Haven't posted here in a while, things have been fairly busy and frankly I haven't had much to write about either. However, there have been some interesting things that have arisen in the past couple weeks.
Firstly, Megayahtzee is a hit. More of a hit than I ever could have expected. You know, initially I began developing the game just for myself and a friend. We've played enough Yahtzee to the point where we wanted some added challenge, some new sort of technique or strategy that must be used. After creating the initial "alpha" version, I wasn't sure how much work I wanted to put into it anymore.
It got to the point where I didn't have much care to update it, even though it looked incredibly messy. About a week later, something made me want to work on it again, so I cleaned up the UI, fixed all of the bugs, and made it into a functional singleplayer game. I'm happy with the game at this point, so I share it with some friends... who share it with some friends.
It wasn't long before a small community formed around this game. I really only expected a couple people to play it maybe twice and forget about it, but no, many people enjoyed this game, and played it for hours! It wasn't before long that I started work on a leaderboard for the game, created custom rankings for different scores. There have been users that have even modded the game, one player wrote technical documentation over the permutations of all scoretypes, another player got a score which I initially thought was impossible.
All of this took me by complete surprise, but it was nice. It was refreshing to know that some silly web game I whipped up had the ability to form a small community. This experience gave me some perspective into how it goes for game developers. It's an interesting timeline, really. Even though it wasn't on a grand scale or anything, it was still nice, and it made me feel good.
What exactly is a decision? What does it mean to make a decision as a human being? Some say that your experiences shape who you are as a person, which, I find to be accurate. You are who you are because of the experiences that you've experienced. The decisions you make reflect this, the way you experience now is affected by your decisions. It's this tangled, conjunctive, reflective, intra-- and interpersonal web of decisions that make you a human being.
I'm currently at the point in my life where I'm running into fairly heavy decisions that have been more tough than the average decision you would have to make in your daily life. Some of these are potentially life-changing, career-altering, some are mundane as choosing to walk to the left or right of an oncoming person, (you should always choose the right side, by the way... if you're in the US that is, I'm sure it's switched elsewhere).
Sure, it was a decision of mine to start writing this blog post--to put my thoughts into physical existence, which I can find troubling at times. Articulating thoughts can be a seamless flow of elegance or a struggle to convey the depth of our intentions, sometimes what I end up saying is an entirely watered-down version of what I was wanting to say. Regardless of how well we express ourselves though, the essence of our message is invariably filtered through the recipient's personal experiences, a unique interpretation by each individual.
Each person will grasp your message in a different way each time, sometimes slight, or sometimes a little more obtuse. When you articulate your thoughts to a person, they will search for a connection within themselves to synthesize with what you are trying to convey based off of their experiences or decisions, at the root of it, at least. It is possible to try and articulate a message in a way of assisting the listener in a way that digs at their previous emotional experiences to something, so that you can better convey what you're trying to articulate. For instance, imagine you stated "remember the last time you felt genuine excitement, ...", rather than explaning an event outright, and expecting them to feel excited, you can "pre-load" an emotion into your delivery.
It's akin to the way music can evoke a visceral yet vicarious emotion through its themes. It's why you have the music taste that you do. Your experiences and decisions lead you to enjoying what you enjoy, why your hobbies-- or lackthereof, exist. Maybe this sounds crazy, or manipulative, but really it's about having a more meaningful dialogue or interaction with the person you're articulating your thoughts to. Achieving a deeper understanding is crucial for meaningful human connections, allowing us to form our ideas into something more influentially malleable.
Happy Mario Day!
Recently, I've found myself diving back into charting with renewed motivation. There's something uniquely satisfying about the creative journey, especially when revisiting it after a break. Each return feels like a fresh perspective, subtly shifting my approach to chart creation. This incremental change becomes more pronounced over time, differing significantly from the routine of daily practice. The latest simfile I'm working on presents its own set of challenges, yet the excitement of eventually sharing it with the community keeps me motivated. Despite the work that lies ahead, the process of charting itself has been immensely enjoyable.
I've been contemplating the role of a charter in the rhythm game ecosystem. Is the goal to express oneself, or to craft experiences that resonate with players? In reality, it's a mix of both, along with other considerations. The diversity in charting styles and objectives is huge, each creator bringing their unique vision to the music. While some may prioritize the challenge or simply creating charts to songs they enjoy, others focus on conveying the intricacies of a musical piece through gameplay. And that's okay, to each their own. I've been more open-minded about things like that lately.
I've also ventured into developing a new Yahtzee dice game, "Megayahtzee", currently available* on my site, albeit in a rough state. The game mechanics are set, but the user interface needs significant refinement. Cleaning up the code, enhancing the visuals, and tackling the CSS are all on my to-do list. The design for the scorecard is still up in the air, but there's no rush—placeholders serve their purpose for now.
Published a new Etterna tool yesterday, who knew writing math for interpolation could be so much fun... it did come with its headaches, what project doesn't? A couple hours after publishing it I considered some edge cases that I didn't even consider as possibilities, so I fixed those up the same day. Hopefully there aren't others that I have to worry about.
On another tangent, I really don't like how so many people these days feel like they have to criticize everything. If you like something, that's great, if you dislike something, that's also fine. In music for example, it is easy to just pass something off that you don't like as "bad" or "low-effort". It never matters how much effort goes into something as long as you enjoy it.
It's the same case for video games these days. In my opinion, it is distasteful to not try a game just because you heard the reviews weren't good. Play the game if you have fun with it. As long as you are enjoying it, or having fun, who cares what other people think?
It is the case that many people are worried about being judged by others, thus causing them to force themselves into liking what a majority of "critically-acclaimed" people are writing decent reviews about.
Well, since last time I posted, I developed two new tools in the Etterna section. Maybe not entirely practical but it's fine, honestly I developed them because I just wanted more room to fill on my site.
Who knows, maybe people will start using more BGChanges or X-mod because of it, highly doubt it, but it's at least a hopeful outlook.
The BGChanges generator ended up being a lot more work than I initially anticipated, a lot of edge cases I didn't really think about before starting the project, and a lot of issues I didn't expect to run into. But, that's just how development for things like that go.
I did end up doing that "Under Construction" thing, but now it serves nicely as both a 404 and an Under Construction page.
This week I'll be getting to the Notecharting and Packs tab... maybe the Packs tab. My idea with that tab is to post reviews about packs that I play through and talk about highlight files I enjoyed from them. The end goal being that maybe people would be interested in seeing what I write about them and try them out for themselves.
Leap year! Woo! See you in 2028.
Ended up getting more done yesterday on the webpage than I anticipated, which I'm happy about. Still, not all the pages are complete, but I could redirect the incomplete pages to something that would display "Under Construction" or something.
Most likely will spend today working on the Etterna section, and might publish some of my games in the programming section. There aren't many games that I have to show off yet, but I do think they could be fun little projects to pick up in small bursts and show them off.
One game I have an idea for is a Tetris clone with a twist, not sure what that twist will be... but maybe it will come to me while I program it, who knows.
Website was launched today. I'm excited to see where this goes. Not much to share currently, pretty much all of the content is still in my head. I'm hoping to have a few things up by the end of the month.
This entire project began out of boredom during a work day, we have a lot of downtime at my job during this specific week: 13th Week. Engineers on various projects will give presentations the first couple days then apparently there's some tradition to create a project during the week. So, this is my project, hopefully it evolves to something much more than simply a week-long project.