After the very melancholy "Never Let Me Go" I needed a pick-me-up, and
turned to the first of Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter novels:
Tress of the Emerald Sea.
It was a great little standalone novel! A little Young-Adult for my usual
tastes, but for an audiobook I can't think of anything more comforting than
a Sanderson novel read by Michael Kramer (and / or Kate Reading). It's like
a big bowl of pho -- you know what you're going to get; there may be a
couple small surprises but you're guaranteed feel warm and full afterward.
I try to take something away from everything I read, and from this one I
glinted a hint of how to make characters lovable. The book's particularly
sassy / sarcastic narrator has a way of humanizing characters that you
didn't particularly care about extremely quickly via goofiness. In
one particular instance, a nameless character dies, and the narrator quickly
tells us that fallen character's name and some silly story about their
strange beliefs, and suddenly you're a little sad they're dead.
The tone of the book is very humorous so it's easy for these kinds of jokey
situations to come up, but I think back to the JRPGs of my youth and this
was similarly used, especially with super-serious characters, to make them
more likable. A trip or failure to communicate is a super quick way to
endear a character to readers / players.
Anyways, Tress was a nice fun light read with a neat little world and
lovable characters. Now I'm ready for some more heavy shit.
Just finished reading Fire Punch. I had actually put it down after
finding the first volume kinda stupid, but ended up hooked back in when I
was waiting in my car recently and my 20-minute app limits on Reddit and
YouTube had been used up.
It remained kinda stupid. Really stupid, actually, but it stayed interesting
enough. Watching the characters repeat the evils of those they sought
revenge on was well done, if a little shallow. A lot of it smelled of
how-fucked-up-can-we-get-away-with with the charred corpses and burning
children, but at the same time the whole thing felt weirdly nostalgic -- it
had that hyper-violent pseudo-philosophical-but-not-actually-saying-much
mouthfeel to it that reminded me of the old JRPG / manga auteurs that
crafted the messed up borderline-incoherent stories of my youth.
It was a very different quick read, and stupid isn't necessarily a bad thing
every now and then. Stupid can be fun.
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.
