Geldonyetich's site

Don't roll over for Wikipedia trolls.

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 19:25:26 +0000

Looks like "Ryokoshi" attempted to call NEStalgia's legitimacy into question on Wikipedia despite the fact that it had several prominent online [and offline] publications mentioning it.

And it got me to thinking, you know, I think we let BYOND's article go. It was our fault for simply not contesting the claim. Whenever somebody sets your article to "not notable," you just remove it, that's it. You don't need to be a special person to do it, just do it. It only sticks if nobody takes it out for 7 days, because nobody in the entire world caring to remove it is how Wikipedia determines something is not notable.

Frankly, if we ever were reported to Wikipedia higher ups for doing that, what do you think would happen? They'd take one look, say, "Dang, this is a free SDK used by tens of thousands of people, references or not, of course it's notable" and that would be that.

Keep an eye on the NESTalgia article. If nobody corrects it when it's contested, then indeed his claim we're not notable enough remains true enough to apply.

[Edit: It probably wasn't this Ryoish guy who had the original BYOND article removed.]

Fruits Of Procrastination

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:10:45 +0000

The fruit borne from the seeds of procrastination is of a very unique variety: it is nothing at all. Just about any other kind of figurative seed figuratively sown could have bore a figurative fruit of some kind. However, sitting here as I am now, I'm feeling keenly my lack of progress made since my last entry, about two weeks ago. How could a fruit that does not exist taste so bitter?

What occupied my time? Terraria version 1.1, mostly: it was a massive update, and the list of improvements were impressive enough to interest an old High School friend to have me give the game another spin with him.

So we did, starting pretty much from anew (albeit importing some old gear from our old world). However, now that I've more or less caught up to where I was from starting anew, played with the new mechanics system, killed the Wall Of Flesh and mined a few of the new ores, I find myself largely dispossessed once again. We'll get our Hamdrax and Hallowed Armor and such, and then what? Wait until the next patch? Yeah, I think we're playing Terraria for the wrong reasons.

No game interests me in playing at the moment. Skyrim is still broken, enough so that Rock Paper Shotgun put out a public appeal. (As my qualms are with the balance, I'll have to wait until next month when the construction set releases.) I may have burned all my enthusiasm for Sword of the Stars 2 playing the broken versions before the much-improved-but-hardly-perfect version available today. You know, there's always Batman: Arkham City, and even Bastion was picked up for $5 a few days ago, so perhaps it's the lack of Zoloft speaking, and this is why I'm bored with gaming.

Whenever I'm in this mood, I can't help but wonder if I aught to try my hand at creating a game again. The time I spent away from developing is, in a way, a boon: it grants me a fresh outlook on what I was working on. When you're deep in the trenches of development, it's ludicrously easy to fail to see you're trudging in circles.

If I could make any game in the world in BYOND, what game shall it be?

This is a tough question, really. I had been messing around with an old idea I had about an open-ended space RPG, and I threw in a bunch of ideas about virtual worlds with consequences, and such. However, am I really so married to the idea of a space RPG? Because space is mostly empty. It's so much easier to make an RPG where your feet are on the ground because we've a lifetime of experience living that way. Space is a relative sensory deprivation experience.

The burden of knowledge is that, the more you know about something, the more you realize you know so little about it. It's really no wonder I've never finished a game: the goal was to create My Own Net Dream, but how can one truly recognize something as vague as a dream? One really needs to set the bar at something real for real results to be found.

Perhaps I'll answer my question, coming up with something real to create. Or perhaps I'll take half a Zoloft tomorrow and be forget my troubles, planting the seeds of procrastination anew.

Stirrings of creative expression

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:01:12 +0000

Well, Skyrim was fun. But, after 145 hours of it (according to Steam), I largely stopped caring. Bethesda is great at making worlds, but not so great at game balance, and when my level 61 character was doing over 400 damage bow attacks (over 1200 damage when a sneak attack) the game was largely in ludicrous territory. Something about the idea that I'm doing several hundred times more damage with the same pointy stick really killed the sense of immersion, and immersion is pretty much the whole appeal of Bethesda RPGs. Maybe after I give it a rest a bit I'll feel differently and be able to play it some more.

Soon afterward, I found myself in a strange void of game dissatisfaction. I'm not entirely sure what brings this mental state on. Perhaps it's boredom with all existing games I have, but I need only look at my list of available games to know that surely there's something worth playing in that mess. Arkham City, for example: there's very little wrong with that game at all. No, the issue is internal to me: for some reason, gaming strikes me as the wrong thing to do.

In this case, I've found creative expression can help. So I'm sitting down again to BYOND and wondering WTF I plan to make. I've this vague idea of an open-ended sci-fi multiplayer Dwarf Fortress / Minecraft fusion in BYOND? Sounds wonderful, but anyone who has attempted it would be quick to inform you that the devil is in the details. It is wrestling these details, time and time again, that have tired me out and prevented me from seeing my projects through to fruition.

ASCII Sector is something that could be done in BYOND, but I'm not one for flat out imitation.
Still, this is the first time I attempted game development on zoloft. Perhaps there will be something interesting to show for it this time.

Where October 2011 Has Gone

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:30:26 +0000

I'll say one thing about Zoloft: when you're a fellow with low level generalized anxiety probably related to the depression of his overall social situation, just half a 50mg tablet is all it really takes to take the edge off and be able to enjoy the things you love again.

Well, no, I can't really say that at all: I can just say that this has been my experience with it. At around the time of my last BYOND blog entry, I was prescribed the stuff as an alternative to Wellbutrin (which pretty much was nothing but an appetite suppression in terms of what it did for me) and since then I largely have been playing games:

1. Orcs Must Die - (About 2 days of this.) Pretty solid first perspective tower defense/action game. Too short, but the price is right.

2. Fallout: New Vegas - (About 2-3 weeks of this.) Has it really been a year since this game was released? How time flies. The last time I tried to play this game, near release, I really could not get into it - it was kinda buggy and the flow felt really off to me. I gave it another try recently and was surprised to find it captivated me long enough to not only beat the main campaign but perform a second play through that endeavors to find everything. I'd probably still be on that second play, but then I hit the level cap and decided to wait until the DLC starts going on sale so I can get a raised level cap before playing again.

3. Killing Floor - (About a day of this.) Not my first play of this game, either. It's really a superb little Counterstrike vrs Zombies style game. Consequently, you could play it forever, should you be so inclined, but I like a bit more variety in my gaming.

4. Sword of the Stars II - (About 3 days of this, and it's ongoing as new patches are released.) Unfortunately, released in a state whose playability could be described as debatable. It crashes and a lot of the core functionality is missing. Paradox has, thus far, been doing a pretty good job of patching it back into shape, but I'd say they've a couple months to go until it's good for anything more than ogling the ship graphics porn. I hope they get the opportunity: I loved the first game, and still have hopes for this one. At least I'm getting the DLC for free by means of apology.

5. Two Worlds II - (About 3-4 days of this.) The original Two Worlds was maligned and perhaps justly so: it was a glitchy, temperamental game. Two Worlds II is a surprisingly well-polished game. I would not be surprised if it's considered better than Oblivion in some ways. It's still a little glitchy - mostly in terms of mob pathing - but it has a fairly good story flow and diversity of gameplay unfortunately hampered by having to equip a staff to cast spells.

6. DC Universe Online - (Ongoing.) I always knew that DC Universe Online would have been a far better F2P game than a P2P game, and indeed its population has blown up 10x. It's only been F2P for about a week, and SOE is struggling to get the servers stable under the new demand. DCUO is basically an action superhero RPG that got the action right but the customization wrong. Don't plan to design your favorite superhero concept in this, plan instead for a visceral action MMORPG where you must adapt yourself to what superhero concepts they have available.

7. City of Heroes. (Ongoing.) Still the deepest superhero MMORPG in existence, I've probably sunk 2000 hours in it before but have exhausted the content to the point where I don't feel like subscribing to this game, so I was excited to learn it is now F2P. Unfortunately, they broke the cardinal rule of F2P: never put essential things on P2P. The ability to invite to teams and core mission arcs qualify as essential, and that's letting invention enhancement creation go reluctantly. Perhaps I'm spoiled by later MMORPGs, but the old school combat does feel a bit cumbersome, even though I appreciate the element of choice involved.

Fun times had, but all the while I've failed to find work, work on my own little games, or otherwise improve my social situation. I'm currently planning on going back to school in January if only because student loans are the closest thing I can get to an income. I'm curious how well my newfound Zoloft-fueled optimism will translate to my game development endeavors. But that will have to wait a little while, as I'm eagerly looking forward to a certain game that's coming out this week and I've already pre-ordered.

Kidnapped By Familial Obligations

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:28:13 +0000

I was pulled out of my shell to spend a week up in Seattle Washington last week. There, I stayed in my sister's apartment and spent most of the time caring for the resident rugrats, my two-year-old nephew and somewhat newborn niece.

Suffice to say, I was a fish out of water, and even now on my third day home after that I've yet to fully shake that feeling of disassociation.
It rattled my cage so much that I decided to start dating and to grow a beard. It doesn't help that we've apparently adopted a little calico kitten while I was gone. She's a cutie and all (and many say calicos are good luck) but I'm not being left to my solitude to perform development, and that's truly a miserable situation.

Today, I'm working on something in BYOND. I'm not going to tell you what, exactly, for fear that it will rob me of my motivation. However, I do know that it would not at all be hard for me to release something playable. (Heck, I could make a basic playable game inside of two hours - BYOND pretty much is one from the start.) It's just that, per usual, I'm trying to see a vision to completion before doing so.

How To Fail At Making Games

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:25:00 +0000

The brain found some satisfying stimulation when I bought Dungeons of Dredmor for the ridiculously low price of $5 and found it entertained me for 3 days straight. Then I beat it on medium difficulty, permadeath with a juggernaut character who is basically am ambidextrous, sword-wielding, man-of-arms, artful dodger, who forges his own equipment. (Dredmor himself probably would have been the end of me if I didn't have a potion of invisibility and he wandered off and died somehow - probably from a Mass Destruction DoT.)

It's a pretty good refutation for my earlier belief that I'm sick of games, all games. Apparently I still like Roguelikes. This puts me in the mood to do some development.

How I've been screwing up for years.

Short version: I AM FEATURE CREEP'S BITCH.
Willingly, even, thanks to being overambitious.
Long version follows.

This latest space game I've been working on? I've had this idea I wanted to do a game involving open-ended space exploration. Like, a Star Wars RPG, but nothing copyright infringing, just a space opera adventure.

Unfortunately, I started the wrong side first. I built the outside of the game: a structure of supporting solar systems, planets, spots of land on those planets. It sucks eggs for a rather important fundamental reason: space is mostly only empty space, boringly so, and there's literally nothing to do in it in my current implementation.

The above video is of the Get Something Done Challenge for 2010. It's heavily based on the Future Shock code I've given away over here.

But, while I have given you a lot of cool icons in there, I would not recommend actually trying to finish the game. This is because I heavily mired myself down into this whole idea of an advanced interface where I need to code three objects for every single action. The entire game uses no verbs at all (other than to take input from the mouse and keyboard). This all came from wanting to have a visible action icon for all actions on the skin control, and probably could have been avoided if verbs inherently had icons.

Here we have a video that ultimately became Planetbreakers. What did I decide to do with that game? How about have three completely different player factions that play completely differently. One plays like a RTS game, another plays like a vehicular combat game, and a third plays like SimAnt.

What you should be taking away from this.

Are you seeing a pattern here? In every single case, I overcomplicated things before making the game playable.

It's the curse of an overly-creative mind, really. I get these really cool ideas that I want to put in the game. However, the game never really becomes playable and, instead of completing the project, I wrote a ton of code for features that simply slowed down the development process with sheer bloat to the point where it exceeded my pain threshold to continue. I end up wracking my brain against a sort of writer's block: why isn't this game fun yet? Try because it's not actually playable, me.

Okay, so I'm going to have to start over again. I can probably reuse some code from this latest Space Game I wrote later, but not Future Shock or Planetbreakers for reasons I explained above. My goal is now this: make a simple, fully playable Roguelike game. Only after it is fully playable will I start inserting cool features.

It does not get much simpler than this. BYOND is actually about 90% of the way to a Roguelike before you write the first line of DM code. About the only complicating factor is a map generation routine, which I already know how to do, and there's libraries to do it for me if I don't want to. It doesn't get much simpler than that!

The Brain Craves Stimulation

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:07:03 +0000

I decided to taper off my use of BuSpar, that new med I was given a couple weeks ago, on account of how I read up on it and decided that the cons outweighed the pros. I did not want to get dependent on a substance I can't quit cold turkey, my bladder was perpetually overstimulated, and I ran a small possibility of developing a permanent muscular disorder. Yeah, screw that, I can deal with minor generalized anxiety.

God, I'm bored. I'm not sure if it's a result of coming down off the BuSpar or what. (If it is, good thing I started to stop taking it at 15mg, when the dose was eventually going to be twice as much.) Now, I'm trying to figure out what to do in order to make life seem worthwhile. (No, don't interpret that as me being the least bit suicidal: I meant that literally.)

It seems I've underwent a major life transition at about the time I discovered pony. I used to entertain myself by playing lots of video games... and I was perpetually frustrated by how few seemed to entertain me. Now, I mostly entertain myself with brony-related browsing. I can track this major change of habit to three things:

Games generally don't entertain me anymore. I'm immune to caring about grinding for lootz or graphics, so the game mechanic is all that matters. A game has to be at least Deus Ex: Human Revolution good, in terms of meaningful interaction, or forget it.
My independent game development allowed me to look behind the curtain and see just how hard it is to solve that problem.
The ponies are oddly addictive.

If you want to recommend a game for me to play, then you don't understand the severity of what I'm up against.

Last week, I invested my ambition in creatively realizing myself in writing fiction. I might have mentioned this before, but the nice thing about fiction is that it's a heck of a lot easier to revise the work actively than game development is. (Maybe I need to improve my game development methodology?)

What kind of fiction? Pony fiction, of course. It's not that I particularly had a burning need for exalting pony, it's just that I needed something to make myself feel like I was doing something worthwhile. The result did not set the world on fire, but the reception was generally favorable, although I'm a little depressed I got a little carried away and dug myself over-deep in a few major plot points.

Season 2 of MLP:FIM starts this Saturday. Am I excited? I don't really know. Sure, it's more pony, but then what? I should probably get back to work on game development, but right now I'm not sure anything I could make would be the least bit satisfying...

Weekend Progess Report 9/3/11

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:10:13 +0000

I skipped last week's progress report because, as I said I would, much of that week was spent playing Deus Ex 3. How fun is that game? Well, perhaps this will answer your question:

During that week, I was able to once again retire my backup CRT monitor when I received my new LCD, a Viewsonic VX2268wm. Like the CRT, the LCD before that (the one that died unexpectedly) was also standard aspect monitor, so I'm returning to wide aspect at long last. Suddenly, all that code that seemed to evoke claustrophobia only takes up half the screen, creating an illusion of extremely efficient code. (Perhaps that's not an illusion: while I may never have released a finished game, I am quite well practiced in BYOND coding.)

That was the week before last. Last week, not much progress was made. Not only was I house sitting, but I'm once again battling against my highly ingrained habit to procrastinate. I blame my anxiety as being a probable cause of that. You'd think being anxious would cause you to do more. However, when you're too nervous, there's not much more you can do than self-medicate, which I accomplish by slacking off.

As of my meeting with my psychiatrist yesterday, I'm on a new happy drug today. It's called Buspirone and, contrary to the Wellbutrin I was prescribed by a general practitioner before, this stuff actually addresses generalized anxiety. Though I was told that it would take a few weeks to kick in, I already feel a little better. (Perhaps that's a placebo effect?)

So, about my game I'm working on. Actually, I'm currently working on a work of fiction. However, the problem being overcome is the same: I'm a total refinement whore. In my story, I get caught up in tweaking and re-tweaking passages of text before the story is complete. The same happens when I try to create a game. Maybe I'm too nervous to accept what I create is fine?

Unlike my games, my stories are usually completed. Why is that? Perhaps it's because writing paragraphs is something I can do quickly enough that I don't lose interest even when I'm heavily mired down in refining them. Games are a bit more painstaking. Rewriting a passage of text can be done in within a few hours, while rewriting a game can take days. In fact, the last major change I made to the game is completely invisible from how it plays, a massive retooling of how the game stores the universe, and it took over a week of constant coding to complete.

Weekend Progress Report 8/20/11

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 18:29:52 +0000

Sunday, smunday, "weekend" is close enough.

Despite the fact my best computer monitor stopped working on Thursday (fortunately I kept a spare CRT around), I did manage to return to work on my project this week. I mostly restored all the old functionality I had prior to this revamp of how the universe is organized. So the game is now back up to 100% of where it was.

Now, for the hard part: actually turning it into a playable game. As I've said before, it's not that I don't know how to create a playable game, I've played tens of thousands of computer games in my life, I know the drill. However, I'm not here to just make any old game, I'm here to make, "My Own Net Dream," and I'm a very fussy gamer indeed. A lot of the part where my body just shuts down and says, "No! No more of this!" is because of extended grappling with writer's block, but it seems to me the right thing to do is just start adding stuff knowing I can take it out later.

So what is, "My Own Net Dream?" Like most people blustering for answers as to specifically why they like their favorite games, this has been a journey of self-discovery. However, what I currently look to be coding is this: a platform of an open-ended 4X/RPG/Squad-based-tactical-combat (ala X-COM-alike) hybrid with space exploration elements (ala Starflight/Star Control 2), dynamic generated content (ala Roguelikes), and completely player-mutable content (ala Minecraft). I've kept coming back to this idea along enough that it's probably going to persist.

Yeah, little wonder this has been taking me awhile. Although I can really blame falling off the development wagon for about 75% of the time delay involved. I look forward to having a cool platform to add a bunch of cool stuff to as soon as I get the game into a playable state.

I'm anticipating a bit of a disruption when Deus Ex 3 releases on Monday, because everything I hear about the game suggests these developers have done a good job of following in the original Deus Ex's footsteps, and that game is on many reviewer's lists as, "Best PC Game Of All Time."

Sunday Progress Report 8/14/11 (Pre-Emptive)

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:06:49 +0000

This week, I watched about 90 episodes of the Nostalgia Critic and browsed forums.

In terms of doing anything at all worthwhile, I've been pretty damn unproductive, but I do have a reason for my misery. It basically goes back to an event three week ago.

Last week of July, the sister's having some major problems in her personal life. Mom went up where she lives (some 400 miles away) and spent a week helping her out. I should have gone in her place, but it was too short notice.

Mom had left with a mild cold. Two weeks ago, mom returned, with pneumonia. The first week of August, I was being perpetually asked to do this and that to help her recover. The constant threat of interruptions made it difficult to focus on my work and, on top of that, I was pretty worried.

This week, it seems mom has recovered enough to go back to work a bit, that's a relief. (Although she's still not completely over it, and I'm being tasked to unexpectedly get up and do things.) Unfortunately, it seems I may have caught the bug she had, because I feel really worn down.

I really hate low level colds. With an acute bug, you're miserable for a little while, but then you get over it and you're back at roughly 100%. But these low-level, Seattle-grade colds, they really hang on.

I really need to get my nose back on the grindstone, but my body is in full rebellion. It's as though some primal drive is convinced I can't survive wracking my brain on how to bring about closure to this game I'm working on. What the Hell is the matter with you, motivation? Am I doing something wrong?