i had been working on this game for a while, posting to twitter regularly at the time- my aim was to create a sort of 3dimensional room to install digital artwork.
around this time NFTs were gaining notoriety too. I felt it was at least relevant or interesting to work on this idea and make it real. i love the idea of tangible virtual spaces that have purpose or atmosphere. i was just finishing up a two year curation residency, after graduating me and a few friends were given a gallery space to host exhibitions... it was fun, exciting, but the space was a basement gallery, full of damp and mould, it was trash really. but it felt like something. so i photoscanned one wall of the gallery space and i was going to make it into a virtual gallery.

this wasnt my first time trying and failing to do this- i wrote about my experience doing VRChat art gallery here: https://d48bc053-7c66-4794-971d-1fdc40fa85fc.filesusr.com/ugd/a5eb28_8004c9a6388f4ce99b741cd8230695de.pdf
( as part of this publication: https://www.softspotsoftspot.com/sso3a )

tldr it was a similar failure, in truth i guess not many people share this weird dream i had of art galleries being monasteries or institutions for experimental thought & practice... maybe people can 'feel' it, but they can't get involved, they have ther more tangible things that burden them. and honestly the more i did these things the more they felt like a burden, thats why im writing here, for some catharsis maybe.
a 'white cube gallery space' is a type of interior design (?) or something that is adopted by most art galleries. they are devoid of character, and devoid of life maybe- its kind of the point, so they dont interfere with the work. but to pretend like white cubes really exist in a vacuum is just pure unbridled fantasy, and it does more harm than good- me, a young graduate doing a vague unpaid internship was sold a life as a fantasy. and i didnt make anything good out of it. both myself and the system i was a part of are to blame.
working digitally i met the same issues as in the physical space. these issues were mostly, audience and publishing, who and what is being platformed, identity of the space & how it exists- as a 'thing' and in peoples lives.
physical space- almost entirely attended by art graduates being sold the same fantasy (i also use the term dream, but honestly, no one dreams of this), mature people who have doubled down on the fantasy, or have nothing else to value higher than this... and very rarely, one or two alienated members of the public, too nervous to engage. i think its completely hostile to that sort of person. and they are total aliens, its hard to explain, they move through the space and people move around them, like they arent part of this fake world, maybe im actually jealous of them.

tldr art galleries in modern times exist as a hostile liminal pseudo-environment that is riddled with challenges and fundamental issues.
i enjoy sculpture parks, art in open air, the experience can feel slightly more sincere, but that may be my personal bias.

in 2018 we held an exhibition in a disused bank- it was being sold and in the process of changing hands, and in the UK, theres a bit of a subculture around abandoned spaces and squatting laws that permit / provoke people to engage with them. so you have little events managers holding raves or lock-ins where everyone stays inside and gets smashed and does a load of drugs. but in galleries this type of fun is Not Allowed because everyone is upholding that hostile pseudoenvironment rule. (not to say that either is better than the other)
we basically talked to the guy who was hosting events in this space and got to install work there, there were like 5 of us and the space was HUGE, had everything- vaults, underground vaults, back tea-room, front area, lil offices... buildings are made of bones, and organs, and they all function like a living thing when we move through them. this space, its bones had so much character, it feels fulfilling to exist within that. knowing its all been picked clean lets you see it in the new perspective, lets you understand everything a bit better. this experience is probably the most valuable part IMO
we had projections in the vaults, we recorded videos in the basement and played them upstairs, cosmetic sculptures around, narrative-led artworks in offices, a whole installation in the main foyer, performances in the tea room. we served drinks out of the tills. it was actually good, now im writing about it, that felt really good. this was before we were given the actual art space, and i think it was probably the most exciting part of anything we did, even if we didnt know at the time.

we had a lot of benefits helping us tho- we were still connected with the graduates above us, as well as ppl in lower years, it was very local and easy to get to, properly unique interior space, solid work involved. it would be unrealistic to imagine that a similar thing of that scale could happen again and receive as much attention. it was a one night thing, be there or be square.
(sidenote: we had a lot of random people attend this bank show and actively engage with us, other people, and the artwork on show. they had been to other events in the space etc. so cultural diversity was high i guess. this essentially never happened at a 'real' art gallery, where the crowd was always the same)
maybe in a big city that depends on its subcultures, you could convince a relatively large crowd to visit something similar- i think of that 2015 noisey video about UK raves, how you have these old-heads committed to their vision of the scene, racking lines on CD cases in the back of cars, in some backwater car park in wales... contrasted with wealthy london young people desperate to be cool, doing pills to dance then balloons on the floor in a white room. in the vid, the guy talks about the latter as if its the mecca of raving, (in fairness it probably seemed good compared to the other options) but after i watched it, i was hit with this pervasive thing, i cant describe, i guess it made me face my meager relationship with subcultures in general ... im still not over it, cant quite figure it out.

one of our aims as a collective was to facilitate collaboration / conversation with people in a range of mediums. this was essentially impossible to do and we fell into a rut of googling artists and picking ones we liked the look of. if anyone in my real life heard me say that, they would hate me for it, but it is the sad truth.

i like virtual environments and building them because it does allow me to explore headspaces and thoughts i have from a new perspective, as i get older and my responsibilities change this can get muddy. i start thinking i need them to do something or there should be an outcome i can hold up and be like "i did this, its like this, and it works".
so back to this art gallery game, it went nowhere and still is nowhere, after seeing things like Art Skool on nintendo switch and cyber.io NFT art galleries, my milk turned sour you know what i mean? then i think, maybe i should apply myself to these things and provide my thoughts to them, but for some reason im not going to do that. im a bit of a weird hoarder in terms of the things i make, i cant put them down even if theyre garbage, i still hold them up and mount them in my brain as if they have value.
my idea was to have an open-house virtual art-gallery environment that's free to use by anyone for whatever they want. i quickly realised that no one really wants this, even if they think they do; the real-life equivalents is not better, is less desirable, and requires more effort. my real life experience curating gallery spaces, its incredibly enriching to install in the bones of something old, with a relationship to diverse subcultures. joining altgame community i hoped i could have something similar happen but whatever i was doing wasnt right. maybe too rigid, too reductive, too bland, too hostile to facilitate engagement. but i sitll have it in me. the title for the game was originally 100rooms, then underground gallery, now its abandoned (and not in a cool way).
i sometimes think about tiktok and roblox, or these types of metaverse(EUGH) platforms , and wonder if they are for me. but i feel like they are not. gamedev twitter is a lot of shilling, no hate to anyone, i guess free-market means you have a LOT of desperate traders. and its exhausting, especially if you want to see this stuff as artistic, creative, spiritually valuable, to have so much murk to wade through. i guess this is why curation is crucial, because it allows the audience to be free from the burden of over-saturation, makes things comprehensive.

but how do you curate in an ethical way, on a philosophical level, and how do you apply that as logic / formula to these platforms that capitalise on free-market, so don't really want it to happen? they always just let algorithms do it? like, if you could curate roblox, you can no longer tell every kid that they can make it big and go pro because its demystified- either someone is pulling the strings, curating the popular stuff and is responsible for the fame, or the systems and feedback loops that we are vulnerable to become obvious. at least thats how it appears.
with free games YOU are the product - no joke. you are at the mercy of brain chemical induced feedback loops. LoL, Valorant, Apex, Warzone all run on the same chemicals and they are proliferated by all the people who freely give their time to these experiences. Adopt Me on roblox has lootboxes too. i thought it was just a fun roleplay where kids were being kids (like when i was a kid, watching other kids play Family RP in Blockland) but no, turns out its heavily gamified via dopamine loops. i dont know what to think of this, something tells me its all wrong. but maybe if its fun theres nothing wrong with it... but maybe these games become institutions and they rob their players of other more enriching experiences. i dont know.
i also resent the systems that guilt their consumers in order to make sales, or weaponise their independence. i just feel like grassroots as a USP is just as bad as a marketing strategy.

i wish we were free online. we can be whatever we want, and we choose to drag these terrible things in here. like imagine walking through a monastery with your dirty shoes, claiming you're a monk, keeping your shoes on, and never sweeping up. saying that the dirt belongs there, because dirt is on the ground. maybe its unrealistic to think of cyberspace as a spiritual place.

i dont feel comfortable with the term curator, i barely am one. im barely an artist nowadays too. not sure if this is the place for this type of writing, or what exactly im trying to do, but at least im trying. we can be glorious trainwrecks

next game? go again? extra LIFE? hopium??

This isn't *really* a blog entry. I know no one reads the blogs here, so I'm using this as a sneaky image host for a game called "going to the beach with your favorite nerd :)". It doesn't exist yet, but I'm almost done making it, and if you go back to my account and click games, you'll probably be able to play it.

I can't host the images on the game page, because it doesn't exist yet, so I gotta host em here. Thamks to sergiocornaga, I found out I could unlist them, so there's no risk of any snoopers around.

was playing some katelabs worlds today and remembered that info about this isn't anywhere i can find, so here's how to run katelabs on linux (tested on debian 11)

1. create a new 32-BIT wineprefix:
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX="/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.katelabs" winecfg

! important ! only works with a 32 bit wineprefix - some of the stuff below will fail to install otherwise

2. install necessary stuff with winetricks:
WINEPREFIX="/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.katelabs" winetricks amstream dmband dmcompos dmime dmloader dmscript dmstyle dmsynth dmusic dmusic32 dsound dswave qasf qcap qdvd qedit quartz vcrun6 xvid

after doing this you should no longer get a "memory access violation" error after selecting the resolution

Name of this game is The Day of the Dray! This game will be pretty long

On “Master/Slave” and How Godot Developers Handled Calls to Change The Phrase
by Mariken S.

I've been making games for a while, and I've been sitting on some finished—but unreleased—Binky games since 2018. They were all made in the Godot game development engine, which because of what I will elaborate on in this essay, I can no longer use consciously. I really would have tried to finish this essay which I felt was necessary to include alongside the games sooner, if it were not for my depression, the banal pressures of university, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic among others. I would like to heavily thank my friend Nikki for revising and editing this essay.

As full disclosure, I am a white woman who lives in the USA. Thus I do not have a lived experience of racism and the legacy of slavery. If you find issue with this writing, feel free to message me on Glorious Trainwrecks or other avenues. My page is found here: https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/user/24039
You will need to make an account in order to message me.

The event as described happens in March of 2017. On the development website Github, user Hikari-no-yume spoke up on the word choice for Godot's scripting language. She states that the word choice of Master/slave "may be unfortunate..." and that "At the risk of starting a flame war, it might be worth changing them." And well, a minor flame war of sorts did begin in which some of Godot's developers revealed their true characters.

The entire conversation can be found here:
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/7986

An archived web page defines master/slave as "a model for a communication protocol in which one device or process (known as the master) controls one or more other devices or processes (known as slaves)"[1]. Said page now redirects to
https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
In contrast to attempting to defend the term, as some Godot developers did, the authors of this website seek to provide alternatives in language.

I think it is clear: Master/slave is an inappropriate and racist term. These 'slaves' are not people, they were never taken from their homes and forced to work in unbearable conditions. They have never had to suffer the innumerable accounts of life under slavery that can be read or watched. This linguistic metaphor trivializes the centuries long experiences of victims of slavery and their descendants. These so called "Master and slaves" are pieces of hardware, of plastics and metals, of zeros and ones. Though in regards to the last sentence it should be known that many electronic devices and their components (see: conflict minerals) are created in unethical and unbearable conditions. But that is another essay. Furthermore, the problem of Master/slave is not just one that is exclusive to the Godot engine, but the field of Computer Science as a whole.

Going back to the issue as brought up on Github, some seemed receptive to Hikari’s request, but one person in particular gave a strongly dismissive response. Said person is Reduz [Juan Linietsky], a head developer of the Godot engine alongside Ariel Manzur. His objection is as quoted:

"Sorry, I think this is stupid, slavery has been erradicated centuries ago and there is no one alive that could be offended or discriminated by such condition.... I understand there are a few retrograde countries still around, but i think naming convention in a game engine is the least of their problems. ...I'm all for stuff like inclusion, equality, human rights, etc. But using less clear and accepted technical terminology for groundless cause (IMO) is not a good idea."

I think this is an incorrect reasoning. Slavery has been ceased in the manner of the USAmerican plantation (chattel slavery), but still there is human trafficking, the prison-industrial complex, and other atrocities. The memory lives on in many a people's consciousnesses. There is even discussion of trauma that can be passed down to generation to generation. The scars of such deep atrocities do not heal easily as this Reduz could think. He does not consider the feelings of people who are different from him. Reduz mentions "retrograde countries" but does not really elaborate on this concept. Does this imply that Reduz believes the fact that slavery is a problem in the global south is a reason that the global south is how it is? It is a circular logic that does not think of the etiology, the origin, of the problems of the global south. Does one not remember the hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism of the Global North (mainly the European powers) upon Africa, North and South America, and Asia? The Global North exploited these areas for their labor force and natural resources among other things. This statement is merely scratching the surface of why the Global South is how it is. This further ties into Conflict Minerals, where most of the conflict is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (A former colony of Belgium until 1960). This website seems a bit outdated but it is a good starting point if one wants to research conflict minerals in the DRC: https://conflictmineral.wordpress.com/

Another one such complaint by "freemanfromgodotengine" says more of the same:

"I checked. Original text by Global Language Monitor[2] says clearly, that it's all about Political (in)Correctness. So, imho, if we are not making politics here with Godot - and we are clearly not, because it's a game engine for all - we should stay with the most logical terms and meanings of words..."

Game engines and politics!? In the circles I orbit I have seen some mockery of such behavior, of thinking that games can be without politics. And the phrase 'Political Correctness' is a dog whistle to reactionaries. It is often used to either point to the antisemitic conspiracy theory called 'Cultural Marxism', or simply to mock anyone who supports leftist or liberal policies. It is a dangerous phrase to use. I think the fact that the Godot Engine is “free and open source software released under the permissive MIT license” https://godotengine.org/license entails an anti-capitalist political bent in a world full of computer program subscription licenses. It is to go against the almost monopoly-like nature of proprietary software such as Microsoft and Adobe. Free and Open Source Software is, in many cases, a community effort. Godot is one such example. Does freeman’s use of “for all” not entail a collective use? Is Godot not for people who object to the use of "master/slave" terminology? Because of this fiasco I feel excluded from using this engine to make games! I do not feel comfortable working on games if the lead creators of the game engine have such a dismissive world view of such issues.

There is some more talk of it not really mattering, and then a few days later the administrators close the issue. However, on Godot's official IRC channel, a less visible but still public space, further discussion continues.

Reduz acknowledges other’s experiences by saying “Where I live, racism pretty much does not exist, so I am completely indifferent to master/slave terminology, but I can understand if this was more offensive somewher[sic] else like in the US”. What proof does Reduz have of racism not existing in his publicly listed location of Buenos Aries? A cursory internet search gives discussion of racism and the likes in Argentina. Continuing the conversation, the community members make light of the debate, with Reduz joking that “Also, I suggest we replace master/slave with slug/human”. This trivializes and turns the traumas of slavery into science fiction tomfoolery. He further invokes a foolish straw man to replace “master/slave by sjw/whitemalecis” with no understanding of power dynamics, the benefits of being white as opposed to being black, the benefits of being a man as opposed to a woman, and benefits of being cisgender as opposed to being transgender.

As of 2018, Godot now uses the word "puppet" as opposed to "slave", shown here: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/22087
Regardless, when discussing the change in a separate thread, now only open for comment to developers of the Godot engine, Reduz's behaviour still comes off as dismissive, arrogant, and heedless of the reasons for such a change being demanded. His responses can be found here https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/7986#issuecomment-421185969

To highlight an excerpt from Reduz:
"I hope you understand that, even though the majority was in favor of this change, most of Godot contributors are not from regions where the "slave" word (still) has a strong negative connotation (case in point, most contributors are not from the US). The world is more complex than many believe it to be."

Perhaps this has a tinge of calling feminism and civil rights movements as 'western propaganda'. It echos of freeman's comments of 'Political (in)Correctness'. It makes it seem as if the legacy of racism in South America is not as damaging as it is in the United States, Canada, etc.

To conclude this writing here are excerpts of further evidence of the Godot development community's problems from the IRC chat logs, publicly available, and my commentary:

[15:00:31] reduz: if you're using the "would you use such an engine"-argument, then you have to consider the tradeoff between "scaring some people off by not changing the nomenclature" vs "scaring some people off by changing it"
[15:01:56] because I am sure, changing the name would be interpreted as "submitting to the SJWs" by some people, and that might prevent them from supporting godot. now it's a "them vs those", and, following that argumentation, you'd need to do whatever keeps the "more valuable (potential) developers" at the project.

Windfisch's words come off as indifferent to the feelings of those upset by the use of the "slave" term! They think of a few developers, who may or may not even care about the issue, before the good of the community. They value the right of the lead developer to be argumentative over creating a positive and welcoming space. What entails a "more valuable developer"? Does Windfisch find white people who are indifferent to racism in terminology more valuable then people of color, or anyone who takes offense to the "master/slave" term? I think that is what this user is getting at.

[14:52:23] Groud: Let me cut to the point, this is almost 99% an US issue because, in their culture, getting offended about things they don't like (be it with reason or not) is very common. Still, it's an important part of our community and we should respect it I guess
[14:54:20] It's kind of like the 60s all over again
[14:54:36] where everything was politically correct

Again Reduz accuses the act of correcting the language as being of an USAmerican centrism. And again the reactionary phrase `politically correct` is used. Does he really believe that USAmerican colleges are centers of Marxist indoctrination?

[15:08:12] (how did we get from slavery to lbgt?)
[15:11:23] Windfisch: well, that is where inclusive language comes from (All this is about inclusive language)

Just as the theory of intersectionality can be used to describe an interlinking of oppressed people, it can also be used to describe how oppression under slavery and bondage is interlinked with oppression as a lgbtq person. It is reductionism to dismiss anti-racist language as simply lgbtq persons being 'frivolous'. It is dismissive of the decades of work by civil rights activists.

As mentioned, these IRC logs are publicly available, and logs I quoted from can be accessed from the link below. There is much more evidence of harmful remarks and debates within.

http://godot.eska.me/irc-logs/devel/2018-09-13.log

http://godot.eska.me/irc-logs/devel/2018-09-14.log

In conclusion, the behavior of Reduz in regards to the “Master\Slave” situation is my primary motivation to stop using Godot Engine. I do not seek to shame anyone continuing to use the engine to make their games. I am simply a person with a strong conscious. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170204003218/http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/master-slave
[2] A word of caution: As of writing, the website for the Global Language Monitor seems to have real life gore on the sidebar. We can conclude that the website is biased to the reactionary right wing by its' use of the phrase 'political correctness' and claiming words such as cisgender are 'politically incorrect'.

15 Ways to Surprise Your Little One
Children of young age need to play with higher level toys that sharpen their mind and enforce physical activities, and due to this reason, while selecting a surprise gift or toy, it should have cared for that product should challenge the growing abilities of children physically and mentally. There is a list of 15 ways that surprise your little one.
1. BrainBolt: It is a classic game that is a memory booster and serves as the best way of killing time on a long journey.
2. Paper aeroplane controlled by smartphone: It encourages children to play outside and teaches principles of aerodynamics, flight and sharpens their reflexes.
3. Marble Circuit logic board: It helps in developing cognitive skills and amazes your child.
4. Action Figures: The action figure of your child's favourite character will surprise them and increase their joy to many folds, and parents can purchase Sonic action figure
.
5. American Ninja warrior game: It is an amazing game that improves the skills of your child and increases their level of enjoyment.
6. Toys to make a racing car: The game of making a racing car is amazing, and it surprises your child.
7. Meltdown: It is a game that enhances the critical and analytical skills of a child, and they also like it.
8. Carpool Karaoke: It is an amazing gift that surprises your child, and children can enjoy singing on it
9. Boost Creative Toolbox: Children are able to make and program a robot and play with it
10. PLAYMOBIL: It is an amazing gift that provides the experience of playing with a spaceship to the child
11. Butts Up Electronic Game: It is a fun game that can be played with the family members
12. Star war game: Children can play amazing games form 270 pieces
13. Made Easy Craft Set: Children can play with the craft set and make amazing art pieces
14. Tiny Pong: A game that improves coordination between hand and eye
15. Make Your Own: Cross-Stitch Jewellery box: Children can make their own jewellery from pieces.

Around the time I posted my last post here last year was pretty much the last time I was productive for most of 2020. For some reason after that my brain became totally fried and I couldn't work on anything anymore. Near the end of the year I decided to retire and had a break from trying and failing to work on games until this year and now I am coming out of retirement to make some new good shit.
Right now I am making a new game library for browser games which I am going to call fish-tank or somethign like that. It's closest inspiration is lua löve which I think is just about the perfect game making library. It does stuff and it does it with ease, but it doesn't have much of it's own internal state which forces you to structure your game around state that the library creates (this is the reason I despise all existing browser game libraries and needed to make my own). Having little state from the library is great because it means you can pretty much design your game however you like and create whatever abstractions seem useful.
My library is a fair bit higher level than lua love admittedly, basically anything that I always implement in a game I make I am just implementing into this library which means some features by default are kind of limited to the kind of use case that I have. However, it is also designed so that all of the subsystems like renderer, soundplayer, inputhandler etc can be swapped out with your own version, you just have to implement one or two features that the library actually uses internally, like for example the inputhandler needs to provide functions for the gui system to know when the user presses buttons that control the gui. Since these subsystems are just built on top of web apis it's not that hard to implement your own one (except the graphics one, that was a real bitch).
When I say they are implemented how I use them, for example, the input handler takes all input from the keyboard and any connected gamepads and maps all of it into one virtual game controller, so all you can ask it is 'is the B button pressed' and it checks all of those actual input sources then tells you for the imaginary controller. So if you need 2 player or want to handle the mouse you are gonna have to create your own at the moment. To be honest though 2 player and mouse support should probably be added to the default one later.
Yeah so at this point the library is almost done, I just need to do the necessary stuff to implement the gui system, and then I have an approximately finished game library v1.0.0. Once that is done I am gonna make a metroidvania type game where the whole game is in a house but you have to shrink and then you can talk to rats and stuff and go inside pipes. wahooo.
Also I am gonna bring back my website and I am gonna release a scathing polemnic on why I hate the 'alt-game' label.

Hello. I am new here. Do whatever you want with this information.

prolly about a year or so back I posted Sock Man and some other stuff and moved onto itch.io
after the games I posted I deleted most of it after one of the old sunfish members got banned and I made a dumb post
I remembered this site was still a thing not that long ago so I figured we could call that old wounds and I could move onto sharing some more games
since it's not like anything I do is offensive at all, it was more just for sticking up for them in pack mentality

since then I've been working on projects and I finished
Gamit
which was a huge project tthat had to deal with development hell for the better part of two-ish years
but now that it's done I wanted to revisit good ol' Grandman

if you're not aware
or don't care-- I can getcha up to speed

Grandman was originally a crap wario fangame I turned into my own thing with some original art
and this yellow sun dude I dubbed "Grand Grandman"

not that long ago I wanted to make another one cuz I was enjoying wario games again
I think a heavily underused part of wario is his throwing-- he has stubby arms so it makes sense they don't put emphasis on it and instead his charge
so using my dude who has BIG ARMS, let's make him throw stuff and abuse items

some ms paintin' later and I had this concept art squared up


I liked it, so ever since then I've been working on it

I'm nearing the end of the engine, so now's a good a time as ever to post about it:

Chaser Enemy

A big nuke

all the level elements so far see if you can guess em' all

I'll post some more later when my work is done,
I've got 5 things left to do before I can release a demo and start playtesting
those being:
-enemies
-dumb hat system
-level editor
-final bug-fixes
-special stuff for ground and a few other things

hope to see ya there

Hi! I'm alive. I know, right? It's only been like, literally over half a decade since I made anything on this website, or even acknowledged its existence. Sorry.

If you've wondered where the hell I've been, well... my situation's honestly been kinda the same since I last left on that passive-aggressive note all of those years ago. The only difference now is I'm attending college, I've jumped game engines twice (MMF2 to Construct 2 and now am currently experimenting with Godot), and I've developed a taste for those V8 Sparkling Energy drinks.

Oh yeah, I'm also 21 now. My last game was posted when I was 15. I am legally an adult to the point of being allowed to drink in the US and everything. Wild, right?

I still visit this site every now and then just to reminisce on all of the weird shit I put out back then. I kinda miss being able to churn out like 10 games in a week. Mind you, they were more spur-of-the-moment ideas than deliberately crafted out games (for the most part), so it makes sense, but still. But holy mother of GOD there is an insane amount of "author appeal" in these games, even when it makes very little sense. Mega Man MIDIs, the same few .MODs and .XMs over and over again, and, most of all, the fact that quite a lot of the games I made adhered to this "arcade standard".

There's always gotta be some sort of player-induced violence, there's always gotta be action, even when it makes very little sense. Forever Alone (Pictured Above) is a really good example. A sort of weird minimalist self-proclaimed "art game" (to me, an "art game" was something with a sort of ethereal, pretentious attitude back then), where you kick around a ball and have the narrator lambast you for not going outside. It's a cute and weird thing, but then it just suddenly becomes a quasi-SHMUP game where you SHOOT at the door! Because of course you do. You always do. It's not a game without hardcore action-based gameplay, right!?

(Also SWEET JESUS I named games after rage comic memes?!)

There's also the fact that a lot of my games lacked any sort of good difficulty curve. They plateaued between "Piss Easy" to "FUCK YOU". However, there's kind of a good reason for that, a dirty little secret about a lot of my old games. They kinda were like that so I could have an excuse to stim the fuck out while "testing" them. That's not self-deprecation or me calling my self "lol autistic!!11!!" either. I'm dead serious when I say this. My dad had built me a MAME cabinet (yes, really. I actually have another smaller bartop Raspberry Pi based one lying around too!) with an X-Arcade stick (pictured above) and dear god mashing that middle-left button felt so good to 12 year old me (the tank stick was pre-mapped to keyboard keys so it was Shift). Obviously, they were still made with an intent to convey... something, but from a game design standpoint I figured "we're making dumbass deliberately stupid games, why care that much anyways?".

Nowadays, I care about actually making coherent video games. I still wear my inspirations on my sleeve, but I'd like to think I've progressed since slapping random MIDIs and sprites into my games without forethought. Even if it does mean I made a game based on a meme that was considered dead at the time of the game's inception. This is a bit of a double-edged sword, however, since I find myself actually trying even in projects where random stupidity is the name of the game. I've kind of lost that sense of fun slap-dashed-ness nowadays. I find myself trying to "prove" myself, trying to push the envelope, making games that... resemble games, for lack of a better term. If I have an interesting idea, there's gotta be a full playable game around it, and it leads to me dropping projects and ideas more and more by the day.

As for why I left the site so abruptly? Easy. Peer pressure and being an angsty teen. I hung out with a few people who at the time were hardcore "Anti-SJW™®" types, and it kinda rubbed off on me a bit too hard. Even to this day, I have a really bad tendency to bottle up emotions and let them loose, and that's basically what happened there. You may remember a certain Twine-based piece of interactive fiction I wrote.

That's as far as I will talk about it, because thinking about that any longer makes me want to swallow my own eyeballs.

That's a phase of my life I kind of regret a lot, to say the least. That's not to say I'm a perfect squeaky-clean person these days (far from it), but I'd like to think I've grown up just a little from being that unironically venomous. (ABOVE PIC UNRELATED)

I don't fuckin' know, man. Crazy, unbelievable shit has been happening all over the world, I'm cooped up indoors, and I've been dwelling over my life more and more by the day. Sometimes it feels like I don't have much of a future at all. I'm still living with my dad, I have very little in the way of real "adult" responsibilities, and it feels like everything outside of my internet presence has just kinda stagnated.

A lot of my attempts at projects over the past few years have been me trying to "fix" my past in some way, shape or form. I've still been trying to make my "Magnum Opus" game, My Hero 3, which to this day has just stopped and started over again countless times. I keep looking back to the past to dig up old things that I could rework and bring to up my modern gamedev sensibilities. And yes, this includes the ever-fabled Justice Mustache 4. Don't think for a second I've forgotten about that.

Part of the reason I typed this up was to finally get some closure. I did return briefly into the Discord server, but I don't think I had a lot of time to air out my thoughts on everything. I don't really know if anyone's gonna read this, frankly, but I hope someone does. I've been pondering over this for a while now. I sometimes feel like I need to let go of all of this. Most of my current projects and ideas are me trying to capture what I did here and bring them into my new, fancier standards.

That's not to say I hate developing games now or anything, far from it. It's just I feel like I might need to move on with my life. Stop trying to recreate something that's already passed. I have so many original ideas that I want to make, so many original stories I wanna tell, but I'm too afraid of presenting them because I feel like I lack any sort of real talent outside of game development and maybe music. So, I just kinda retreat into trying to make the same game over and over again, but Better™. And it's only worked like, once.

I miss not having any strict codes of design to adhere to. I miss not caring about properly offsetting sprites and aligning floor tiles. I miss being more impulsive and just making a game for the sake of it being funny and not worrying about the game even really working. I miss not feeling completely powerless when I can't get something I want to work exactly as I want it to via some crazy code magic that next to nobody will notice.

And yet, when I make things off-the-cuff, like I used to, it generally seems to prevail the most. But my brain nags me all the way through. "This is hardcoded in so it's bad and everyone will hate you for it!". "You didn't sneak in enough sine wave movement patterns!". "You didn't exactly recreate this one split-second animation from this game that accurately!". That kind of thing. I went from being insanely lax to incredibly anal in the span of 8 years.

I haven't had a very good time in regards to my mental health in these intervening years, if it's not apparent.

Will I ever return to make a new Trainwreck? Will I ever finally make one of my dream games that I've always wanted to? Even though I still have quite a lot of time left before I pass on, I still kind of feel like I've been wasting what time I've had, and I worry I won't be able to accomplish everything I've ever wanted to before I'm dead. A thing I remember is that when I first joined the Discord, someone mentioned that they believed I had "moved onto using Unity" or something to that effect. While it's nice to know that I'm still thought of that highly (somehow), it did make me realize I was still in the same place, using simplified click-on-thing-to-make-thing-happen based programming (I actually had tried Unity before that and absolutely hated it, incidentally).

Most of all, however, I feel alone. One of my only close IRL friends passed away from a battle with cancer in 2016, and ever since then I've felt completely distant from everyone in school and college. I generally found myself conversing with my professors about life more than any fellow student, but that itself has come to a halt for... obvious reasons.

I know this entire segment has been a huge bummer, but I write it because I need validation in my life. Especially now. The story of the starry-eyed kid who wanted to make the funny mustache shooty guy game has now become one of a manchild who has no clue what goals he has set in life aside from what he does on his computer, living with his crazy, borderline verbally abusive dad who doesn't really understand him or see him beyond what I was like when I was 8, and my mom who I'm absolutely sure is only helping me to get back at him (that's a whole different can of worms I will refrain from getting into here). I feel like I've never gonna leave this house...

I hope you've all been doing okay. I don't know how many of the people from the time I was regularly making games are still here, but I hope this message gets to you. God bless.