So break is over for me. And I did NOTHING during it. =D
Well. Except get a haircut. And that means I lost three pounds. (I have thick hair.)
It was a kind of miserable week, really. Rain and gloomy skies from Tuesday until Sunday afternoon, and then one more quick foggy blargh on Monday. So combining the absence of sun with my room being in the basement and my blinds being closed, I couldn't ever tell what time it was while waking up without consciously looking at a clock, and who wants to look at a clock when they're half asleep? So I ended up getting out of bed at one, more often than not.
Did no work on the Veridan sketch until yesterday during Chemistry; I'll probably work on it some more this afternoon until six. I did browse through and get general handles on some basic HTML coding on Thursday last week, but that was about it. Can anyone tell me how I can get one of my browsers to read a text file as if it were a web page? I'd like to start tinkering with what I can and can't do, and I'd like a visual check on if I'm doing things right.
No, most of my break was spent in the addicting clutches of the Chao Garden from Sonic Adventure Heroes 2—and the Chao Garden is, in all probability, the only reason to ever want to own SAH2, since the game itself is pretty well a letdown. But if you like massive cuteness and . . . well, look. I don't like massive cuteness. But this side-game suckered me in anyway. =P
Anyway, the only thing you do in the Chao Garden is raise Chao. Don't ask me what they are. I don't know, and that's why I gave you an image. All I know is they're tiny and kinda boingy and they have a little dot floating over their head that indicates their moods or thoughts. Like, if they're annoyed (or if you accidentally throw them across the garden—or if you throw them on purpose, you mean person), it'll turn into this little swirly cyclone-looking thing; if they get an idea, an exclamation point line will appear above the dot; if they start wondering about something, or if you give them something and they don't immediately know what to do with it, it'll turn into a question mark; and if you pet them it will briefly turn into a heart.
They also have a complete range of emotions: they can bully other Chao (or so I have heard), they will laugh or cry, they will react to whichever character is holding them (one of mine cannot stand to be touched by Shadow, and will squirm and struggle and cry when Shadow holds it; another has taken a distinct liking to Sonic and started singing and giggling once when I had Sonic pick it up), they will mimic each other if they like one another, and so on and so forth. I have one (the one who hates Shadow) who always snarfs his food, and more often than not chokes while he's eating, though he doesn't really seem to care too much. Little dude loves food. I have to feed my Chao generally, but he'll just be walking around the garden, see a fruit lying on the ground, pop the exclamation point, run over and grab it and start wolfing it down. He's got the highest stamina of anyone already, and he's younger than most of the others.
They all hatch from large eggs. When you first enter the Chao Garden, there are two eggs sitting there, and if you don't get impatient and start knocking them about, they'll hatch all by themselves. You can lean them in different directions by holding the eggs with different characters, but you don't need to. And it's actually kinda dangerous; I accidentally threw one of the eggs (clunky control system; I thought I had stopped), and my second Chao hatched with no legs. He's got two massive dragon claw-arms to make up for it now, and he's the undisputed enforcer of the bunch, but he still ain't got no legs.
Depending on how you interact with your Chao, and how you raise their stats (I'll get to that), they will change color as they grow and evolve—unless you bought their egg from the store, in which case they will apparently never change color. The little dragon I have started out kinda greyish (Tails threw him >_<) but after his first metamorphosis he is now bright orange with a red splotch on his stomach; his older sister is completely white, and favors seal appendages (swimming type).
Which is a great spot for a segue into stat-raising. Basically, the only reason you'll go back and replay any levels (or keep playing the main game at all) is to get items to raise your Chao's stats. Stat-raising can either be done by giving the Chao little colored tubes called Chao Drives, which raise a particular stat a particular amount and which are collected from smashed enemies throughout the stage, or by giving the Chao little critters, which can be found hopping or meandering of flying around various spots in the level. I usually start out by giving animals a bunch because not only do different animals raise different stats, usually more than one and usually by a far greater amount than drives, but the Chao who uses the animal will take on attributes of that animal. Obviously dragons and seals exist, for those were the animals I gave each of the first two most consistently, and once Chao go through metamorphosis they tend to take on traits of the animals they last used. If nothing was consistent enough, the traits they take on just look better and more mature. I gave the little orange guy at least four dragons right before his metamorphosis, and so when he came out of his cocoon not only did he have two massive purple dragon arms, but his three horns (for power/running type, I guess) had dragon-horn stripe markings on them.
Same is true with other animals. So far I have found a parrot, a peacock, a penguin, some gold bird with which I can't quite correlate a name, a ram, a rabbit, a tiger, a leopard, a green bear-looking thing that inexplicably gives good swimming, a purple actual bear, a seal, a dragon, a boar (great running; at least half the exp meter), a disturbingly evil-looking bat, a creepy skeletal cow, and . . . well, I think that's all I remember at the moment.
Any time your Chao gets enough . . . ehh, stuff in each stat category (Swim, Fly, Run, Power, and Stamina—increased only by eating fruit from the garden), they get more points in that stat. How much they get is based on their 'ranking' in that stat, which is individual for each Chao. Rankings can be viewed in the Doctor's office, and go anywhere from E to A, with S being higher than A. (Yes, I know that'd be E to S. But that's not quite a clear.) So the higher rank a Chao is in a particular stat, the more points they'll get for raising that stat one level. A rank usually gvies something like 20-22 points, E usually gives around 11.
You can alter their ranking between metamorphoses, of which I believe each Chao has two (one cocoon stage and one long, gradual maturation stage), depending on how you initially set up their stats. If you balance the whole shebang, that Chao's rankings will adjust up or down to approach a more neutral set, and if you keep its better ranks higher and its worse ranks lower up until first metamorphosis, it will adjust stat ranking to reflect that after metamorphosis. Or at least after the first one; none of mine had started the second yet.
Aaaaaand you can take it to a classroom and have it learn whatever the current 'lesson' happens to be, which is apparently rotated on a fifteen-minute basis (time for this is counted only while you're in the Chao Garden part of the game, probably so Chao don't grow up while you're not looking, unlike real parenting *shot*). Stuff there ranges from drawing to exercising (which is funny as heck to watch) to shake-dancing to playing a small array of musical instruments and so on and so forth. Chao who have learned these things will randomly perform them while in the garden, and if other Chao are around, they might join in or plop down and bob their heads along, and if they were an audience they will clap and cheer when the Chao are done singing or dancing or playing trumpet or whatever. It's unbelievably cute. It's also hilarious how after that they all get up and immediately go off in all separate directions.
Also, from what I've heard Chao will age and die eventually. When this happens, either the Chao will die completely or it will be reborn as a new infant with one-tenth of the old Chao's stats. You have some control over whether this happens based on how you treat the Chao, but again I've no experience in that department yet, so I couldn't say. I hope the Dragon Man gets reborn. He's awesome.
So yeah, that comprised a lot of my break. If you got a Gamecube, I'd say look into this game just for the Chao Garden because I think it's totally worth it (and probably more fun than Animal Crossing). I mean, I'm already semi-addicted.
And before anyone comments on the subject, the first Utah person to say "I have no idea what you were talking about, but it sounds like you had fun" gets a major noogie. The SECOND one gets made fun of for a week. And consequences increase from there. I didn't post about this game so you'd totally understand what I was talking about, I posted to give you a general idea ('general' being used loosely, since I can't help attention to detail) so you would want to look into the game.
Besides, if I didn't have fun, would I have written a post this long advocating you get the game? Come on. =P
No Captain Obvious comments, please. Comments from the Peanut Gallery (aka Sam and the 'Miss'es) are more than welcome, though.
Now to do some writing.
