Smoke rolled in from forest fires. So, not much. It kinda prevents me from doing all the things I like doing. The house is hot(can't run AC or smoke will come in), we can't go outside. So I'm probably going to be reading, on my phone, or playing a Gameboy advance, lol. My PC and TV are also out of the question because they are little space heaters. It's not the end of the world, I think I'm just grumpy from the heat lol.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Nice username! Have you ever played the Star Wars Attack of the Clones game for the GBA? One of my core gaming memories there! Any games in mind? Or is your PC one you could try undervolting? I feel you on the space heater, my PC looks like a crypto mining rig because of the vent shaft I have going out an AC-space-converted window.
Sorry to hear about the smoke, we recently had a 1 day lightning storm which set some fires off just north of me, though I'm thankful that it hasn't come down. But I can see it if I drive up just 15 or 20 minutes.
Thank you! I haven't played the attack of the clones game on the GBA but I still have a copy of episode 3 which I remember enjoying thoroughly!
I suppose I could undervolt my pc...I'm not sure I would trust myself to do it without messing it up lol. I would probably need to jump back and forth quite frequently, so I wonder if that would be worthwhile. That gives me something to think about, though! Venting the heat out of the room is a very interesting idea. I've thought about so many ways of trapping the heat, cooling it down faster, magically poofing it out of the air lol.
It's great in the winter though! It was -30 for a bit this winter, and I had to open my window for a bit to let the heat escape.
Nooo worries. I appreciate your thoughtfulness though. I'm trying to get used to it or figure out ways to adapt because I imagine it's going to be smokey and hot like this (or worse) for the foreseeable future.
I did come up with a couple of ideas this weekend that I'll have to try. I hooked up a big box fan with a furnace filter taped to the back, and that seems to help filter any smoke that comes in. Another idea I had was to tape the whole window with a garbage bag so that it's completely airtight. Alternatively, I remembered that wetting a towel and waving it around a room is a great way to remove smoke particles from the air. So that's also neat.
Painting some minis mostly (technically just dry brushing today, there's too many for more). They're for some sessions of One Page Rules that my buddies and I are getting into.
And planning tomorrow's DND session though I fully expect it to go like the last 2 sessions; sessions that should have been delayed as one player was in condition to play both times. (Once for getting too drunk the day before and once for having a kidney stone kicking their ass)
Here's a pic of one of the dudes I finished dry brushing before this current little break.
The dude
That's super cool! I enjoy DnD from the outside (movies, games, concepts) but I've never really participated myself. My friend recently asked me to create a character, I've been thinking to play something like a Vash the Stampede type personality and, to get a feel for the game, go for perception and try to inspect as much as I can.
I also love the idea of minifig painting! Something I've always wanted to do that's similar is finding toys and figurines to resculpt and paint. Turning Iron Man into a WarHammer type sort of thing lol.
He looks great!!
DND can be really fun with the right people and playing with friends definitely stacks it in the way of fun potential
In terms of mini painting I really dig it, it's so relaxing to just sit down and paint a mini
Making minis both physically and digitally is also really fun though I don't do it very often. Most of the 3D modeling I do is CAD stuff but I've been dipping my toes back into Blender lately. I don't currently have any models I've made in Blender I want to show off but that's usually how I tackle any creative endeavor; I spend a few weeks exclusivley doing internal feedback, then a few months to a year with some external feedback from a very limited group, then after that I'll show stuff publically. That way I can learn and have fun without worrying about people sucking the fun out of it before I can grow into it.
Edit: But the best way to start a new creative endeavor into a process is to just do it. Make mistakes, fail, learn. But most importantly: have fun.
Definitely! He's also a very relaxed DM, if I wanted to I could find some silly ridiculous class - my other friend will be playing an enslaved dragon tamer that he found online for example.
Honestly, the main reason I never got into it is that I already have so many hobbies that adding even more has always been a balancing act of "how interesting in this am I really?" It's different for a group of friends though, so I'm happy to be part of this one even if I wasn't as interested in the past.
I got home from a 100km bike ride about an hour ago. I'm going to go mow the lawn and get the patio staged so a fiber optic line can be run under it.
That's awesome, that's super far!
This was my shakedown ride for the 100 miler planned for next weekend. :p
I am happy that I managed to keep nearly a 16mph average riding solo today. Also, just 8 more miles on this bike before I feel like I have definitely gotten my money's worth out of it.
Mischief :3
The best kind of day!
Playing video games, lawn mowing, taking the dog for walks and hanging out with my two sons.
Sounds like a lovely day! Which games have you got in mind?
I love the Diablo franchise, so I'm playing both Diablo 3 and Diablo 4.
Picking up trash in my neighborhood, watering some trees I planted, haircut, packing for tomorrow’s travel… if I have time hope to go swim in the river and maybe have sex later.
Busy day!
Taking care of your local area before traveling is a nice way to make your return even brighter! That sounds lovely! We've had a lot of good river/lake days this month!
Ripped a bunch of home movies and optical disks for archival. Threw a bunch of stuff out. Cleaned off some of my bookshelves to free up space and took the books to a couple of Little Free Libraries.
I'm in Seattle for a little vacation. Went to the "Bite of Seattle" at the Seattle Center today. That was unexpected, as my brother and I just wanted to go to the Space Needle. Instead, we walked around the festival grounds, got some beers, and listened to some of the local artists rocking out. We also met up with our parents for a bit who are vacationing up here, separately, too. Bit of a nice surprise for our mom. This was my first time here; it's a cool place!
Now I'm trying to get home, which is proving a little tougher due to IT issues stemming from Friday. My airline, Delta, has been heavily affected. I was supposed to go home Saturday, but flight got cancelled. Now I'm supposed to leave today, Sunday, but I'm getting nervous. Feel like my flight will get cancelled again. Or my connecting flight home will get cancelled, leaving me stranded in another city So yeah. Nothing like a relaxing, chill vacation ending in some mild anxiety!
Ah well, I'll get home eventually, one way or another.
The irony of having incredibly great, and incredibly terrible timing! Thankfully all things considered it's a pretty safe way to experience some fun traveling! Let the job know, have someone check in on any pets back home -- everything will work out alright and you've got yourself an extra day to experience some new stuff! May not be ideal but it can still be fun!
Well the extra time on Saturday and Sunday morning was fine. But then it turned into a rolling delay fest for about 10hrs. I was at the airport at like 10am on Sunday, flight was supposed to leave a 1:30p, and it was finally cancelled around 11pm. So I've been here for an extra two days, without much other than my laptop, phone, and 1 extra pair of clothes that I always bring on my carry-on (my checked baggage made it home Sunday night/Monday morning, go figure).
But at least I was able to find a reasonably priced hotel. And a ticket out on another airline, which I'm boarding in about 10min.
Delta is going to be paying me back a lot of money...I'm up to about $1500 in unexpected travel expenses.
Not much. Just went grocery shopping and relaxed in the pool. It's been raining for the past two weeks, but today was sunny, and it was perfect. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, since there's a chance of rain, but if it's still sunny when I wake up, I'll head on the new trail by my place.
I also liked what you were listening to. Jazz is underrated imo.
Thank you! I like picking music based off the mood I'm in, so it can be picked pretty randomly usually based on the tempo. The first hour was perfect for what I needed!
Did an action pistol match on Saturday, and a PCSL 2-gun match on Sunday. I did tolerably well on the action pistol match, but I need to practice moving and shooting more. I... Got DQ'd for a major safety violation in the second stage of the PCSL 2-gun; I was sprinting to the last shooting position, slipped on wet grass, and fell, dropping a loaded firearm. (To be clear - it's the 'dropping a loaded gun' that's the safety violation; a bouncing firearm is going to break the 180 rule.) It was really disappointing.
On the other hand, my handgun worked flawlessly in the action pistol match; I'd had a major issue with it in the previous match I'd shot, and while I was pretty sure I'd corrected the problem, I wasn't sure.
Holy shit it was humid; the rain stopped for both matches, but that just meant that it was oppressively hot and humid. Woooo, climate change... :/
Went to the farmers market from 7-1 today, came home to find my wife running a fever so I'm now doing laundry and dishes. I'll have to go do all the watering a little later today, but that's okay. I still have about 7 cubic yards of wood chips to move, and our pond is now low enough to allow me to buck and remove the trees that fell into it during a wind storm earlier this year. Some of that will get done today, and I'll be doing more of it tomorrow before and after the weekly grocery run. I also recorded and edited a video for our channel but I'm sorta 50/50 on it a few hours later and don't know whether it'll be posted or just deleted despite the time it took to do all that.
I, too, clean to music! It's usually some kind of bop like Parov Stellar or Caravan Palace to prevent me from stopping to admire my work partway through.
That's awesome, busy day! I can understand not being sold on a video you just made, I've been wanting to make videos for a while now but can't quite find my place. Curating can be difficult!
When I'm cleaning downstairs I love putting on a record since it helps time management a little bit, gives me that 2-5 minute break to switch the record, feel the weight of the last song in silence, get some water and get back to cleaning after flipping it! I recently found a couple pieces of carousel music which have just been awesome!
I'm with you 100% on the music helping with time management, there's nothing like putting on an album with the right bpm for what needs to get accomplished. And the small dance movements, head bops, and shimmies while working helps to prevent getting burned out on the chores. Plus that feeling of serendipity when the task completes around the same time as the album.... pure magic.
Gonna go see Common perform with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra.
That sounds awesome! Summer concerts are great, I went to go see Primus last weekend!
Mainly working on a game-jam game with a friend.
It's been very interesting and quite fun. We're using Godot. Progress is going well, despite our lack of previous experience.
That's super cool! As I understand, game jams are a shorter period of time to put the project together right? What sort of game are you going for?
I have a game project I've been tentatively working on as well, but it's going to be quite the struggle because I am not a programmer, nor am I really an artist haha! My plan has been to take it "one scene at a time" as a way to practice the fundamentals while slowly starting to put together the pieces.
My goals for it are pretty crazy through. Hand drawn assets, sfx and music made by me, game coded by mostly me... Lot to do lol. My idea for the game itself is a mix of a few games. The hardest part will be the movement, as I want it to feel like Smash Bros Melee, where the player has really good control over the character. The gameplay is a mix of Revita and Hollow Knight. Revita is an arena-level based game where there are 5 thematic kingdoms with about 10 floors, so I'm looking at something like seeded rooms so I don't have to hand draw every room.
I have some friends willing to help, but the programming part is still falling on me for now lol. For the most part, I think I'll do alright (for example, I whipped up a main menu pretty easily with only minor setbacks). I know for sure the hardest part will be the character physics, then the enemy AI. Otherwise I feel pretty confident that I can learn what I need to do.
I have a bunch of ideas all written down, the game itself is pretty fully fleshed out with not a whole lot of feature creep. There's just my abilities in getting it made standing in the way!
I've got an underground and a sewer put together so far
Sorry for the reply being so late :)
Yeah, game jams typically have a theme that is revealed when it starts, and then a limited time until submissions end. Can be a day, a weekend, or longer, even significantly. The one I participated in was two weeks, and concluded last Wednesday.
Our game Frogventure (more like a prototype anyway) is a side-scrolling jump-and-run. The jam themes were "Shadows and Alchemy" (which can be interpreted broadly and non-literally). You play as a frog and save tadpoles by collecting them and putting them in safe puddles. You run and jump. You eat insects to transform your abilities. Higher jumps, hiding under a leaf, tongue-grabbing.
My friend and I are actually both programmers, so that part wasn't a problem for us. :) We didn't have real gamedev experience. It was a lot of fun, very interesting, and surprisingly productive. It's great how iterative and with visual and experienceable results it is. (Quite contrary to software development lol)
I was about to write I haven't heard of Revita, but I own it on Steam. I haven't played it yet.
Your game sounds like a lot of effort. Good luck :) Do you have any concrete planning or milestones you are tackling now?
What game engine are you using for it?
Hey no problem! I have a backlog of comments to respond to also haha! Revita is a lot of fun! Make sure you opt into its beta, it's the last official update for a while and changes the game relatively drastically. And that great to hear it went well! I've heard about them a number of times (moreso as I got involved in this), so it's always cool seeing people work on their projects!
I'm using Godot since it seems pretty straightforward, although I am wondering if I should look into a node style one instead, since I'm not a programmer lol. So far with Godot everything has been fine except the scripting, cause I have very little idea what I'm doing lmao, definitely going to have to put in some work to learn. When I was working on it, I did end up with a serviceable main menu, although it needed some work to actually move between scenes still, not sure why it wasn't working. But I got the music, the icons, and the exit game to work lol, just the scene transitions are left.
Unfortunately I haven't made much progress since the original post. I worked on some assets around the time of this original post, but I've been so busy since that I haven't gotten to do much else. I'm not great with characters, so I'm having a friend work on those but it's also been slow going (which is fine, I can't even really use the character assets for a while anyway). Mostly, I just got a new job and have been training and had all that crunch with the audiobook and the game testing that I do, so hopefully in a couple weeks I'll be more settled, as it's 3 days a week on site. It's just the training has me in during the week making time short for me, along with the other 2 jobs.
But I do have achievable goals I feel like, and the game itself I feel is fairly fleshed out, it just needs to be put together piece by piece.
In terms of level design, I want it to progress like Revita does, where the player goes through arenas that are procedurally generated, or probably seeded levels is a better phrase. (Or hand crafted is what it's looking like right now, since I can't actually find a lot of details on what I want to accomplish). So at the time I played around with creating one level, putting up the collision boxes to walk on then adding the assets in a canvas of -3 to 3, to create the Hollow Knight styled parallax. Since the assets weren't scaled right, it came out silly but not bad for a first attempt I'd say. So for that I just need to rescale my assets and I'll be able to start making levels. But I really don't want to hand craft most of these stages, I will if I have to, but if I could figure out how to get a good seed system in place that would be ideal. And I have plans for hidden/unlockable rooms written out as well, this should be pretty easy from what I've seen. And finally on this aspect, I've been thinking about each stage having a gimmick. The snowly level would have sliding physics, the sewer level would have poison, the underground would have pratfalls, that sort of stuff. Nothing too complicated, just a bit of variety for each stage.
In terms of character physics, this is really the one I want to focus on, since that's really the core gameplay. The thing about Smash Melee is its movement is so fluid and strong that you can play it by yourself just interacting with the stages. This is also the combat gameplay, so it's a bit of a mix of hollow knight and revita. So I really want to get something like that working well. Currently I'm planning on trying to recreate Melee's aspects of movements (walk, run, dash, eventually aeriel attacks). It has been difficult, mostly because it's physics programming which are two things that are just pretty far beyond me. I get the feeling that I'll need to play around with other game projects in order to get mine the way I want it. For that, I may go with Super Mario World, since there seems to be some overlap. Anyway, the most important one has the biggest hurdle lol. I have ideas for 3 characters though, a bit standard overall but should still be fun. A pretty typical melee/sword fighter, a typical ranged/bow fighter, and an in-between that I want to be boomerangs. It's going to be difficult getting it to work as I want it, but if I can get it it will be very worth it.
In terms of enemies, I don't have a lot set in stone design wise, but I do have a solid plan for how they work in game. Each stage has 2 bosses, a regular boss and an afflicted boss. The afflicted bosses of each stage have 3 enemies that they create. These enemies can appear randomly in any stage, and take on the properties of that stage. So, the Undergrounds Stage 1 Afflicted boss might have enemies appear in the stage 4 Snowy level, and they'd have some of those properties. The idea here is as you play the game normally, you come across a variety of afflicted enemies. As you defeat those, a counter grows (say 100 defeated for now) and you unlock the afflicted boss for the stage.
Basically, each stage has a regular boss and an unlockable boss! And each stage has its cast of enemies (about 7 probably), along with the %chance to spawn an afflicted one, so there should be a good amount of variation.
And this leads to the goal of the game, which would be to defeat all the afflicted bosses, wiping out the affliction!
Other than all that, the SFX and music will be done by me since music and audio is really one of my main hobbies, so this week I've been getting my music space set back up, in part for that and in part for myself!
Finally, that seems to just leave the items and synergies. This is probably my least planned one at the moment, as coming up with a variety of stat altering items and ability altering items will be pretty dependent on these characters existing for something to alter. I have some ideas and goals for these, but I don't really want to start working on items to place around chests/rooms when I don't even have a player character yet lol. So I'll probably have this around the same time/after I get the enemy AI sorted out, as those two seem pretty related in gameplay. Typically defeating enemies has a chance to give you something, so I'll play around with that at that point. But I know that at least as a base I can have a set of items that change stats, that affect abilities, and then standard currency/HP/shield drops.
And well off the top of my head I think that's mostly everything! There's definitely a lot that I have to do to make progress, but I feel it's a super solid concept with a lot of manageable goals, without too much potential for feature creep. I initially came up with 9 kingdoms/biomes, which seems like a lot but I think it's not so bad. For one, I have the concepts already drawn out, so it's just translating the assets. For two, I'm going for the progression style that Revita has, so a few arenas within a biome. That would just be the (hopefully seeded) levels, which doesn't seem so bad. With that many stages it's mostly just the enemies and bosses left, and I already have the enemies planned out for the most part. And for bosses, I have thematic elements of each stage that I'm going to incorporate into the afflicted bosses, so for example the industrial city level has greed and overconsumption as themes, so the city boss will have features that indicate that.
It's very much a fully fledged game, so I am getting to the point where I will probably want to work on other game projects to get a better familiarity. Then once I have that, I'd be able to better work on this project with confidence. My shortcomings here really are the physics for movement and the enemy AI though, everything else I've been able to get a cursory start on and it's been pretty good!
Sounds interesting!
We've also used Godot. As for sound design, I voiced the sounds we put in - frog ribbiting, jumping, and tongue slurping :P
I can definitely see how Godot without scripting experience/expertise would be hard to get into.
I found the UI of Godot awful. And the entire node system quickly leads to a mess of mixed concerns in structuring logic and elements. As a software engineer I am mindful of structure and can - at least for myself - keep at restructuring when elements, logic, and relationships change, but I felt like the entire system was not guiding you to well-structured components concerns. The GDScript casing difference to C# and docs and the lack of braces for code blocks were to my dislike too.
That being said, Godot does have a lot of features and allowed us to move forward quite well. Just with occasional stumbling.
I have some very basic experience from college so I get the concept, it's just the execution I struggle with as the documentation is helpful but sometimes too abstract for me to engage with, which is why seeing it put into practice in a video can help.
Thankfully the UI feels pretty straightforward for me, and I learned before I started to treat nodes as scenes, sort of like LEGO bricks haha. But it definitely can also make organization harder too, since it's a lot of subtrees for the main project.