Righteous Rage!

Hey, Geril here.
Not much has happened work-wise, except for us still not having much free time.

In our limited free time, we don't really feel like doing anything productive generally, so we started playing the Mass Effect series together.
Lussy has never played it, I only played it a long time ago, and our work is kinda related to it, so it made sense.
But oh boy, it is hard.
Not the game. Everything else.

First, the original Mass Effect game barely works on a modern PC. NPC-s charge around, performance is unbearable and glitches are everywhere. But no problem, we own this game for the good ol' X360.

We have the original Xbox 360, without the HDMI out and with the fans what sound like a vacuum cleaner. But whatever, we have a component cable for it, and we can pump the volume up.
We started playing, but we couldn't even start a new game, the console just told us that the disc was dirty. Of course the issue is actually with the disc drive, but whatever, we copied the game onto the mighty 12GB HDD. It took some time and tries, but it succeeded eventually.

I always played the Mass Effect games on the PC, so I had no idea that the game's Xbox version was this... problematic. Low framerate, and texture streaming issues everywhere.
We played for a while, then got fed up, and installed the game onto our Xbox One. It's even in the Game Pass, so it was an easy install. But the game still ran horribly. Oh well, we slowly finished it. Lussy liked the story, so we looked forward to the next game.

That we own for the X360. It was the German version.
If somebody told me that a high profile game made in 2010 has no language options, I would call them an idiot. But lo and behold, there's no other language on the disk. And what about the Xbox One version, that actually just downloads the game files? Nope, still German only.
I got pissed off, so I just bought the game again. But first, the Microsoft store locked me out for some reason, so I had to contact support.

Mass Effect 2 has some pretty important DLCs. Like whole stories and characters are locked behind them. So I got to buying the DLCs on the store but there was only 2 of them. The Arrival and Kasumi - and also some appearence set. What?

Installed the game on the Xbox One. Main menu, connected to Cerberus network. Tried to download the Kasumi DLC I bought, and it just said that it was going to download. But nothing happened.
Tried to download the other one, still got the same pop up notification. Then nothing.

Got fed up again, checked it online. In our country (and in some other ones around us), we can't download any kind DLCs (besides Arrival and an appearance pack) on Xbox One. No reason, we just can't.

So we tried buying the DLCs on the Xbox 360 so that we could trick the Xbox One into downloading it. We put the glorious German disc inside the crappy disc drive, and it started grinding it. Very loudly. Error message, and the disc drive opens without warning. Disc got some pretty big scratches - not a big loss - but the disc drive now doesn't want to stay closed. Not even when we turn off the damn console.

shame.

We checked it online, it's not a rare issue. But the only viable solution is to send it to Microsoft with warranty. That is not an option for us, especially in 2019.
But the machine itself works, and I'm not the type who gives up if it's about a video game, so I installed the digital version of Mass Effect 2 onto the X360's HDD. It was slow, but it downloaded. Game starts, I enter Cerberus network and then download all of the relevant DLCs.
But the X360 only has a tiny 12GB HDD, so I had to wipe everything else on it. And we still can't download the Overlord DLC.
Well, at least everything else is installed and ready to go.
I moved the console against a furniture so the disc tray couldn't open, and we played the game. And man, it's just as good as I remembered. Lussy and I are having a great time playing.
But the damn machine is loud and sometimes the HDD doesn't start, so we're gonna buy a slim version soon.
Maybe with that we can finally play the game without issues. One can only hope.

Anyways.
It sucks that we can't talk about our work publicly now, but until we get more time to work on our personal projects, there's not much to say.

Story time!

Hi! We're going to share some information about the game's world. It's going to be a bit technical so bear with us. The next story post will be focused on the actual story and the characters.
So... here we go.

The story takes place on Koronite, a world made up of irons. Along with this iron based world there are other kinds of matters on the surface which make life possible. Water is rare to find, clean water even more so as the seas contain lots of iron mixed in with mercury.

Magnetism is what makes the continents, mountains, air and water move. The planet has such a high voltage that it could shatter on its own, but the energy is contained by resistors (gigantic natural poles).

The atmosphere is slowly eating away the hills and mountains by oxidising them. Millions of undiscovered minerals lie hidden deep inside the planet’s inner layers among with organic living irons.

The reason why life is possible in this world is because of the plants as many of them are able to extract iron from the air as well as other sources and incorporate them. They then give off the materials they don’t need -  the ones that are needed for humans to live.

The life forms here are either based on iron or have evolved to survive in this environment. The people living on Koronite essentially adapted to the planet, their bodies able to process some of the iron. As such, they are heavier and sturdier but they regenerate less and more slowly. Their fur is strong but prone to rust if it’s not taken care of regularly. Breaking one of their bones may take tonnes of force but once broken, it stays that way. They can also have parasite-like irons consuming their bodies, or living with them in symbiosis. 

The planet tries to get rid of outsiders on a daily basis, these are the more recent inhabitants who haven't evolved to process iron, yet they are determined in surviving at any cost.

The surface is varied. In some places the ground is hot and sandy, elsewhere it is cold with crumbled metal. There are endless oceans that look like large mirrors and also seemingly never-ending are the chasms, floating mountains made of dust and slowly moving damp cubes of metal.

While life is everywhere in its own stubborn form, the inhabitants are fighting an endless war against nature using steam and sparks. After centuries they can finally say the surface is theirs. The problem is, the surface is not the only layer the world has.

Before conquering the surface life only existed deep below it. The creatures were primitive and less able to adapt to changes. Their large bodies remained as caves between the layers of the planet. As it moved and changed, the surface became more stable than the other layers. Water carved long caverns that became the home of simple and more complex creatures alike. So while the surface keeps changing, under it, chaos is the only natural order.

The average inhabitant stays far away from the deeper levels - they have enough trouble on the surface already - yet there are people who use the caves to remain hidden, to do things under everyone’s feet. They have to fight other creatures or nature itself for these places, so it isn’t very common.

About one and a half centuries ago, it became forbidden in most regions to work, develop and transport under the surface. Only mining could be continued and even that was kept under close supervision. Recently there have been revolts across the world. Leaders came and went, laws faded and became rewritten. Nations changed names and conquered new lands.

These new, neutral areas of land - or as their inhabitants called them, “free terrains” - were captured by hired mercenaries. Without a flag or a name the conquered lands could become inhabited to form a new nation of their own.

In this unstable world, to survive, beggars can't be choosers.

Our protagonists’ lives start out from the village in the valley of Maron.
They separate for a while after but their past and goals ultimately causes their paths to collide soon enough.

names not final