Omnivore:

Current Mood:

Watching the Chrono Trigger programmer ending for no particular reason. I didn't realise Tetsuya Nomura is the guy who pulls the '3... 2... 1... RESET!' gag!

And Yasunori Mitsuda is the guy who says 'Now I'm going on a journey!' and runs out of the room :')

I've sorted out the heavy tin of loose change I had into little plastic bags so I can use them for lunch money. I can't help feeling it makes me look like a bit of a nutter. It's a sad indication of... something or rather, I'm sure. (I remember flipping out at an American Express ad saying a major benefit of a credit card is being able to slip it in the back pocket of your sexy designer jeans. What if it broke!???)

I spent a lot of last night drawing. I should have spent more time drawing this evening, but I've been slacking terribly. I should just chill-out, it's not like I'm on a deadline to sort my life out (or rather, I am, but so is everyone else). I'm still pretty negative about drawing, but I think I'm getting closer to the massive problem that's been holding me back from improving for so long with it. Funnily enough it's closely related to all the other massive problems I've had...

I realised last week that for as long as I have lived, my response when a situation reached a certain difficulty level was to yell FUCK THIS SHIT and wander off, and this approach wasn't really going to work for me any more. So that's good (also means I don't have to rage-quit my job, hah!).

But I'm still really lonely. All my attempts to talk to anyone outside a circle of four or so people (half of those are online) always wind up with me feeling like the most awkward thing since the 70s. Random things I try doing to get some sort of conversation going get very little to no response, or backfires horrifically. People don't really talk to me either. I've always felt like there's no one around me. Like I'm a fly buzzing around an empty room.

I honestly have no idea how true this is, I could dismiss it all as extreme negativity but I've met some very self-absorbed people in my life (even taking into account that I'm one of them) or if it's all in my imagination, which probably is what annoys me the most.

Pshaw. *throws up hands*

Shitty day improved immeasurably by tooling around with Python some more and making Hello World in Flixel. Time to tear myself away from the Call of Juarez menu music (which has been playing for the last 45 minutes) and get some sleep while I'm feeling the inclination.

It only took me a minute to remember I had to change the code to point to Flex 3 and not Flex 4. See, I'm not a complete sponge!

As part of a currently super-seekrit project I'm going to be throwing the book of unfulfilled design ideas and ditching the whining and Imma learning me some PROGRAMMING.

I may have gone overboard borrowing textbooks from the library at work. I had to catch a taxi home.

Someone has reassured me that RDR gets awesome again after the mission I'm about to do, thank goodness. But first, I've got work to do. :3

I still need to buy a replacement laptop (and this Acer laptop I'm borrowing is terribly designed, good lord). I'm planning on hunting around the city for a cheap eeePC or equivalent, and spending the time and money to get a beefy PC when I'm more inclined.

I'm not about to jump around screaming I'M CURED of the terrible-ass mood I was in for the last two months, but I feel pretty good atm. *bro-grabs self*

In GTA (and RDR) you're forced to do things for other people (sometimes utterly stupid or abhorrent things, that your character may or may not comment on but will go ahead with anyway) before they are willing to help you. This is a fact of life in all video games (collect 20 wolf pelts anyone?), but in Rockstar games it takes on its own tenor for me, for some reason. Part of the reason I'm so enamoured with Red Dead Redemption and didn't think much of the GTA games I played is because it's blatantly obvious the main character is only doing these things because he's held at ransom and he's resigned to being a criminal and a murderer, not because someone asked him to set a village on fire and he went 'why the hell not'.*

I also found that distressing blog article by that would-be pick up artist today. I'd rather eat a live piglet than read it again or describe it, but I can find the link if you really want to know. Suffice to say it's the belief that a man deserves sex if he gives a woman gifts or privileges taken to a distressing extreme.

So that combined with RDR gave me this strange inclination to make a game based on the concept of such 'obligations'.

You'd have a very clear goal, that means a great deal to the player. The quest-bearing NPCs help you, but start expecting things in return, either that you do things for them or that you give them things that belong to you, which may involve body and soul. If you don't give it to them, they become unhelpful, start refusing to help and eventually grow malevolent. But what else are you going to do? Fight an entire city/government/crime organisation/swarm of flying jellyfish/whatever by yourself with a stick and a garbage can lid?

It doesn't have to be a huge game, it could even be a little statement like increpare's take on Mass Effect 2. I suppose the pivotal thing is that the game give you the benefits that you need to proceed in the game first and THEN makes you work for it, not the other way around.

When I put it like that it sounds like just the sort of art-trendy-statement game people on indiegames.com hate. Heh.

The other problem is that Rockstar has the benefit of huge money and employees willing to be flogged into creating a game that's good enough on a storytelling and etc. level to give you an incentive to do these things. Some budget indie text adventure game or what have you would need horrifyingly good writing to give people the same inclination. Still, it's something to think about.

* But I'm not your average GTA player and I'm probably one of like... ten people, ever, who cares about this. I'm the only person I know IRL whose first actions in a Rockstar game aren't 'steal a car' and 'make like Frank Miller'. I will concede however that the mission in The Ballad of Gay Tony where you steal a train is baaaadaaass.

Ugh.

I was thinking of the Three Weeks of Dreamwidth thing again and wondering if I could go through the project, but then found the non-fandom friending meme and I've been hit with this overwhelming wave of 'what the hell am I doing here'. I just read all those entries and I feel so damn shallow. No, not because I'm a straight white cisgendered female with no serious health issues, that would be... silly; but everyone there wants to communicate and all I want to do is stay by myself because I can't relate to them on a personal or hobby-related level. My life is so fracking dull and my interests are so shallow by comparison.

Soooo... I wanted to do a Three Weeks of Dreamwidth project that involves a hobby I don't think anyone else is interested in, in the same way I am? (The only non-Facebook games I've seen mentioned around here are MMOs and the Lego games and the only indie game was The Path!) Just... WHY should I do this?

I know this is a bit of a cockheaded thing to say, I mean I'm not one of THOSE hardcore gamers, if I made this hypothetical 'finish all your games' community and everyone joined to beat Lego Batman I wouldn't get pissy, but everywhere, everywhere I go on the internet (anywhere really but let's not go into detail), I feel completely out of place, and I don't feel like actually exerting energy and time into putting myself into that situation again!

But at the same time I recognise that I want to meet and talk to more people. Bzwuh???

I might stop using this journal entirely and take this project to that blog I should be using. I dunno, I feel stupid for staying here when all I do is stare into the corner talking to myself. Sorry for the sudden emo. I'm, uh, going to go offline, to feel silly for a while....

WASHIZU TIC-TAC-TOE
Inspired by a challenge in that game design book by Ian and Brenda
And I swear I came up with the game before the title

You have a board with nine squares on it in a typical noughts and crosses configuration, and a bag. The bag contains eight plastic squares
Three opaque squares with crosses on them
Three opaque squares with noughts on them
Two see-through squares, one with a nought and one with a cross.

Players declare who will play noughts and who will play crosses. Randomly determine who will start. (Possible alternation: Crosses always start?)

Draw two tiles to start.

Each turn, the player puts a tile face-down on the square, then draws a tile from the bag. Obviously, the see-through tiles will be obvious as to what they are, but the others will be a mystery.

Play continues until all tiles are down. The person who finishes last (i.e. after the other person plays the last tile) can automatically claim the empty tile as a nought or a cross as appropiate.

The tiles are then turned over. The winner is the person who successfully creates a line. Draws can occur if both people make lines or if no lines are created.

The loser loses a pint of blood (optional)

RON RON RON RON RONNNNNN!



Possible variant that'd probably end badly:

TIC-TAC-JERK

Three players
Four by four square to play on (So you have to get four in a row)
Fifteen squares
- Ten are normal, half noughts and half crosses
- Four are see-through, half noughts and half crosses
- A brightly-coloured card with a cross on one side and a nought on the other
One player is noughts, one is crosses, the last is trying for a draw.
People draw from the bag until one person gets the brightly-coloured double-sided card. The person to his left is Noughts and the perosn to his right is Crosses. Play commences from Noughts to Crosses to Jerk.
The jerk keeps his double-sided card. He is only allowed two cards at a time like the others, so it is up to him when he wants to play it. As above, he declares whether the last square is a nought or a cross before the cards are flipped.

I need to do a hundred things before tomorrow, but first, I put out a call for this meme on the Twitter

Name a fandom (or anything really), and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to it.

Only MadamLuna responded, but she said Grasshopper Manufacture, which is a doozy!

* I love Killer7. However, sometimes I wonder how and why they screwed it up so badly. As fantastically brain-melting as it is in its current state, if you have to chop out more than half the plot, something must have gone very wrong in development...
* I'd happily swap both No More Heroes titles for a new Killer7, in a heartbeat.
* Speaking of sequels, why DID they translate Flower Sun and Rain before the Silver Case, anyway? It's not as if Flower Sun and Rain has that much more mainstream appeal...
* Sometimes I think the real genius at GHM is not Suda51 but Masafumi Takada. (Usually when I'm listening to Pleather for Breakfast)
* I still think Suda51 is fantastic! But sometimes in darker moments I am absurdly jealous of him for getting such a lucky break in video games through his enthusiasm for wrestling. I wish I could make games because I knew a lot about my hobby, though looking at my hobbies I fear what they might be like... But to his credit, he persisted with working on games for years though he was still obscure and their earlier titles weren't so great. He seems to have earned his cult reputation in Japan and elsewhere and the company isn't afraid to try odd things even when they fail, which is laudible.
* ... That still doesn't excuse Michigan.
* Curtis Blackburn can go to fuck. Death-by-carwash was too good for him. (This is an unpopular opinion in Japanese fandom, I think)
* Mask de Smith (in the white suit, not the Cell-from-DBZ cosplay) is the hottest man in Killer7. I am very serious. DAT VOICE. And Dan Smith might have magnificent sideburns, but can he stop a bullet in mid-air by headbutting it?? I THINK NOT.

Gonna go clean before I embarass myself further now.

Seriously, what do we do now that man-on-man lovin' fanfiction is now known of amongst mainstream filmmakers and actors to the point where it is, dare I say it, commonplace? Where are we going to get our non-standard kicks now?

I propose:

More female-on-female lovin'.