Gamer Magazine has arrived, if later than anticipated. It contains a countdown of the fifty most influential games of all time. I was fortunate enough to claim coverage of Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. They’re 500 words each, and I think I did well.

This issue is completely free, so please check it out!

I also wrote a piece for Deus Ex, but it didn’t make the cut. It, alongside other remnants of the project, are set to appear in the next issue.

Upcoming

I hashed out a ton of new projects with my editor. I’m hesitant to give away identifying details, since I didn’t ask for permission. Instead, I’ll just promise an exciting year with a broad range of topics. I’ll even be interviewing at least some industry veterans, which is a brand-new experience for me. As always, you’ll receive more information when everything’s solidified and public. I should have at least one project on the docket for the next half-year; and that’s just my work with OSGM.

Site Content

I’ve obviously been busy, but I’m working on new mega-articles for the site, too. My reviews for Drakengard and Clock Tower 3 are the furthest along. I don’t like to make promises on my own deadlines, but work is being done.

Game Log

Miscellaneous

Still on my PlayStation 2 kick. I made a Grouvee list ranking the games I’ve finished so far, which also contains some commentary.

I reached 100% in Ape Escape 2 last night; the game’s definition, anyway. I wasn’t willing to 100% the minigames, as they’re way too damn hard for me. After that, I was feeling very uncertain about what to play next. I decided to try random games until something clicked, and the first one was…

R.A.D. – Robot Alchemic Drive

I started this one just last night. It’s been on my to-play list for so goddamn long, as I’m a big mecha fan, but I just haven’t gotten to it. The premise is that you control your human character and their mech separately. There’s no cockpit, so you need to run around the environment while the carnage unfolds, swapping to your mech’s controls in real-time. Your perspective is always that of the human’s, so positioning yourself to get a good look at the fight is essential, but you place yourself at risk of getting caught up in the destruction if you walk too close. If either you or your mech are defeated, it’s a game over. Also, your mech’s controls simulate an actual control panel; the bumpers operate each leg, respectively, and the joysticks cover arm movement. It’s mecha QWOP.

I’m not sold on the experience, as much as I love the concept. It feels like there’s never an ideal place to just sit and watch the mech fights, and without being able to properly gauge depth and relative positioning, I’m never compelled to attempt my more-complex attacks. Instead, I just want to flail my arms around until I make contact, lest my uppercut graze the side of my target. And if it does, how much do I need to rotate until I’m aligned? Most of any fight has been just trying to face my damn opponent.

Also, the feedback on your attacks is lacking. Punches feel weak, laser blasts are so tiny they’re nearly impossible to see, and so on. When you hit something, it feels like you’re clumsily knocking a tower of cardboard boxes over, rather than forcing it down.

I picked the Laguiole, as I like transforming mechs, but the plane mode sucks ass. It’s only capable of cruise control speeds, when I thought it’d be like a fighter plane. It almost felt like a joke when I rode on its back for the first time, cool though it is that’s possible.

In fact, the whole game feels like one giant shitpost. The best thing going for it so far is how comical everything is, because it’s difficult to tell what humor is intentional. The voice acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard, but is it a sendup of old English dubs for kaiju movies? Not all voice performances being equally bad throws that theory into question.

The slapstick gore effects are hysterical. I can’t remember the last time I laughed at a game as hard as the start of story mode, where I was told a train was pulling into the station I was at. I walked onto the tracks with my schoolgirl friend in tow, thinking I’d just be pushed out of the way by the incoming train model. Instead, we’re sent flying like ragdolls in a shower of blood dozens of feet away, screaming as my health bar depletes. Then we land, dust ourselves off, and take the train home.

I think the most fun I’ve had with the game is vaulting over the cities using my anti-gravity jumps and seeing how high I can go. There’s barely anything going on outside of fights, which is a shame, as that means I can’t (easily) deliberately walk in front of cars and shit. The city may as well be papier-mâché, merely a setting to place loading zones on. It never feels like a real location.

Also, there’s frame drops out the ass. I looked it up, and apparently this is just part of the game and not an emulator issue. It’s fairly unpleasant.

I’m not giving up on the game entirely, but I’m unsure if I’m going to return to it at this point in time. The gameplay feels too arbitrary to be fun, since the forced perspective means a lot of my ideas fail for reasons not entirely known to me, and there seems to be nothing outside of the mech fights. The story is a total farce because of the voice acting, and while that’s certainly funny, it keeps me from becoming invested. Yeah, it cracked me up to hear a news reporter say in complete monotone, “could this be the end of humanity,” but it’s not like it became funnier when they said it again in the next stage.

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So, yeah, I’m unsure of what to play, still. I think with every other game in this marathon, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to play next. I got nothin’ this time. My to-play list is still gigantic, but nothing is jumping out at me. I’m open to suggestions, but odds are I’ve already considered it. I’ll find something.

Outro

That’s my check-in for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything I mentioned! I’m going to continue working on my storage issues after I post this.