hcnone

Friday Rambles 2024-04-05

Added 2024-04-05 08:03:24 +0000 UTC

It's the first Friday Rambles for April, 2024. Well, it's getting deep into Friday here, anyway. Greetings from the future.

It was a nice week. I think I'm mostly over the jet lag. I saw a movie in a theater for the first time in like a year (Dune: Part 2, what a good movie to see in a theater). I ate lots of good cookin'. My goal is to gain some weight during this trip, because I've gotten kinda gaunt these past few months. I got that new keyboard I talked about last week. It's a Leopold FC660MBT, the third Leopold FC660 series keyboard I own now, but THIS one is a Bluetooth version, so I can more easily use it on the go with my cool laptop. It also has a cool and fancy white and gray color scheme which is a nice change of pace from the straight black keyboards I usually get. Man, the typing feeling is good (and familiar). Click clack click clack.

Above: The author's cool new keyboard and on-the-go setup

Somewhat predictably, the only productive thing I've done with this expensive new keyboard so far is write the Rambles. So much for writing dialogue.

Monday this week was "April Fool's Day" as they say, but I wasn't able to do anything funny for it. It's a lot of effort to do anything really creative for a one off gag, so I get why some game studios will just pull a "we are announcing a dating sim version of our game" and move on. One April Fool's joke I thought was really cool was the Cyberpunk RED X Va11halla collab supplement that R. Talsorian Games (the original creators of the Cyberpunk TTRPG that Cyberpunk 2077 is based on) made. If you enjoy Va11halla at all, you should check it out, if only for the additional bits of lore detailed in the doc. For the next April Fool's Day, Good Smile Company should collab with me on a Skye Nendoroid. Wouldn't that be a funny joke?

I finally, finally, started playing Signalis, like a year after I bought it, because Yuri "Signalis" Stern played my game and recommended it a couple weeks ago and I was embarrassed that I wasn't able to reciprocate, and I was finally able to find some time to game on my Steam Deck. I am not familiar with the survival horror genre at all (mostly because I'm too scared to play spooky games). I must say that I've been thoroughly engrossed, though, a few hours in - the retro-sci-fi aesthetic is super interesting, the atmosphere is oppressive and mysterious and idk, overall I'm still kinda scared but I'm too invested now to quit. I'm now getting used to the idea of not taking out every enemy because hey, it turns out you don't have an infinite supply of ammo, and you're not actually meant to blow everyone up Call of Duty style. I guess the feeling of constant dread is what makes the genre so compelling.

Above: I'm scared but I will finish this game no matter what

I think I'm gonna play the rest of it on my computer, though, because I want to use mouse and keyboard instead of gamepad controls. It doesn't have Mac support, but luckily it seems to work just fine on my travel Macbook with Whisky. I gotta say, Whisky has really been a gamechanger.

That reminds me that I also still need to play Refind Self too, because Lizardry "7 Days to End With You and Refind Self" Dev also recommended my game. I think it's a much shorter game. Maybe I'll go play right now. [an hour later] Okay, I finally played this game too. Look! My (automaton's) personality is "Clergy".

Above: Apparently I emphasize with fictional characters, which I guess makes sense...

The gist of the game is that you control a humanoid robot that has lost its memories and perform actions within a world to determine its personality. You also unravel memories of the past. At the end you get the results of your "personality test" and you can share it with your social media friends. I enjoyed the experience, and I think it was a lot more lighthearted than 7 Days to End with You (maybe), but I think I'm supposed to play through more than once to reveal the entire plot. I'll go through again later to see additional endings and finding hidden secrets and stuff. It was really fun seeing the % of people who made the same decisions I did. There! I can finally say I played your game! And thought it was really neat! Sorry it took so long! @lizardy_dev

I've also been playing Apollo Justice Trilogy off and on on my Steam Deck. I've already played these games but I've really been enjoying the HD sprites vs the tiny resolution of the 3DS where I originally played them. It's also good research for my video game making "job".

Yeah, I'm doing a lot of game playing, not a lot of game devving. But a game dev that doesn't play games... is like a writer who doesn't read books, or a composer who doesn't listen to music. like whaaa?? Who makes games without playing them?? Maybe you think it'll make a lot of money? Lol

Anyway I'm taking lots of notes about what makes a game interesting to me, and what works and doesn't and all the different stuff I want to gain inspiration from so I can apply those learnings to my own next game that will definitely be made at some point. I keep thinking about Game 2. The more I think about Game 2 the more I want to fully work on it. I keep putting off doing work for the EMDND Content Update. I am Penny.

SUCCULES: IF YOU HAD SPENT EVEN HALF THE TIME YOU SPENT TALKING ABOUT THE CONTENT UPDATE ON ACTUALLY FINISHING THE CONTENT UPDATE, YOU'D HAVE FINISHED THE CONTENT UPDATE THREE TIMES BY NOW.

TORTURED VOICE: ... I'm... sorry... I really thought... doing those localizations... would be worth it...

Okay, moving on.

In 3 days I will be in Osaka, meeting an old friend and enjoying omakase at a fancy sushi restaurant. And eat other foods, of course. Just gonna pig out, really. After coming back from my Japan trip I'm going up to Seoul and doing Seoul things. Which will probably involve eating more foods.

Am I actually going to have any time to make the anniversary zine? lol probably not. RIP. i should spend a day or two making a comic at least. Maybe I'll just use the sales pic and call it a month. What luck to have all this going on during the anniversary of my game, huh! Oh well!