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[23 Oct 2009|10:36pm] |
HEY EVERYONE
WHAT IS UP WITH YOU?
OH, ME?
NOT MUCH, REALLY.
YEAH
SO
I've been drawing a lot lately. Probably about an hour a day. Needless to say, My schoolwork's been falling behind. I hope I don't fail anything.
Did I mention that Ryan and I are 80 now? My gear is still shit, but it's getting better. R doesn't want to do Hallow's End with Brad, and Brad would rather gank Horde in Wetlands with his guild than do Hallow's End with us, so I guess it's just me and him.
The KS level should be done by Christmas. I'm going to have Wesley test it, I think, or maybe make an account on the forums and put it up there. Maybe I'll get to watch him play it.
We're watching Brotherhood together (we're caught up now, so it's down to one episode a week, which is barely "watching" as far as I'm concerned), and Gurren Lagann (one or two per day). It makes me miss my anime club friends. I shoud dig up all my con flyers and see which ones are coming up. I should visit on Fridays. I keep forgetting.
I've been scouting around art sites for videyuh game music. Found a couple of promising people.
No friends in college yet
my mom moved my keyboard out of my room and I have absolutely no idea where it is now
you'd think it'd be easy to find. I doubt she got rid of it, though.
I mean, there is more space, so that's cool.
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[06 Oct 2009|05:49pm] |
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WHAT IS THIS??
MUSIC?!??
OMGWTF
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| one large paragraph and then some small ones |
[05 Oct 2009|05:13am] |
So I'm going to work on drawing for a little while, now. It's actually more or less easy and convenient to do before bed, and also in math class whilst simultaneously proving that the square root of two is irrational. (It feels vaguely like this professor is trying to lead us down some Newtonian path to discover calculus the hard way, or something. It's freaking interesting, and I've got pages and pages of notes. Also, the douchebag who seemed smarter than me at first actually isn't, so it's all good; and anyway I'm younger so I get better contribution from armor, naturally.) I've got a couple of "characters" (Nys, mothwoman, doll-girl, dragon, etc etc) to practice at getting consistently; today I spent a few minutes trying to calculate how many heads tall Nys is, and failing because my motionline-filler-sketchcircle head is never the same size as the actual thing. For now, I'll work on them and other such humanoids, as opposed to loltrees, until I can get the anatomy and proportions right on the first or second try rather than mucking about for half hour and then scrapping the sketch.
I mean, this shit's a lot easier in pen, but ART IS WORK RIGHT?
Anyway, it turns out that drawing actually makes me feel good, thus enabling me to do it without being pressured. Why can't everything be this way?
(Everything: one [1] Knytt Stories level as a present for the boyfriend [so it's gonna be damn special], six hours' worth of reading for sometime next week, and maybe a Banjo-Kazooie LP in the near future. I've been fantasizing about the latter for a while, but I don't think I could actually pull it off. We'll see.)
SO NEXT WEEK ON ``MORE INANE SHIT```;;:::::
It seems like just toying with the idea of writing down my dreams is helping me to remember them. I need to come up with a totally witty and subversive name for a dream journal so I can hype it up and then write a dozen entries in it over the course of four years.
Alright everyone, stop reading here.
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[19 Sep 2009|02:30am] |
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this whole thing is embarrassing, and I'm going to hate it in three years
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| this journal is now a bank statement |
[11 Sep 2009|04:41pm] |
Apparently my father just received a "BIG" check from FAU; "BIG" in this case meaning "almost 12 hundred dollars".
That's pretty fucking dandy, but I'll have to wrestle it away from him. He wants me to start a new bank account (under his name, obviously, because I'm not quite legally responsible for cognition), so he can be "involved in my life". Guffaw!
Seriously, though, if it's true then that's my side of some 3.5 months' hypothetical rent. Padding:+1px.
I know it's been sort of a rollercoasterish affair, what with the various pessis and optis swimming about in my ism over the apartment, but this is promising; coupled with the $450 I got a couple weeks ago, it's more than I expected. I've never had to deal with anything remotely like poverty, so I'm very much in the dark as to how uncomfortable it's going to get -- and on top of that, things go from "lol 8 hours a week" to "whoa free chedda," so it's kind of hard to get a good prognosis.
In short, it's scary and I don't really know what the fuck is going on, which is bad because hey, I'm the one who has to find the place. But if there's anyone who could make it work, it'd be Ryan, and we've been set on this for a pretty long time, and we've been doing all we can, so it has to work. Every time I get on the interstate I imagine myself passing Boca and Orlando and all those other cities too far embedded into hick Florida to care about, and crossing the border, and noting the gradual (I mean, I figure) disappearance of palm trees, and passing through Atlanta like Google Maps tells me I will, and finding some truck stop or something where I can park and sleep in the car and then, you know, driving moar, and there might be snow. And that will be mid-December, and then I'll spend maybe two weeks in Kentucky, and maybe I'll eat Christmas dinner with Ryan and his mom and his brother's family (on Christmas day, no less, like the rhythmless whites we are), and then we'll pack up his stuff and drive the fuck back down and it'll be great.
I hope there are guides on the internet about the exact etiquette of the process of moving into apartments, but I guess we'll get to that when we get to that.
(In other news, I painted for like two hours today. It was great, I guess!)
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| really eloquent stuff |
[10 Sep 2009|10:09pm] |
Holy hell, Rah-bop is a furry.
..What?
I mean, one would assume as much of anyone so ridiculously good at drawing human-headed deer, but shit, man.
Anyway, Rah-bop is also ridiculously good at dragons. Jealousjealousjealous. Also paints. Fucking hell, man.
So today I drove home in the rain and it was all meaningful and shit and I listened to 13 Angels Standing Guard Round The Corners Of Your Bed or however the song title goes by some band with the words Silver, Mount and Zion in their name (usually). I guess it's an old favorite, at this point. It's got ghosts, and it made me feel all descriptive and metaphorical, and I went rambling on in my head about how the street was the same color as the sky. (Do you do that sort of thing, Anon?)
I was all psyched up to WRITE A STORY YAR before that, too, but then it sunk in that I'd never remember any of the ineffably sublime shit my brain was spewing at itself and then it sucked.
I've been watching too much raocow. I want to be raocow, damnit.
So it seems that
Functional hyperlinks are out; title text is in.
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| swell news |
[05 Sep 2009|09:38am] |
My paycheck from twoish weeks ago says I worked 3.52 hours and earned $24.39.
This is going swimmingly, I think.
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| loops = hierarchies |
[03 Sep 2009|07:52am] |
I'm getting that way again where I kind of want to write a story and so I kind of want something to motivate me to write a story and I'll finish this time I swear I swear if I could just start.
Which is bullshit because if I were to write a story I'd have to perfectly good ones to choose from, one with Themes and Meanings and the other with landmarks that are also people like in Spirited Away. But if I were to write one of those it would no longer be perfectly good but rather terrible, so I think I'd prefer not to.
This must stop, in other words, before it becomes debilitating.
(I still want to write down my dreams. I remember a piece of the one I had just now, which I guess is where I should start. But I won't, because -- I have to get ready for school.)
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| REAL UPDATE TIME |
[02 Sep 2009|08:31pm] |
Okay. On a more serious note, I'm working my way up to something impressive. Absolutely promise. I can't not at least try, after spending a day on the internets looking up shit.
I think I need some sort of a list. I think I need to start writing down my dreams. I think I need to take my sketchbook with me more. I think I need to buy my textbooks.
The other day I made the sidesprites for the character of whom I've posted front and back sprites here already, and who looks exactly like a 22-pixel-tall version of Ryan in slightly indier garb; all that remains (at least, for this sprite of the potential hundreds) is wrapping my brain around the diagonals. That same day I gathered some isometric mountain tiles from an image someone ripped from the game Live a Live (which I didn't know anything about, of course, but the graphics were very nice), and ripped them apart and put them together again and spent half hour in Sphere's map editor making shapes with them and in various low-end graphics programs trying to change their bluish hue to something more minimal. (I will rework them, someday, when it doesn't feel so much like a colossal waste of time.)
I took my sketchbook to school yesterday instead of the computer, and drew another picture of Nys's head that I like quite a bit. It's got pen shading. Crosshatched.
I didn't go to class today, because I have to start Worrying About Money now and gas costs a lot and it was only one class and I wasn't going to learn anything in the hour and a half that I couldn't dredge up in five minutes on the internet. It feels a little like part of some process of acclimating to the Real World, except that I've been in my pajamas all day.
Better better better better. I've been glancing over drawing books, and I think it's helped a little bit, maybe.
I need to buy my textbooks.
Ryan's home, and we're playing WoW.
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| a day or two |
[02 Sep 2009|04:29pm] |
I've been playing WoW and doing fishing dailies.
I've been going to college and getting graeds.
I want a pet rat.
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| the polyrhythmic life |
[12 Aug 2009|03:16am] |
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I really can't come up with characters outside of drawing them. (Pity it is that I'm so bad at drawing anything other than trees--) I also told myself I'd go to bed at three, but I think I'll go draw or something. It's always something. I should have played Mother 3.
The last time I took a (brief what, week-long?) break from LJ it was nice. Even considering that this thing's purpose is mostly to have something to grimace at in four years (maybe that way I won't be grimacing at everything?), it's kind of stark. Very stark. It's always something.
Hopefully, I can convince myself that college in the short term is not a waste of time, so I won't feel like I'm wasting time.
How uncanny it is that I have to draw in order to write -- as if I really write, or draw.
Maybe for NaNoWriMo, or something, if I can pull myself away from clicking pokemon sprites and ogling textual webcomics for long enough to finger-vomit 1,667 or howevermany words of prose.
Part of me wants to join one of those roleplaying forums, the kind you have to apply to and that's dedicated to an individual world. Some other part knows I probably wouldn't last for a month before ducking out noncommitally. Some other part has chosen the forum already, except it's moving and changing and is thus closed. Time to waver on it, I guess, as if I needed any.
Damnit, pay attention to me. Fucking fuck.
I depart.
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| A day in the year of a life [or few](; in words, but about pictures) |
[09 Aug 2009|11:56pm] |
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mood |
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brackets are sufficintly indie |
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Have I ever mentioned that there was a time when I really wanted a tablet? I did all the research, too: Wacom Graphire, 6x8 would probably do. I didn't have a checking account then.
I think at this point if I counted all the printer-paper pages I've drawled on in my current possession (read: under the bed and in the middle desk drawer), it would approach 300. Or maybe not, but I do think it would be over 200. Either way I ain't about to actually count -- point is, there's a fuck of a lot of paper rotting around here. When I was twelve (thirteen?) and in the eighth grade (seventh? sixth?), I bought this abysmal how-to-draw-manga book from one of those book fair things they have twice a year in middle school, along with two posters of airbrushed, faux-digital-art, ridiculously disproportionate dragons. (My words to the cashier lady when I bought them were "Oh, my friend is going to be so happy with these!"... They're both still hanging above my bed in my dad's house.) My best friend at the time got one too (a copy of the book, I mean, not a poster), and then we both got -- that is, bought with our parents' money -- absolutely badass zipper binders, the kind with two zippered compartments. And I got myself some five folders, the kind that come with three holes in them already, and stuck them in my binder with pencils and pens and spare paper and the abysmal how-to-draw-manga book already tucked away in its myriad zippered pockets.
Pretty much every drawing I've ever saved since that point is still around, either in there or in the stack of paper paper in the middle drawer of my desk. I started dating things in 2006, or maybe late 2005, chiefly as a by-product of the signature (because fuck, I signed drawings back then. All the way up until late '07 or so, at which point I learned the word "pretentious"). It was pure animu until late that year, when, impressionable little wench that I was and am, I was inspired by a former boyfriend to try something a bit more abstract. I started dating things without signing them (but, occasionally titling) a few months later.
...And then I met the current boyfriend and shit went downhill. THE END
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| elements of progress |
[08 Aug 2009|02:31am] |
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mood |
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 wut |
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My college schedule's fucking done. Actually, it's more than done -- it manages to encompass plans alpha and beta, at the same time.
Here's what it looks like so far:
Monday:
Methods of Calculus; 8:00-8:50am
Intro to Programming in C (Lecture); 9:30-10:50am
Intro to Programming in C (Lab); 11:00-11:50am
Tuesday:
Discrete Mathematics; 9:30-10:50am
Global Perspectives on Language; 11am-12:20pm
Literary Theory; 12:30-1:50pm
Wednesday:
Methods of Calculus; 8:00-8:50am
Intro to Programming in C (Lecture); 9:30-10:50am
Thursday:
(ditto Tuesday)
Friday:
Methods of Calculus; 8:00-8:50am
...obviously it's going to be a bitch to drive the 20ish miles to FAU and back in rush hour morning traffic on a Friday for a single class that I don't actually need (seeing as I took it two years ago and all), but that was the plan a. The plan b was getting into Interpretation of Fiction from 12:30 to 1:50 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, towards whose purpose I've been groping the system every half hour or so in the hopes of a vacancy (apparently you can't get signed into a closed course if it requires you to write essays), but just now I managed to enlist in Literary Theory instead so it's all good. I mean, words are words are shit, right?
(I can't fucking wait for my global languages course the professor is supposed to be stellar and the books are only like $30 total wtf)
Anyway, I need four courses (12 credit hours lol) to actually qualify for the scholarships I've qualified for, and now I have five. Courses, I mean. In credit hours that's fifteen. So I can drop calculus if I want to, but there's no need to do it now.
AND THEN I GET FRIDAY OFF HUAH
WHICH MEANS I GET TO WORK AAAAALL DAY LONG.
For the sake of completion, I also talkted to my mom about winter break a day or so ago. It was one of those five-second moments in a conversation, but hey. I proposed that I drive up to Kentucky instead of flying, so I could help R move his stuff back down, and she was like "Okay."
...
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| Progress, and more links (LJ is a bookmarking service, right?) |
[03 Aug 2009|01:19am] |
So I spent yesterday morning (or probably the morning before that) thinking about systems for once and the things I "need" to do, and I guess I made a minute amount of theoretical progress. Namely... well, here, I'll map it out for no one in particular.
Attributes of species:
- types
- evolution (what + how)
- learnable moves
- possible abilities
- base stats
- base xp
- base happiness
- gender ratio
- catch rate
- held items when caught
- location found
- cry
- footprint
- ht / wt
- description
- egg group
- steps to hatch
- sprites
Attributes of individual:
- IVs
- EVs
- current known moves
- current stats
- status condition
- nickname
- pokerus boolean?
- state (PC, party, daycare)?
- held item
- ribbons
- nature
- nature snippet
- ability
- gender
- trainer ID
- caught/hatched info (parents?)
- ball
- shiny boolean
...and of course, a few universal attributes, mostly maximums. Max level, max stats, et cetera. There are probably some attributes I missed (I could crack open YAPE and likely find at least three more), but that should about cover it for now. So now there's an outline. That's a step below pseudocode, guys. How fantastic!
I remember enough about hexo-dessimals to know that all this shit is stored somewhere in the multitudinous Pocket Monsters ROMs in the form of some 48 bytes or whatever per pokemon; wherein, for example, the eighth and ninth bytes signify the types (0F = water, say), the twenty-third and twenty-fourth bytes comprise a pointer to a move list of sorts elsewhere in the datas, and the howevermany somethingelse bytes make up the shitbird's nickname. And the creator of YAPE (some Brazilian dude) wrote a program that goes, in short, something like "Hey, here's how you break up this shit and what it all means in Human. It also starts at byte 80B69F. Do yer thing." As to how the GB[A] (or emulator, as the case may be!~) makes sense of all these letter-numbers is far, far beyond me. But I guess that's not really an issue, since it's not like anybody writes code from scratch anymore.
WHOA WAIT A MINUTE, WE'RE USING JAVASCRIPT NOW AREN'T WE. SHITFUCK.
Yeah, see, the problem is that I have no idea how to make a database in JS. I obviously don't know enough about the lingo to merit anyone's taking me seriously, either, but whilst searching for info on window sizes I read on the Sphere forums a few weeks ago something about the way Javascript stores its variables in temporary tentacles, so I guess if the squid runs out of arms the old tentacles will decompose or something, metaphorically. Which is bad, because RPGs tend to have a lot of data to save, especially if you've got unlimited unique instances of well-nigh 500 different entities to deal with. And that's not even counting items or moves or natures or --
I've read quite a few (read: 1.5) articles on Object-Oriented Programming, but not a one comparing the former with Non-Object-Oriented Programming. (Fuck it, I know Eloquent Javascript will touch on that eventually, probably somewhere after the chapter on basic math, but give me a break, here.) Point is, I need to dig up some slabs of binary granite from somewhere in this shitpile of function()s to carve all these goddamn bytes into. Sure, it'd look more like EstablishPoke(PokeArray[130], Lapras, Water, Ice, 130, 85, 80, 95, 90, Monster, Water 1, 45, WaterAbsorb, ShellArmor) than 08 B2 FA 5E 00 9C D3 12, but it's the same generally. I think.
I have to do all this, or at least a skeleton of it, before I can have my first battle. I mean, I need to have Pokemans to show you them, even if they look like this:
...which, by the way, you will come across somewhere in Eidolon, if I have my way. Along with a line from Moo-nsi-demoons-ide, if you catch my drift.
(...stop writing like you have an audience, fucker)
(but it feels good)
-- Oh! Yeah. The link. Rejoice, Saad, LJ baby that you are.
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| pix[i]e(l)s |
[31 Jul 2009|10:36am] |
  
Maybe I'll start a band called The Pixels.
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| It's like The Catcher in the Rye until you're fifteen |
[13 Jul 2009|01:09am] |
...in that it should be reread approximately once a year. Stumbled across this; know I've read it. Reading it again because some things are honestly worth it.
Here is a part quoted nearly in full:
Again and again, we hear about story. Interactive literature. Creating a story through roleplay. The idea that games have something to do with stories has such a hold on designers' imagination that it probably can't be expunged. It deserves at least to be challenged.
Stories are inherently linear. However much characters may agonize over the decisions they make, they make them the same way every time we reread the story, and the outcome is always the same. Indeed, this is a strength; the author chose precisely those characters, those events, those decisions, and that outcome, because it made for the strongest story. If the characters did something else, the story wouldn't be as interesting.
Games are inherently non-linear. They depend on decision making. Decisions have to pose real, plausible alternatives, or they aren't real decisions. It must be entirely reasonable for a player to make a decision one way in one game, and a different way in the next. To the degree that you make a game more like a story -- more linear, fewer real options -- you make it less like a game.
I think I still need to fully wrap my head around this, but I've come a lot closer than when I first tried.
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| hrm. |
[12 Jul 2009|11:58pm] |
There's a very, very small beetlesque thing capsized on my desk, four inches from the water bottle. It's kicking around a bit, and if I get very close to it I can see its little legs and antennae. I'm wondering slightly why bugs disgust me. Because they do, up close, all of them, and I can't ascribe rhyme or reason to it.
Tonight I am going to attempt to write a pokemon-style leveling system. That's my goal. I'll cheat as much as I need to to do so, as long as I have something to show for myself by 6am the thirteenth. I woke up at 3pm today. Why am I so tired? Fuck it. [3:56 am]
Rupert (the bug) is really very adorable from the normal perspective. He's so tiny and round. And now he's cleaning his foreleg or something; d'aww. I think it's the leg-attachment mechanisms and mandibles that do it, which is slightly strange since nobody gets grossed-out by bone joints.
(something about consciousness that I'll bookmark and read in a year or so)
Emotion! Pixels! Further evidence that I get uncannily worked-up over sprites:- Kirby's Dreamland 3. R and I are on the second-last level, the one where you help out an angel by collecting feathers from a bunch of post-miniboss rooms. Game's for faggots, man.
- This. Play it.
And googlepages (file hosting fun!) is telling me that they're going to move my shit soon. Way to break ALL my links, guys.
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