Definitely had another one of those marching band dreams last night...was some prep for a show or something and i was totally unprepared for some reason.  Omg, I just realized I also had a different dream the other night where college finals were coming up and I was actually screwed because I had basically skipped class the entire year...it never ends, lol.

In better news, Ludum Dare is over and we came out alive, with a game!  Big success!  Will be writing more about that soon. :)

It's great that my music happens to be the type that's great for getting into the zone and trying to get stuff done.  Back when I was interning at Google I was having this huuuge 8-bit chiptune kick and I was using https://electricchildren8bit.bandcamp.com/album/i-am as my work music all day (interestingly I was also using tracks by flashygoodness as "naptime music", haha)...but nowadays I'm not as into pure chiptune anymore.

Lots and lots of stuff to cover!  I feel like I've really been in need of decompressing but haven't gotten around to =(  I was going to last night but then I got distracted by watching Yo-yo videos, haha.  It actually seems pretty fun / legit, and somehow has a good mix of aesthetics that I feel like I could enjoy (but probably won't, as I've got other things that are more interesting to do).  It kind of made me want to do some glowstringing again just for the heck of it, even though I know I'm probably terrible at it now. (never was terribly good at stringing to be honest)

Ludum Dare is this weekend!!!!!  I'm excited and nervous at the same time...looking forward to what comes out of our jam, while hoping that we have a good healthy weekend of work.  Still have some setup work to do tonight, and we also have to do grocery shopping and stockpile food! :D

Went 0-3 in yesterday's draft, which felt kind of bad...but lately I've been trying to remind myself that the reason I play this game isn't just because I want to win...I mean of course I want to do the best I can and I really enjoy improving, but just playing in itself, and getting to experience the game, and talk about it, is fun!  I think MtG drafts are a little harder to truly let yourself "have fun" because well...you spent money and put time into an event, so you really want to do the best that you can.  So it's a different feeling than when I'm just sitting on the couch playing melee with my bros (awesome times, btw).  But it's important to have fun with it too, otherwise losing is just too stressful.  So yeah, I made some drafting mistakes (but no big ones), and I definitely made some play mistakes too, but to be perfectly honest it wouldn't have mattered that much in the end, I don't think -- I found the open colors and drafted accordingly but unfortunately my deck just didn't end up coming together that well.  Sometimes that just happens, I guess.  I did have a particularly awesome sequence where I beat my round 3 opponent who had 2x cryptolith fragment (!!) and a thermo alchemist on the board by casting chilling grasp on his fragments once they flipped, then casting fiery temper on his alchemist in response to his untap trigger to survive with 1 life, then attacking and scrying on my upkeep using geist of the archives in order to draw into a creature which I then needed to play in order to avoid being dead.  So that was pretty hype!  I made a bad misplay in game 3 which may have cost me the game, so that was pretty sad, but that's that...

JaSmix came and went, and was super awesome!  I'm really glad it went well, and was feeling super happy that I decided to step up and organize it this year.  Everyone was so helpful and supportive, which was wonderful to experience -- never have I ever felt the awesomeness of the community so readily, haha.  People seemed to enjoy my class too, which is good!  Big thanks to everyone else who helped make it a success!

I watched Kubo and the Two Strings...haven't been this elated with a movie since Wreck It Ralph!  I won't say that it's perfect but it made me so happy.  There were so many things that I just saw and was just like....yes!  Haha...so that was pretty amazing.  I love art!!!

Music stuff continues to roll forward...I'm going to be putting out "Take My Hand EP" soon, which is going to feature 3 old old old trance tracks that I originally made back in 2011 (!).  Then of course, I'll have another album release with whatever music I end up making this weekend for Ludum Dare.  And past that, there's still a bunch of unreleased stuff that I need to work on, of course, including that dance music album which I need to figure out album art for.  I also really want to set up Patreon soon, but I want to set aside time to make a really good song for that so that I can make it a Patreon exclusive, so that'll have to happen first.  In the meantime, though, people have been jumping on The Best of DDRKirby(ISQ) - Volume 1, which got promoted by DJ Cutman on This Week in Chiptune 158 (thanks!).  It's been performing well, especially for being a compilation album with basically no new material on it, though of course Love Everlasting still remains my best work, with The Ecstasy of Life following behind and being the #1 grossing album.  I've also got Volume 2 of the Mysterious Space OST coming out soon, so....basically, a whole bunch of stuff trickling down the pipeline eventually.

I've put some work into my personal Unity framework lately, which is coming along (just in time for Ludum Dare!).  To be perfectly honest it probably won't be too useful for this upcoming LD (unless we end up making a platformer, in which case it will be awesome), and I'll probably just be leveraging it for simple things like audio and screen transitions.  But I'm looking forward to it becoming a more developed and fleshed-out set of utility features that I can use in my games to good effect, including this particular game that I really want to make next.  Unfortunately I don't think it makes sense to work on Zenith Fighter any more at the moment, though I might want to at least put it out in =some= form or another, if anything just to have it in the archives.

Going to be watching Branching Paths tonight, hoping to get some extra inspiration and motivation for LD, so that should be fun!  Overall things are pretty OK recently...definitely have had some low points, but overall not too many of them and they haven't been too bad.  It's a really scary feeling when you can't seem to figure out what you're living for, but that hasn't really been holding me in its grip, so to speak, which is nice.  Work stuff is actually alright for now, though from time to time I get stuck on some annoying issue here and there (that's how it goes).  Also we finally got the water heater replaced so hopefully I'll be able to take showers without having to constantly fiddle with the knobs -- yay!

It's going to be really great to put everything aside and just work on something that I'm really excited about this weekend. :)

Listening back to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvs2cwrqPFE fills me with a warm sense of nostalgia and reminds me of how much hope there is in my dreams of creating more games -- games that bring joy to myself and the rest of the people who play them.

Games, too, are a part of my past and present.  Reminders of a "better" era, when we sat down in front of the TV and really enjoyed exploring these worlds.  This track in particular harkens to something like...Brave Fencer Musashi, I guess.  The pastime of really sitting down and enjoying something wholesale is something that is important, I think.  I think it's really sad when I hear that people don't play "real games" anymore because they just don't have time.  The idea that you don't have the time in your life to sit down and enjoy yourself is really sad...

Of course, I think what they really mean is just that they have more important things and other things that bring them joy, so maybe delving into these universes and gaming systems isn't something that they "need" anymore.  So that's ok.  I do miss my SNES though ^^;

I am

so sad

Today was....interesting.  Not even sure whether I'm supposed to be happy or sad right now.

Regardless, I 3-0d the draft tonight -- second time in a row!  I've actually only lost one match so far in the Eldritch Moon format (and that was during the prerelease...definitely could have played one game of that better).  The draft was very tricky to navigate...P1P1 started off with an interesting decision between Assembled Alphas and Choking Restraints.  Choking Restraints is =probably= the correct pick here, but I decided to take the Assembled Alphas to see how well it played.  It's still a very good card, but it's also a 6-drop, so I think it's reasonable to take the restraints over it.  I guess it was also worth noting that Mercurial Geists was in the pack and might wheel?  But I don't think that should really change the pick.  However I wanted to try out the rare to see how it played.  I followed it up with another odd pick -- this time I took another rare to see how it played -- Stromkirk Occultist, over the "safe" pick which would have been Ulvenwald Captive.  I ended up with an amazingly sweet deck featuring 3x Mercurial Geists (!), 4x Take Inventory (!), Docent of Perfection, Assembled Alphas, Fevered Visions, Confirm Suspicions...kind of sweet, to say the least.  It was sort of lacking solid 2 and 3-drops -- I had a sanguinary mage and a breakneck rider, and would have killed for another sanguinary mage, or an ingenious skaab.  But in practice I actually ended up OK and never got steamrolled, though to be honest I didn't play any matches against quick curve-out beatdown decks.

=====

Don't know what I should be praying for anymore

Caught up and checked around the internets tonight...  I discovered the devlog of this incredibly charming game in development, Leilani's Island!  I'm kind in awe at just how much good pixel art, animation, game design, AND technical programming pragmatism are brought forth in this devlog -- all by one person!  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely jealous...My mind is already buzzing around with ideas, thoughts, and inspirations from reading all of it.  Indie game development is just so...exciting!!!

ABZU released today!  I haven't played it yet, but of course will do so soon.  I'll try not to compare it to Journey, because well, this game is not Journey, nor is it pretending or claiming to be Journey.  It is ABZU, and I'm sure it will be pretty awesome.  Congrats to the whole team over at giant squid for finally bringing it to light.  I can only dream of what it feels like to be a part of something like that.

Watched some GDC talks tonight as well, including one about Monument Valley, and this awesome awesome talk by Jenova Chen on Journey.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be wandering off to bed while in awe of all of these amazing things.  Amazing.