Oops!

Came down with a bad case of Someone Is Wrong on the Internet last night.  I'll figure something out in the next day or two. Pardon our dust, and all that.

EDIT FOR DAY 48:  Nope, I got sucked into another project.  Unrelated, I won't be writing about it here.  But it took up all my time.  I'm venturing forth unto the Frigid Northlands tomorrow morning to see my kid brother play the Tin Man, though, so I should have some time to get something together by Friday.  I've just been busy with other things (I'm not accustomed to devoting so much time to a single hobby with such a narrow focus... jeez...).  If nothing else, I'll crank out another text-based whatever, just to keep myself in practice.  Peace!

Day 45: Ennui conquered... need for sleep still a worthy opponent...

Fell asleep at my desk working on... well, I was doodling, but I was doodling a way to algorithmically build cities.  It works (at least on paper), and is nice & flexible, so it's all good.  Now I just need... a world to put it in, and to code it all out.

Reconnected with an old hobby of mine, that did wonders to re-center myself and I'm feeling much better now.  But aside from these doodles, I don't have much to show for it.  Still, doing something, even if I'm not doing much... due for a breakthrough any day now, I swears it...

Day 41: Ennui strikes. :|

Fuck, you guys.  (That comma is so important.  I'm complaining, not lashing out at you, Dear Readers.)

Yesterday, all the way home from work, I was like, "I'll get those programs Zach told me about, figure out how to open up those files, read through 'em until I see how they work, then apply some of that to my own thing.  Ooh, then maybe I'll play some vidjagames, if I've still got time, 'cuz I'm off tomorrow."  The whole way home, I was fucking excited to get home and start doing things.

Got home, opened up my 'puter, and... shit.  Shitty, shitty shit-shit.  Nothing was wrong with my computer, or anything else in the world, I just suddenly came down with Maximum Strength Not-Fucking-Around ennui.  For those who aren't savvy, ennui is a French word that means "boredom" - but it's a particularly French flavor of boredom.

So I thought, "Fuggit, I'll play some games first, then see if that helps."  Nope!  Phoned it in for a little bit, then didn't care any more.  Poked around on the internet, didn't care about anything.  Found some life-affirming quotes and phrases on the "We Fucking Love Atheism" page on Facebook, brought a smile to my face, but the ennui didn't go away.  Made dinner, it tasted like cardboard.  Went to bed the Hell-ass early.

Woke up after twelve hours of sleep, it was my day off, thought I'd be full of energy.  Nope!  Still full of ennui. Got Notepad++, and figured out how to open those files Zach sent me - so I'm at least in a better position than I was on Friday.  Tried reading it, but the voice in my head kept shouting - like, seriously shouting - "This is stupid!  This is so stupid!  Who cares about this stupid, stupid shit?  Nobody!  Fuck this!" over and over at me.  Took a bath, and somehow the water went from luke-warm to burning without warming me.  Made breakfast and had tea - breakfast also tasted like cardboard, despite carefully planned spices, and tea made me want a nap.  Laid down for a nap - but no!  Stared at the ceiling for four hours.

This is worse than Existential Crisis and Dragons.

Seriously, The Internet.  I think I lost my dice in the move, so I can't even roll my way out of this.  I mean, I don't even feel like drinking.  Don't wanna watch A Game of Thrones.  Don't wanna eat ice cream, for fear that red velvet cake will also taste like cardboard.

I am angry at the world for a whole host of reasons, though - reasons that predate my birth (Hell, reasons that predate the fucking Industrial Revolution) - so I do feel like breaking things.  But I know in my heart of hearts that breaking things won't fix those problems, and will really just inconvenience someone else, which will make me feel worse.  Shit, I even tried looking up cures for ennui on the internet - I found religion, spending money, and murder; all things I can't do.

Fuggit.  I haven't spent a day staring at the air for a while.  I guess I just gotta ride this out.  And anyway, I got Zach's files open in Notepad++, so that's technically progress (stupid, tiny, insignificant progress is still progress).  I'm gonna go sit on the porch now and think about feelings.  Y'all have a better one.

Day 40: Frustration!

Zach gave me some old files of his from which to learn some coding, but I'm having trouble opening them due to version conflicts an' shit.  The message "the file could not be opened" is really starting to grate, now that I've seen it like forty times.  After more than two hours of arguing with my computer over whether or not a file can be opened with a program, I'm just fucking sick of this.  I quit.

For tonight.

I'll take another crack at it over the weekend (I only work half a day on Sunday), and should have some coding done for Monday's post.  But right now, this feels less like a hobby and more like Purgatory, so I'm just going to set it aside for the moment.  Y'all have a great weekend!

Day 36: A Matter of Scale

Missed Friday.  That's two in 33, but still in general A territory overall.

I haven't been working on Hula or Solitaire, so I guess I may as well talk about what I have been working on:  drawing maps an' stuff.

Here's the general schematic of how the world breaks down:

The "flow" is basically from right to left.

Everything's gonna be represented in terms of cards (and tiles and chips, which are just types of cards).  The world will be built, Carcassone-style, out of modular tiles, not unlike RPGtoolkit's boards, but of varying sizes for the various levels of detail at which they will be dealt with.  Here are some of the chips and other tiles that can be placed on land tile cards:

Those houses are roughly 1/4 of a mile on a side.

I guess we're officially dealing in serious real estate, eh?

This is a closeup of the tile diagram in the center of that big wide image at top:

One of these tiles is 3 miles on a side, with a central feature occupying 2.25 square miles.

Hopefully this will give me enough useful levels of detail without requiring ridiculous loading screens.  But I guess we'll jump off that bridge when we get to it.

I drew this area of the map to scale on a magnetic toy.  Such a world would be about a quarter the cirucmference of the real world.  I figure if Minecraft can go up to eight times the surface area of the actual world, so this should be a manageable world size, I think.

This is going to be Noob Island:

Noob Island pictured on left Side, inset of the Northern Wastes.

I'm going to figure out some way, when this is all going, to make it multiplayer.  I know that Hanachi makes long-distance LAN-like playing possible, so this is still in the realm of things I can do.  But that's a bit farther down the line.

I also drew a general body plan for sprite maps:

Generic body plan with optional features!

This is farther down the line still, but it'll be a lot of work to implement, so I figure there's no harm in getting some work done in advance.

I also have stuff about stats & shit, but it's a lot of writing and not fun to look at.  However, I was able to run a fight with just a deck of playing cards, so I think that bodes well for my combat mechanics.

Day 31.5: Employment!

I didn't want to say anything about this, not out of some irrational fear of jinxing it, but for the very practical and rational reason that I didn't want to risk saying something foolish and thereby screwing it up... but I am employed now!  In accordance with the prophecy, I shall be reducing my output to Mondays and Fridays.  So the next post will be Day 35, this coming Friday.  Hooray for gainful employment!

Day 31: More learning, more coding

Still working on Solitaire.  Also realized just now that I completely forgot to update on Friday.  Whoops!  My best friend came down from out of town to hang out, and it slipped my mind until just now.  Still, losing out on one day in thirty isn't exactly terrible...

Solitaire still isn't ready, though.  I've beefed up the header some, and have read further in a few of the tutorials, but it's still not working.  So, more on that as it develops.  Later!