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Monday 2 November 2015

Warning: screenies incoming


It's november and that means... IntPiPoMo! Or so I'm told. While our hardcore peers are slogging through ten thousands of words for NaNoWriMo, we casuals (yes, I'm admitting I'm a filthy casual here!) collect pretty pictures for its little sister, IntPiPoMo. The directive: to post 50 images (be it photos, screenshots or artwork) in November.

This year's hostess is Chestnut from Gamer Girl Confessions and she has set the following guidelines:
  • you can start participating at any time during November;
  • both blogs and micro-blogs (such as Tumblr) can participate;
  • any form of non-word creativity is allowed (e.g. photos, screenshots, artwork, gifs);
  • images that are part of differently themed blog posts count;
  • $15 and $5 dollar gifts cards are raffled at the end of the month!

Having images from 'normal' blog posts count for the challenge was very important for me. As much as I enjoy the community side of blogger events, I've found they don't work out well for me if they interfere or completely take over my normal blogger schedule. There's a reason I write about the topics I write about and how frequent I tend to do so: blogging is just one aspect of my very busy life. Ever since I've failed terribly at the ABC challenge (requiring me to write in-character instead of from my own view for a month), I've been more conservative with participating in any blogger event showing up.


However, IntPiPoMo sounds fantastic! I love taking screenshots in games and have a screenshot library counting thousands of shots (I should install something to actually count them). My rule of thumb is to use a minimum of one screenshot per blog post, but that usually ends up being a lot more. I get a lot of pleasure out of making my blog posts visually appealing. 

Funnily enough, while I started this blog to get rid of my screenshots lying around, I found it more rewarding to actually write my thoughts down for posts rather than putting the screenshots central. So while I plan to have some extra screenshot-heavy posts dedicated to IntPiPoMo this month, I'll also be counting the screenshots that I use to support my usual blog posts for the challenge. To make it easy for Chestnut to keep track, I'll keep a counter in the sidebar of my blog underneath the IntPiPoMo sticker.


I also made a little box with recent updates on IntPiPoMo participators so I can keep track of all the pretty screenies being published. If you're participating but not showing up (be sure to click "Show all" to check), feel free to write a comment on this post and I'll add you to the list.

In the spirit of IntPiPoMo, here are some pretty screenies of my new favourite area in Star Wars: the Old Republic: the fairy tale-like swamp below Zakuul. Instead of being scared or stressed when I made an emergency landing here, I was mesmerized by the surroundings and couldn't stop taking pictures. I'll leave it up to you to try and understand why:

The lights of the towering city in the distance shine as little stars

This absolutely breathtaking cave reminds me of the one in my Yavin stronghold

It was almost a shame to have to leave this place

Enjoying the night shifts with HK *sheds tear*

My favourite picture of the place, peeking from behind the trees

Finally, if I made you enthusiastic about IntPiPoMo now, it's not too late to start participating! Oh, and did I mention there are Steam gift cards being given away? Simply leave a comment on Chestnut's blog and start posting.

21 comments :

  1. Ooh, I like this one, especially because of the flexibility! I kind of wish I'd held off on my KOTFE impressions post now - I was very careful to trim it down to 50 screencaps! LOL

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    1. Whaha. Wow, that *is* really impressive! With that kind of output it shouldn't be hard to catch up if you start participating now, though. :D

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  2. That grove in the swamp is indeed gorgeous. I'm usually not someone to take that many screenshots of the environment (I tend to focus on characters' facial expressions instead), but that one was so stunning even I couldn't overlook it (and I have a screenie just like the third one in this post).

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    1. Yay, great minds... ;) And I honestly think the "even I" is misplaced; I always enjoy your screenies on Going Commando!

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  3. Considering the amount and quality of screenshots you take you are anything but a "filthy casual" to me. Specially because I have not the patience or the inclination to get as many screenshots as you do. Really, the only times I will take a screenshot is is it is something really extraordinary, for a blog post or references for decoration in EQ2. Although I never end up using the latter...

    Anything that doesn't conform to one of those categories has to live in my memory which is a pretty terrible place to be in considering how I forget things.

    Anyway, those are awesome screenshots. They are so good I could easily see them being used by the marketing team of SWTOR. Really, it almost makes me want to play the game just to check that place out!

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    1. As always, you send waaay too nice words my way, causing me to be at a loss of words. I have a new life goal now: to make the ultimate SWTOR screenshot, getting Rakuno to download the game... :P

      What are you up to this November, then? I know IntPiPoMo would be horror for you, so are you going for the 50.000 words or the Movember? ;)

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    2. I only say what I think! You are good at what you do which gives me nice thoughts which leads me to say nice things. :)

      Just the usual. Trying to get back into the blogging groovy, lower the size of my "To Play" list and so on. I did consider participating on IntPiPoMo since my current setup for Skyrim might lead to some nice screenshots. But I think just taking screenshots of Skyrim would get boring quickly and the only other game I am playing right now is Splatoon which I have no idea how to take screenshots in and even if I did I am usually too busy trying to be useful for my team/not get splatted. 50k Words is also not something I want to aim for just yet. And I have no idea what Movember is. So I guess it is time to google it!

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    3. I wouldn't mind seeing a lot of Skyrim pictures at all, especially since the game is so pretty! But you should do what feels best to you. I actually tried to reinstall Skyrim a while ago when I had just moved to Sweden and my internet connection was wacky. I never managed to finish the main quest, if you remember, because of some horrible bug that required to roll back days of playtime and made me /ragequit. But since it's been so long, I felt I should give it a try again. Unfortunately, it turned out my favourite ENB mod is no longer supported and caused the game to crash consistently. The game looks so much worse without it (especially the characters, just ouch!) that I couldn't bear playing it. Still have to find a solution, but anyway, that caused me to give it a rest.

      Bumped into an old Twitter account of you (I think) today, btw, with a description that made me laugh. Can imagine that platform not working out for you, seeing the average length of your beloved commentary! :)

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    4. Oh, it is not boring other people I am worried about. It is that thinking of what to take screenshots of, sorting them, editing and then making posts of only one game would get boring for me really fast, I think.

      For ENB I like this one:

      http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36067/?

      It is up-to-date, isn't too perfomance heavy and has good compatibility. If you don't like it, there is a small list of up-to-date ENBs on here that aren't too perfomance heavy:

      http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB#Recommended_ENB_Presets

      As for Twitter, yeah, I got the notification. I didn't abandon Twitter because of the character limitations (although that did get annoying some times). It was more because I was just trying to read *every* tweet from people I followed (and I didn't even followed that many people!) and because it somehow made me very self-conscious about what I wrote. I know that second one is a pretty stupid reason considering I like to blog and comment on other people's blogs. But to me it is kinda like the difference between a circle of small friends who share their writings and discuss them and a party with tons of strangers where conversations can start or stop at any time with anyone about anything. If that makes any sense.

      From time to time I still ponder about giving it a try again. But I haven't found the motivation for it just yet.

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    5. Thank you so much for the recommendations! I don't know if I'll find the time anytime soon to fiddle with Skyrim, but I'll definitely try these out when I will.

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  4. Holy moly, your screenshots are always so lovely<3 Thanks for sharing this, it's such an awesome idea! I'm actually attempting NaNoWriMo (I'm almost positive I won't stick it out to the end, but I'm trying my darnedest) but since I'm also planning on posting on my blog throughout November, this might be something I can join in on too! That might be a little too ambitious for me though...so we'll see if I end up participating in this one. But I absolutely can't wait for all the gorgeous screenies!!

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    1. That's the problem with NaNoWriMo for me: I'm positive I wouldn't have any mental energy leftover for blogging at all if I'd participate. That's why I'm not going to participate as long as I have an active blog. So I'm really impressed that you're going to try to do both! You must have some serious superpowers! ;)

      As for IntPiPoMo, seeing as you use a lot of nice screenies for your usual blog posts already... why not? If you are considering giving it a try (and I totally understand if you don't) I'd definitely sign up at Chestnut's blog either way and get the exposure. There's even 'consolation prizes' for those who don't make the 50 and a banner for everyone who makes 5. So it's really no big deal if you're too busy to make it all the way; I don't think you're alone.

      Anyway, thank you for your support! It always brightens my day if someone likes my screenshots. :D

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  5. Your screenshots are always so beautifully composed. I'm going to work on my technique. These shots from SWTOR are the nicest Ive seen from that game.

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  6. I concur - great screenshots and very tempted to have a go at this (although given I was about to write an article about crafting in 4.0 with lots of functional rather than picturesque screenshots, that might be cheating.)

    I think I too had a shot of that cave in the swamp too. May need to get more. May need to run through it again!

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    1. Just checked your blog and saw you've returned to SWTOR blogging just now with KOTFE.. It'd be great to see more stuff pop up - maybe screenshots will give you some extra fuel! If you do decide to participate, don't forget to officially sign up here on Chestnut's blog. I'll be following yours either way!

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    2. Oh, and I think you can always decide to not count screenshots that are informative rather than artistic if you think that would be cheating. :)

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  7. Dirty casuals, all of you. I have over 5000 SWTOR screenshots from October alone. This should be fun.

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  8. Love the cave screenshot! This makes me want to download SWTOR again and play. I'm trying to find a happy medium with the IntPiPoMo challenge. Screenshots are not the problem, I have galleries of them but now I'm posting every day when I'd originally wanted to a different schedule with posts that had some kind of substance. Will be back to read up on SWTOR.

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    1. Thank you! Sounds like you're having the same trouble as me. I've been posting a lot of screenshots lately, but I really should write some more content as well. I also feel bad for not writing more about GW2 and LOTRO lately, but the new SWTOR expansion has me very occupied. No doubt I'll return to those other games in time. Thanks for hopping by!

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