Well, I’m not entirely fond of how half of the last few posts have been nothing-posts compared to my early output, but there is an explanation: I keep taking on personal projects! This isn’t necesarily a bad thing; Part of starting this blog was to get me working on and finishing personal projects again. However, I might have bitten off more than I can chew. Might as well go through the list since that constitutes an update anyways.
Streaming stuff Link to heading
For one, I’m still working on the overlays for Licenseathon. They’re coming along well, albeit a tad slowly. After doing some more analysis I was able to identify more stylistic trappings of vectorheart that I like, and I’m trying to implement those as well. There’s nothing more to show just yet, but I’ll provide an update on the final product when it’s done.
I’ve also been continuing to stream - I’ve really enjoyed this recent game, Neopets: The Darkest Faerie for PS2. I know, I’m just as shocked as you that it’s actually good, but it is! A little janky and rough around the edges, but there’s a lot of charm present and it’s clear the developers were trying to advance the Legend of Zelda-style formula instead of just cashing out.
Another fun thing recently was a friend starting a new Twitch channel, IdleContent. It’s a channel where retro games are set up to pit the computer against itself. Great background noise, and the AI tends to do funny things that a human wouldn’t. This kind of channel has existed before - SaltyBet is the prime example - but this channel rotates through games and the titles tend to be slower-paced. Strategy games, board games, that sort of thing. I offered to help on the technical end, to create scripts for the emulator, webpages to display information, etc. While that work hasn’t started yet, I did draw up an architecture diagram to visualize what technology would be required. The vision for the channel is to have values pulled out of a game’s memory and sent to a webpage for visualization on the stream, slick animations and layouts and all. So that’s been on my mind lately.
The blog Link to heading
And of course this blog has been a lot. I had initially thought two weeks would be enough time to write a post, and it probably is. What I’ve found however is that after I publish a post, I typically want to take a break from writing for a bit, and this often snowballs into the next weekend arriving without any writing getting done. Then with a week left I’m not always sure what to write about, and I typically avoid taking on too much work. Writing and editing a longer post takes about 5 days of persistent effort after my day job, so it’s pretty exhausting to do alongside this other stuff I’ve got going on.
Personal life Link to heading
On top of all of that, I’ve been having a very hard time sleeping lately, and I’ve been waking up later in the day and taking more naps. It’s really cut into my productivity. With any luck that will be changing this weekend.
Oh, and lastly I’ll be travelling to Summer Games Done Quick again this year. I’m super excited to see all my friends again. Last year was good, but now I know people and activities will be somewhat more directed, I think. Apparently there will be a Playstation mystery tournament going on, and I think JaxlerSR and I will be hitting up a local game store to find some dogwater PSX games to supply. I’m looking forwrd to that, and getting to travel again.
That’s all for now - With any luck I can get this design work done and make some breathing room for myself, so I can write a new post of the style I like. I’m doing some light research for a post about liminal spaces and hostile urban design, so be on the lookout for that. I might also do some lighter content about the projects I’m working on.
Until next time!