Critique.

American / Western culture of being inoffensive has swung far to the other side on the internet. I imagine the cycles will get shorter and shorter over time as more people are added to the mix. I can't count a single time that I've offered criticism for one of an astonishing number of online posts and got a negative reaction for it. At first it was just plain opinion. You post some art, leave a reply in the comments section and so on. I've said before that internet content is vastly mediocre. Call em as you see em. People are more interested in bumping click-bait so that they can get more social media points and that is interesting to me. Gamification. I won't give any specific cases for where this has occurred but maybe the adage of " If you have nothing nice to say then don't say nothing" has gone too far. We're not training a cultural muscle by letting creators go into the wash. It's nice to feel good from the comments and views that you get until the light attracts moths and then trolls even during daylight.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I too am among the mass of creators that in one way or another seeking attention and verification. Looking for an audience in a sea of people that grows every single day. I care about these platforms as much as they care about me. At the end of the day I'll have my growth and my creative experience and perhaps even a few sheckles to show for the effort. But the main difference between most creatives that I encounter in cyberspace or the people in those communities and myself is that I DON'T seek to make it to your virtual fridge for a week. Maybe I have ambitions for timelessness in my craft and I work steadily at that with each passing week. To that effect I have enough attention and potential and inspiration to last as far as I can foresee.

I didn't know there were any unspoken rules on the internet. That's where this fantastic market that enabled google in the first place came from. Made all this possible. The wild west of the early 90's is now a much more suburban kind of sprawl. I get my coffee, go to the park , chat here , listen there and all of the sudden my network of internet exposure shrinks as much as the vast variety of it grows and homogenizes. Does that kind of thing worry you ? I used to think that expository writing about my condition and identity was a bad sign that I was perhaps becoming unstable again. Or that I would make digital promises on deaf ears to allow myself the mistakes and deviations from the milestones I set before me. I used to be envious of those who were in their own groove until I woke up one day and realized that I am in one of my own and I could have been loving myself for being here longer.

I wish I wasn't any kind of mystery. That I could weave complexity in to works and remain a simple person that people could have more confidence in. That employers would genuinely care about people I know who are going from job to job to avoid being , like myself, among the under-employed. I've been contacted by half a dozen recruiters this year who are all looking to get a bonus and generally vary in the ability to pretend to care about the prospects which are fed to them practically automatically. That there was more opportunity and transparency for people who are able and just need to work where clearly the manpower is needed. The price of corporate convenience has been intolerable my entire adult life. I'm reluctant to admit that I may not have a marketable physique for customer service. Or a particularly sharp single tool. At any rate I keep working because the experience is valuable to me and that will pay off. Somebody may be lucky enough to bank with me on that before-hand, but it seems unlikely this month.

I've had a hard time coming to terms with my disorder/disease/disability. I see people all around me who are clearly less functional and I understand that I too have been over that edge and back a couple times. But.. I'm having trouble making a space for myself that is separate from that experience. How can I fall in love again? Become independent again? Nurture a new skill? Pass my experience on. I'm becoming more and more concerned about that. Is it funny that the first thing I notice about a woman is her left ring finger? Even though at present I have no means to start that chapter I really anticipate it. I've heard tale and seen the remains of the artist who lives only with her craft. I've watched many other people I know ( generally not creatives ) struggle in to new families or adopt themselves into one. I never thought I would be so desperate that I would seek the conversation of CL strangers.

Many things fall through anyway. My motto for this year is to 'pull all the ropes' , eventually one of those things will break and I am not one of those things. The base goal being to never experience psychosis again if I can help it.

As usual there are a handful of other things going on with me this month. Boxy Brown looks good this week and should be ready for some internal testing by the end of the month. HTUR and other games are on hold until I make this smaller game happen ( trust me its easier than the other 3 in the air ) ... while subcutaneous is actually very close to completion, I think, there are many things to learn from this more traditional game.

Music - wise. I'm courting a couple of locals so that I can perform and record with them. I think playing more guitar lately has helped. I still feel mostly isolated but it has helped in general. ** I love how my mother gets snippy about the one trip I get to make back home a year. I get to see most of the people I care about for less than 2 weeks on average. What else wouldn't drive you crazy? ** I'm in the last stretch of the nerd-core beat tape that I've been working on for far too long ( between this project and that computer exploding ).. Also I've kinda let loose on prioritization and just started making things that  are relevant and inspirational to me in the moment. All these game projects kinda force you to live a few weeks in the future so that your prototype can edge toward the concept of the game you set out to make. The untold struggle of development ( that is very much specific to games.) continues.

Moving forward. Maybe I'll heard from one of the jobs I've applied for. I intend to go to the local college and hopefully receive some kind of funding to make that easier overall. Like before.. I can only go to school with a vague idea of what I want to do with the education I want. Who's to say that I'll get what I need or even my experience will lead me in another direction altogether. An academic director one of the programs that I'm looking into asked me if I knew what kind of job I wanted to have coming out of school. I want to solve creative and technical problems. There are many fields that I think fit the description and the coursework but I can't be sure until I get some more guidance. I can read instructions as well as the next monkey. Deep down I feel i'll be happier in a more creative and less technical field, but, those worlds have overlapped many times for me and I don't see either as a waste at this point. I have stretch goals. But don't ask me what they are as they are subject to change. My 11 year old self wouldn't be mad at me for not being an architect today.

To top it all off , repeated stress on my hands from this fantastic technology is starting to cause me physical pain. I need to get the hell out of this state. It's mostly poison.

My work will come out as it's ready. I hunger for cruel words far more than gold-star-stickers because I can only point out the shit in my life as far as I'm aware of it. And then post that shit here.

- See you next time. -

Observe, then attack.

Really I just wanted to post another image of the boxy brown progress. I want to get feature complete in the next week so I'm of course busting the buns. Definitions.. definitions.. here is the image.

its starting to make more sense but still needs work and some tuning.. It's starting to look right. 

Time of the Season

When the phone calls come in. Spruce up. Polish your things and sleep a few times a week.  There is a new prototype in the games section. Started up another little idea with the TOFGCo dudes over the break. It's never too early to test and I'm very proud of the feel and reliability of this proto. At any rate its a good time to take what I'm learning from these project sprints and have some quality items in the coming months. I have only one thing to say ; GIFTACULAR 20-GIFTEEN! Because development bloopers make games worth making :

See you soon.

I know you care.

So the year is closing. I'm deciding what to drop and what to take with me into the next season of work after my trip home next week. Currently I've been kinda obsessed with some older projects just to see if I should salvage them or shovel them. Also there has been some progress with the unreal game and the last LudumDare based game. In the most recent LD I came up with a good idea but didn't really execute it the way I wanted. Decided to keep up with modeling instead. The following is a work in progress render.. The state of the unreal project is to make an example of taking a concept and making it into a playable character for the team228 fighting game ExtinctionGrid that kicks off development next year. I can't share much but I do have a render. In related news is some more music coming down the pipe with a beat tape and about 8 remixes that I've been putting off between personal work and other things ( like getting the other games done ) it'll be nice to have a little package of the work from the last year or so in the same place so hang around for that. I'm also looking at some more CSS modifications for this site to include a visuals page and a music page. Anyway.. Enough about that. Have a splendid holiday season and new year and stuff. I'll see you around.

Block

I've been dealing with a bit of a development block recently. I have been able to break through a number of these blocks over the last year and recently was able to hand off HTUR development to the other guy on the project which frees me up to check on/start other projects. Creatively it's been hard to conceptualize a game where you don't have an avatar or jump or shoot stuff at other things or any of the like. Part of me is really sick of older game tropes and I have a strong sense of why that is but it isn't helping me move along very quickly. The next big thing is a fighting game made with unreal. I have the outlines of the functionality down but I can't find a good entry point. When I get a good idea about how to attack this project then I'll get back to the  Unreal grip posts that I started a year ago. Since then it's been rather unproductive and that's really a bad feeling. Sure I've done some music here and graphic design there but that's not really where I want to grow. Most of my mindset is focused on getting in better physical health. Maybe it's a good idea to do some kind of regular update here on what  my workout habits are but I feel like I just lack the discipline in general to make good on those things. And the year is already coming to a close so fast that I don't know what hit me . As I get older each week seems to go by in a blink or two and I've been battling personal things since Summer. Anyway, for the few who read .. I still exist and I'll probably see half of you before you know it. For everyone else who may read this , I think it's important to break some ground before I talk to much and deliver too little. This may be strange but I feel like a laptop is really holding me back and I really want to give back before I take too much more from the world.

Speaking of give and take. I finally came around to understanding the one thing about women that I should have learned from my mother and only gained  a real sense of it's impact recently.. Consideration. Just the smallest bit of consideration makes all the difference. That's really what's important. Also , using commas in the correct places. Another thing that I've learned in recent times. particularly when you are directing a phrase at someone, dude.

Hmm.. I want to take a quick look at what's happening and what I can do about those things.

HTUR :
    Polish up the background scrolling scripts and make the game more difficult overall. The last couple of testers that I had said that the game wasn't challenging enough.
    Also the art for most of the game needs a once-over. Time to get the final style in place and such. These things are part of the rework but it's actually quite difficult to make a plan and get those things clear.
-- another big issue that I take with this project is that it's completion time was never really set .. and so that means I have to not feel so bad if the project takes some 2 years to get done. It kinda drives a man insane.

Subcutaneous:
    I really liked the idea of this project but my brilliant organization kinda became a mess.. I didn't think clearly enough and did quite a few things wrong. This would be a great place to get back on the horse as there really isn't too much to this game overall. But I am kinda reserved and want to work more on the unreal game.

UnrealFighter:
    This game is the most nebulous. There are so many things that it needs and I've really completed very little of the basic systems. It's hard to test without decent placeholder assets and the rest of the team is about at the same pace. Group meetings rarely cover the needs of the game and most other people are focused on their job ( of course ) than this side project. It's a toolset that I want to learn but I'm also torn between the visual scripting side of the implementation because it's very deep ( as well as confusing in a big enough system. my designer side says to make better tools for people who are going to do the meat of the design and content creation work. )


I don't have any other projects on my plate. Each month I put out several applications and perhaps get an interview here and there. But I'm really not cut out for the service industry ... the bothersome part is not being able to save any money. I'm not really counting on making it big but I know that somewhere I have to get better at what I do. Use it or lose it as they say. I need to get over the shock of recognizing my age. I want to confront and execute my dreams instead of yearn for them. I want to do what any artist wants to do. Have that great experience and use my skills to re-convey it in a meaningful experience.

I have so many people to thank for helping me get through some of my most difficult years so far. It's impossible to extinguish the hope I have for a brighter future. That's the most important part.

I want to come back and let out more thoughts here. Bear with me.