I also finished Pentiment [Spoilers] over the weekend!
The game's 16th Century European art style was thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly expressive when animated. Even more enjoyable was the game's use of fonts. I never thought I'd be praising fonts but holy hell. Every character uses a font corresponding to their spoken language or background -- Peasants and priests have completely different lettering which added so much unexpected character to a game with no voice acting. The printing press guy had printing press text boxes!
I also want to praise the game's ambiguity in finding the murderers in the first 2 acts. There's just so many little threads for the player to follow to open up potential culprits, and I was completely engaged in the murder mystery segments in act 1 and 2. You legitimately can't know whether you got the right person, and just need to trust in your not-so-professional deductive abilities.
The story in the first two acts is fantastic, and the game is full of so many memorable characters. I wanted to spend my meals with many of them just to read the dialogue -- the fact that many would reveal hints and clues about potential motives or give character backgrounds was just a bonus. You get to know the characters and the town and the abbey so well by the end of the second act that when (if) you follow a specific thead and find additional locations it's thrill. Finding little interactions between characters and the little stories peppered around town and over the time period of the three acts is a joy.
For the record, the game also manages to stick in some absolute asshole characters which keeps the cast colorful and makes the good ones all the better.
I loved the way your skill choices in the game could also give you a free pass or completely mess up a potential route in some cases. I will admit, however, that the skill selection process is vague as hell, and I was pretty apprehensive to chose skills right out of the gate with no idea how they'd impact the game.
With all the praise out of the way I want to address Act 3, which I really didn't like. Act 3, while full of many of the same people and places really outstayed its welcome for me. I found myself annoyed with the protagonist, with the townsfolk, and with the task assigned when compared with the first 2 acts. While you do get to see the impact of your choices from the first 2 acts, the story isn't as impactful, interactions were more flat, most of the new characters are bland, and the primary task didn't draw me in much.
I was also disappointed with some of the reveals that happened in Act 3. The big reveal was kinda meh, and while the overall mystery was solved and there was some excitement in the final couple hours of the game, I wish we got more time to sort though the protagonists' internalized problems and face more consequences for being wrong.
While I can't read minds I feel like the developers wanted to have the story branch more -- to have more direct repercussions and vary the final act more depending on your character and choices in acts 1 and 2, but it may not have been possible without making the game way more complicated. I could be wrong, and perhaps there's a lesson intended here in how one person can only impact the world so much.
All in all, I loved the game. I love the idea of the player / protagonist being wrong in a detective game and that not being an endgame state, but rather something that has repercussions in the game world. I love how the game had something to say through its gameplay and narrative, even if I didn't necessarily like how it ended. It was time well spent.
I finished Never Let me Go [Full Plot Spoilers Ahead] over the weekend, and holy shit what a melancholy novel.
The story covers the life of Kathy H, a student at a fancy school for clones who are harvested for organs as young adults. You start suspecting this early on, so it doesn't come as a surprise when it's confirmed -- neither to the students nor to the reader.
That seems to be one of the running themes in the book -- inevitability. Much of the story's structure follows the pattern of:
Narrator says or implies some conclusion or plot element
Story backtracks to fill in the details that lead up to said conclusion
Conclusion happens and leads to next thing
This same pattern underlies the story as a whole -- we're told in the very start of the novel that Kathy's cared for (past tense) her two friends as they donated organs, and that she, too, will soon start donating. Then we fill the details that lead up to that point at the very end of the novel.
Considering the author got a nobel prize in literature we can assume there's a lot more going on here -- the story touches on many topics: the dangers of science unchecked, memory, regret, caste systems -- lots of stuff to chew on. I'm not a proper literary analyst so I'm going to just focus on the bits that resonated with me and the interesting writing style.
The story is masterfully written, with the author spinning lots of offshoot threads -- as one would when narrating a deep-dive into childhood memories -- but always managing to loop back around and tie off those threads later. Every little tangent has a resolution. For example:
Telling a story from young childhood, bring up forest by the school that they found intimidating
Emphasize how intimidating the forest was on a tangent, how they once punished a girl by forcing her to look out the window at the forest for a long time
Later on in the story, tell of how a girl in class made everybody mad by asking the wrong kinds of questions pertaining to the donor program
Reveal that this was the girl that they forced to look at the forest, and that this was why
The book is full of this kind of setup, and it works really well for the tone and the "memory recall" narration style. When the tie-in comes around, it almost feels like the memory is your own -- you're in on the secret, you get the inside reference. At the same time it solves the tiny mystery of "who was the girl they did this to and why?"
The pattern pushes the story through Kathy's memories as she jumps backs and forth between periods in her life, explaining the big events by building up to them with the small. The big events are rarely that big in the grand scheme of things, but for these second-class organ donors they feel big. A trip to Norfolk with friends, a later trip with those friends are dead to a rotting beached boat. A big falling out between friends. These are the events that define Kathy and her friends' lives.
That's where the melancholy settles in. A story about a short and quiet life, filled with small events that feel big. Kathy and her peers simply accepted their places -- they loved, and argued over petty things and made memories both good and bad. They had small collections and simple dreams. They are entirely unable to touch the world outside of their bubbles, though they are not physically constrained in any way, and all their biggest milestones end so quietly. The end of their childhoods, the ends of their trip(s), the ends of their relationships, the ends of their lives. All of these things happen with very little fanfare and are remembered with a muted sadness, but not sorrow.
I think that's the part that killed me. Kathy remembers all of this so fondly, while she was afforded so few opportunities. It's easy to imagine the kind of life she could have had and cherished in other circumstances, yet she doesn't, or can't, even consider the possibility. All she ever fights for is a chance for a few more years, and even that is extinguished without a fuss.
I personally took away an underlying message to cherish the time you have, and appreciate the freedoms afforded you. Death is inevitable to everyone, and no matter how fondly the characters recalled their lives, they all had regrets. They all took too long to do the things they should have done and lost their chances. You don't get a deferral in life, and while we can cling to our memories, we should make sure to take the time to make new ones. Do the important things we are able to do while we're able to them.
Anyways, good book. Gave me lots to think about, and new perspectives on writing techniques. I think I'm going to go with something a little lighter next -- the first of Sanderson's KickStarter books is out and sounds very much like a pallette cleanser.
While I was intending to "blast into the new year", things have been going even slower than usual so far, and today for the first time in a long time I seriously considered the fact that I may never produce anything of significance in my lifetime.
Perhaps it was pulling my back making me feel my youth sliding away, or the realization that I've only spent an hour per week on my side projects lately. Maybe it's even been the really good books and games I've been reading and playing that are putting real talent into perspective.
At 33 I can't remember the last time I thought this -- it's always been my assumption that eventually something good would fall out of my interests and efforts. Being a semi-creative-type my whole life with so many projects and skills, it was a foregone conclusion that one day all these things would come together on their own and I'd produce something; a game or a book or a song or an idea that was at least one other person's favorite thing.
But that may not happen. I'm not exactly shocked or appalled by the idea -- the vast majority of people never produce anything at all, let alone something memorable. It is, however, a new and alien thought that is only a shade or two shy of self-pity, and I need to make sure I keep that in check.
I'm far from a starving artist, so my creative endeavors have never been more than a hobby. I lead a life of leisure and general comfort. I put a lot of effort into my job, and spend most of my evenings with my family or reading or playing games that inspire me or make me think.
The reality is that I'm still pretty far from good enough to accomplish the things I'd like to accomplish. They say it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill -- at an hour a week that's almost 200 years! While I intend to "master" any skills, the reality is I'm definitely much more than a couple of side project away from being a decent writer or character designer or programmer or game developer.
But that's OK. I'll keep working on my small projects and achieving my tiny goals. I'll keep exploring new skills and ideas. Maybe something one of these days will light that fire in me that makes for creative greatness.
And if not? So be it. I'm still enjoying the ride.
The new year is upon us! With it I have cleansed my project list and notes, refreshed my reading and games-to-play list, and am ready to rock.
First off, I've killed my ~2 year on-and-off side project "Journode",, a web-based note-taking application in redbean and fullmoon. I had previously used a couple of note-taking tools, and found that my notes tended to have a directionality to them. The design had a standard note-editing view and a star map, and each note could have references / backreferences and indicate the next or previous note, letting you fork a project into tangents. I thought it was very cool, and even designed a polar-coordinate map system, where new notes would show up at the center of the map and push all old notes out radially.
It was a neat project but I'd often get it just to where I needed it to be (barely functional) and then use it for 2-4 months, then stop using it a couple months.... then come back and completely redesign the front end. It was a lot of wasted effort! (Plus I started getting way heavier into physical notes in 2022)
So with that dead I moved all of my notes into Obsidian, as I'm keen on the infinite canvas mode they recently added. Not sure if I'll pay for sync yet, but that's the last bullet in Journode!
The very first note from 2 years ago is "I want to get back into game development", and I took that note to heart! Almost all of my side projects that I take on now are at least tangentially oriented around game development.
Next up, I reworked my to-read list. I read a tonne of fun scifi last year, but the stuff that stuck with me was the philosophical stuff. Left hand of Darkness is what I started 2022 with, and I want more stuff like that. I've loaded up on stuff like Snow Crash, Flowers for Algernon, and Permutation City. I also bought into the Brandon Sanderson kickstarter, so I'll have some lighter audiobooks to sprinkle through the year.
Over my holidays I also listened to Noor, by Nnedi Okorafor, which I got on sale on Libro.fm. It was a fairly light read with standard sci-fi stuff, but having it set in futuristic-africa (which wasn't that futuristic except for a handful of new technologies) made for at least a difference in scenery and underlying philosophy.
I overloaded my games-to-play list for 2023... I won't get to all of them, but I'm going to try to be more militant about getting to the meaty stuff. I was spoiled with tactical RPGs in 2022 with Triangle Strategy and Digimon Survive -- it got capped off with a re-release of Tactics Ogre, which was on my to-play list at the start of 2022 (psp version)! I haven't got to that one yet, but I'm going to tackle it this year.
Over the break I dabbled in some light gaming, not wanting to get too invested in anything. I ended up playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress' Steam Release (I've been playing that on and off for years, and spent quite a while on the Bay12 Patreon). I didn't get very far, but assembled some happy fortresses without too many deaths. The game plays pretty alright on the SteamDeck, and mobile Dwarf Fortress isn't something I'd ever dared to dream of.
I also played Gato Roboto, which I failed to beat on account of some of the Mouse bosses being assholes. Dyson Sphere Program got about 3 hours of attention before I realized the SteamDeck really wasn't going to cut it for long-term play. I put a couple hours into Dome Keeper and Noita, both fun pixelly roguelikes which I'll likely tinker with in the future.
I also ended up with a copy of Pentiment, which has hooked me. I beat the first Act and plan on completing the game before moving on to anything else this year!
Finally, I've taken up a bit of writing. I saw somewhere that lots of prolific writers push out ~500 words a day, and as it turns out 500 words isn't too difficult. Plus due to 2022's influx of fountain pens and notebooks, I have ample writing implements.
So far most days I get between 250 and 500 words (not counting since I'm using physical media, about a page and a half), and I've been writing little vignettes from a story I've been working on for nearly 2 years in my head. I write them as if they're 500-word snippets from a finished novel, and it's really refreshing! I've got about 8 of these done so far, and expect I'll hit a writer's block soon, but I'll keep it going as long as I can.
I'm excited for the new year! I've got all my work stuff locked and loaded for the first day back tomorrow, and am hoping to blast into this new year at full speed to build up momentum that will carry me through the dreary winter months. Cheers.
Not big ends, all small stuff, but the sum of which feels impactful as timing found the ends all lining up to the same day.
It's the end of my work year, with much less accomplished than I'd hoped, and much more gained in terms of responsibility than I'd expected.
I continue to see my job shift from "programmer" to general problem-solver (programming still being the primary tool for this purpose). I see myself struggling in the coming years to stay relevant at programming if my work continues to pull me into higher level discussions and meetings. I fear there will come a time that I'll be so involved discussing problems and solutions that I'll not be able to find time to keep my skills polished enough implement these solutions myself. That time won't be 2023, however, so for now I forge ahead.
I've just reached the end of my most recent Audiobook: "The Lost Metal", which coincidentally is the end of "Era 2" of the Mistborn series. This is a series I've been following for a long time, and while I was initially unsure of the Era 2 cast, I've found Sanderson's writing in this era to feel a bit less "Young Adult" than the first Era of Mistborn.
Sanderson's works are very much comfort food for me, especially when it's Michael Kramer doing the reading -- I've been listening to him voicing fantasy novels back to the very first audiobooks I ever listened to (Wheel of Time). I don't have much to say on the book except that I liked it quite a bit, and enjoyed the endings he gave to his characters in this Era.
I've also just finished volume 10 of Sandman, which as a series I simultaneously liked less, and appreciated more than I'd expected. I found a lot of the storylines in the series to be left incomplete, but Neil Gaiman's blurb at the end of volume 10 put the entire series into perspective for me: "In many ways that's what these stories were about: the process of saying goodbye."
With that single sentence everything kind of fit into place, and I was able to put a name to the melancholy running through the entire series. Honestly I don't know how I missed it before, but in that context I feel stories can be left with unsatisfactory resolutions -- many goodbyes are.
The series is very artsy -- that's not a complaint, but it was artsier than I'd expected. The series reads more like literature than most comic books, and can be difficult to follow at times. I wasn't overly fond of the short-story collections that generally comprised every other volume. I found while these helped for a bit of world building, many of them didn't add much to the overall narrative (which I was more interested in).
I've still got volume 11 to read, though volume 10 is the end of the main storyline. I think I'll take volume 11 slowly and continue with what's been a little bit of a tradition and read it in bed as I fall asleep. What better way to read "Sandman" than passing out and letting the story bleed into your dreams?
I've accepted the decision to move next year, which is a kind of end, and something I hate doing. I tend to grow very attached to both places and living patterns. Me and my partner moved to a smaller city during COVID where we could afford a house, but with things opening back up it would be cruel to keep them (who doesn't drive) in place where driving is essentially mandatory to accomplish even the most basic activities.
So it'll be back to the big city, which will require me to live a little less comfortably as I'll need to find a functioning commuting and dog-watching pattern in the new configuration. As much as I dislike the idea, I do appreciate having someone to push me into changing things up semi-regularly, as alone I'd likely stagnate in one place forever.
Bit of a tangential end, but I found out they're retiring Ash and Pikachu, anf the news hit me way harder than expected. I haven't kept up with the animated series in many years, and think it was likely time to move on or let Ash grow up long ago; but the announcement that "this will be their final journey" really choked me up.
As a kid I was religiously into the Pokemon TV show, and to this day one scene is stuck in my head at the very end of the first season. In my head the scene is ash standing there after losing in championship as the full version of the "Gotta Catch 'em All" song plays out -- but I went and re-watched it and it was definitely more of a montage-of-the-journey-so-far scene. The effect was the same; at 9 or 10 years old I was devastated by the idea that Ash lost at the end of the series. It was incomprehensible to end my favorite show this way! In the end, however, he was ready to get back up and train harder and try again, which was a super foundational storyline for young me.
Anyways, they're retiring Ash and something in my brain is sad about it, even though I haven't cared about Ash for over a decade.
So here I am -- between books and audiobooks and games. The end of my year came 2 weeks early and now I'm in a bit of a limbo -- but I kinda dig it. I've got 2 weeks of limbo where I'm going to just futz with projects and play some undemanding roguelikes and read short stories. Not get into anything too heavy. Start the new year with a clean slate, and try to find a good balance next year between entertainment and education in my selected readings and playings.
A day of small endings, but all good endings. I feel very inspired to start new things in the new year.
I've realized today that I've been using my purchase-oriented hobbies (retro games, fountain pens) as a bandage to cover up my lack of progress in my effort-oriented hobbies (learning stuff, making stuff, working out).
The dopamine hit of dropping hundreds of dollars on super fancy new stationary or a rare retro game is very similar, and while the satisfaction doesn't last nearly as long, it's a helluva lot easier to get.
I'm going to cut back on my purchase hobbies in the new year. I know a new year's resolution sounds cliche and tacky, but I generally find orienting lifestyle changes around large events (new year, birthday, vacation) works for me as I feel very rejuvenated after them.
I've been playing the mainline Pokemon games for almost 25 years now, and beaten at least one version of each generation. I defeated each rendition of the Elite Four and completed most generations' post-game content.
In Pokemon Violet, however, for the first time in all these years... I completed the regional pokedex!
For those not familiar with the series, this entails having caught (or obtained through evolution or trading) every species of Pokemon "native" to the game's region. For the newest game that's 400 Pokemon!
The core gameplay loop in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is excellent. This generation unlocked something through the simple act of entirely removing random battles from the equation, allowing players to freely roam around and see the Pokemon they're about to fight. That's all it took to make this the most fun game in the mainline series.
And honestly it's saying a lot about this core loop that the game manages to stay fun so long, because a lot of the game kinda objectively sucks. The environmental graphics are garbage, the geography is uninspired (with the exception of maybe 2-3 areas), and while the supporting cast is well designed, all three "stories" in the game essentially just amount to three different series of the "gym battle" formula.
Also, as usual the different "versions" of the game were just the same game with a couple of different Pokemon. I had hoped for a Ruby/Sapphire setup with the whole Future / Past thing, but the story (and locations) were basically identical with the dialog going through a s/future/past/g. I don't know why I expected more from Game Freak in this aspect, but I did. (Maybe because there were 2 professors advertised in the promotional content.)
Hot damn was the Pokemon part good, though. The gyms and story may have just been flat excuses to catch and train more Pokemon, but that's all they really needed to be for a good time. Climbing up the side of a mountain to see the final evolved form of a fairly rare Pokemon wandering around was a dopamine hit. Evolving some of the old returning Pokemon into new forms was super exciting. I spent a lot of time in this game smiling or yelling for my partner to "look at what I caught!" (they have been similarly engrossed in the Scarlet version of the game)
With my pokedex filled I can now put this game away. I don't feel any need to compete online or do these awful level 5/6 raids, so there's not much left for me in Paldea.
When that DLC drops, though, with more Pokemon to catch? Well, my party is waiting.
I managed to wrestle myself away from playing Pokemon long enough to download the TIC-80 fantasy console and give it a go today.
Like the Pico-8, the TIC-80 is an all-in-one lowfi game-dev system with a built-in text editor, sprite editor, SFX and music editor all in one. They're both neat, but TIC-80 is open source and supports Javascript. I know Javascript.
Because I know javascript I had a super easy time getting a basic game working within an hour of downloading. There was next to no friction in getting the little engine to do what I wanted (not that I asked much of it). It was a real breath of fresh air; my usual game-dev attempts are several-hour long slogs through coding patterns or Godot tutorials without much to show by the end.
I realized that part of the friction I'm getting from Godot is that I'm just not used to UI in my workflow. I spend my days in text editors and terminals; Godot's dropdowns and nested menus and mouse-driven interfaces are wildly alien to how my brain chews on programmey tasks. These system are obviously super powerful and valuable in large projects, but the TIC-80 let me make a tiny project that was almost entirely code and got out of my way. (The little music editor was neat, too)
The experience also really highlighted how much easier gamedev is in a language you already know. Every serious attempt I've made into game development I've self-imposed a significant language-learning component.
"Oh, I'll make a CHIP-8 game... by learning enough Rust to build a CHIP-8 emulator from scratch!"
"I'm going to make a small proof-of-concept RPG!.. but in Zig and I'll cross-compile ImGUI and GL and compile it to WASM!"
It's kind of like trying to write a novel in a language I don't know. I should probably get some experience novel writing in my native tongue first.
All that said, I'm not going to give up on the Godot and GDScript. I am, however, going to try to take more detours into things like TIC-80, and perhaps do some more tiny games in python / JS. Learning game development isn't going to be a quick process, and I need the occasional quick win to keep my motivation up.
On that note, here's a clip of my TIC-80 game. I feel like a child holding up a shitty drawing and beaming with pride -- it isn't good or unique or impressive in any way, but I made it myself so it goes on the fridge.
I finished the Nona the Ninth audiobook this morning. It's the 3rd book in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir.
The first book in the series was a riot, and the second was a thorough exercise in "what the fuck is even going on". This third book is essentially filler plus a whole lot of world building with a much smaller dash of "what the fuck is even going on".
It wasn't the bad kind of filler, though. More like custard in a doughnut -- good, fattening filler.
I got terribly attached to the characters, and the author continued to deliver hard with their brand of humour and writing. The entire series premise of necromancers in space is a wild ride, and reader (Moira Quirk) sells every line from every character perfectly. She and this series were seriously made for each other.
Between The Locked Tomb and The Murderbot Diaries I've been absolutely spoiled with high-caliber comedy Scifi audiobooks this year.
I went to a "celebration of life" for someone I grew up with this weekend. I wasn't terribly close with them, but
I was close to their friend groups in the past.
It was a really nice event -- even those grieving the hardest put on a smile and had fun
in honour of the deceased. Though they died far too young and I knew them only in highschool, it was warming
to see how much they had flourished into adulthood and hear how they had become such an important
figure in so many circles.
This person had been wise even in their youth. One of the few memories I recall of them is as a teenager, perhaps
of 14 or 15, when I found out that they "didn't like" me. At the time this was a shock -- as a confident teenager I was
convinced I was loved by all; if you've ever seen the cartoon "Recess", imagine the episode where TJ finds out
there's one student who doesn't like him and his distress about it.
Full of myself I eventually confronted them and demanded to know their reasoning. "You think you're better than everyone, and you're not" was
their answer, calm and clear and naked truth that I've recalled multiple times in my life even before their death. At 14 they were grounded
and wise as an owl. From the stories I heard, they never lost that. (We did reconcile our differences at some point and got along
very well in our remaining highschool years!)
In East of Eden, the author stated that the measure of a person's life is how people react to their death; if you die and nobody's happy about it,
you probably lived a decent life. If people are sad, it was probably a great one.
While the celebration was filled with laughter and smiles to honour the dead, everyone was sad -- even those of us who weren't close.
