Just had to post this.
First post from my new laptop bought earlier today. Here it is.
Not yet played any games on it. Still think I need to update video drivers.
Also, I keep having to mop up my pools of saliva off the keyboard…. 
New laptop… a monster!
Posted in Uncategorized on August 16, 2008 by sentimentalgamerData organization at home
Posted in Random on August 15, 2008 by sentimentalgamerGigs of old digitized family home videos: ~19
Gigs of family pictures: ~58 and rising (12 from 2007 alone… what a year…)
Gigs of music: ~75 and rising
Trying to keep all this data synchronized between my external WD drive, our family’s home PC, and any other backup drive I can get my hands on while avoiding duplicate file creation, making SyncToy ignore iPod photo cache, and not having the internal drive make a fairly scary whining sound from overheating:
Byteless.
One of those days…
Posted in Random on August 3, 2008 by sentimentalgamerSome days, you’re on fire. Everything you do works out, and you just have this giddy sense of accomplishing anything you want effortlessly.
Other days, you accidentally stab yourself and cause minor bleeding on your upper lip while trying to lick the jelly off the end of a butter knife.
Today is an example of the latter.
Stage IV (Temp) Link
Posted in Stage IV on August 3, 2008 by sentimentalgamerFinally sent the Stage IV installer to Walker, so should be up on the GDIAC website sooner or later, but, since I’m using sendspace to give it to him, thought I might as well give the temp link for anybody who wants to grab it now (all quite-possibly-maybe-even 1 of you ).
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Posted in Uncategorized on July 26, 2008 by sentimentalgamerI’m a bit of a fan of the books. They’re hilarious. And fun. And smart. So, I finally made myself watch the movie. I actually started to watch it before, maybe a year or so ago, and it’s one of the few movies I literally could not watch, so I stopped 10 minutes in. It was just… not… funny…. you know? Like, whereas the book had me in stitches by the time the Earth is blown up, the movie… I really couldn’t bring myself to laugh much at all.
So eh… oh well. I told myself I’d try it again, and I did, and nope… it didnt’ get any better. Could have been a lot of fun, but nope.
So, as so often happens with this sort of thing… read the book, skip the movie.
Summertime
Posted in Sentimental with tags Sentimental on July 4, 2008 by sentimentalgamerThere’s two possible reasons for not updating Sentimental Gamer as much as I should.
Reason 1: I’m just so darn happy with life that I feel no need to comment on it.
Reason 2: I’m just so darn depressed with life that I feel no need to comment on it.
Actually, it’s probably a mix of the two. Funny thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is that I sort have a love-hate relationship with what I’m doing in life. On the one hand… man… I’m friggin working on Spore!!! Fairly sure that it doesn’t get much better than that. Then, on the other hand, I get the nagging feeling sometimes that this is a really hollow life and I need to pull a 180. Feel the same way a lot at Cornell too. I either feel “wow… this is it! This is the apex of life!” or “God… this is just a poisonous way to live.” I’ve really not sorted out for myself which of the two is true.
Then again, maybe it just means that only select bits of my life are either great or poisonous. Maybe I’m doing ok on average (to quote The (British) Office that I just watched… maybe I’ve rolled a three?). *shrugs*
Post Stage IV… what’s up next…
Posted in Game Design, Random on June 7, 2008 by sentimentalgamerOk, so, pending the final submission of the installer to GDIAC site, I’m just about done with Stage IV. It’s something I really wanted to make, I made it, and it was …. well, it was. Let’s just leave it at that. Next design..
One of the stories that I replay in my head a lot is one of those “Wizard of Oz” type things where the character is whisked off to some weird universe and needs to confront specific task to make things right again. I guess It’s a common device because you get to isolate the specific issue you want not by dealing with the real world (which has thousands of intersecting influences), but by simply making up your own world with just what you’d like . Cheap? Eh, p’raps.
So, mostly it’s inspired by the Enigma song “The Gravity of Love”, which is pretty high up there in terms of songs that I treasure. I actually just watched the music video this morning on YouTube… funky….
So, god help me, I’ve no friggin clue what the video’s about, or what the song was originally supposed to be about, but when I listen to the song, it makes me envision a strong female character who’s trying terribly hard to convince herself that her romantic love is “it”. What do I mean by “it”? I mean that it’s a character who’s totally convinced that the ultimate feeling we can have is love… it’s what defines us, what makes life worth living, etc. But not just love in general… a specific love for a person.
I dunno, I’ll talk more about the story later I’m sure (much to the dismay of I’m sure every citizen of the internet), but I’ve felt in the past few years that a lot of people get hung up on love (romantic love in particular). It’s treated like some sort of panacea, as though it solves any issue. Ok, so it’s certainly not a bad thing, but it feels like the “easy” solution to life. It feels tangential to a lot of issues, yet it’s always readily applied. It’s like how you would treat somebody putting grafitti on your house. If you’re in it for the long haul, you figure out why people are vandalizing your property, you work to solve youth delinquency, and in general spend far more time than is reasonable to solve the issue. But you have solved it, rooted it out and removed it completely. Conversely, you could get a bucket of paint and just blot it out. Boom. Done. Root of the problem is still there, but hey… you got a quick solution.
That’s what I feel love is like sometimes… a quick and easy solution when we would do well to find a more robust meaning.
Or am I just being a grouch?
Likely the latter….
Working on Spore…
Posted in Uncategorized on May 20, 2008 by sentimentalgamerSo the fun thing about working on Spore is that you get to play it early, and you get to see the cool inner workings.
The bad thing? Well, you aren’t really able talk about the game:(. Oh well… it’ll all be out there in a few months.
Done for Spring 2008 at Cornell
Posted in Random on May 16, 2008 by sentimentalgamerFinal project? CS 569 Interactive Graphics game. Behold the first official screenshot of Grand Theft Droopy IV. Coming soon to …. nowhere.
This weekend: Macy’s graduation on Saturday, Nate’s on Sunday, and Spore on Monday. Fun stuff.
Stage IV Final Result (Fast)
Posted in Stage IV on May 11, 2008 by sentimentalgamerOk, so I don’t actually feel like talking about my final thoughts on Stage IV now. But I just thought I should put down my current feelings on it for future reference.
Showcase? Well… it went pretty badly. Not many people played it; no surprises there. The bigger issue for me was that I’d pulled an all-nighter just before it. That wasn’t what I was planning for. You gotta be well-rested for showcase, ready to extol the greatness of your game. Additionally, I had my CS 322 final soon after showcase, so… yeah sleep would be important. Ooo boy… I can’t imagine that test will give me anything higher than a C for the semester. Peachy. I was too tired to pull an all-nighter on Monday… so I needed to to it last Tuesday. And what can I say? You always want the game to be that much better… there’s always a little more work you could do for it.
So yeah… I was kinda already exhausted coming in, so by showcase, I was pretty on edge. I just wasn’t able to interact, or talk about the game, or face people playing it. I was just totally useless. So… yeah god that was awful…
Right now, I just feel like the game is total crap. Writing? Awful. Design? Misguided at best. Programming? Hacky. But whether I feel that way because I have a bad impression from showcase, or whether I’m just being honest with myself, I couldn’t say. I’m kinda leaning towards the latter.
Either way, I wanted to make the game, I did it… end of story. Was it as meaningful as I’d hoped? Not in the least; I’m just hoping the end result isn’t too comically awful now. But it’s time to close that part of my life. It’s always annoying to learn that you’re not as great as you wish you could be, but people deal. I guess I don’t try to worry too much about failing; I figure it’s only worth dwelling on it long enough to be motivated to do better next year. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Oh, and I’ve been at home from last Thursday until today. I won’t get a chance to go home before I go to CA for Spore internship after I finish on Friday, so it was wondrous to see my family these past few days. Now, onto work…
