CuteGod

Just been twenty days...

2011-11-25T06:00:00Z

Twenty days since my last post. It isn't that I don't love my readers, I was just distracted by the things that always happen at the end of the year. Work is the first one, since we are coming up to "release season" and I'm spending more time at the office or downstairs remoting into the office than doing anything "fun".

I have been getting some writing down. I have the short serial I've been working on, and while I skipped a week because I got a volunteer editor, I've been pretty much hanging on to the one/week submit schedule. At current rate, it looks like it is going to end around twenty-three chapters, but we'll find out. I'm posting as I go and sometimes people ask for more, sometimes they ask me to skip chapters.

I had a problem with the Flight printing for the third round of edits. I finally got it back a few days ago with a proper print. While I verified the PDF with Acrobat 7 and 8, I didn't with 10. It was foolish of me to assume that if versions 7 and 8 could handle it, 10 could also. And I was wrong. I also didn't want to upgrade to 10 because I have a weekly reboot at work because of patches to 10, they added way too much advertisement, and frankly version 10 is moving toward the custom look and feel which I despise in my programs. I don't want distinction, I was conformity with my application. I don't use Trillian for that exact reason.

But, the world is going to move past me so sooner or later, I'll stop ranting.

Right now, there are eight beta-readers for Flight. None of them are probably going to get me answers until the middle of December at the latest and more likely February. One... I might not trust, but I'm not sure. EDM is currently at his grandmothers, then an aunt, today and tomorrow, so I'm going to do one more pass on the novel, write up the summary which is the last thing I must do, and send out the email to the two people I trust in the writing industry who have made a hint they would read it for me.

I feel guilty about asking professionals to read my stuff. Even if they are friends, I don't like asking the same person more than once to read my stuff. Maybe because I've encountered so many people who have said yes, but later would tell me they regretted it, or simply because I don't want to pressure anyone into anything.

I had a rejection of a short story too. That always hurts, but I hate when the rejection is just a short sentence. And three months after the point they said they would email. This kind of goes back to editors giving feedback, but I'm not quite an editor enough; I know it is hard work.

But, I did managed to do a bit more book editing. One of the submissions was a humorous farmer's almanac. They needed a series of short, silly articles for the weeks of the year, but they were behind by twenty-something articles. Over the last three weeks, I wrote twenty-something articles... and found artists to illustrate the pages. I won't get paid for it, except for a free copy, but I don't mind because I had fun writing them.

I have gotten into a video game for a little bit: Glitch. It is a MMORPG that is just adorable. And non-aggressive. I don't know why, but I really prefer cooperative games over killing games, and cute 2D graphics over 3D anything. My plan for Moonfire Games is to write games that have a non-violent way of winning the game, even if it is harder. Now, the demake of Oblivion that I want to finish won't have that because I'm trying to duplicate Oblivion's general play, but CuteGod and the others do and will have that ending.

Speaking of programming, my goal for next year is to mostly be programming. I'm going to write and finish KK as a novel, but I also want to get Author Intrusion in a usable state before I do that. Since half the novel is already written (from the cuts of Flight), that means I should only need 3-4 months to finish it. If the current trend is right, summers are the dry spells for the writing group, so I have to have a few chapters ready by June, but I should be good.

Blocks of time

2009-07-31T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)

Commission (4,227 of 15,000 words)

MfGames.Tools

Been a busy week this week, mainly because of a self-inflicted need to do better at work. I hate putting in estimates for 100+ hours on a single task when everyone else is putting in 8, 12, even 40. But, having the only one over 50 and having it so much higher gives me a tiny little lurch in my stomach. More so when I'm justifying to the VP of Development. It doesn't matter that it is an honest estimate, and probably a bit low, it still sucks when I have to do it. True, the 100+ hours is broken into a rather impressive WBS, but still.

I like breaking things into smaller blocks. Most of my personal projects are done that way. The MfGames.Tools is just one step toward my current programming goal of having a new version of CuteGod out. I just need to get the command line tools, unit performance, updater, BooGame, and a ton of other things. I decided I need to really focus on a single programming project, so the "main goal" is getting CuteGod polished. Then I'll play with Tablet of Words (WordPlay, my other "official" game), Ceimaha and other ideas.

I don't expect any of those to be done before GenCon, which I'm seriously looking forward to. I think the next week or so is going to be dedicated to working on homework and finishing up the petition which I promised by Auguest 9. I'm thinking about also stopping doing book reviews from GenCon this year, or at least just doing it when I feel like doing reviews. I don't know if they are helpful in general, but I feel bad since I don't give glowing reviews... ever. I don't even give glowing reviews to my own book. Like the review my brother did of MG (rated 4 out of 5 stars), I really try to be brutally honest but I hate the imagined conflict I get when I do them.

While I'm not entirely sure why I did it, I finally joined Twitter. Amazingly, my account is the same almost everywhere else: dmoonfire. No clue how long I'll use it, it seems to be as unfocused as everything else in my life. But, that is who I am. I don't focus on one thing in general and I kind of like it that way.

It nets out to neutral

2009-03-20T05:00:00Z

Today has been a relatively good and somewhat frustrating day at the same time. A bit long and wandering though, both the good, the eh, and idle thoughts.

I decided to mark my Critters membership as inactive, which I hate doing. I like critiquing, but I feel that if I'm not posting something new at least every few months and letting my critiques slip, I'm not really participating. I figured once I get back into writing heavily into topics they deal with, I'll active my membership and get right back into the mix.

I also sent a letter to my landlord telling them I'm leaving in a month or so. I don't feel I have to, we have a legal contract and it ends in 40 days. There is no auto-renewal clause, there is nothing beyond it. But apparently it's one of those excuses the landlord takes for not giving back a deposit. It doesn't matter if it is polite or not--I already planned on doing it--I don't like when I have to, despite the fact my understanding of legalese says I don't.

Oh well.

I also talked to my brother. In these discussions about what we would do with the economy, one of my opinions is that the auto makers (and their unions) should be reminded that they have a business model that needs to drastically change. One of the consequences of this, sadly, might result in one going under or really close to it. It is hard when you have family in that industry, more so when you find out they were laid off. Me and my brother both like plans. We have our "master plans" for the future (though he doesn't call it the Salmon Plan like me). Both of us have been hit with some really nasty distractions on that aspect (one of them has the potentially of really throwing a wrench into my plan). But, when compared to my misery of the flood in Iowa, being laid off in Detroit is devastating. I really hope he gets back on his feet and his wife, also in the car industry, manages to survive this.

Even with all that, it didn't really temper the email that gave me the results of my first college petition.

...

One down, four to go. They accepted it without any comments, which makes me feel really damn good about it. Apparently, I write at an appropriate level of a master's course and I can prove it with supporting documentation and well-reason arguments.

Yah, me!

I've been focusing on this move in the next two weeks. Instead of relaxing and playing a video game, I ended up filing the last of my DVD's into the filing cabinet. I know have just about every DVD I own entered into the computer... for the week at least. I'm also working on getting my finances entered into the computer, sorting my LEGO toys, and generally knocking things off my TODO list.

I did do one naughty thing today. For the last few (i.e. five including all my commission income) months, I didn't spend my entertainment fund because I kept using it to pay bills. With the refinance and everything, I actually got it back and decided to blow it on something I wanted: a Nokia n810. No, I don't need it. But, I know I'm beginning to forget what books I really want to pick up, what DVD's I'm missing (like having 1-5 and 8-10 of a series), and a list of addresses. It's a little PDA, a bit pricey, but I think I could use it. Plus, it would be just like Fluffy when she plays Scrabble in bed on her phone... I too shall have a hand-held computer to play games. And mine will be Linux! Bwahahaha!

Yeah, I want to write a game for it.

Speaking of games, I'm beginning to want to write a game. A massively single-player online RPG (MSPORPG). This is frustrating, mainly because I had that self-imposed desire to finish CuteGod and Baby Squid God. Not sure of those really should just be trunked or not, though. I want to finish, but you know what, I should also learn when to let things go.

Goals for 2009

2009-01-05T06:00:00Z

Every year, I believe the year with a bunch of new goals. My record for achieving them isn't the greatest, but I'm usually pretty good at least making a few of them. This year, after some playful ribbing from Fluffy, I have five:

Writing: Finish Flight of the Scions. This was last year's goal also, but I hit writer's block for most of the year. I'm not including writing a novel this year, because after so many years of doing it, it's more of a "well, duh" item instead of something remarkable. I'm going to write a new novel this year, it just isn't a goal.
Programming: Join and complete 4E7. I've had a nasty time with game writing contests last year. I'm going to not join any game writing contests until 4E7, then work on that one. I want to finish, damn it. Now, that said, I'm still going to work on CuteGod, Baby Squid God, and Wordplay when I want to write a game.
Health: Lose 16 kg (35 pounds). I need to loose some weight. This is actually the hardest one on the set. I'm not going to set a goal of a certain number of miles on a bike or walking, or the stairs or anything. I just want to be 16 kg lighter by the end of the year (and ideally not through projectile vomiting or amputation).
Family: Be living with Fluffy, our cats, and dog in the same house by the end of the year. I'm tired of living across two states, really, really tired of it.
Education: Graduate with a master's. I'm on track for this one, but I need just a little push...

I do have some secondary goals. These are goals that I want to get done, but I won't feel guilty of I don't:

I have a second novel that needs an edit round and self-publication. I won't get the artwork done in a reasonable time, but I can everything prepared for the artwork.
Get at least one story published.
Finish up the book of poetry I've been working in my spare time for two years.
Finish Baby Squid God.
Finish CuteGod.
Finish the Glorious Saber arc and get closure on that project.
Get more commissions.
Stop being a wanna writer and programmer.
5 ascensions on Kingdom of Loathing.

A hermit emerges

2008-12-15T06:00:00Z

I had a very busy and interesting weekend, filled with in-laws, programs, and getting my grade in college (an "A").

Most of Friday and Saturday ended up being for the in-laws. On Friday, spent a few hours with FiL talking about everything and nothing. He made a really good pork roast and I did laundry. On Saturday, I helped my aunt-in-law set up her new Vista machine and help her learn the changes in Windows since we gave her a computer 5-6 years ago. Just a few little changes. :) It also reminded me, dial-up sucks when you are used to a cable modem.

And on my side of the family, starting the planning for the holidays thing. A couple good hours with my dad on holiday plans and how to render things in Blender. It's interesting that he and I both like the program, but we have completely different goals of what we want out of it. He wants realism, I want abstraction (line drawings are love...).

Beyond that, I did some work for Prebuild and got a bunch of patches put into the system. Minor little things, but I'm aiming for a release next Saturday.

I also got BooGame to compile and run under Linux. I honestly thought it would be a lot more work, but it just took a couple minor things and `mdtool`. Very cool since it means that I'm still on track for making Baby Squid God and CuteGod both multi-platform with a minimum of work.

Beyond that, not much more. I spent all of Sunday in the apartment, so I missed the notice to park on a lower level to avoid the -30 C tempatures that hit the city; I had the joys of scraping off my car in really cold weather this morning.

I should probably get gloves. Or, more importantly, more than a single glove.

This coming week should be mostly a writing week. I'm hoping to do a bit more programming in the latter half, but I want to write a short story (maybe two), do my Critters obligations, work on my commission, and write another chapter for my serial.

Oh yeah, and a petition. I really need to get off my ass and write my college course petitions so I can actually graduate next year. This is a Good Thing™ with our future plans.

The winds of change

2008-12-01T06:00:00Z

This holiday week may be signaling a rather interesting change of pace in my life. Obviously, it started with putting Smokey to sleep, but it also marked the point where Fluffy gets a roommate to hopefully help with our financial woes. Sadly, my refinance didn't go through, nor an extended line of credit, so its probably the one way to help. Not to mention, it means that Fluffy has an adult in the house and a two-year old running around. Which might help the biological alarm clock ringing every time I visit. :)

It was also a chance to watch Firefly again (yah for Nathan Fillion's's butt! I mean, everyone else too... :P), Invader Zim, and Absolutely Fabulous. If you can't guess, most of the week was watching DVD's and just spending time with the wifetype in a happy martial bliss.

We also picked up Rayman Ravin Rabbid 3. They really figured out what they did wrong with #2 and made it good for #3. The WiiFit board really worked out well for some of the games, Fluffy is pretty good at the dancing games if they involve full-body movement instead of the pure timing/rhythm games that I excel at. I also ended up playing DarkStar One until it crashed four times in two hours and a few hours of Jak II, which I'm borrowing from a co-worker.

Driving wasn't pleasant, but not terrible. Its about 230 miles or so one way to Illinois and going there at night wasn't too bad. FiL annoyed the hell out of me right before I left, mainly with his opinions of what you should do with gays. I hate that he won't see any other opinion, but what can I do? He won't change probably as much as I won't change. He doesn't really care if he's a bigot, it is what he is and he sees no reason to change it. I decided a few weeks ago to stop talking about it, but he keeps bringing it up. Besides that, it was great going to Illinois, but it started snowing on the way back to Iowa. So, I had to suffer with the frequent slowdowns as people rubbernecked the accidents.

Remember boys and girls: it is the passenger's job to look at the accidents and the driver's job to keep moving forward. After the fact, its the passenger's job to tell the driver all about it.

Obviously, I missed the deadline for Baby Squid God. This time, I mean it, I'm not going to do another game writing contest until 4E7 and just focus on the game I already have to fin: CuteGod, Wordplay, and Baby Squid God. I'm going to focus on writing and finishing stuff this month, around all the holiday trials, of course.

Started working on a longish story. It won't amount to much, other than just the simple joy of writing (its pretty much non-publishable since I'm going to be posting it on a story site). After that, I'm planning on working on my two commissions (one from April of this year). I'm dealing with the fun of a new writing project, when all the characters are so... new. Its like a first date all over again.

Horrible, evil monkeys...

2008-10-09T05:00:00Z

Had a monkey night. The type of nights where you manage to get into bed on time, get all nice and comfortable and then, instead of drifting to sleep and nice dreams of food processors, you end up staring at the ceiling and thinking. While I love to think about things, it gets annoying when you can't sleep because of it. I call it the monkey, since its your consciousness chattering away like a pissed off monkey.

Things I thought about:

I got another five thousand words on my commission. Almost done with this and I'm very happy about that. Plus, it means I'll get a bit of money hopefully in the near future to help relieve the stress of...
Not having enough money. We'll just leave that one in the box, shall we?
Ascending on Kingdom of Loathing and writing my own version of KOL Mafia, despite not having enough time or energy. Not to mention way too many projects to do already. I tried to bribe my thoughts by getting up and playing my 40 (well, 137) turns but that didn't help.
The brownies in the fridge. Tried to bribe myself by getting up and eating all of them, but it didn't help either. They were good though.
Ultra Mega Super Premium Mall and if I should use crayon-style images to distinguish it from Kingdom of Loathing, which its obviously inspired by.
Flight of the Scions, but mostly to berate myself for not working on it. But, also working out some of the outfits and dresses in the book. And if I really should have a specific kissing scene in book two.
2D scene graphs. This was the bulk of my distractions since I think I found a good way of organizing my various code projects between BooGame and MfGames.* to handle Baby Squid God and CuteGod equally. Of course, it requires me to rewrite things again, but I think I needed to do that anyways. Plus, I inherited BooGame and need to clean that up and make it more useful.
Wondering why I still can't find a good generic C# game engine that works with 2D? Likewise, wondering if I really should create yet another vector/matrix library just because no one else will work together? I want someone else to figure out all this hard part. Its thankless and probably why I'm doing it.
Are there fleas in the bed? I'm pretty sure I got rid of them, but when you are lying there with nothing else, every little twinge and itch seems to bring up the idea that there might be critters with me. Having a cat clean herself for two solid hours on your chest doesn't help. Even if that is what she normally does.
And finally, just wondering what life is going to be like in the next three months. I have absolutely no clue. Utterly no clue, not even a hint of what I'm doing in month, much less the end of the year.

So, busy night. And I overslept and was two hours late for work.

Oh well, its a special day.

CuteGod and Running Bomb

2008-05-19T05:00:00Z

So, I was feeling a bit weird and did an ego search on "CuteGod". Why? Just because, and I found that someone actually reviewed the game! Very cool. I love reviews, even if they are negative. Yeah, it wasn't that positive of a review, but at least I have some areas to focus on. Actually, the stuff I'm doing for Running Bomb are also for CuteGod. As soon as that contest is over, I was planning on returning back to CuteGod to polish it up. That and redo the graphic tiles since I'm still not happy with them.

I also found out that CuteGod has a very low nuisance score and no viruses. I knew that, but it is neat that McAffe scans the web for installers. And that I pass.

As for Running Bomb, that is the WIP title for my procedural game. Struggling a bit with the tunneling interface. The basic setting for the game is that you are in a hollowed-out asteroid with lots of tunnels leading out from the center. Your home, Bubble City at the moment, is in the center, 1 Mm away from the surface of the asteroid. Which is fine, except that as you were docking on a slow day, they found a bomb in the city. And, since you were the only person in dock, you got "volunteered" to take the bomb as far away as possible. With full freedom to break any and all speed limits, blow up things, as long as you save people. Of course, you'll die in the process, but this is a game about how many people you can save.

It seemed like a pretty simple idea, given that I only have two weeks left to write it. The game is going to be procedural, which means that it will change every time you play it. In this case, the tunnel system is different every time, along with the random stuff inside it. If I have time, you'll also be able to customize your ship during play, giving yourself higher speed or turning rate (it's physics-based), shields, or weapons.

The idea sounds like fun, the question is can I actually do it? :)

DL and Keyboards

2008-02-29T06:00:00Z

I think I realized the balance in my life. It really isn't a writer, as much as I want it to be, and it isn't a programmer. Right now, it's both. And while that makes it harder to excel at both. Mainly because I, through this blog for example, doesn't show someone obsessed with the writing craft. Likewise, this blog doesn't show a pure programmer. But, you know what? I'm both and there really isn't much I can do about that. I love to write, it makes me whole. I love to put words on paper, to see the word counts slowly rise up as I find myself creating these fascinating characters that make me want to write about them.

So, I've been doing this short story, call it DL for the abbreviations since it is under the other byline. Obviously, I'm telling everyone where I'm posting it. It won't be a proper published novel, mainly because it is "published" on a free website. Though, I think with that byline, I may just self-publish these self-contained. Yeah, they'll only make $5-10 dollars in their life, but I'd be happy with that. :)

As for programming, I spent last night working on a generic input library. Now, for those who actually are curious, I'm writing a library that consistently lets you say "someone pressed down the 'A' key" and do stuff with it. Very, very basic stuff.

The main question comes down to, why? This is reinventing the wheel, flat out. There is no question that I am redoing what endless other libraries have done and yet I'm moving forward. It came down to one thing.

Simplicity.

I have my Sprite3 library. It has a GUI layer on it, so I need to know what characters are being pressed. I also help maintain, well am the only user, of BooGame. BooGame is an abstraction layer on top of Tao.Sdl and Tao.FreeGlut. FreeGlut, SDL, and System.Windows.Forms all have their input methodologies, each of which is separate than the others. Each one deals with character input in a different way. When I first touched BooGame, it was just a FreeGlut backend, so it used FreeGlut characters. When I added the abstracted backend, so I could have SDL or FreeGlut, I had to write a generic keyboard input. Which then I wrapped around my own generic input methods.

Well, that's a lot of abstraction layers.

At some point this week, I realized as pretty much the sole user of BooGame, why don't I just write something that agrees with the entire library chain and reduces the complexity of the system? Plus, add the features I really want in a game, like chained keyboard commands.

Chained keystrokes are an expansion on the "control-s", I'll refer to it as "C-s" based on Emacs. Visual Studio 2005 uses this, as does Emacs, but you can have a series of commands to result in something. For example, "C-x C-c" (control-x, control-c) to save a file. Yeah, it's a bit strange, but it lets you have more complicated commands. Not that I plan on writing a game that requires "C-x C-s S-x" because I hate people, but it will let me do things like have commands that require you to press two keys ("C-s" or "z-x" or even "RMB-LMB" for both buttons).

It's a small library, but it will really make my life easier as I focus on CuteGod. And, at the moment, that is what I need.

Writing and Code

2008-02-25T06:00:00Z

Ah, the two pleasures of life for me: writing and programming. I've been writing a short series lately. Just 2-3k words per day, but I'm enjoying it. Not entirely polished and pretty though. I'm trying to work on my writing craft, trying to make my words a bit more interesting to read about. I'm posting it on a random forum where it is on-topic, Like usual, I don't get a lot of comments on it. So, my goal is to write so people want to comment on it. That and I have this idea that I'm not a good writer. Mainly because people don't really get excited about most of my work. There are the few pieces that will get 20-30 comments, but most of them average about 0.1 comment, which is not a good trend. And I want to succeed as a writer, it is something I love to do.

On the other side, I'm working on CuteGod still. Mostly with getting things organized and maybe documenting my sprite library. I rushed CuteGod out the first time and it shows. I need to polish up some of the core libraries, like the GUI processing. I also pulled PlanetCute library out from the Sprite3 library and put it into CuteGod. No reason to make that generic when I'm moving away from it.

Yep, I decided that PlanetCute is nice, but there should be a different style, one that is easier to select things. So I think I'm going to create an isometric version of the game and let you pick between the PlanetCute and isometric depending on your preferences. Bit more work, but I think it will create a more entertaining game.

I also realized that the music I picked up from the always excellent Toucan Music, while free isn't the right "free" for Debian. So, I need to find different music and sound effects for the game. If I can't find a musican who wants to work for the right type of free, I'm going to have to make music that is the right type of free. Free is such a complicated word, you know. There is Creative Commons by-sa license (byline and share-alike), which is the most common CC license you can find for music, but only CC sa/3.0 is apparently considered "free" in Debian's eyes. On Toucan, all the files are licenses CC by-sa/2.5. So, free isn't free enough for Debian.

Why Debian? Because I use it and I want to see my game packaged and shared to others. And, if Debian accept it, chances are, the threshold for being put into other distributions is also lowered.

Lack of gaming... sniff

2008-02-24T06:00:00Z

Most of yesterday and this morning was dedicate to getting my game ready for Changeling. I thought I'd be all proactive and create the character sheets, figure out the points, and even have everything there. I knew that Fluffy and Evyl weren't going to make it, but I still had two of the four gamers.

So, after listening to Science Princess for a minute, I suggested that we cancel. She sounds horrible with that head cold. So, we just have Ranger Tom who I can't get ahold of, but the game I was looking forward to all week isn't going to happen.

Oh well, time to work on CuteGod.

IHAP

2008-02-18T06:00:00Z

This weekend was a relatively relaxing weekend. Getting the urge to write again, finished up a short story, stared pointlessly at Cleaning House, and struggling through my homework. I'm have a good idea why I'm struggling with homework, mainly because I'm working so hard, but I finally got it out and I'm pretty happy with the results.

I'm going to try focusing on a few things for a bit. Mainly and the biggest is Wind, Bear, and Moon and finishing that rewrite. On the programming side, CuteGod. I want... need actually to get these done so they stop haunting me. Though, reading this got me rather frightened of my chosen path. I remember it from my first published novel, or the lack of it more accurately, but it is one of those scary things. It's also why I respect the people who get an author's table at GenCon and everywhere else.

I need to get something done. And I think I need to seriously stop putting more things on my plate! Heh, I'm really bad about that. So, the plan for this week is to start getting up to speed on WBM and CuteGod.

I Have a Plan. IHAP, like IHOP but more planned.

Slogging Through the Snow

2008-02-13T06:00:00Z

Not many interesting things happening right now. Mostly doing these 10-12 hour days for the last week and a half, crashing when I get home. Started changing my ordering from fast food when I'm in a hurry though, that's good. Instead of a double-quarter pounder meal, I'm getting a fry and salad. Just a few less calories, but you have to start small. Or at least that is what I'm telling myself.

Last night, I got a box of HERO Games books, mostly bestiary and Metamorphs. I saw they had a "damaged" version for sale, so I ordered it. I figured that it would be torn or have a hole in it. But, as long as I could use it for my game, I would be fine.

"Damaged" to them is less damage than I do to my books in the first month. It was $5 less on the cover price and there was just a bit of gunk on the front cover. So, getting damaged books a lot more from them. I do like the HERO system a lot more than say Exalted, but I like the Exalted universe more than most of the universes from Hero.

Of course, HERO suffers from the same problem that I feel Palladium suffers: one major developer. On one hand, it is very consistent (unlike RIFTS in my opinion), but there is so much on one person. There is also no doubt that he loves it.

I want to make a HERO game books, mainly for my steampunk world, Fedora, and Fightertype's Itrifore universe. While I'm killing time between compiles and developing, I've been playing around with ideas for the following:

CuteGod improvements, including a different tile set that is easier to see.
Ponies Among Us: I know that I won't get it done in time, haven't touched it for two weeks now, but I still want to finish it.
Wind, Bear, and Moon rewrite
Calpluta: Just a game in the style of Kingdom of Loathing that is keeping me occupied.
Various library stuff.
Finishing up the Meritous packaging for Debian.
A steampunk story due tomorrow at Steam Punk Magazine. This one is not based on my Fedora world. Instead it is more of a classic Victorian age one (I hope).

So, lots of things to work on. This weekend, we aren't having gaming because Fightertype bowed out (she is suppose to run on the weekend I gave up). I could have run, but I'm planning on being just generally sick and burned out, so figured I could just take it easy instead.

Boiling Pots

2008-02-03T06:00:00Z

Woke up yesterday thinking about Itrifore, Fedora, both of my unpublished novels, and everything else in the world. Stress is a really crappy thing, you know?

I need to work on some resumes, mainly to create variants that won't scare the hell out of people seeing exactly how many different things I've done in my life. It's a lot, I've been a very busy beaver these last twenty years. Tomorrow, I should have a pair of development resumes (C# and web in general). And then to poke the recruiters.

This is coupled with work itself. My boss is demanding I work overtime to get something done. This is not something I'm looking forward to. One, because I'm afraid I'll burn out with 2-3 weeks of 60-80 hour work weeks to get something done. And it is the project that I feel is a complete waste of money for the last three years and killing everyone to get it done in three weeks won't change that fact. It's important to her, and from my impression, it is more important than anything else in the world right now, including paying her employees on time.

As she announced to the company:

"If you want to get paid on time, you are in the wrong company."

But, I have college to work on and I won't have the energy or time to write my papers if I'm working every damn moment of the night.

I'm getting a hankering to write again. Ponies Among Us isn't going to make it. If I'm looking and 2-3 more weeks of overtime, which means I have no creativity left to write or program, I lost any and all chance to actually complete the game on time.

This. Royally. Sucks.

Yeah, I might have no made it, but I would be willing to do overtime to try getting it at least minimally working. This is what happened last year, maybe I'm not ready to make a game yet. Well, I've been thinking about CuteGod as well. I'm going to try really hard not to get any new projects and just work on things for a while. Give up on 4E6, I mean really give up the hope and just work on little things to get them done.

I'm not going to drop Ponies though. I love the idea too much. I'll just let it get in the boiling pot of ideas and interests. That is related to Itrifore. I like the HERO system and the more I use it, the more comfortable I'm with it. And I really want to write up Fightertype world in the system; if only to make her play the game again.

This is a year of transition for me. I'm planning on it. I'm planning on quitting my job and finding a new one in efforts to be happier with my bankroll and myself. I don't want to be upset at my boss, I don't want to be this personally involved with the company and be so utterly helpless at the same time.

Honesty

2008-01-07T06:00:00Z

I'm a fairly honest person. I know, it sounds strange, but I am. Actually, I go a bit more toward the brutally honest side of things instead of the "mostly honest". In the past, it's hurt me. Sometimes, a lot. One example is giving blood. I used to give blood every six months for a good number of years until I answered one question honestly. Since then, I can't. I can't help with something I love doing. And it is a stupid little thing that a medical test can (and has) proven repeatedly that isn't an issue. Kind of like being in England during the Mad Cow Scare. If you were, even if you are a vegatarian, you can't give blood. Ever.

My strict honesty comes from how I was brought up. My mother was... less than honest with me in most things. Obviously, honestly isn't a strong thing at work either. So, I went the far opposite direction with being full and completely honest in most thing (I usually won't lie to a direct question and I will not lie to a direct question from Fluffy).

So, why is this issue causing me troubles at night and giving me insomnia? Because I'm thinking about being less than completely honest about my car. I will tell the truth, but I'm struggling with the need to tell the entire truth and leave nothing out, which would result in me getting nothing for the Subaru, or telling mostly the truth and trying to get a bit of money out of it.

As a side note, in my inability to sleep over moral issues, I got a bit more done with Kitteh Braik. It now shows a big black screen with Glorious' hair on it. Yes, it doesn't look like much, but that screen represents a ton of work. There is BooWorks, which is a game framework I wrote to simplify code between CuteGod, Kitteh Braik, and Ponies Among Us. There is the asset toolchain which parses the SVG to change colors (my code), loads the file from SVG (using rsvg), into a Pixbuf (gdk), and finally into an OpenGL texture (Tao.OpenGl). In other words, this rather boring image is actually the result of weeks of work. This week, I hope to get a physics layer into the game so Glorious can move.

Character Builder (91%)
World Builder (2%)
Kitteh Braik (9%)

Looking Back and Forward from 2007 to 2008

2007-12-29T06:00:00Z

Hard to believe I've been blogging for two years now. I started this journal about a month after my other, in-character one. Originally, it was just there to comment on friends, but I started posting one or two things on occasion. Now, as my brother said, "I'm a pretty good blogger." Or at least I do it fairly consistently and I've gotten a few compliments on letting everyone in on the trials and joys of my life.

This year is probably the year I started to really blogging on two of my major themes of life: writing and programming. I will, of course, blame the the other Dylan for getting me into writing about writing. After meeting with him at GenCon 2006, it really pushed me to finally take that step toward trying to be a "real" writer again instead of just hanging my hat on my one relatively minor success. I've been a lot of really cool writers in this last year and I'm pretty thankful for making that step. Now, I just have to follow their footsteps and get published again. On the programming/gaming side, I haven't really done much with networking, but I blog about it almost as much as my writing. Even if I occasionally give "too technical" details as more than one said. Oh well, just who I am.

The end of the year is the time when I look at my major projects for the year. I plan them ahead of time, sometimes even figure out when I'll work on it, but mainly it is a framework for my personal projects throughout the year. I also like to remember what I have succeeded at.

Probably the largest accomplishment this year is that I wrote a game. After my father taught me to program at the age of six, I've been trying to finish a computer game since. At the age of thirty-two, I actually got close to succeeding at that goal with CuteGod. Yeah, someone else came up with the design document and the graphics, but I actually sat down and started to write it. And I got it to a playable state. For something I've been struggling with for over twenty-six years, I think that is a major thing.

Following up, I'd have to say My Father's Bike and Case of the Morning Zombies. I manages to get a first draft on two novels this year, one that has had major significance in my life already even though it never got published and the other because I wrote it for NaNoWriMo.

Everything else was kind of minor compared to those: friends, games, and novels. In this next year, I have quite a few plans and it is going to be a very rough and packed year:

The Master Plan: This is the year where Fluffy and I finally get into the end of the plan. In the following year, I'm going to try finding a job in Iowa, move to Iowa, and start to have a family. This is the part that has terrified me for the last five years and it is finally time for it to happen.
College: I start college for my Masters in five days. Eight classes and eight 30+ page essays before I get it. Then the joys of deciding if I want to keep on going to finish up a doctorate, which I'm also considering.
Ponies Among Us: This game is due by April 2 and I'm hitting the struggle point. Only three more full months of working on it and I'm nowhere near the completion point or even the midway point for that project. Related to that is Kitteh Braik which is a proof-of-concept game that I'm suppose to have done by the end of January or thereabouts.
My Father's Bike: At this point, I think my dad knows that this book exists, but I don't think he knows what's really in it. I don't keep secrets in general, but I want to give it to him for his birthday in January 2009. So, I have to find a new way of organizing it and finally finish it and get it bound for him.
Case of the Morning Zombies: I want this story to succeed, so I need to edit it and clean it up. That way, I can start the submission grinder on it and hope that this one will also succeed.
Muddy Reflections and Wind, Bear, and Moon: I got some really good feedback on both of these novels, but I've been sitting on them. So, in the next couple of months, I need to polish them off and get them back out.
Somewhere in the middle of all this writing, I plan on writing another novel of course. It's initials are QoF, and the first draft is already done, but I want to polish it up and get it out. This is for my other byline.
Stories: I want to write 24 short stories this year. Half for each byline. This is including commissions, but I want to write six to publish directly on http://brokentypewriterpress.com/ and the other six for submissions. It was a really nice feeling to get Thomas the Baker published and I want to do it again.

And that is my goals this year. Some of them are huge, like the Master Plan, while others are relatively minor, but its going to be a very busy year for me. And it doesn't even talk about my Debian work or the games I run. It also doesn't talk about my web comic. I'm not sure how I'm going to juggle all of this, but at least I have a goal.

Obviously, I'm not planning on putting a progress bar for each one on my postings. That would be silly and they wouldn't change nearly enough, but I want to figure out something to poke me every time I post that I need to keep moving forward.

Character Builder (91%)
World Builder (2%)
Kitteh Braik (7%)
Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

Gift Societies and Writing

2007-12-05T06:00:00Z

Decided to roll out CuteGod 0.3.0 later today. Just need to finish up the Windows installer and make the various announcements. Nice features and people are beginning to really like what I've done, so that is a major egoboo. :)

Yesterday, I sent my first email to Blambot. If you don't know who they are, they make comic fonts. Two a month, one free and one not so free. I use them for Glorious Saber and I wanted to use the same font (Webletter Pro BB or the free version) in Ponies Among Us and a few other projects. Despite the fact these games are going to be open-sourced, Blambot (well, the guy who answered, but I treat this as a company/identity answer) said $400. Commerical, closed, or open-source, $400.

Now, it seems like a large hunk of money for something that I will never make money off of, but I'm still considering it. I think part of it comes from the nature of art verses programming. For some reason, the programming community has a very large section based on the gift society. You can see that in what I do: I give away 90% of my programming libraries and also about 90% of my stories. Yeah, I could keep them close to my chest and try to eek some money out of them, but I instead choose to publish them on the Internet and let anyone use them with relatively permissive terms. The same with stories. But, this isn't normal for the creative works.

On gamedev.net, I once found an article from a musician that even paying him $20, 50, or even $100 is something. He spends hours working on something and doesn't want to just give it away free, just because the code is free. Some of it comes from art verses programming (I'm an artistic programmer, that's how I write), but I think it has to do with something else. Artists should get paid for the work. And, fonts are art. It takes 20-30 hours to make a font. Yeah, I want to do it myself, but $400 might be far and away worth it for me to have a font that I like to use as I want. Same for paying someone to make music for me or draw art for my games. But, chances are, I'll continue to give away 90% of my art, be it stories, programming, and graphics, because it "feels right" to me.

This conflicts with my desire to be a professional writer, of course. It's hard to be famous and all writery when you give it away. People don't pay for things that are given away and if you don't get it pushed past a cash register, it never makes the New York Times Bestseller List. In this case, I'm trying to phase in the occasional pay in there. My novels are for the business side of my life. I do plan on giving them away, yes, but that is part of their "end of life" plan (i.e. after X years of publication, I'm planning on opening them up to Creative Commons, probably by-nc-sa, and throwing them on a POD). About 90% of my stories are freebies, things I want to give away so people know how I write, and the fact I write. I am combining both bylines in this, by the way, since looking at my stories index, I appear to be a rather unprolific writer. I need to fix that. Next year's goal is to write at least twelve stories under this byline and have nine go straight to the page, and the other three try the publication route. Yeah, it isn't 90%, but I think I'm having trouble establishing myself as a professional writer.

So, $400 isn't bad for a font. Well, for just a font, it's a bit high. Adobe sells their fonts for about $200 each, but the $400 gives me the right to put it in a game and send it out. I couldn't get that from Adobe for less than a couple grand problem. Yeah, I could cheat and pre-render the images and that would bypass it entirely. Or I could make my own font. Well, I want to make my own font, I really do and its on my list of "things to do" but is it worth the 40 hours of work to just make my own? Given the fact I'm already on month three of six for 4E6? Probably not, but you never know. Until then, I'll go with Webletter Pro BB, and if I don't have the insane desire to make my own font by February, I'll pay for the license and use a professional's work.

Remember, just because you can do something, doesn't mean it makes sense. Or is worth the time. Or will be better. And, I'll leave you one of my mottos in life:

Anyone can build a house. Experience just means you do it faster and with less mistakes.

It is true. Anyone can build a house. Anyone can figure out how to do it, get the tools and puzzle through it. But, an experienced house builder will do it faster, make less mistakes, and it probably will look better.

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)
CuteGod 0.3.0 (8 of 10 tasks)

CuteGod 0.2.1 out!

2007-12-03T06:00:00Z

Well, my vacation is over and I'm back at work. At least for two weeks, then I take another two weeks off to finish up my vacations for the year. In the next two weeks, I need to seriously clean up one of my programs and try to get it done for work. That way, everyone will feel better and we'll have something "zippy" as I hope. Plus, it would be nice to know that the last three months of work on this refactor is worth it. Trying to making something 1000% faster is not as easy as you think.

I got CuteGod 0.2.1 out. I had a 0.2.0, but apparently I broke something badly, so I put out a 0.2.1 release when I couldn't sleep that night. Still got a bunch of features I want to get done for 0.3.0 (and 0.4.0), but I really wanted to get a release out. Oh well, now to balance my effort on three points: CuteGod, Ponies Among Us, and Case of the Morning Zombies.

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

Productivity

2007-11-29T06:00:00Z

Still sick, imagine that. At least I didn't wake up at noon like yesterday. Instead, I actually had a rather nice day creating graphics with very little programming. I finished the blocks for CuteGod, including animating the grass and water ones (except the main water, oops). So, that should all be ready for the actually programming bit.

Last night, I worked on the beginnings of MfGames.Updater. It won't be done by the end of the week, but I can fake it with a zip file and the data structures I have now. I got some really good feedback on #mono, so I might make updater generic enough that others can use it for their own C#/.NET applications. I also spent most of yesterday cleaning up my libraries a bit, splitting Sprite3 from CuteGod (which needs to be done for Ponies) and getting things to stand on their own. I'm also splitting the Debian-specific stuff of my libraries from the main library, just because they aren't in sync most of the time.

I also redid part of my Moonfire Games website. Mainly to add the tabs on the top of the page, a about page for Glorious Saber, and clean up for the strip #018 that I also got done today. Plus, two people gave me some really nice compliments on the comic, mostly about it being funny which is the entire point.

Oh, and I posted my cheesecake recipe online for those who like it.

So, I've had a pretty busy couple of days. Tomorrow, I'm planning on working on Updater and getting CuteGod ready again. My plan is to have 0.2 alpha out on Sunday night or Monday morning (probably Monday morning).

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

New Tiles (Still Sick)

2007-11-27T06:00:00Z

Kind of a crappy day yesterday. Still sick, going from transparent goo in my head to bad color goo. This morning, I woke up at noon when my boss called me into work. I got a bit done yesterday though, mostly cleaning up library stuff and I got some new proposed tiles done for CuteGod.

The first is my new "dead water" block and the second should be randomly selected as the immobile blocks. Hopefully much better than the swirly things that everyone seemed to hate. I think I am getting better at graphics. The font, if you are curious, was Dark Arts by the utterly awesome font maker Blambot.

(Yeah, I know about the ridge on the first one, I'll clean that up later.)

Being sick and plans for this week

2007-11-26T06:00:00Z

I got sick this weekend. Seriously sucks, but it was pretty predictable with Fluffy being sick the week before. Always seems to happen around this time of year, but at least I have the week off to properly enjoy it.

So, Case of the Morning Zombies draft is done and I'm on my next round of projects, fixing up CuteGod and working on the stuff for Ponies Among Us. Last night and this morning, I finally tracked down that damn bug with 32/64-bit operating systems on Tao.FreeType. Got it polished up and checked in this morning. That means that CuteGod *should* work on amd64 flawlessly with the next version coming out. Now just to clean up the horrendous code, repackage some files, and get through a 80+ list of things that I think it should include. Heh.

Meebey asked me to work on Debian packages a bit, so I spent a few hours this morning updating XSP and mod-mono to the latest version. Not working on the log4net stuff quite yet, but I'm hoping to get to that later this week. That will get all of my Debian obligations done for a few months (I hope) and let me focus on Ponies.

I guess the next focus is to work on cleaning up my various libraries, getting them broken up properly (Sprite3 and CuteGod are being split), and work on getting the file downloader/updater working. Then... I don't know, probably just trying to move forward so by Friday, everything is Super Green.

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

2,611 words and 9 chapters to go

2007-11-23T06:00:00Z

I had a great writing day today. The chapters I worked on flowed like honey and the descriptions came out with a wonderful clarity that I was just happy about it. Of course, I highly suspect writing a sex scene (which I feel I am *very* good at) didn't really hurt with getting the words out. Well, it was part of the story and had a reason, honest. :)

Already thinking about the changes I want to make to CuteGod next week and Ponies Among Us the week after. Some of them are pretty simple, a update tool for CuteGod though I might use the strength of PhysicsFs a bit more and package the assets into a zip file; that should simplify the update process and make it a bit easier to do the changes I need to do.

For Ponies, if things go well, I might be creating a couple secondary programs as part of the "steps" for finishing the game. From appearances, I think I'll create a character creator for Glorious Saber since I"m using the same graphics style for both. Plus, it would speed up the process of making characters for that comic. If I put a poser in there, it would really simplify things. I also might make a fighting game for Glorious Saber, mainly because the jumping and fighting engine for Ponies would be a superset of what you expect in a simple three round fight game. Not sure, but it seems like a reasonable start.

Well, another two days like today and I'll have Case of the Morning Zombies wrapped up. Another day tomorrow and I should hit my NaNoWriMo goal. Overall, I'm having a good day.

And, sadly, I think the main reason I had so much luck today is because I sat down and played a damn game instead of working all night!. *sigh* I hate it when the obvious smacks me in the head.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 47,389 of 50,000 words)
Case of the Morning Zombies (47,389 of 75,000 words)

Filesystems and Level Loading

2007-11-23T06:00:00Z

This is a bit technical about using abstract filesystems for assets storage of games (CuteGod) and the idea of having a continuous world loading for Ponies Among Us.

One of the things I noticed with CuteGod is that I couldn't really package updates to the game without needing someone to install all 25 MiB worth of graphics and sounds. Obviously, the most logical approach is to break apart the installer into two parts: game system and graphics. But, you really want to only have one installer for Windows, so I thought an updater program would make it easier. That way, they can install the game, then click "Update" to get the latest graphics and sounds. So, if I made a change to the graphics, then I could just update a website and anyone who hits update will get the newest and greatest graphics.

All because I want/need to expand on Danc's wonderful work to fit the additional features or graphical elements.

Originally, I was planning on a XML file for each file, probably built up by SVN, and use that to download individual files. Then, I was reading through a good article about using filesystems in games and remembered that I already use PhysicsFS as my base library. Instead of making a really fancy system, why not just have a single zip archive that can be throw into an installer, downloaded from the Internet, or downloaded separately. It won't have the microupdating (if one file updates, you don't need all 25 MiB) that the individual file has, but it will have the simplicity of a single file. A third approach is to allow the micromanagement and write the update tool to do a in-place replacement of the files within the archive. That way, the install directory is relatively neat, it doesn't chew up inodes (file entries) but still allows for a precise update when I make little changes.

Not sure what I want to do, but I think having a framework for updating is probably going to be one of those tiny components that would really help both games. Being able to build up assets and update them dynamically seems like a good idea (even if 4E6 won't let you do network stuff). And I might be able to get a bit more agile with my development and testing.

Ponies is going to cause me more trouble. I'm going to be throwing a couple different technologies into the game and it occured to me that I really should make the "game mode" part of CuteGod more generic. That is the part that lets you switch from the main menu to the play mode and around again. I already have it pretty well ironed out, so why not use what I already developed?

Of course, that leads into the wonderful mess of levels. My original plan for Ponies was to have multiple connected levels. Then I was playing Kyntt Stories (it is a free game and I highly recommend it) and I kept wanting a continuous world instead of those damn screen changes. Obviously, if that bothers me then, it probably will bother me with Ponies which is going to be set up the same way. Plus, I got to reading some articles about level loading and it got me to thinking. I wonder how hard it would be to make a pluggable system that can handle a flexible, 2D platform world like Ponies? Is it worth it or should I just go for huge levels or interspersed levels with a overhead map? Part of me thinks I should go with the most basic system, mainly because I already lost two of my six months for this project. The other tells me to write the game I want to play.

Of course, if I go with a procedural generated "stage" that will make things that much more complicated. I had an idea that the basic game could have expansions. If you add locations to a given place, it would expand it into multiple branches and forks to make sure all your connections are properly placed. But, that makes continuous worlds nearly impossible. Or at least really damn hard.

Things to keep my thoughts working while I finish up my novel. I hate it when I have all these wonderful ideas, but I still have to write or program them. Everything is perfectly formed in my head until that magic point I sit down in front of the computer and start to type.

This next month is going to be interesting.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 47,389 of 50,000 words)
Case of the Morning Zombies (47,389 of 75,000 words)

14k to go

2007-11-21T06:00:00Z

Ah, vacations. Two weeks off to do everything that's been building up. Lots of time to finish up Case of the Morning Zombies, get another round of CuteGod, and get ready to start work on Ponies Among Us. I'm in day three of my vacation and let me check my list...

Nothing.

I've managed to play twelve game demos, listen to a bunch of soundtracks, think about a game system I killed a long time ago, and slept an average of twelve hours a day for the last five days. I've run one Changeling game and get ready for my Sepia Throne. I've also played in Fightertype's Exalted game.

I'm struggling, as I always do, with too many projects at the end of the year. Too many things I want to get done verses too many things I committed myself to getting done. Right now, I give it a 0.4 chance that I'll get Case of the Morning Zombies ready for submission by the end of December, but I'm still going to try for it. I also really, really want to get Ponies started, even if I break it up into multiple sub projects.

Only fourteen thousand words until I hit my NaNo goal and eleven chapters left until I finish the book. I hate the story and yet I like it, I hate how I seemed to have lost my voice partially from feedback I got and partially because I lost how I write. It seems... flat. I think my writing style is changing recently and Case is really showing it. I don't want to put in the twelve paragraphs of descriptions, but I still yearn for the flowing descriptions that set up my scene. I hate that somehow I forgot how to type and constantly swap letters I know shouldn't be swapped. It's like my fingers forgot how to type and I've gone through three keyboards this month trying to find one that is comfortable on my fingertips.

Well, got to finish this story and get Glorious Saber done.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 36,059 of 50,000 words)
Case of the Morning Zombies (36,059 of 75,000 words)

Crappy NaNoWriMo, AMD64 Debian, and CuteGod

2007-11-14T06:00:00Z

"Oh, the horror, oh the pain. I cannot make my deadline for NaNoWriMo. The anguish. The suffering. Why did I ever start it?"

Okay, enough feeding antonstrout the despair of a NaNo'er. I had a terrible day writing yesterday, mostly because of stress at work (you *might* be able to go on vacation if you got what you said done done on Friday despite all the other things I gave you), finding a new addictive game (Windows and Linux versions!) to play, and screwing around with settings and installing programs.

I finally got the AMD64 version of Debian installed on my machine. I have to say, it looks almost identical to the old one, which is in itself, an amazing thing. The boot 4.0r1 CD didn't work, but the boot testing DVD did and everything went in smoothly. Since I had /home on a separate partition, I didn't even have to backup my data (interestingly, I have backups of this stuff). Even things I didn't think would work, such as Flash, worked beautifully.

And to add a cherry to the top, I actually found the bug everyone is getting with CuteGod! Yeah, getting a bug is a point of cheer, mainly because if I can see it, I can fix it. Just as soon as I get through NaNoWriMo. I'm planning on having a second alpha of the game at the end of the month with probably a new installer, a few new tiles, and other nifties.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 26,930 of 75,000 words)

NaNoWriMo Day 1

2007-11-07T06:00:00Z

I'm a sprint writer. I can get a fair amount of words out of a story in a relatively short period of time. However, I can't maintain a steady rate in my writing. Part of it is my commitements and part of it is that I would get burned out too easily. So, seven days late into NaNoWriMo, I finally got started. Yeah, I had a lot of goals to finish before then, and my deadline wooshed right past me while thumbing its nose. The stories I worked on have a slightly higher chance of getting my name out than the NaNoWriMo and CuteGod had the little work to do, but I finally got started.

The first thing I realized is that while I have been thinking about Case of the Morning Zombies for a few months, I actually never sat down and created notes on it. Things like what chapter goes where and what order of events. Oops. An hour of fast work got out the first ten chapters in outline form and I got to writing.

I had a good night, not a great one, but a good night. Just over six thousand words in three hours. I noticed a few things already. I'm having a very large problem with passive voice. Way too may "was" in my writing and its beginning to get obvious. More so when I'm rushing through the story to get it done instead of editing it. Probably time to work on that part of my craft a bit faster.

The other is the pacing. I aimed for about two thousand words a chapter, but I'm already on chapter five. I don't have the rest of them planned, but I'm afraid it will end up a short novel (somewhere around 75k words) instead of the full length novel I'm aiming for. Thinking about it, as long as I hid my minimum goal of 75k words, I think I'm pretty happy with it.

So, a great first day. :) Today, however, I need to work out and finish up Glorious Saber, so I suspect no writing. Thursday and Friday I plan on working on Morning Zombies, Saturday I have Exalted and Sunday I'm reinstalling my operating system to fix a bug with CuteGod.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 6,286 of 75,000 words)

Ton of links and self-pride

2007-11-05T06:00:00Z

Well, I got my plate cleared off. I sent Change of Honor to Fantasist Enterprises, Best Laid Plans to White Wolf, Thomas the Baker to Twisted Ink, Hidden Room to Manifesto Games, Another Werewolf's Tail to Dark Recesses Press, finished a commission, and did a lot of writing. I even had a chance to run my Changeling game on Sunday. Not bad for basically the first week of NaNoMoWri. Maybe I should actually sit down and actually write the novel? Heh, most of these were to get me back up to speed with writing and get me in the frame of mood. Tomorrow, I start the novel as soon as I get home and I know I have a lot of catching up to do.

Somewhere in there, I also did a bit of work on CuteGod to take into account some of the comments on my forum. While I'm not a professional artist, there are two ways of doing artwork. In CuteGod, I took Danc's tiles and did color changes and some swirlies to come up with the tiles he didn't make. Mainly the dead tiles and the immobile blocks. To my surprise, there are actually people who use greyscale monitors and there was a good point that blue/green colorblind people can't play my game. I had no clue people still used grayscale monitors. So, I dusted off my artistic skills and effectively traced over Danc's water tiles to make something that looks a bit more distinct in greyscale mode.

Now, these aren't as impressive as Danc's, but I thought they turned out pretty well for the time being. The upper left one is Danc's, the upper right is my version of Danc's water tile. They aren't perfect, but since I don't use Microsoft Expressions, I had to use Inkscape to redo the tile. The lower left is the sealed water. This is used when a layout uses a water tile, but has the water tile on top. The one on the lower right is my "brackish" or dead water. The second set of images are what it looks like in black and white; the thumbnail doesn't really do it justice.

So, in short: I had a fantastic writing week, a little bit of graphics, and I'm raring to get started on NaNoWriMo tomorrow.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 0 of 100,000 words)

Context switching from CuteGod to NaNoWriMo

2007-10-25T05:00:00Z

Amazing how you can pack so much in three days. On Monday, I was sick as I mentioned before. Inigo also went into the vet to get neutered and be tagged. Since then, he has been absolutely miserable since then, screaming out in pain with every step and crawling into a ball instead of moving. The formerly excited puppy has turned into sad eyes and it reminds me of Dante so much before he died. I know he isn't, he is just miserable and in a few weeks, he'll be fine, but it hurts to much to hear him yelping.

I got the second alpha for CuteGod out. It includes installers for Windows and a binary package for Linux. THere are some burps with some of the Linux platforms, but Windows works beautifully and I'm damn proud I got so far. I sent a copy to Danc, who proposed the challenge, and he gave me a lot of really good feedback and compliments. I won't be able to do much for a few weeks with NaNoWriMo, but it is actually getting close to being a real "game" and something I've been trying to do for twenty-six very long years. Please, download it and tell me what you think.

I'm also winding up for NaNoWriMo by writing some short stories. Struggling a lot with trying to "remember" how to write. It's that horrible state where I know the words, but I lost that skill where it comes out so quickly, so easily. I'll get there, but I have to context switch between programming and writing and its hard. It really points out that you can specialize or you can be generic, but a specialist will usually do it faster and easier than the generalist.

Four days, twelve pounds, and four hundred thousand dollars

2007-10-22T05:00:00Z

Ick, Imperial measurements. But, my bathroom scale, which is in the hall, doesn't do proper metric like any sane appliance. What it tells me, even through the filter of a measurement system I find dated, is that I've lost twelve pounds in four days. Or about that, I didn't actually check it more than a couple of times before I had to be sick again.

Yep, still sick. I called in sick today and gave myself only a few more hours before calling the doctor. Thankfully, both for my insurance premiums and my own pride, one of the drugs I was taking finally started to take hold and I've only been slightly miserable for the last four hours.

Just in case, I didn't bother going into work.

Instead, I worked on CuteGod. Yah for obsession. Well, it has more to do with I don't think about being sick when I program. I don't think about being miserable or what time it is. I don't actually think that much when I code or write, I just try to do and it works out for me.

However, my attempts at achieving Oneness with the Universe didn't work out with a few choice phone calls from my company's accountant. We are friends, sort of, and we look out for each other. It all centered around a Bad Decision™ my boss made last Friday. She bought out interest in a liquor store for the low price of $400k. As a side note, no, she still hasn't caught up pay for me or most of the company, but it's okay, it's "her money" and she'll do what she wants. Doesn't matter that $400k comes out to eight full paycheck rounds and would catch up almost every single employee who has been hanging around for two years now waiting to get caught up. I wasn't happy finding out about this, but I got really unhappy today when I found out she specifically told people not to tell me. She didn't want me telling her it was a bad idea, that she already has commitments, that she doesn't need a project distracting her even more from the one that makes money, so she told everyone to keep me in the dark until after it happened.

How's that for trust? I've been with the company over two decades, am the vice president, and am in line to take over the company when she retires, but she won't tell me when she makes decisions that she knows are a bad idea. She didn't want to hear no, so she made sure I would never tell her that horrible, forbidden word.

I'll ignore the other lies she told people about how much I loved this purchase and I was completely behind it.

Summer Biking: (370.2 of 400.0 km)

Food Poisoning!

2007-10-20T05:00:00Z

Fluffy is out of town this weekend so I get to be a bachelor. Ah, the fancy times of wild parties, staying up late, and basically reliving the non-existent days before my second decade. So, what did I do in this restriction-free environment?

Got sick.

Yep, food poisoning. Started feeling bad on Thursday and it went right into Friday, getting steadily worse, and finally tapered off this morning. Woke up only a few minutes before noon, which is remarkable given the puppies not waking me up more than once. But, I feel much better. The strange part, I'm craving sushi which is what I suspected gave it to me in the first place.

So, between the rounds of being sick, I worked on the surprise of all surprises, CuteGod. Fixed a bunch of bugs, got more prayers working, and just admired the fact it is beginning to look like a real game. My goal this weekend is to put out a alpha release for Windows and Linux. The Windows one might not happen, but at least I can get the Linux version out and start getting feedback and stuff I missed type of things. Here's hoping.

I created a LJ feed for Glorious Saber for those who are interested in adding it to your friends page. Not sure if it is working properly, but I'm hoping to get more exposure.

I'll be removing my bike goal probably in a week or so. It is getting a tad chilly to ride and I'm hoping to get those last 30 km in before then.

Summer Biking: (370.2 of 400.0 km)

Editing Code and Editing Novels

2007-10-19T05:00:00Z

I got to thinking about editing, mainly because of some conversations. Lately, I haven't been writing much, mainly because I have a packed schedule for the next three months and writing isn't for another two weeks. Mostly, I've been obsessing about CuteGod and getting it done before November 1st. Writing problems is like writing novels. The difference is that it is, in a way, more compact but more complicated. In a story or novel, you know how it ends, in a program, you have to plan for all the possibilities. You have to test data and, in most cases, let people do their own thing. In a way, running RPG games is the mid-point of writing and programming, at least for me. :)

A good example is CuteGod. I've been working on it for a few months, call it two, but if you look at the lines of code (LOC), it doesn't look like much. Yeah, a LOC is like a sentence in a story, but the language is richer in many ways.

MfGames.Sprite3: 8,515 LOC
MfGames Libraries: 13,868 LOC
BooGame: 5,529 LOC
Total: 27,912 LOC

Can you guess which library I've been working on for a few years? Put together, this pretty much comes up to the same amount of work as a novel. Now, I don't use everything for CuteGod, but a lot of the same things with editing are there. When I start, the code is clean and organized, I have everything thrown into its perfectly little bit, encapsulated like a proper object-oriented (OO) code should be. As I get further though, I start to throw in patches and fixes. Like adding descriptions or plot lines that weren't planned from the beginning, the patches start to wind their way into the program and soon I have layers on layers of code that is rather fragile. One change to the underlying system and it can bring things crumbling down. For example, in Sprite3, I have a small library to handle the blocks being dropped. They work for almost everything, except the bugs I wanted to add to CuteGod. Vibrating blocks simply didn't work with the pseudo-physics layer. I know how to fix it, but to do so would require me to rip out the entire library and rebuild the block management.

Mr. Birtolo came back with his opinions of Muddy Reflections a week or so ago and I've been mulling over them. Some of them are pretty simple, clean up the language, maybe rebuild the calendar to be less regular and a bit more... fantasy. Others are a bit more complicated. I write in layers, pretty much have for the last five years. At the bottom level, there are the nice clean plots of everyone involved. Everyone has their story, motivations, and personalities. Held alone, like a brand new source file, they are fairly simple. Its when they interact and start to mix that you get these little layers of plot. They are patches, fixes, in the individual plot lines as everyone tries to go back to their goals in life, but those patches are what creates the story. They weave into the tale creating the interaction and conflict that stories need. At the top, it ends up being a complicated mess because of those interactions. However, changing a character's motivation or purpose creates this ripple where you have to fix everything they impact and sometimes you have to rip out large hunks to make it work. I have three of those from Dylan's review. They are three important ones, ones that help fuel the story, but if I want to succeed I have to fix it.

In the case of CuteGod, I just took out the bugs. They were important to the story of the game and I can always fix it later. For Muddy Reflections, I decided to keep all three points in, but it means I have to debug my code and review almost everything to make sure they fit a bit smoother into the story. To me, there isn't much difference in writing programs or writing stories. There also isn't much difference in the ways you have to edit it, how you figure out what to cut and what to change. Sometimes you hate how it looks or sounds and go back and rewrite an entire chapter. I do the same with code, when I realize I did something really badly and it doesn't fit. Last night, I worked on rewriting the prayer complete, chest bonuses, and new stage screens because they really needed to be cleaned up. Too many patches.

Oh, since it is polite, the LOC program I use requests that I mention that it was generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'.

Summer Biking: (370.2 of 400.0 km)

Glorious Saber #013

2007-10-18T05:00:00Z

Worked only a little bit on CuteGod last night. Mostly I spent the night working on Glorious Saber to get strip #13 out. Still struggling a bit with it, but I gave up on the mouths for this strip and went back to the original look. There is little bits here and there, but I'm feeling more comfortable doing it. I'm also thinking about posting when I do work on Glorious Saber, mainly to troll for comments.

Of course, that comfort was shaken a bit when I posted it on the White Wolf forums. It was feedback, pretty good feedback, but not the type of stuff I can change easily. I mean, Glorious' speech patterns are easier to mask and make more English but the artistic style, while abstract, may not be easily changed until I get better at my artistic skill. Not to mention, I'm working on libraries to generate the avatars for Ponies Among Us and Glorious Saber at the same time. And the trees (the L-system library from yesterday) and a few other things.

I aim big, you know that?

I also desperately need to write a story this weekend. Even if it just to post instead of sending out to one of many places that want it. Honest, they do.

They just don't know it yet.

Summer Biking: (357.2 of 400.0 km)

Almost done with an l-system

2007-10-17T05:00:00Z

Well, should have been writing or at least working on CuteGod. But, I had to get my L-system mostly working and now it is. Apparently, I accidentally got contextual working in the process of doing parametric ones. So, I bet you are wondering what is the difference? No, didn't think so.

Gonna write about it anyway.

The basic l-system is a bunch of variables, constants, and rules. They have the initial state (axiom) which indicates where we start.

Variables: A, B.
Constants: None.
Rules: (A -> AB, B -> A)
Axiom: A

This initial mess starts with "A" and every generation replaces the "A" with "AB" and the "B" with "A".

Generation 0: A
Generation 1: AB
Generation 2: ABA
Generation 3: ABAAB

A parametric l-system gives you a bit more information, specifically parameters to your values.

Variables: K.
Constants: None.
Rules: (K(n) -> K(n + 1))
Axiom: K(0)

This system increments K(n) by one every time you get it.

Generation 0: K(0)
Generation 1: K(1)
Generation 2: K(2)
Generation 3: K(3)

One of the features I saw was the ability to take a parametric and use some comparison to show the rise and fall of something. Or, what I have in mind, leaf and flower sizes.

Variables: Leaf, Flower.
Constants: None.
Rules: (Leaf(2) -> Flower(0), Leaf(n) -> Leaf(n + 1), Flower(n Flower(n + 1))
Axiom: Leaf(0)

What this does is start with Left(0) and increment it until we get Leaf(2), then replace it with a Flower(0) which grows until you get Flower(2). I can use that to show a tree, have the tree branch off into twigs, have leaves grow on the twigs and gets some flowers, then have the flowers die and the leaves turn colors before falling off, then in the next year branch it off some more.

Generation 0: Leaf(0)
Generation 1: Leaf(1)
Generation 2: Leaf(2)
Generation 3: Flower(0)
Generation 3: Flower(1)
Generation 3: Flower(2)
Generation 3: Flower(2)

Complicated, huh? It seems like an interesting system for creating "dynamic" cities, trees, and other stuff for Ponies Among Us and maybe Cute God, though I doubt it. I don't have much left to do on the library until I can call it "alpha". Mainly comparisons, ie. "Flower(n < 2)", and probabilities. The latter will take about 5-10 minutes, the former probably an hour then I'm "done" for now on the library.

Didn't get much biking as I planned. My bosstype asked me to stay late to babysit the guy putting in the Internet connection, so I had to catch a ride instead of biking. My goal isn't looking too good, unless I make a point of biking on the weekend, which I rarely do.

Summer Biking: (357.2 of 400.0 km)

Focus Issues and L-systems

2007-10-16T05:00:00Z

Last night, I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Rifftrax, so I couldn't do much programming. So, I decided to write up a little L-system library. I'm not entirely sure why I did this, other than I thought it might be useful for Ponies Among Us or even CuteGod. It isn't optimized for use, but it at least does a context-free L-system with simple regex operations. In theory, this would let me do something with city building, tree creation, or something neat with character appearance. Most of these are for Ponies Among Us. Naturally, I really should focus on getting CuteGod done but sometimes I have trouble focusing on the game issues and not trying to do the polish one. I mean, I don't even have a main menu yet and had to remove features (*pout*).

Well, tonight, tonight I shall code! And the code shall be good!

... maybe.

Summer Biking: (357.2 of 400.0 km)

No more cute bugs

2007-10-15T05:00:00Z

Another day of torment. Well, not really. I spent a lovely morning waking up with Fluffy and reading books well into the afternoon. Other than that, I basically did nothing productive except read books, comics, and go grocery shopping. Oh, I did decide to take out the bugs for CuteGod instead of going back and fixing the engine. It will never get done if I start over on something as critical as that.

Summer Biking: (349.9 of 400.0 km)

PlanetCute woes and NaNoWriMo trepidations

2007-10-13T05:00:00Z

Hit a roadblock on CuteGod and Sprite3. Apparently, my psuedo physics engine can't handle the bugs (the final stage penalty in the game) without a lot of screen breaking and really screwed up quirks. So, I need to go back and review how I built up the PlanetCute block engine and see if I can fix it without too much work.

In other words, I registered for NaNoWriMo. Yeah, I don't need to do it, but I just wanted to this year. Plus, it really comes down to the question if I can write a good novel in a third of the time I normally take?

Fluffy made me work out, which is good, but I hate that I still don't feel good after I work out. On the other hand, I can fairly comfortably walk 4 miles per hour for 10 minutes without going over 135 heart rate. A far improvement over the 150 heart rate for going 2.5 mph from the beginning of this year.

Summer Biking: (349.9 of 400.0 km)

Lovely Progress on CuteGod

2007-10-12T05:00:00Z

Had a pretty productive day last night. Worked on polishing up CuteGod and it is starting to look very nice. Probably the most unimportant, but critical, thing I added was a proper loading screen. This let me get something up on the screen as fast as possible, then to load the rest of the textures in the background. Otherwise, there was this 5-10 second on this computer (10-15 on my laptop) delay before the screen started up.

After that, I added a new stage screen. This shows up after you finish a prayer and it tells you about what new complexity has been added to the game. Right now, I only have a few of them (5 out of 7) finished but I hope to get the rest of them done pretty quickly. If you would be so kind, please notice the lovely font, the edges and how it renders. That is basically what I spent a week working on, just getting fonts to render almost properly. It doesn't do character kerning of course, and ligatures are right out.

In the next couple of images, you can see advanced stages of the game. The grass is somewhat dead, you can see some sand, and a bit of brackish water. All of those bricks can be moved around just as normal, but you can't build on them so it gets harder to arrange stuff near the end of the stage.

Finally, I took out my horrible implementation of getting stars to center on the icons and made it a much more appropriate gravity-based system. I didn't even have to look up how to use arctan, sine, or cos but it looks MUCH better. On my computer, the hearts and stars stream to the right place, but with the lower framerate they circle around in orbit. The following screen is me triggering the prayer completed stage over and over again until there are hundreds of stars. Like moving bricks around, I could do this for hours:

From the looks of it, things are moving forward nicely. I'm still resisting the urge to work on the silly non-game related graphics since they work directly with Ponies Among Us but I need to finish the game. If I don't finish, its going to annoy me. I'm trying very hard to finish thing in life, not get endlessly new projects.

Summer Biking: (346.7 of 400.0 km)

CuteGod Movie #1

2007-10-05T05:00:00Z

You know, there is a difference between a five year old laptop with an "accelerated" ATI driver and a dual-core machine with twice the speed and a binary nVidia accelerated driver? For starters, while I couldn't even make the video of CuteGod at 4 shots per second on the laptop, I could make one at 20 shots per second on my computer and still not have my music skip a beat.

It took a while, but I managed to get a little flash video of CuteGod, or at least my version of CuteGod. Now, this isn't done, but it is getting fairly good looking at this point. I'd love feedback on it, mainly because it is basically the first time I showed off the program with the recent changes to BooGame and everything else.

There is a 14 MB flash video behind the cut.

Summer Biking: (326.1 of 400.0 km)

The path not chosen

2007-10-04T05:00:00Z

Or, the decision could be a completely different one that I had planned. As I was trolling through my friends lists and my rather large RSS feed, I noticed a little entry for Amazon's novel contest. And, like most writers with a novel sitting on their shelf begging to be read, I had to jump on the bandwagon and registered to enter. The odds are too bad, 0.0006 (or 3 of 5,000) for getting at least in the semi-finals which is good enough for me. So, I'm going to beg/pressure/whimper to get some feedback on the novel, rewrite part of the first 50 pages, and submit everything. In the next seven days.

It's doable. Since I consider get published to be one of my major goals, I'll shuffle things around. CuteGod can wait.

Speaking of CuteGod, I took yesterday off to babysit my new refrigerator. It's so shiny, clean, and already smells of minced garlic, which was the only thing to survive the last one dying. While waiting, I decided that finishing CuteGod was more important than start with 4E6. Plus, some of the libraries I need for Ponies Among Us are also used by CuteGod and CuteGod is a much more limited subset of functionality. So, CuteGod first, then NaNoWriMo, then 4E6. And, somehow, I feel that this is a much more relaxed year's end compared to last year's.

Off the tangent again, I worked on CuteGod and got a lot of really good progress. Sadly, I wanted to make a little flash movie of what I've done so far, but my computer wasn't behaving. My laptop isn't OpenGL-accelerated and between the game and the screen capture, it simply can't handle the load. Maybe when I get home, I can make a video. It would be neat to see what everyone thinks.

Summer Biking: (314.8 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (3 of 4 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (3 of 4 rounds)

Choices, choices

2007-10-02T05:00:00Z

I need 11 work/home segments or 5.5 days to get my goal in biking. At 10 km per ride, it makes it a pretty even 110 km to go or just about that. It might be only 10 and something, but I'm not too worried. I think I can do it, though it will be a push to get it before it gets too nippy to really enjoy the bike riding. Unlike a Fluffy, who can work out five hours a week consistently, even an hour is a struggle for me.

I give five projects in the works right now, including two ongoing ones:

Sepia Throne, my Exalted game
College of Veils, the new Changling/Hero game I'm starting
CuteGod and related work with BooGame
Case of the Morning Zombies which I'm going to write in November
Ponies Among Us, my 4E6 entry

Of course, I also have my ton of open source projects, Debian work, and everything else. As it always seems, the end of the year is packed. Just packed. But, I don't think I can do all of that without burning out. So, I'm juggling the various things and seeing what I can handle. The two games are not that hard, most of them take less than a few hours during the week, then a day on the weekend (every two weeks and every four respectively). Morning Zombies is November and the beginning of December, so that is pretty well set.

It comes down to CuteGod verses Ponies. On one side, there is the rush of finally finishing something. CuteGod has been bothering me since I had to stop it, way back in July. But, all the hours I work on CuteGod are hours I don't work on 4E6 which is something I really want to succeed at. I want to succeed at CuteGod just as much. Goddess, I hate having to decide on my projects.

Summer Biking: (292.2 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (3 of 4 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (3 of 4 rounds)

Epiphanies in BooGame, plans for CuteGod and writing

2007-09-26T05:00:00Z

Apparently, I was one epiphany away from figuring out BooGame. Last night, I realized what I was doing wrong and moved things around and got both a SDL and FreeGlut version working almost identically. I managed to clean up the font rendering so it works a ton better than the old one and allows you to use the full Unicode character set instead of just 128 of the most common letters. It also handles spaces slightly better and sizes over 100 pixels that the other method didn't.

I think there are a couple little things left, mainly to clean it up a bit more, and I think I basically got BooGame updated for what I had in mind. That is just perfect since 4E6 elements are going to be announced tomorrow. CuteGod will probably be put on hold a bit more, or I'll work on it while doing the "design document" for the game I'm planning on writing 4E6. I think my hesitant plan is:

October: CuteGod and Design Doc
November: NoNoWriMo and Case of the Morning Zombies
December: Getting Morning Zombies edited and submitted to Wizards, start working on 4E6 game
January-April: 4E6

Yeah, the plan won't last, but that is my hesitant goal at this point. I want to succeed.

Summer Biking: (260.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (3 of 4 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (3 of 4 rounds)

Feeling a bit down...

2007-09-24T05:00:00Z

This was a very busy weekend, but not that much on the productive side. I worked on my commission most of the weekend (with frequent "don't wanna work" breaks to various places). And got pretty much up to a first draft. On Sunday, Fluffy and Fightertype entered into a Tae Kwon Do tournament They are both Hapkido students, but they must enter a tournament before their black belt, so they went in for board breaking only. Fluffy got the gold medal in her minor division but didn't get grand champion. However, it was awesome to watch her elbow strike three boards at the same time, twice. I was stunned by the price involved: $10 for me to watch, $60 for her to participate, $3/board (she broke 15-18, I don't remember). Everything cost money, money, and more money--about $132 this time.

They are finally announcing the Four Elements VI contest and elements in four days. I'm annoyed at myself for failing to finish CuteGod in time. I'm also upset that I should have been able to finish, but got lost in the trees and never managed to pull myself out. It doesn't help that Steam Punk Magazine #3 just came out. I didn't get a rejection notice, but I wasn't in it. It's a great magazine, but it makes me wonder if I just don't Get It™? At this point, every story and novel I have sent out has come back as a rejection. I'm probably going to wait to sending out Wind, Bear, and Moon and Muddy Reflections again, but after I get feedback from the other Dylan and Scienceprincess respectively.

Summer Biking: (260.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (1 of 3 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (2 of 3 rounds)
Commissioned Work (4,885 of 5,000 words)

I'm not in the lead, but that's okay...

2007-09-10T05:00:00Z

I hate it when I want to work and can't seem to get anything done. I mean, I wanted to get almost done with BooGame and related libraries before the end of the weekend. I noticed that loading my Sprite3 demo was taking about 1.5 GB of ram for the first five minutes, then dropped down to 45 MB. Since it was using a less than optimum method of loading (DevIL instead of the built-in SDL_Image), I decided to switch it over to an abstracted texture backend. This, naturally, broke a lot of things and I'm still trying to bring it back to date. All this to finish CuteGod before they announce 4E6.

When I was wandering around the Internet, I found this site that had another CuteGod implementation far and away beyond what I've gotten on CuteGod. So, I have a benchmark to try reaching, their game actually looks pretty good. It also inspired the guy who proposed the CuteGod to respond, something I never got. :) So, I have my inspiration. Now I just have to finish.

I also submitted my resume today. It is to work on a Novell implementation of a Microsoft product, but it is with a group of developers that I already work with and it is something I think I could do fairly well. I think it means I'll be looking at somewhere between a 40k and 60k drop in pay (*sigh*), but what is more important. Making lots of money inconsistently or making less consistent money? I guess I'll figure out the answer, but I still have to get through a few tests, some interviews, and the like before that question actually comes up. And if I'm still choking at work (my contingency plan kicked in yesterday), then the universe might be making a choice for me.

Summer Biking: (236.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (1 of 3 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (1 of 3 rounds)
Commissioned Work (493 of 10,000 words)

Relief of Financial Woes

2007-09-10T05:00:00Z

Today is a much better day than most of the last week. It is always stressful when I don't get paid on time, more so when a flood of bills came in. But, I got a nice surprise when I found out I got paid today. That little bit will get me back in the black and hopefully less stressed out (and snapping at Inigo and Fluffy).

That leads into a problem I might have. I've always gone with Faith in life. "Things work out in the end." When life gets hard, it usually meant that things needed to change. The first time I quit the company (six months late on paycheck, getting one check in every three), everything opened up. I found a job in a hard market in less than two weeks for 20% more than I was making inconsistently. Like a golden road opening up, I was on comfortable street nearly instantly. And I was happy. Fluffy had the same thing with her first marriage. It was getting rough and nasty, then she decided to leave her mate and the world opened up, a friend just happened to be in the area and had his truck. Again, the path opened up for her.

Now, it's less clear. On one side, I have this loyalty that keeps me at the company, despite the bad pay. I get cranky and upset, mainly because of loyalties, but... *sigh* I guess she is trying to get her best to take care of us. It just doesn't happen in the way I want it to. Or I think it should be. I don't want to find a job, but I think about it when we get so far back in paychecks. Or when I see my paycheck going to one of her social affairs or the other company.

But, today I'm a bit better. Worked on CuteGod most of the night, and struggled through some writing for my commission. CuteGod is sputtering, which is frustrating because I really want to finish it. It just feels like a huge mountain, you know, when standing at the bottom or even half-way up. I'll see if the Novell thing pans out and go back to what I've done for the last year: keep on writing, keeping on programming, try to get published.

Summer Biking: (236.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (1 of 3 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (1 of 3 rounds)
Commissioned Work (493 of 10,000 words)

Good day of writing, programming, and The Host.

2007-09-08T05:00:00Z

I had a good writing day yesterday. I finally finished the first draft of Change of Honor while watching bad movies on the television. Then, as I decided to watch Dark Water (the Japanese version), I finished the first draft of Another Werewolf's Tail. So, I am enjoying a distinct high from getting something done.

I also got more progress on BooGame. Actually got the SDL layer to load a window and show something close to what I'm aiming for. That was seriously good news, though I think I still have a lot of work left on that. I figured today will be getting the SDL stuff on BooGame working and maybe, just maybe start working on CuteGod again this Monday.

4E6 is coming closer to announcement and I'm both anxious for that and half worried about it. Normally, they give you about nine months to work on it. I really, really want to finish CuteGod before that, which means that I might be taking the first two months of 4E6 off to work on other things instead of working on that contest. Furthermore, after some discussion about making games cross-platform (and how a good number of people feel that making games run on Linux or Macs is a waste of time, energy, and effort), I might be ponying up a couple hundred dollars to make a secondary prize for cross-platform. Yeah, it doesn't matter to 91% of the market, who all run Windows, but I feel that the Mac and Linux both deserve to have at least more than a handful of games. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.

As long as I can afford it. I can't actually spend money until I get paid. The emergency check from work didn't go as far as I hoped. Its going to be tight, but I think doable, I already have a contingency plan in action to help with that. I plan things.

The only other thing I did last night of note was watch The Host again with Fightertype and Uteck. Despite the fact they burst out laughing at least half a dozen times, it "wasn't that funny." How can you laugh about scenes, talk about them minutes after they happen, and bring them up as funny quotes and somehow say it wasn't funny. Oh well, different people, different thoughts.

Summer Biking: (236.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (1 of 3 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (1 of 3 rounds)
Commissioned Work (0 of 10,000 words)

Bikes and Programs

2007-09-05T05:00:00Z

It is hard to ride your bike when you bring two dogs into work, so I drove in again and probably will all week. With Fluffy out of town, I'm doing all the morning things like feeding the cats and dogs. It doesn't help when you stay up to 01:00 to get the MythTV box upgraded, trying newer and newer versions just to find that what you were fixing was not what was broken. *sigh* I hate those days.

I did get BooGame to compile again. The example program doesn't work, but at least it compiles. Now, to make everyone play happily and to get things back to before I started working. :) It's silly and was a lot of hard work, but I think it will make CuteGod more stable.

I tried working on a Japanese-themed story in the last couple of days. While I can picture it in my head, its been so long since I wrote that I "forgot" the spark. So, I have to write to get it going again just so I can work on my stories and commissions.

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (236.7 / 400.0 km)

I'm Purple!

2007-08-31T05:00:00Z

This did not surprise me. :)

What color is your soul painted?

Purple

Your soul is painted the color purple, which embodies the characteristics of sensuality, spirituality, creativity, wealth, royalty, nobility, mystery, enlightenment, arrogance, gaudiness, mourning, confusion, pride, delicacy, power, meditation, religion, and ambition. Purple falls under the element of Earth, and was once a European symbol of royalty; today it symbolizes the divine.

Click Here to Take This Quiz

Quizzes and Personality Tests

Spent last night working more on BooGame. It's getting there, but the problem when you have two libraries very tightly tied together is that it takes a lot to abstract one away. I just hope the decisions I'm making and what I'm doing is going to make CuteGod more stable (it crashes a lot on Windows and I can't use it on Linux lately).

Going to be an interesting weekend. Going to a comedy club tonight with Fluffy and Evyl. Tomorrow I have gaming, which should be leading into the final bits of Arc 3. Trying to organize the plots a bit more using FreeMind. Maybe this will be the Ultimate Plot Management Tool, I've been seeking. Heh, I'm also looking for the Ultimate Map Management Tool but haven't found one yet.

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (236.7 / 400.0 km)

Programming Hard

2007-08-30T05:00:00Z

Feel a bit better today. Last night, I worked on the comic script a bit and added an atom feed. Still need to figure out how I want to move forward with this project, since I suspect I might be doing another web comic some day or... I want to productize it to make it easier for others to use it. I mean, might as well let others use what I insist on rewriting, right?

I also worked on BooGame last night. This is for CuteGod but I need a better window backend and I figured I'd make it more flexible as part of the process. Mr. Loach said it was okay to do what changes I'm making, since I'm apparently the only one using the library right now. Mainly, I just want to get it off my TODO list before 4E6 or NaNoWriMo kicks in. That and I think it is a really fun game, I just have to keep on trucking to finish it before I lost interest. I mean, I've been trying to finish a computer game since I was six (when I first learned how to program) and that was a long time ago (I'm 32).

Fluffy is leaving on Sunday for her vacation. So, ten days of me being alone, obsessing. I suspect, I'm going to be programming and writing a lot. There are a couple short stories that I need to finish up and get me back "in the groove" as it were for NaNoWriMo and Case of the Morning Zombies.

Fightertype once mentioned that I update my journal too often, which is why she doesn't really read it. I wonder if that is true for most of you, do you just pass on by since I'm so damn wordy?

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (236.7 / 400.0 km)

Back from GenCon

2007-08-20T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)

Apparently, unlike some of you, I don't use my computer during my vacations or during GenCon. :) So, after six days of enjoying myself, I'm finally back from another wonderful trip. I left on Wednesday morning and came back a few hours ago, here on Monday. This was the first time I've ever run a game at GenCon (Exalted of course) and I had some really cool news from the end of it.

Actually, the first one was wandering over to the White Wolf booth and talking to a random person who ended up being one of the Exalted developers. I did the first thing that came to mind and thanked him for creating a great game. We got to chatting and apparently he knew of my comic (whee), my online map (squee), and actually heard of me (bouncebouncybounce). I kept running into him the next three times I went to the booth, mainly to pick up Monte Cook's World of Darkness, Sidereals, Changeling, and something else. If anything else, the ego boost along floated me along through the trip.

Fluffy had a great time, though she encountered something new at GenCon: the Impossibly Cute Twenty-Something Gamer Boy (ICTSGB). In packs, hordes. One of them was playing her husband in a LARP and she got flustered. And she kept talking about them, but I can't disagree. There were a lot of good-looking twenty-somethings in there, including a set that wanted to join my game but it was in the last hour. I'm including the ICTSGG also, though I appreciate both sets.

Speaking of looking good, I got a chance to chat with The Original Dylan. He wasn't classified in the ICTSGB group (sorry), but he was placed in the Improbably Cute group by a few members of my group. :) Good thing I don't seem to be capable of being jealous, otherwise I could have been. Looking forward to seeing his next novel, plus he liked my idea for Case of the Morning Zombies (more squee). Dylan also told me some things about Muddy Reflections that I need to work on, and I'm really anxiously waiting for his and scienceprincess' reviews of my novels so I can try improving my writing and finally get published properly.

I also got to chat with Charles Embrey Jr. who wrote the Lost Keep of Kaywall. Given the fact I didn't write what I felt was the most positive review, apparently he was really appreciative that I did and apparently was telling people about my review of his book. I was completely and utterly surprised about that, mainly because it was an honest review (as I want others to give me) and I would have loved it, I was surprised he did. He told me about the sequel, which actually sounded like a good story (and I'll be picking it up as soon as I can). So, it was really nice to find out that he didn't hate me and actually appreciated what I did.

I did end up doing the rest of the Author's Alley. I'm apparently a very chatty person and everyone seemed to enjoy talking to me. I asked them if they minded if I read the book and did a review like I did for Dylan's and Charles' book and everyone thought it was a grand idea. I mean, I'm going to read them anyways. So, I've added the following to my reading stack:

Sails and Sorcery edited by W. H. Horner
Elfhunter by C. S. Marks
Sharamitaro by Jonathan M. Rudder
Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Bad Guy edited by W. H. Horner
Shadow Over Shandahar by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim
A Prisoner's Welcome by Shane Moore
Into the Reach by Alana Abbott

So, I'm going to be reading for a while. Which is okay. With the Wizard call for submissions September 1-Jan something, I'm going to write Morning Zombies for NaNoWriMo and submit that. So, I got a 1.5 months to working on polishing up my Exalted stuff, cleaning up some rules, finishing CuteGod and charm cards before going at Zombies. So, my next three months are nicely planned.

Speaking of updating rules, I talked to someone at WizKids about my house rules for using their Pirates minatures with Exalted and they loved it. They even gave me their business card to send them an email about it.

I appear to have lost the card.

I tore apart the hotel room three times trying to find it. So, this is a very important lesson. When an industry insider gives you a card, treat it as treasure? k? Like platinum, not copper.

In the lessons arena, I learned a bunch about how to run a con game. And how to run Exalted in a con. First one: CHARM CARDS! I must get my charm cards cleaned up because I lost an hour of my four hour game just getting everyone up to speed. Also, 1-2 battles is pretty much the max for mass combat and never, ever give the players too many options. On the other hand, it was a 3 hour planning session that everyone liked. The second one was must better planned, but only one person showed up. Another lesson: don't run a game during a massive party at a con, no one shows up.

Overall, I had a wonderful time. Got a lot of stuff to work on in the next, lots of reading and saving up money (blew a bit more than I wanted to), and basically relaxing for a few months.

Low-Hanging Fruit Week

2007-07-18T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Muddy Reflections Reading
Summer Biking: (183.8 / 400.0 km)

Today, I'm rode my bike into work again. Just as yesterday and I am very, very exhausted. I know that my body will adapt to doing 20 km two days in a row (had to walk almost three meters though yesterday), but it isn't fun until the rest of me adapts. As my dad says, my struggle comes from the extra weight I'm carrying (i.e. a polite way of saying I'm fat). I can consistently average about 38 minutes to go 10 km, including both ways. Which is pretty good, given that the way home is uphill most of the way.

The ride in was pretty good, mainly because I was excited that I finally got something off my chest. There was some work with dh_creatclipolicy that has been hanging over me for the last couple of months, my obligations to the Open Source community, and I've been stalling. Last night, I finally got off my ass and made it work. It just needs some cosmetic changes, maybe a bug fix or three, and I should finally be able to say it is done.

I have no energy for CuteGod, as I knew I wouldn't. I found a good (free) installer maker, so I'll be able to offer an installer program the next round. I also was made one of the project developers for BooGame since I'm going to be adding some features to it. And, to my surprise, I was made one of the project leadertypes for prebuild. Again, that is because I'm going to scratch an itch I have and make it a bit better to use. One thing I like about the OSS community, sometimes you can just send in changes and sometimes you just step forward to help everyone. Admitedly, I haven't done much with CeGui# or SDL.NET, both of which I'm developers for, though I have submitted code to both (a Irrlicht.NET backend and the "Moonfire Demos" which have since been removed, respectively).

I think this week is "get rid of small things" week. Trying to knock off a couple of things that have been haunting me. Depending on my mood, I might try to write a short story or two. I have a (hopefully better) story for Steam Punk Magazine which I want to write. Plus, getting read to tile my living room (I have 54 boxes of tile on my sun porch which thankfully has a concrete floor to handle the weight) and GenCon and my vacation next week. Oh, and gaming this Saturday.

It's going to be a busy set of weeks coming up.

Weekend of Cute and Gods

2007-07-16T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Muddy Reflections Reading
Summer Biking: (152.2 / 400.0 km)

I spent all weekend programming fairly obsessively. I didn't get anywhere near as much as I wanted to, but on Sunday, I got to what I would call is a "minimal game!" Very good news for me, since I won't have time to obsess for the next couple of weeks. But, things can calm down now that I got the basics and I'll probably be working to finish this (must finish!) within the next month or so.

Screenshots and more after the cut.

Here is what the game looks like when you start it up now. You have hearts (upper right) which is your health. When this goes below zero, that is the end of the game. The stars are your score, you get stars when you finish constructions. The little figures that have hearts on them are offering prayers to you, as the CuteGod.

Clicking on the heart gives you some hearts and shows you what they are looking for, as a grid of colors. You can see that it also shows up in the upper-left of the screen. The bottom squares are basically an overview of the entire map. Clicking on more than one prayer shows you all the active prayers. At this point, there is only one layout.

Th move the blocks, you move your mouse over until the little yellow selector lights up a block. To pick up, you click on the left mouse button, to drop, you click on the right. Later in the game, you'll be able to pick up more than one at a time (debugging cheat: press F7 to be able to pick up 3 at a time). The following screenshot shows a layout about to be completed, with only one block hovering in place. There is a bug that the lower-right is really the only thing that triggers the layout, so if you have one, just pick it up and drop it off. (So, bet you are wondering why I'm telling you how to play, right?)

When you drop it, you get a little construction stage! Yes, there are bugs with the text and stuff, haven't figured them out yet. After that stage, it brings you back to the game where you can see your new construction.

This is much further along the game, with a lot of little selected prayers. You can see in the second screenshot that the prayer list zooms in when you put your mouse over, like the Mac OS X bar.

So, the directions. It isn't complete, hell it isn't even that complicated, but I have a alpha version of the game uploaded if you are interesting in trying it out. It is 26 MB in size, mainly because of the graphics and music.

MfGames CuteGod 0.1

Just uncompress it, it creates its own folder. Find the CuteGod.exe file and double-click. If all goes well, it should actually run after a somewhat reasonable pause (really need a loading screen). If it doesn't, I'm not sure. While there is nothing malicious in the code (that I know of), please be aware that I don't know if something terrible will happen.

Dylan is Competitive

2007-07-13T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (12 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Muddy Reflections Reading
Summer Biking: (135.1 / 400.0 km)

I did it. For the first time in three years of biking, I made the entire 10 km trip without stopping for a breather. I wouldn't have done it, except that Fluffy kept telling me that she could get up that last hill of Evil without stopping, so naturally I had to do as well or better than her. My front derailer needs a bit of love, I couldn't use the 1-1 (hill climber) at all without it slipping its chain so I had to really work to get up those hills. But, I did it, which means I'll do everything I can to keep on doing it.

Worked on CuteGod last night. A very frustrating, since I didn't really get anything done. I found a new website (FreeSound) with a ton of samples for noises using one of my favorite licenses, the Creative Commons. So, while I only got a small amount of things actually done, I started working on most of the sounds which is around fifteen of my so-called requirements. I started to get into it, but Fluffy made me go to bed, mainly because she is worried that I'm going to burn myself out working on this since I have this deadline she doesn't understand.

I modified my progress bars for status to actually do date calculations for me. I'm horribly lazy but I didn't like how I only updated the Wind, Bear, and Moon and Muddy Reflections status on Fridays. So, I went back, figured out what days I started, then updated the progress bar to automatically calculate the days for me. Remember, boys and girls, good programmers are lazy programmers.

High Stakes Adventures

2007-07-08T05:00:00Z

Its been a couple good days. On the 4th, we had a BBQ here and ended up playing a full round of Mario Party 8, a couple games of Unspeakable Words, which we found to be a load of fun. We also played Snorta which had us laughing very hard as people tried to remember how to make animal noises in a hurry. I think we'll be playing those games again in the future. We didn't get to the Order of the Stick game, but it looks like a lot of fun. Not to mention, the instructions might be in comic-form, judging from the web page.

Most of the rest of the week was relaxing since I took two days off from work. I worked on the CuteGod game and got fairly far, but not into the game itself. *pout* Maybe this week since I have almost every needed feature in Sprite3 done to make it work. I ended up losing half a day getting my Linux machine to have accelerated 3D, which was a royal pain in the ass, but I finally got it working properly. I suspect I'll avoid getting my kernel upgraded until Linux and nVidia start to behave together again.

Saturday was... interesting. Two of my players told me ahead that they wouldn't make it and I had on cancellation an hour before gaming started, so we were down to four out of seven players. So, I gave them a choice: they could either do a four-character version of the planned adventure or do the original seven-character version, risk life and limb, and I'll give them more treasure at the end. So, we almost lost some players since they all decided they would risk it. It ended up going a bit longer than I wanted, mainly because of confidence, but it was really neat because everyone was really working together this time. And the toy Juggarnaut being used as a missile weapon was just funny. And scienceprincess threw a spell in combat for the first time. Exalted spells are HUGE, a line, 30 YARDS wide by 100 yards long. It also removed about 2/3rds of an entire fight. And... *sigh* my opinions on the Twilight power of negating Essence in damage has crystalized into a general hate for that power. It is like the Haste spell of 3rd edition D&D.

Oh well, I had a lot of fun and that is what matters. And I think everyone else did too.

Peering into Glasses

2007-07-02T05:00:00Z

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal: (1 / 26 weeks)
Muddy Reflections Reading: (1 / 26 weeks)
Summer Biking: (91.2 / 400 km)

This weekend, LensCrafters pissed off Fluffy and me. It started last week, when Fluffy went to get her eye exam. She really liked her glasses, so she asked if they could just replace the frames. Too scratched, they said, and so Fluffy bought herself another set of frames and a stack of contact lenses. Perfectly find, if Inigo didn't chew on the frames. More accurately, he chewed on one end and scratched the plastic lenses. When she brought them in: Too scratch, you'll have to drop another $245 for a new set of frames. He didn't even scratch the chrome around the lenses, just the end that doesn't bother Fluffy. So, they can't replace a week-old set of glasses without spending a ton of money. I'd consider going to Pearl Vision, but I was told they are owned by the same company now, probably doing the Walmart thing of getting rid of their competition, then driving up prices on stupid rules. Speaking of Walmart, they'll replace her lenses for $20 and the cost of the lenses and use her old frames. Now, if she could just find them...

A lovely weekend, spending a fair amount of time on the Wii and working on Sprite3. Caught Fluffy playing by herself a couple of times, which was neat because it means I found a game she could enjoy. On Sprite3, I finally got enough to give screenshots so you can see what in the world I'm doing. I'll put them behind a cut because they are relatively big.

Now, for those of you who don't know what a sprite library it, basically it is a system for putting 2D images on a screen and moving them around. The 2D images can look 3D-ish, but the main part is moving them around the screen. I'm using the PlanetCute and CuteGod stuff for this, so the tests are actually using the tiles from that set because they just look good. The first is just some examples of layouts, mainly to make sure the shadows turned out right and to remind me that I have a chance. The second is a random collection of land blocks, which is the start of my selector (click on the mouse to pick up) demo. Oh, all of these images can be clicked for full-sized ones.

One of the features of the game I'm planning on writing needs the tiles to jump up slightly when there is a bug underneath them. These two screens are basically part of the "physics" demo, which is basically just having two 1D vectors working on a tile to cause them to jump up or fall down based on mass and a vector.

These next two screens are the drag and drop demo. Basically, the gems turn green when your mouse is over them (sort as) and orange when you click and drag it around. You can move them around the screen. I don't really need this for the game, just something that was fairly easy to implement and the mouse-over/click stuff is needed, since I kind of need exit buttons and main menus.

Ah, the evil children demo. This just has three children randomly moving across the screen every second or so. Probably one of my original demos and slightly creepy. :)

Finally, I have my bounce demo. All this is is gems bouncing around the screen. When your mouse is over them, they turn green. As I worked on the library, I basically started simple (teleporting children, bouncing) and moved up into the PlanetCute stuff.

I'm pretty happy with everything so far. I have a couple more minor features left to work on the library, then I'll be starting CuteGod probably this week. Apparently, I also have two days off on Thursday and Friday, so I might be doing a lot more and seeing if I can get at least a "game" out of it by the end of the weekend.

Futurama made me cry

2007-06-29T05:00:00Z

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal: (1 / 26 weeks)
Muddy Reflections Reading: (1 / 26 weeks)
Summer Biking: (91.2 / 400 km)

I love Futurama. I find the show pretty good, but last night, I found an episode that made me cry. It was about Fry's loved dog. The episode shows how the dog loved him, but when he finds out that it lived 12 years after he was frozen, he decides it had a good life and didn't need to be raised from the dead. Up to that point, I was enjoying the show though it wasn't my favorite. It was the scene where they show the dog waiting 12 years for Fry to return that brought tears to my eyes. I started crying, not because I remember Dante, but because it really brought me sorrow. Even when I tried to explain it to Fluffy, I started crying again.

That episode allow killed my programming for the night. I got next to no progress on Sprite3, despite my best efforts. I went to bed feeling impotent, sad, and basically useless. I know that I'll get it, and the deadline is completely arbitrary, but I wanted to get drag and drop done last night. Maybe tonight, though I suspect Fluffy is going to want some attention (instead of letting me obsess about a program library).

I'm pulling My Father's Bike off the progress list. I think that it needs to sit for a few months before I get around to it again. It isn't because of last night, but I realize that something "isn't right" and I just need to let it go for a while and come back to it, maybe I'll find my voice again on that. After the CuteGod/4E6 stuff, I'll start up the next one.

Courier

2007-06-28T05:00:00Z

My Father's Bike: (28,567 / 40,000 words)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal: (0 / 26 weeks)
Muddy Reflections Reading: (0 / 26 weeks)
Summer Biking: (91.2 / 400 km)

There is something about holding a stack of paper and seeing Courier font across the entire page. Twelve point font and one inch margins. In a way, it makes me smile because it is the picture of doing something. More than anything else when it comes to writing is the typewriter-style font filling the page. Clean, white, and rather bland, but it represents everything I see in myself when it comes to writing. I normally write with the font, though I occasionally go for the proportional serifs, like Garamond, or more exotic fonts, but Courier, Courier is the font that I am a writer in.

Today, I got my package ready for Open Book Press and sent it out. Since Muddy Reflections is over 50,000 words, I sent them only three chapters, which came out to a depressing nineteen pages. I'd love to have sent out 50,000 words worth of chapters, that's nearly half the book, but when it comes to directions, I obey them usually to the letter. A quick visit to the post office and $1.38 later, it is out on its way. Now, the wait. The horrid wait of "months" until I get a response. On one side, I truly hope that they will love it and I will get another contract, like I did for my first book. In the other hand, I'm worried it will just end up another rejection. Once again, my writing is under the spotlight and I worry about coming up wanting. I also know that most of this worry is self-inflicted and entirely my fault. :) Remember, boys and girls, knowing about a problem doesn't mean you are immune to it.

In other sides of my world, I worked on Sprite3 last night. I got 250 bouncing sprites without killing my CPU and it is beginning to look like a real library now. I'm hoping to get mouse rollovers, clicking, and drag-and-drop done tonight. That will leave me 1-2 days to write the Planet Cute layout engine with just enough time to work on the CuteGod game itself next week.

I'm also trying a new progress bar.

Faux Heart Attacks

2007-06-27T05:00:00Z

Â» My Father's Bike: 0.714 (28,567 / 40,000 words)
Â» Wind, Bear, and Moon Query: 0.000 (0 / 26 weeks)
Â» Summer Biking: 0.228 (91.2 / 400 km)

One useful method of getting an genuine imitation heart attack:

Ride your bike after not doing it for a couple weeks because you are (still) sick.
Do so on a really humid and hot day.
Worry about a wobble in the rear tire.
Struggle a lot trying to beat your wife's time and then just equal her.
Lean bike against office door.
Get really, really involved with work.
Jump loudly when bike tire explodes without anyone touching it.

So, my tire decided that it was done and committed suicide yesterday. Startled the hell out of me and was good for a few minutes of everyone asking what in the world that noise was. The rest of the day was rather sedate. I'm trying to get LDAP and PAM (ldap-pam) running in our office.

Oh, because my Google-Fu didn't find it, if you get "I have no name!" and you are not using ncsd, make sure your /etc/pam_ldap.conf and /etc/libnss_ldap.conf are chmod a+r. Just note to others who spend two days trying to figure it out.

Last night, I worked on Sprite3 on BooGame. This is going to be a graphics library for doing sprites in various rendering systems and eventually leading into getting a GUI (menus, windows, etc) working on a pure graphical interface. Kind of like the windows and popups you see in games. I had hopes that CeGui# would do it, but I can't get that project to do what I need it to. I didn't get very far--I spent two weeks thinking about it, but when I got into actually coding it... nada. I did manage to get one demo working, of three kids moving around the screen every five seconds.

I did have one minor disappointment. In 2004, I wrote something jendave called the Moonfire Demos for SDL.NET. It was my effort to do basically the same thing with Sprite3, but years ago. Sprite3 is also what I did with my Gtk# Sprites, but that isn't really important. Last year or so, jendave said he was working toward moving SDL.NET into more of a pygame approach, which is to provide simple game-related functionality instead of my rather specific sprite library. I thought he was going to keep them in there, but in the last couple rounds of changes, apparently most of my stuff was taken out.

On one hand, I can understand that. I haven't done much with SDL.NET for a few years and I wasn't maintaining it. But, it hurts a bit to find out that something I worked on basically got removed because it was too broken. I can understand that it happen and I hope that I won't drop Sprite3 the same way, though I do plan on getting it working on SDL.NET again, mainly because I keep finding myself wanting this library for the various game projects and maybe if I do it properly, I'll stop doing it. Or at least stop reinventing the wheel every nine months.

It's may fault for not paying attention to SDL.NET and the ton of other projects that I start to get involved with, I know that. And this is the consequences of doing paying attention since I have simply so many other projects to work on.

CuteGod

Just been twenty days...

Blocks of time

It nets out to neutral

Goals for 2009

A hermit emerges

The winds of change

Horrible, evil monkeys...

CuteGod and Running Bomb

DL and Keyboards

Writing and Code

Lack of gaming... *sniff*

IHAP

Slogging Through the Snow

Boiling Pots

Honesty

Looking Back and Forward from 2007 to 2008

Gift Societies and Writing

CuteGod 0.2.1 out!

Productivity

New Tiles (Still Sick)

Being sick and plans for this week

2,611 words and 9 chapters to go

Filesystems and Level Loading

14k to go

Crappy NaNoWriMo, AMD64 Debian, and CuteGod

NaNoWriMo Day 1

Ton of links and self-pride

Context switching from CuteGod to NaNoWriMo

Four days, twelve pounds, and four hundred thousand dollars

Food Poisoning!

Editing Code and Editing Novels

Glorious Saber #013

Almost done with an l-system

Focus Issues and L-systems

No more cute bugs

PlanetCute woes and NaNoWriMo trepidations

Lovely Progress on CuteGod

CuteGod Movie #1

The path not chosen

Choices, choices

Epiphanies in BooGame, plans for CuteGod and writing

Feeling a bit down...

I'm not in the lead, but that's okay...

Relief of Financial Woes

Good day of writing, programming, and The Host.

Bikes and Programs

I'm Purple!

Programming Hard

Back from GenCon

Low-Hanging Fruit Week

Weekend of Cute and Gods

Dylan is Competitive

High Stakes Adventures

Peering into Glasses

Futurama made me cry

Courier

Faux Heart Attacks

Lack of gaming... sniff