It's rare that I can take in day-to-day life and say that things have been at a 5 out of 5, but I guess that's where I'm at, or have been, at least.  Though I guess there are even fewer times when I'd point at my current situation as being a 1 out of 5, thankfully.  Usually that tends to happen more in hindsight than anything else...

I ended up being selected to serve as part of the jury -- fortunately for me, it was a rather short case, so I got to see most of the interesting parts of the trial system and jury deliberation without being bogged down in something super involved.

I was socializing quite a lot last week, and I guess somewhat surprisingly felt very good about most of it.  Not sure if that is just because that's something I had been missing for a while or whether it was just a case of the right people at the right time.  I'm certain that the positive energy I've felt has been in no small part due to some wonderful interactions with two of the more important members of my pantheon.  These two have really proven themselves to me over the years and I feel an incredible sense of gratitude/gratification for the blessing of their presence in my life.

I guess I don't really have a lot else to say.  Ludum Dare is this weekend so I've been taking the week off to prepare and rest and take it easy, and I guess just enjoy life a little bit.  Rhythm Quest work beckons, of course, but I'm okay with pushing that off until next week.

Some various updates...some which may be relevant, others less so.  You know how it goes.

Rhythm Quest

Progress continues, as always, on Rhythm Quest.  I'm not really sure whether to say I did a lot of work last week or whether I didn't get that much done, because it was honestly a bit of both.  I only worked on the level select screen, and ended up doing a lot of iteration that ended up being ultimately thrown out, but at the same time that was all sort of....part of the process, and felt like necessary work.  I spent a lot of time thinking about things and reimplementing various systems, so...I guess it's fine?  I skipped my weekly devlog in favor of trying to get the rework finished first; that'll probably happen sometime this week.

Of course, before I embarked on the whole level select rework I was originally hoping to put out a polished demo by the end of the month, so I could submit it to something, and perhaps run another playtest.  Soooo that sort of went out the window, oops!  As long as I'm still achieving steady measurable progress, though, I'm not too worried.  Funny how these games always drag on, though...it's hard to account for iterations and design changes like this.

Dance

I stopped by south bay fusion the other day, that was fun I guess.  I had forgotten that there is a mirror back there, and I guess to no surprise I was interested more in my own dance form than partaking in much social dance.  But still, it was nice to get out and see some people again and such.  I finally got around to filming some dance footage that I was mildly happy with.  It's been a long time coming.  I still have a lot to work on, but it's relieving to know that even despite my on and off efforts, something is starting to sink into my muscle memory.

FFXIV

On a whim I decided to poke my head into the world of FFXIV (free trial) for a bit this weekend, having a looksee to see how everything looks and feels.  It was nice having Sayuri be represented somewhat nicely in the world, and having something new to do over the weekend.  I have been feeling a bit of a lack of community and goals lately, so this could be something to fit that bill, but I remain skeptical whether FFXIV specifically is something I'll commit to partaking in seriously.  It's an option, at least, but I also know that I could just as well start playing Melee online via Slippi, or race ALTTPR/SMZ3 ladder races, or even look for a 5-man Pokemon Unite squad.  There are a lot of options.

TGM

For the time being, I actually ought to brush up on my TGM (Tetris: The Grand Master) skills, as this coming week -- besides being potential jury duty for me -- sees the start of 2022's "Carnival of DEATH" event.  I somehow managed to put up a 690 last year, which is quite impressive given my lack of practice, so I'm aiming to try and at least get an M rank (500+ and break the 3:25 torikan) if I can.  Should probably start by grinding some Master mode so I can remind myself how to stack calmly and more flatly...

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

I somewhat unceremoniously finished all of the campaign missions in Emperor: RotMK.  I say unceremoniously because it really didn't feel like the last couple of missions were anything special...the last mission, in fact, has you returning to a previously (hopefully well-built) city, which takes away most of the interesting part of it.

Ah, apparently there are 3 bonus campaign missions that I haven't played yet; perhaps I will finish those off as well.

Overall, Emperor was enjoyable, but still Caesar 3 holds the cake in being my favorite Impressions city builder series.  The monument-building in Emperor was, thankfully, not nearly as big of a deal as in Pharaoh, so no waiting years and years for monuments to finish.  There's still a =bit= of that, but not nearly as much.  You have to give offerings to the ancestral spirits, as opposed to simply building enough temples, which can be a bit tedious after you've gotten your city all stabilized, as there's no way to just do this automatically.  The diplomacy and "spying" systems in Emperor were....eh.  The spies seemed very gimmicky and random, and diplomacy on very hard was basically just all hostile cities attacking you at any chance they could get.  Feng Shui was a fun "optional" goal to work towards in your city.  Speaking of which, they did away with the prosperity/culture/etc ratings and just gave two or three mission-specific goals for each level.  Not a bad thing, I guess.

One reason why Emperor falls a bit flat is the level design.  Like Pharaoh it suffers from the same sort of "I've done this before..." rinse-and-repeat level design after a while.  Sure, the first half of the game is interesting as you get accustomed to new city structures and such.  But after that they really don't change things up too much, aside from a few missions here and there (which were admittedly interesting).  Caesar was much more ambitious with the challenging environmental layouts of its cities, and also often required you to reach grander heights with your actual city population and design.  I rarely had to build more than 2 regular housing blocks (plus maybe one elite housing block) in Emperor to meet the desired population goals, for example.

The other reason is simply because Caesar mechanically places more restrictions and challenges upon the city-building.  Aqueducts and fountains are a huge part of this (no water structure that simply uses roads!).  The lack of a global labor pool is also huge (every industry area needs to be near a housing block!).  There are more services to build for each city block as well (temples to multiple gods, bathhouse, theater, library, academy, etc.  Even farms are more restricted in that they must be built on specific areas (in Emperor you can build wherever there is fertile water, which is usually abundant, or can be irrigated at least).  When you finally get Luxury Palaces to be evolved in your Caesar 3 city, it really feels like a big accomplishment, as these houses have access to a fountain, bathhouse, doctor, barber, engineer, prefect, amphitheater, library, academy, 4 temples, hippodrome, hospital, and market with wine, oil, furniture, pottery, and 3 types of food.

So yes, Emperor was still enjoyable, but didn't have nearly as much meat to it.  Someday I'll return and do a very hard playthrough of Caesar 3 with some of the new Augustus 3.0 open source updates... 

Birdies

White chicky has been doing mostly okay, but she had one or two soft-shell eggs.  Hopefully she just needs some more calcium or they were just one-offs, but she seems okay otherwise.

Black chicky....sigh.  She is showing signs of stopping her broodiness...by "signs" I mean she started bawking randomly, which is how I know she's back to "normal" (emphasis on the quotes there).  But as soon as I take out the "jail" grates she just wants to go back to sitting and nesting.  Soooooo I don't really know what to do with her.  I guess I'm going to leave the grates on until she lays and egg, or seems normal for a while.  [shakes head]

I got to visit the duckies too, recently.  I miss how they were when they were still with me...they were so nice to have around and play with.  But it was still nice to go and see them again, and squish Soba, pick up Miso, flatten Dashi, and hug Ramen.  All I can wish for now is that they will have good health, I guess...

Life

Life overall isn't so bad.  The day to day can actually be a little "scary" sometimes.  Scary probably isn't the right word, but I just mean the feeling of not having too much to look forward to.  I think that's something that's pretty important to have in life.  Whether that be XYZ video game, or the thought of spending time with someone nice, or anything like that.  It's not that I don't have things that =could= be that, it's more that I don't quite have something that is filling that role at the moment.  That could be a sign of depression, or it could just be a sign that I'm in a sort of in-between phase at the moment.

I guess that sounds like life IS bad, but there has been light in my life too.  A path to move forward, even when it felt like a lot of things hat I had began to feel jaded about, were starting to not be worth my time and effort.  It is rare to feel this way, like life stepped in and said "hey, you're on the right track.  this is for you."  The last time I remember feeling that way was when a close acquaintance of mine provided me my easy/nice contract job after my stint of unemployment.

Ah.  Speaking of that time period.  That's right...there's been some ah..."interesting" light shone on an environment that I once came into contact to in the past.  Honestly, I can point to any number of toxic environments and toxic people that I've had to deal with in the past -- some whom I have a bit of forgiveness (or at least, a lack of blame) toward, others whom I do not -- but rarely does the outside world turn around and affirm that "hey, there are these things that actually aren't okay".  I don't really have much specific to say about it because I am fortunate enough to not be too involved in particular.  Honestly, I could say way more things about any number of those =other= toxic situations which I was involved in.  But it is still an interesting feeling, to hear things like this.

Everyone needs something to get excited about.  I'll have to keep thinking a bit about what that is going to be for me.  It's actually nice that I nixed the whole polished-demo-by-end-of-month plan for Rhythm Quest as that takes a bit of load off of my back.  The only big thing I really have coming up, then, is Ludum Dare, and then after that I get a bit of a vacation.

It's the start of a new week tomorrow...let's see how we can do.

15th Journey - The One Where I Explored Out of Bounds

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Journey!

I ended up missing the official event time due to being busy with other things (didn't feel too bad about it, I had already planned to make this a more light-hearted journey), so I ended up doing it today instead.

I ended up pretty much alone through my whole Journey and I didn't really mind at all.  Sometimes when I take my annual Journey it's a chance to reflect on things, to think about life and how I relate to hardship, companionship, and things like that.  This time it was more of a playful exploratory hike.

The two things that defined my Journey this time were going "out of bounds" as well as "charge-boosting".  Out of bounds refers to the areas behind and outside of the stage proper, which you can reach in various ways depending on the level (often involving flying over the windwalls, or clipping through certain points of level geometry).  Charge-boosting refers to an interesting flight technique (requires either white cloak, or a good buddy) whereby you can "accumulate" downwards flight energy and then expend it to fly upwards.

I took some photos this time!

Here's me going out of bounds in the "Broken Bridge" first level.  There are two ways that I know of to clip out of bounds here, one involving a "head bonk" into a certain spot, but this time I did it by doing a big charge boost up and over the level bounds.  I seem to have gotten a lot more comfortable with these boosts and it was really rewarding to sail over the edge of the level.  You can actually go out of bounds in the chapter select as well, but I've forgotten how to do that...

Another shot in the back of Broken Bridge.  There's a floating tapestry up in the sky here!  I think this what they point the camera at in the history lesson cutscene, probably.  The sand dunes here are really huge!

I didn't go anywhere notable in Pink Desert (nowhere to go out of bounds that I can remember of), and I wandered around a bit (I always have trouble remembering the landmarks in PD), but I managed to do a charge boost up to the top of the end tower without climbing it the conventional way, which was fun!  There are two types of charge boosts -- one where you can charge for an arbitrary amount by pressing against certain walls / corners, and a second type where you simply use vertical height and flight power (often aided by scarf fliers) to do a sort of "boomerang" motion where you go down for a while and then come back up.  This was the latter.

Now we're here in the sand surfing area -- specifically, the mid-stage "rest stop".  There's an interesting charge boost spot here on the right side and you can use it to fly up to this invisible ledge far up in the sky.  The rest spot is also a place where I like to practice the flier-assisted charge boosts, as there's two groups of fliers that you can use to help you charge up.

It took me a little bit to remember how to get out of bounds in the Pink Desert -- you get there after the "drop" into the final area of the level, by climbing up onto the scaffolding and then making your way gradually upward until you can clip through.  The Pink Desert easily has some of the most fascinating OOB areas because of the abundance of extremely glittery sand.  It often manifests in very steep cliff walls which you can scale.  They look really interesting!

More really shiny sand cliffs...

Probably the best shot I got from this session.  It looks like there's glitter everywhere!

Here I found what looked like "the edge of the world", where a floor plane cuts off into nothingness.  It's interesting seeing it billow in the wind.

The out of bounds area in the Undergound level is a bit scary because it can be easy to get lost, and I have some not so great experiences in there, so you have to be careful.  I spent some minutes wandering around quite lost in there, but managed to find my way to some interesting sights.  This is an interesting shot of the scaffolding high up in the level, from out of bounds.

Wandering around out of bounds has a much different vibe here because of the murky haze effect and the vignetting at the edges of the screen.  It's a bit dreamlike and I was happy to find any sort of landmarks that indicated that I was still in the general area of the stage and not at risk of being lost to the darkness that can consume you if you wander too far..

Another interesting area viewed from out of bounds.  Looks like some sort of liminal space?

This was really cool too!  Unfortunately after I jumped down from here I got trapped in a nook and could not escape -- ended up having to reset and chapter select out.

 

In the Tower level, I unlocked the first water level (with the fliers) and then charge-boosted all the way to the top!  That was fun and I impressed myself with how well I was able to manage the charge-flying.  It's definitely something that takes practice, as you have to manage a number of different things all at once: You have to point the camera down, you have to press forward, but also diagonally to the side to keep turning, you have to hold or tap R1 (or X) to fly, and you also have to hold down O and repress it every so often, to shout and activate the fliers.  It's actually for this reason that inverted Y-axis camera controls work much better, because for fancy flying it's way more common to want to tilt the camera down rather than up, and it's easier to do that and press R1 / O at the same time if you press the stick forward rather than back.

 

I didn't remember the OOB areas in the snow level too well...I got up to the first set of initial ledges at the beginning of the level, but wasn't quite sure where to go from there.  It's a shame because I remember other companions showing me some really cool things back there.  I tried the "headbonk" entrance later, but I may not have had enough scarf length due to the chapter select reset, so I decided to just press onward.  Maybe I'll have to look this up for next time and try to play around in this area some more.

I didn't linger too long in paradise since it was nearing dinnertime, but I did play around a little bit with meditation jumps -- if you perform a certain technique, you can do a leaping "squat", which can cause you to slide off of slopes while sitting.  It can lead to some fun rides as you fall down sloped mountains!  There's a fun opportunity to do it at the end of the game at the final plateau as well, and the "superman glow" effect from the golden pillar of light actually activates as well, so you fall down off the slope like a glowing shooting star!

And after all that, I walked into the light and called it a day.  It was a nice fun Journey, and I felt good to be able to explore the OOB areas by myself.  I've been to many of those places before, but most of the time accompanied by a chaperone...I feel like going by myself and refamiliarizing myself with all of the various ways to go out of bounds has really helped me know my way around them better.  Sort of like how if you're just following line-by-line directions to go somewhere, you won't necessarily remember your way next time, but if you're exploring a neighborhood and mapping it out yourself, you get a better sense of where everything is.

But who will praise you for the things you =didn't= do?  The words you left unsaid?  What will your reward be when you stay the same?  When you are the last one who hangs on, you will be all alone.  And what then?

Omori, Axiom Verge, etc.

Right, okay. 

Life has been going alright, I guess.  There's some ups, some downs, some longer-term, some shorter-term.

Omori

I finished playing Omori.  I quite enjoyed it overall, though it felt like it was more of a time sink than I might have liked.  I think the game does a good job with some of the darker elements, and the story development, so it can maybe feel a bit disappointing that I had to trudge through a bunch of combat and other stuff to get to all that.  Sort of like watching a really good anime but then every other episode is average-quality filler, or something.  It felt a bit rough around the edges at times, and sometimes you can sort of feel the RPGMaker / RPG genre in general come through in perhaps not the most helpful way, but overall it's quite impressive as an RPGMaker game and something that really did interest me.  I only played through the game once and went through the more or less "normal" route, so there is a significant amount more interesting stuff to see, but at the moment I honestly don't feel like having to engage with the experience of having to replay games and manage multiple save points and all that in order to see the rest of the content.  Maybe some other time, or maybe not.

Axiom Verge

On a whim (and mostly because it went on a sale) I decided to pull the trigger and buy Axiom Verge, an indie metroidvania title from 2015.  Axiom Verge was...fine.  It does some pretty cool things, it does other things less well...overall it's fine.  Some of the upgrades are pretty unique and the way that they influence your movement is nice.  One of the cool parts of these styles of games is their ability to present you with the same room later in the game and have it be recontextualized based on your expanded abilities.  A higher jump means that you see platforms differently...being able to grapple to ceilings means you're paying more attention to those...things like that.  I think that was done pretty well here.  The map design is sort of forgettable, less evocative and all that, and some of the secrets are arguably too hidden, but it's fine overall.  Surprisingly, the audio was something that stood out to me as not being up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like most of the rest of the game, the music is......okay.  It's not =bad= per se, but it tends to be quite heavy on the bass, which got a bit fatiguing for me, and overall the soundtrack (like the level design) lacked memorability due to not having strong melodies.  The sound design is chiptune/8-bit, but in sort of a cheap "sfxr"-like way.  I really don't know why so many game devs use the same sfxr-like sound effects, it's a pet peeve of mine when I hear some of those really basic/dry coin/menu sounds that for whatever reason show up again and again.

Playing through Axiom Verge really drilled two things into my head.  One is how awesome of a game Super Metroid was (maybe Metroid Fusion as well, perhaps even Zero Mission?).  I look at Super Metroid from 1994 and compare it to Axiom Verge and honestly, Super Metroid hits way higher on almost every single axis.  The visual design is better -- Samus's sprite reads better, is more distinct and colorful, and the suit upgrades changing the color of your sprite is a nice touch.  The level design is better -- the "hub and spokes" system that Super Metroid uses is a great way of organizing rooms, and there are a lot of spaces that are just really memorable.  The music is so much more memorable and pleasing...heck, even the story is something I enjoy more in Super Metroid.  The movement, too...just being able to dash/run in Super Metroid (even sans Speed Booster), it feels so damn good.  None of this is intended to poke at Axiom Verge, more just to highlight how great I think Super Metroid is...

The other thing is how lucky I am to have expertise in such a diverse set of gamedev skills.  Granted, there's plenty of things that I'm not so strong in (and lots of stuff in Rhythm Quest that needs work, I'm sure...), but being able to put this game together as a one-man team and avoiding the sense of, for example, being primarily a programmer and only mildly proficient in visual art and design, or having the visuals look great but the audio sound uninspired...it's something I probably take for granted from time to time since it's just the norm for me, but if I stop and think about all of the Ludum Dare entries I've seen, other indie games, etc. it's clear that this is definitely =not= the norm, and something I should be thankful for.  I guess "lucky" is perhaps really not the right word as it's not like I was born with all of these skills -- I worked steadily and continuously over many years at each of them...

Rhythm Quest

Rhythm Quest has been going well!  I was approved for switch dev access, so I'm going to be trying to handle a Switch port (exciting!).  I've been working on adding more levels, more good stuff to the game, which has been fun.  I also have a demo or two to put together, so I'll probably be trying to transition to a round of polish and wrapping everything together in a complete package for that.  I'm getting the feeling that the game release is going to be pushed back again from where I originally anticipated, but not because I haven't been on track; simply because now that I'm really getting into it, I feel like I have something great on my hands and I want to make sure that I go some extra distance to make it the best thing that it can be.  But we'll see how that all works out...

Life

I said life has been going ok and that's not really a lie.  If I zoom in or out I can tell you different things; I could tell you that I've been having a really good time and looking forward to a lot of things.  Or, I could tell you that I feel depressed, having a very low sense of self-worth because I'm convinced that I am not -- was not -- good enough to be loved.  I could tell you that I'm happy to be done with dental work for the time being, or I could tell you that I'm -_- at receiving my jury duty summons.  I think in the end everything just sort of comes out in the wash.

I feel like I am starting to lose more and more of my old self, but I suppose that is inevitable.  I can only take solace in the fact that the ghost of my past will come back to haunt me and remind me of what it is that is important.  Even if I've already lost it, there is still more that I can do.  Just because I gave up doesn't mean I can stop.  I can feel perhaps more strongly than ever, the temptation to just stop caring anymore.  I've even started to give into that temptation.  But I feel like I'll still come back to it.  If I stop to remember who I really am, it seems obvious that I have to come back to it.