Game Journal #85 - Final (final) home, Battle Improvements

Hey all! Welcome back to my game journal series. This week I've done some coding and some art as well. So let's get into it!

Firstly, life/house update. If you read the last journal, I was about to purchase a home (price was 159k.) Buuut... my bank told me yet again that it was too pricey and that the max they could do was 150k. I didn't mind because I wasn't super in love with the house, I was just settling because it was livable and I was sick of looking. But then... THEN, an amazing house about half that price dropped on the market. When I said I cancelled my purchase agreement at lightning speed, I mean it. Now I'm under contract for this new one, instead!

On a side note, when I scheduled my inspection, the inspector said to me, "We've done quite a few of these for ya, haven't we?" That's when I knew I'd been looking for a home for too long. Lol. But this time for sure, I'm buying this home! I'll give a list of reasons why.

1. The purchase price is about $79k. It's the cheapest home I've tried to purchase so far other than the mobile home, which is pretty crazy!

2. It has a moving garage door that works!

3. It has a built-in shed that can house a lot of things. Meaning, I don't have to move in all my furniture at once!

4. It has a yard on the smaller side, but not too small.

5. There are homes on both sides horizontally, but they face in opposite directions from my home. So it feels very private, but not remote. Additionally, the only thing in front of the home is the backyard of the home across the street.

6. All the other homes surrounding it look nice.

7. It's really close to stores that I frequent all the time, as in I could bike or walk there if I wanted. Awesome!

8. It has washer/dryer hookups.

9. There's a carpet, but there are hardwood floors underneath.

10. It has a dishwasher!

11. It has a tub in the bathroom! You'd be surprised at how many homes have just a shower.

12. The house as a whole feels really sturdy because it's made of stucco. So a lot of issues I had with wood homes (flaking paint, wood rot, shaky foundation) don't apply.

13. All the doors are made of solid wood.

14. I really like the color, trim, and street name.

There's some more I can think of, but yeah! This home is awesome and I'm definitely going to buy it. A lot of the features it has were missing on the pricier homes I toured, which is pretty crazy. My favorite feature is the garage door, I've always wanted a home with a garage. To think there would be one in this price range! My mortgage rate is 5.25%, and my estimated payment is $435 a month. I love it! Once I budget everything out, I think I'll be able to go part time at Cracker Barrel instead of full time, so I'll have more time to work on the game. Very cool!

Funny thing, I got a new realtor (he's awesome) and one of the things he pointed out to me was that the home didn't have an hvac system (as a downside.) Idk why, but in Hot Springs nearly every home has hvac, whereas it's pretty rare in NJ (at least, my home didn't have it.) So to me, it wasn't even something that I noticed lol. I'm used to waking up and having freezing floors. Gotta say, they didn't have hvac in medieval times, either!

I don't think I'm jumping the gun too much when it comes to inspection and the like, just because of how sturdy the house felt to me. Plus, with all the amenities it should definitely pass appraisal. So yeah. There's a bright future ahead for me owning a home! Shoutout to my previous realtor who bungled my previous home offers. The home I wanted to buy back then was double the price of this one, and (something I realized only recently) I would've had to keep my current work schedule to make the mortgage payments. Which isn't too ideal, imo. I really want to make games full time, though I'll stay with FedEx for as long as possible because I like working there. It's a free workout, what's there to complain about? But yeah. Hopefully I'll be able to work less... so I can work more. Ahh, to be type A!

Now for game stuff.

I did a lot of coding this week to add the party features in battle. It took me over 5 hours to debug everything. So, because of that, I only added that and the preliminary equips screen. I've fulfilled my coding desires for now, so I'm going back to drawing. That's how it goes when you're a one-person team...