It has come to my attention that a certain relative of mine has once again invaded my privacy by visiting this site.

Once again I must remind you:

Please go away.  Please stop reading this.  Please stop mentioning anything about my blog.

If you choose to continue reading my blog, know that you are violating my wishes, as you already did a week ago.

If you choose to continue reading my blog, and talk to me about it, know that I will have to resort to more drastic measures.

Every time you do this you are making our relationship worse.

You are not welcome here.

This will remain posted here for a time, to make my message clear.  In the meantime I will simply pour my heart out into other channels.  I need to catch up on my writing anyways.

Fear not though, for I shall return.  I always have, even when countless others have not.

Urer jr tb ntnva...

V jbhyq unir gubhtug gung V jbhyqa'g unir gb qb guvf ntnva, ohg...nf hfhny, gur fghcvqvgl bs gur jbeyq rkprrqf zl rkcrpgngvbaf.

[/rot13]

Ludum Dare 46, Illusion of Gaia, anxiety, narratives in the SNES era

Well, let's see...

We made a game for Ludum Dare 46!  Was stressful but fun.  We still need to make some improvements to the menu and such, and I'm working on the mobile port (just got done debugging a really annoying issue -- apparently CPUParticles crash the app on iOS unless you have a default environment!).  You can check it out here if you'd like in the meantime, or just wait for the improved version. (and yes I'm fully aware that most of you are reading the copy-pasted version of this that won't even have the inline link)

Been continuing to do alttpr seeds -- the latest one I had terrible luck on, and last-locationed an item that I skipped early on.  Bleh.  It happens, I guess.

My birthday came and went.  Of course, I was waist deep in the middle of LD when it happened, so I had no time at all to really think about it, but you know, that's how it goes -- far from the first time this has happened, actually.  It was nice hearing from a bunch of people, even if I didn't really process any of it until afterwards.

The stress of Ludum Dare along with some other stuff resulted in me getting a sort of anxiety attack on Saturday night, which was not very fun at all.  I don't really get these, at least not like this where I wake up in the middle of the night with a bad feeling in my chest and have trouble sleeping again.  I've definitely felt that sensation of stress and/or anxiety in my chest before, but very rare for it to just prop up so suddenly in the middle of sleeping.  Thankfully, that seemed to have been an isolated incident, though for those couple of nights after LD I was still sort of cooling down from it all.  I imagine I should probably find some time to do Tai Chi again as a sort of catch-all physical/mental integrated feel-good practice.

I started up my playthrough of Illusion of Gaia.  No SNES-era game is without its faults (well, perhaps no game ever, really), and Illusion of Gaia, like most other games of the time, doesn't really have the best or most well-put together story.  But what the games of this time lack in narrative and plot they really make up for in charm and atmosphere.  There is so much that can be carried by a game's look, feel, and sound...see Secret of Mana for a perfect example of this.

Illusion of Gaia is a pretty significant step up from Soul Blazer in that the dungeons (at least from what I remember) are quite a lot more interesting to go through, and combat and movement in general is just more smooth, more active, and less tedious.  The environments are a charm to explore and move to as well, with multi-level buildings...just the simple act of running around (you can =run=!) feels great.  And of course the music is great too -- the Itory Village music really sticks out as a really really good "peaceful town" theme and I'm actually still sampling the pan flute instrument from the soundtrack in my tracks today.

It really took a looooong time for video game narrative and writing to catch up.....and even then, the stories that are actually poignant and well-told (looking at you, Journey, Undertale, and omg One Shot) are so few and far between.  To be fair, I have yet to go through both Terranigma and Mother 3, so there's that.  But it's really hard to think of games that tell a good story, even thinking about all of the games in this entire period of time.  Maybe FF6?  FF6 certainly has a LOT going on, but I don't know if I've ever really felt the narratives of final fantasy games really compel me.  When I think about compelling narratives I think of really well put-together environments, I think of well-done moments, I think of storytelling that shows instead of tells.  There is a scene in the water in Cave Story, for example, which does this really poignantly.  And even the "story" (if it could even be called that) of Yume Nikki, really makes you think about things a bit.  But I don't think any games from the beloved SNES era really capture any of those feelings.  Our art form really needed a lot of time to mature, and perhaps beyond that, it really needed the influence of indie games, which simply did not exist back then.  You see all of these one-person and small-team games like Yume Nikki, Undertale, OneShot, Night in the Woods and others, really take risks in their storytelling, because the creator really has a story to tell, and because that story doesn't have to be diluted.  These creators can go out on a limb and tell a story that perhaps won't have the mass-market appeal of a shounen hero fantasy, but will really connect with people when it matters.  I know because we've tried too, and dare I say succeeded.  And it's a wonderful thing, to connect with your audience in that way.

Fear of missing out ain't nothing compared to the fear of losing what I already have.

Off to the races...Ludum Dare starts in 15 minutes!

It's been about a week, huh?  I'm not sure if the fact that I've been skimping on blog posts is indicative of anything, like maybe I'm happier?  Regardless, let's get into it.

Life is in fact going a little bit better.  Things have gotten easier, though of course there are always little hiccups here and there.  On the plus side, I seem to be at a place where for once I don't actually have a ton of different things that I'm trying to work towards, which has been providing me with a rare (and I mean RARE) period of respite -- rare in large part because any other time I'm faced with something like this I immediately start worrying about what I should be doing.  Productivity is like a drug to me, really...

Ludum Dare starts in just 5 days!  I've made the initial "we're in" post at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/$184184/team-cocoa-moss-is-in-for-ld46.  I've been thinking about what kind of games might be nice for Cocoa Moss to try to build next and while thinking about it I felt that it might possibly be a good idea to play something a little different (read: not a game from the 90s), so there's a chance I might try to play through Firewatch or something this week (??).  On the other hand, I've also been thinking about visual design a bunch, and though I usually don't take on much visual design at all in our Cocoa Moss games, it's still something that appeals to and interests me.  I know Minish Cap has some lovely palettes and designs (I guess Mother 3 as well), so those are also some options for me in the future, if only as required reading.

Old games really feel like old books to me, sometimes you just get the urge to replay some games from way back when.  Speaking of which, even though I don't have my physical copies of the rest of the Animorphs series on hand, I've nabbed the PDF/e-reader versions, so I'll be able to start going through those again.

Anyways, back on the subject of old games -- keeping in line with the usual trend of me playing games from ~30 years ago, I've started a playthrough of the Quintet trilogy -- starting first with Soul Blazer, and then hopefully going through Illusion of Gaia and then the ever-lauded Terranigma.  I've seen a little bit of Soul Blazer and have played through Illusion of Gaia a couple of times, but never actually played Soul Blazer myself.  I'm pretty far through it already (just started the castle area).  It's not a game without faults I wouldn't say, but there's also a lot of charm in it, and something about the way that the level layouts are designed as well as the unique dungeon/town progression system really interests me as a designer.  Games are fascinating things, really.  Thinking about all of them really gets me excited for Ludum Dare -- and saying that I'm sure we'll probably fall flat on our faces when trying to design anything good, haha...that's just how it goes sometimes...

Made a pretty nicely successful shui zhu dish!  No fish, just lamb and pork slices, but it came out with a very pleasant fragrance and blend of spiciness and slight numbing flavor.  Definitely on the mild side, but hit all of the right notes and was pretty satisfying.  Tonight I'll be trying my hand at pork belly cooked in the mei cai kou rou style, which should be pretty exciting.

OHC600 happened, which was pretty epic.  I ended up doing a remix of a my ubiquitous Ecstasy of Life theme, which was really fun to do and turned out great.  Several other really great tunes came out of OHC600 as well, and the listening party (hosted by Starla on twitch!) was really fun to go through.  What a great event and community.  Here's to another 100 OHCs, and another 100 after that...

Went outside and did a bunch of freehand glowsticking last night, which is probably the most exercise I've gotten since quarantine started.  I've gone out and spun poi a bunch before but this is the first time in quite a while that I've done a sticking session by myself outdoors, no filming, no audience, just dancing freely and trying out new things without any restrictions.  It felt great, this is something I could definitely use more of.  There's always this weird dichotomy when it comes to dancing where on the one hand you really need time to focus on technique, form, and cleaning up all of your motions (something I'm terrible at) but on the other hand you also need time to dance freely in a way that engages your spontaneity and practices your "flow", for lack of a better term.  There's no doubt that the former is important, but I often find that, at least for my style of dancing, the latter ends up being the thing that really ends up driving improvement, interestingly enough.  But perhaps they are just two sides of a coin, really...

I reconnected with a friend after some 10 years of not really talking with them, so...yeah.  These are rare moments in life, but I know better than anyone that if you try hard enough, sometimes your efforts do bear fruit.  Sometimes it is a matter of simply trying harder, other times it is simply a matter of finding the right tree to look at.  Either way, we keep trying, and trying, and trying...

Things were....simpler, back then.  Like what happened before, we knew it wouldn't last forever, but it felt like it would.  Perhaps that is the time that I should be thinking of most, when I look to the past for guidance?

Instead, though, I often turn back the clock even further.  To when happiness was a measured feeling -- the tranquility of a still lake of water, undisturbed by turmoil, nature, and mankind.  Sadness lay in the middle of that lake, and the waters were clear enough that you could see it if you looked closely.  But the sadness was not one of crashing waves, of whipping winds, of darkness and despair.  For everything was still, quiet, and deliberate.  You feel your presence dissipate into thin air as the sound of your footsteps disappears into nothingness, as every movement becomes softened.

Well, I guess it may be obvious from previous posts that my weekend was a little rough.  I can't say that everything was bad, because indeed, the reality is far from that.  It's good times mixed with hard feelings.  I'm still not back up to 100%, but there's nothing wrong with that.

As is my specialty, I've managed to get around to a bunch of things I've been meaning to do.

We made crostini with buttered french bread, prosciutto, brie, and pear slices (topped with a bit of basil, salt/pepper, and olive oil).  That was a great success, and a recipe that I'll definitely be doing again at some point.  Really yummy and simple!

I finished up the Andalite Chronicles trilogy.  Somehow it got stuck in my head such that my half-delirious dream-state thoughts ended up being about the Time Matrix and feeling stressed about trying to manipulate it or something.  I didn't really have a great night's sleep, probably in no small part due to the tea I drank before bed, oops.

This didn't happen this weekend, but I got around to making a big vat of chili oil!  Truth be told the flavors are actually nowhere as complex as the mala market chili oil that I also have (which is also infused with quite a heavy dose of sichuan peppercorn), but it does have a very nice fragrance and also packs a good amount of heat (more than the recipe intended, due to the mix of dried chilis I used).  I wouldn't really say this is that much more of an improvement over the "lazy version" I've done in the past.  If I did it again I think I would have tried to have a heavier hand with the spice infusing, especially for such a large quantity of oil.

Did a bunch of online clothes shopping for the first time in a while!

Filled out my taxes...

Am now more or less prepped for LD46 - did a bunch of tinkering around with my Godot Template, optimizing things and changing things up based on my experiences that I've had since.  Unfortunately it seems that the latest build of Godot + export templates (3.2.1) still doesn't really work for iOS builds for me (unless I'm just doing something wrong), but using the previous stable release for iOS exports specifically still works, so that's my solution for now.  I set up some other scripts here and there as well, so I'm pretty much set on the Godot side as far as I can tell.

We did a really big groceries run, so we should be set for the time being, though we might have to get some more food in another week and a half in preparation for Ludum Dare.  Will be doing some lesser-tried and/or newer recipes in the near future, like hong shao pork belly, maybe halal cart-style chicken, etc.

We did a thing at work!  Pretty big success and now I'm trying to take it a bit easier, especially now since I am still recovering emotionally from this weekend.

Continuing to work on poi here and there.  There's no shortage of things to work on.  Haven't gotten a chance to do a rando run in a while, but I'm pretty ok with that.  I'll be back at it soon probably.  I worked on my Corridors of Time remix the other day but haven't worked on it since, there just hasn't been a block of time where I've been both available, willing, and ready.

Life is....not easy.  It certainly is not easy.

I'm going to tell you this right now, that it is OK to run away sometimes.  It is ok to run away from conflict, to look the other way, to not do the right thing, and to instead do what is comfortable.  The last thing I would want to do is push someone else out of their comfort zone.  Why would I do that to myself as well?

When you think about doing what will make you happy, it is important to remember that while some things may bring happiness, doing them will not allow you to remain as "you".  Can it really be said, then, that they bring you happiness?

You'll never know the things you have lost unless you stop to look back at them.

"To say the things I feel you know it's hard for me
So sow the words and let them grow into the spring
And break your back open my notes so patiently
And truth or dare I'll take them both so gracefully"

And there is nothing left to do, but try harder.  In the face of despair, there is nothing that we can do except to try harder.

LoopMuse is a project that I made back in 2011 that I brought back to life 6 years later, updating the dependencies, including a rather obscure synthesis toolkit that was used.  I realized too late that I had incorrectly included the OSX dependencies, meaning the OSX build didn't actually work without some cryptic set of instructions to install the SDL2 libraries on your system.  Well now, another 2 years later, I've fixed that issue too, making LoopMuse technically my longest-maintained coding project ever, I think.  Probably nobody else cares, but hey, someone DMed me on twitter about it, so that's enough, really.

It is only then that you will realize how truly alone you are in this world.

I played through Adventures of Lolo, an NES puzzle game released in 1989 (yep, still playing games from 30 years ago).  I've always marveled at just how significantly different of an experience it is for me playing the classic Mega Man games now vs. as an inexperienced young child -- 25+ years of gaming really goes a long way when it comes to both strategy, execution, and simply just approaching games in general.  Those in particular stuck out to me, but Adventures of Lolo as well, was evidence of that, as we basically just went through it in one sitting without getting too stuck in the process.

I started up with reading through the Animorphs series again, although I don't believe I actually have the first few books from the main series -- probably at my parents' place.  But I do have the Andalite Chronicles here, at least, so I finished off the first book in that series again.  It's been a long time coming.

Only 2 weeks remain until Ludum Dare.........

I guess it is just time for me to spend a little more time reconnecting with my past.

There is a sadness and weight that I've been feeling, and I realize of course that this is just the way that my soul reminds me every so often, to visit the memories in my mind, to read these letters I have accumulated.  To think about each and every one of the people that have disappeared from my life, yet whom I still care about.  Friends and acquaintances, both close and distant.  It matters not where they are or who they are now, for I still care about them deeply.

And so, just like how we must allow ourselves time to recover from an ailment, be it physical or mental, this process, too, must be allowed time and rest.  The difference is that unlike a sickness or disease, this pain is not an unwelcome intruder, but rather a gentle reminder of the things that are important and precious.

So I have been calling friends who will not respond, thinking of people who will not appear, and reading through my precious boxes of letters.  Reading words from friends who have not spoken to me, who will not speak to me, but whom I still love anyways.

And as we isolate ourselves, confined to the safety of our own homes, I find that the people I miss most are the ones whom I wouldn't ever be able to see again, even if we were not in the midst of this quarantine.

They are gone.  But my heart cannot go on unless I again reach back for them.