A bunch of stuff has happened...I feel like I've been falling a bit behind on some of my regular maintenance tasks (monthlies art, finishing music).  Not sure if that's a bad thing (I'm lazy) or a good thing (I'm occupied with other stuff in a good way).

Adventures in Ragnarok Online have been continuing!  As always, you can catch those updates over on http://cs181ro.blogspot.com/.

I've finished re-remembering the 42 combined form for taiji, so I will just be doing those two (24 and 42) for a while now.  At some point I wanted to see if I could pick up the Chen 18 form again, but....

instead I've been spending a lot of my exercise time with the new DDR foam mat!  Pretty super fun, I've downloaded pretty much all of the songs that I'm familiar with (DDRMAX, DDRE, and DDR, Disney Mix, and Konamix for PS) and have been having a blast with that.  I'm starting to finally get down to figuring out how to read crossover patterns too, which is a new challenge in and of itself.

Mental health....sort of just oscillates at this point, sometimes (understandably) in conjunction/correlation with my sleep schedule.  In general things are going pretty ok, but there are patches here and there where some extra self-care is needed.

We finished up Birdie Burglars and have now thrown it up for both iOS and Android, hooray!  I applied a bugfix to Nyamo's Adventure, now am working on time attack modes for Unlock Everything (to help out the speedrunners), and will look into adding some speedrun quality-of-life improvements for Colors of Your World as well...

Sometime in the midst of all that I've gotta also finish up some more music, as well as do the pixel art for this month.  Phew.....

Tetris Attack, or.....rather, Panel de Pon, hit the SNES virtual console for Switch!  I had some fun taking a go at it and seeing how rusty my chaining skills are.  It took me a while to kind of get back into the swing of it, but I'm pretty decent now!  Of course, I'm still much worse than I used to be back when I was in my prime.  Pretty crazy to think that at the time I was consistently hitting 10-13x chains, and even getting to the point where getting side clears was actually starting to be important.  What a great game...it's a bit of a shame that VS mode was sort of nonsensical, but I definitely spent many an hour grinding out skill chains in Tetris Attack and Puzzle League for GBA.

Been continuing to do weekly aLttPR runs...that's been fun too.

This week I think I'm working on updates for 4 different games in as many days...what is this life

You win some, you lose some, and you keep on going.

I wasn't really sure what to write today, but I guess I will tell you two things for now.

The first thing I want to let you know is that you don't need to change in order to be happy.  You don't need to do anything differently than what you already are doing.  You don't need to become a better person, improve, go outside of your comfort zone, learn new things, or accomplish greatness.  I want you to know that "stagnation" can mean peace and tranquility.  You can always do something new, but know that every time you do so, you are giving up something in return.  It's OK to choose to remain the same.

The second thing I am less sure of, but I'll still say it anyways.  You can make mistakes.  It's very hard to change your way of thinking in the middle of a situation.  Oftentimes, when we are confronted with unfamiliarity, we freeze up and make a choice that we may not have made if we had been in a better mindset.  That's OK.  As long as you realized afterwards that there was a better way to do things, that is enough.  Enough to forgive yourself.

It feels like in years past, I often would try to consult my own past, asking "what would Timm[ie] do", searching for the answers.  Trying to figure out what a past me would have done.  Because my past self is important to me.

It still is, of course, but right now, it is a different one that concerns me.  Now, whenever I am troubled, I turn to Sayuri.  Because I know her strength.  Her gentle smile, and her aura.  Although I have found a new "role model" for myself in the way that I interact with people, that in itself is not more important than remembering to stay true to that ideal.

Well, let's see...

We were on a brief hiatus for.......reasons.......but we're back now.

So right, I was feeling pretty anxious and stressed, just generally not super OK.  I never figured out a specific trigger for all of it, but...well, to be honest, identified several triggers.  Doesn't really matter which was the needle that broke the proverbial camel's back, just, things weren't great.  Fortunately, I'm doing better now, and some of those issues have either gotten better or gotten resolved.

6 quails are now living in my office!  We have them in a big box and clean their poopies daily.  They are very cute and very dumb.  One of them has started to crow once in a while......that means they will probably be first on the chopping block to.....erm......get chopped.....and eaten :x  But not yet, they are still relatively young.

I realized today that for most of my life growing up I never once had a positive role model for human interaction.  That is not necessarily to say that all of the people I was around were necessarily =bad= at human interaction (though some certainly were), but the truth of the matter is that even if a certain interaction style works for somebody, there's no guarantee that it will work for you, or even be appreciated by you.  Truthfully, I think it was not until 2012 that I really got the chance to regularly be around somebody whose interaction style I really appreciated.

Sorry, that's not at all to mean that all of the friends I had before then had interaction styles that I hated -- but I was not really close enough to most of them, nor did I spent enough time with them regularly to really be able to model my behavior after them.  Reflecting upon some of my social habits nowadays, it's very clear to me that some of these are a byproduct of simply....not really having been exposed to other manners of being with other people.  Many of us are social chameleons to some extent or another -- often we fall into interacting with people in the same way that they interact with us, for better or worse.  But there are situations indeed, where I've realized that interacting with someone in the same ways that they interact with me, is not how I'd like to carry myself.  That is perhaps a habit that I'll need to catch myself on.

As I was growing older the easiest means of interaction was simply to avoid it altogether.  Simply not speaking at all was the healthiest way of proceeding through life, because the means through which I had been taught to speak out were not unhealthy or pleasant, in both their delivery and in their reception.  Sometimes I find that that is still true.

I finished watching all of Steven Universe!  What an interesting series that has been.  I definitely liked parts of it much more than others.  I think it was a show that was not super interesting in the beginning, but as it got deeper and delved into some real subject matter, I started to really appreciate it.  But at some point it reached a point where it started to really become something else, something....I don't exactly know how to describe it.  "mainstream" is surely not the word I would use, but I guess...more grandiose, and branching out away from its roots.  Which I don't think is a bad thing at all, but I just happened to not be a huge fan of some of those other directions.  But somehow in the end they wrapped it up in something that I appreciated anyways.  So I guess the long and short of it is that it was a rather up and down thing for me, but that is perhaps only inevitable with a show that is not really "one-note", as Steven Universe was not.  Perhaps the styles of stories are much alike to the styles in which we interact with others...

We've been hanging out on a Ragnarok Online private server!  (Nova RO) I've started posting again about those adventures, over at http://cs181ro.blogspot.com/, so feel free to check that out, though I imagine most of you will probably not find that particularly interesting.  There are lots of images though, at least ;P  Anyways, it's been me and just two other friends for the time being, not sure if I could find anybody else (though we of course would welcome anybody else!).  It's a nice way to hang out online and such, though of course I know everybody and their mothers (sometimes =literally=) are doing that via Animal Crossing at the moment.  Anyways, add that to the (somehow rather large) list of games that I've got on my plate at the moment, on top of LttP/SM randomizer runs, Illusion of Gaia, Tetris/Puyo Puyo practice, etc.

I've been doing Tai chi a little more regularly, which feels great.  I have my memory of the 24 form up to snuff, but I lost my memory of a lot of the 42 combined form, so I'm trying to get that back into my system again, which will be fun.  I have no hope of remembering either of the sword forms I used to know.....that'll probably be a while from now....

Poi has been an ongoing thing here and there, as it has been.  Taking a bit of a break from flower stuff to work on some other things like snakes and meltdowns and such.

Ordered a simple foam DDR pad to hopefully get into that again!  It's been probably 10 years since I played seriously, but I'm quite looking forward to that.

Ludum Dare results are out!  We did pretty well -- 24th overall, 52nd in fun, 48th in graphics, 3rd in audio, and even 42nd in humor.  That's pretty much in line with how we've been trending, no complaints there.  I'm personally pretty happy with our work too.  Hopefully you'll be hearing more about that once we're all done with the post-jam / mobile versions.

Work has been just fine -- I think I have been doing a good job of making sure to give myself some time and space for self-care especially since the past few weeks have been a little more challenging than usual.

Music is going slowly and steadily as usual (and as with everything in my life, it seems -- I mean, it is me after all).  I used the last two OHCs to work on soundtrack commission pieces and my client was happy with both of them, so that's great.

All in all, things are...fairly good at the moment.  Better than before, for sure.  I'm hovering around 3 or 4 out of 5 I guess?

"I'm always where you've been
but where have you gone?"

mye.

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.

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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.