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myfriendpokey · 5 years

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50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole.

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another. So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view” and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it.

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

#vgames #50 short games #indie games #gamechat #game criticism #notes

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beyainica-blog · 5 years

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Weight on 2/3/19

I am 105.2kg or 231.9lbs

So much to say. Honestly it’s therapeutic to write these posts and having accountability its also nerve wracking and time consuming. I feel pressured too. I know not that many or anyone at all is really paying attention to me but it just feels overwhelming. But I will be able to look back at this and hopefully be proud

Weight

Honestly I’m just as shocked as anyone who might stumble on this weight loss journey. I don’t know why I’m losing 2-4lbs a day on this liquid diet. At first I was like oh, I have pneumonia, I’m taking phentermine and its a liquid diet I expect to lose alot of weight. Especially the first week thats typical. But I have been doing the liquid diet for over a week. I’m not “sick” anymore I might still be fighting off the infection (probably why I sweat so much I’ll get into that later) so I don’t get it. I feel like my scale is wrong, but we’ll see at the doctors office. My scale was 1lb off so it was pretty accurate. I just feel like my eyes are decieving me. On my water fast. I lost weight much slower. Granted I didn’t move around at all. Didn’t drink that much water. But now I don’t drink that much liquid. In fact I was less than sedentary so I wouldn’t faint I was pretty weak. On the liquid diet I’m still weak but not as much because of the sugars in powerade or whatever I’m drinking. I move around ALOT in comparison. I didn’t have a job during my water fast and I wasn’t very active except for school. And I only had ONE class. I have a job that I move around alot AND I workout every morning even though I don’t eat anything. I know being at such a high weight I will lose quickly but I didn’t think it would be THIS quick. If this is true of course I’m fucking happy this is exactly what I wanted. But its just too good to be true and I don’t feel like I deserve it. I don’t want to jinx it. If this is true I want this to continue until I get to 170. I’ll be the happiest girl in the fucking world. I think its true though. Even if the scale is wrong its still super motivating to see the scale move and thats whats keeping me going

Body.

Honestly I can kind of see the weight loss. My pants are looser. My boobs are reducing. My stomach is SLOWLY but surely reducing. My legs look leaner. My arms are kind of reducing too. I feel like I really am losing this weight. But again we shall see at the doctors office coming soon. In about 19-20 days

Phentermine

I stopped taking phentermine. Why? Well because I have anxiety already. My heart rate is already elevated. I also am fat with high cholesteral so my heart is even more elevated. At rest my pulse is 80 thats a bit high for someone my age. The amount of caffiene in there is just too much for me right now. I was fearful of what could happen to me if I kept taking it. I’m all about doing ANYTHING to lose weight but I don’t want to die. Does phentermine work? Um YES. It doesn’t inherently cause weight loss I have been losing the same if not more being off it. It helps you not feel hunger pains or hunger. Off it I have to deal with hunger which is way better than potentially getting a stroke. Maybe I will get the pill cutters and just take half. I’m waiting to get to 200lbs or 199lbs to try it again. Yes I intend to still take it and on my next visit I am getting more. Why? Because it had helped me so far. It does work. Its my own fault I cannot take them. I intend to get the 3 month supply and store it for anytime I binge in the future. My heart rate has a direct correlelation to my weight if my weight reduces so will my heart rate and obviously everything else. 230 I remember having issues with bp thats what I weighed at the end of the semester in college. I know that because I donated plasma and sometimes turned away because of how high my heart rate was. So if I lose another 30lbs I should be fine. Though I still will start with half. See how it goes. Yeah phentermine was making my workouts difficult. I felt like my heart was going to pop out my chest. Anxiety, caffiene and exercise is not a good combination. Now I don’t struggle with my workouts since I stopped taking it.

Weight Reality

I havent properly gushed about my weight loss so far. I can’t believe I got here. I use to stay at the same 252 or shoot back up to 268 and stay there. Now I’m ALMOST IN THE FUCKING 220’s. Literally 2lbs away. And Valentines day is 10 days away. I will hit my first goal weight in a week. Which technically was my valentines weight goal intially but I feel like I will be less by then. 220’s then the 210’s before you know it I will be 200 and THEN I WILL TASTE THE 100’s I cannot weight to be out the 200’s I never want to see it again. EVER. Ugh can it come quicker. (I mean its already coming pretty quick lmao) I’m just impatient. My goal since its monday 2/4/19 is to lose 5kg in the next 5 days. I want to be 100kg by the time I get to work. 100kg exactly is 220lbs omg. Thats 11lbs in 5 days. With the way my weight loss has been going I really feel like I can do it fly by the 230’s quickly. If I dont binge. Speaking of that

Cravings/Binge

I am fighting a potential binge

EVERY FUCKING TIME I GET ON THE VERGE OF A NEW WEIGHT (232,242,252) EVERY FUCKING TIME I AM ABOUT TO GET INTO A NEW WEIGHT RANGE I WANT TO BINGE. I have said this before and I will REPEAT it until I get to my goal weight.

I want CHICKEN. Omg I fucking love fried chicken so much its not fucking fair. Ugh TENDERS AND WHITE GRAVY. I want a family pack and fries. I want to dip and eat all day. SUCH A DISGUSTING FAT FANTASY but I can’t help it. I really want RAMEN. Chicken flavored obviously but spicy too. Ugh. I want to try the new flaming hot doritos. I WANT CARAMEL CHOCOLATES. I fucking want subway lol why. I want egg and sausage burritos. I want PAPA JOHNS EXTRA LARGE PIZZA with extra cheese bacon, ham, pepperoni.

I want ALL of this in one day. Now you see why I had continous binge cycles. Because I wanted all my cravings satisfied. Thats alot of food even for a fat ass like me. It could take me days to eat all of that. And thats just today as feburary passes I will just get more cravings with new foods.

Here is why I’m not going to give in. Because I know it won’t be just one day binge. I know I will gain weight. I am so close to my first goal weight. I am treated better the more weight I lose. I will deter my cam girl job, I wont move out as quick.

I lost my train of thought. Anyway I’m waiting for my calculated and planned binge. Knowing I will have these foods again is comforting it just feels like forever you know. I only get my binge if I reach 194-193 or lower. 199-195 isn’t enough. The goal is to GET OUT the 200’s and stay there. If I binge at 199 I will go back to 200. If I binge at 193 the most I will gain is 4lbs at most send me back to 197 which is very close to 200, but not 200!

Weightloss Goals & Plans

I want to be 220lbs or 100kg before I get back to work this friday. The 8th thats 4-5 days away. The mini goal is 5kg in 5 days but also. Lets go ahead and do 7kg in 7 days. I want to be 97-98kg by Sunday-Monday.

If I’m 220 by this friday. I should be 210 by valentines day. Which is next thursday.

Honestly I just really want to get to size 9 so I can go ahead buy these good fashion nova jeans and fit into size 9 pants my work jeans are getting to big. Like I’m not even saying it proudly its fucking annoying. I’m not buying anything thats not a size 9 I will keep wearing big ass pants and think nothing of it period.

What else?

So much but let me seperate it

I think thats it. I got alot more to get off my chest this is just the weightloss portion.

The liquid diet is meh. I miss eating. I DONT MISS exercising everything off only to lose half a pound. I do enjoy the fast weightloss. I like powerade so its whatever. I dont have a choice being this fat you do what you can. I might switch it up once I hit the 180’s which is 40lbs away.

#abc diet #skinny #skinny girl diet #ana #pro ed #adipex #anorexia #anorexic #apple cider vingar #diet pills

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its-negans-lucille · 7 years

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Old Friends - Part One

THIS IS A REUPLOAD

You can find my Masterlist HERE!

Prompt: I want to request something 🙊 - The reader and Negan were/are best friends (or more) before the apocalypse started, they were together everyday and had lots of fun! They got seperated when it all began and they were thinking of each other everyday ‘til the day comes they see each other again. (Hope you understand what I mean, haha) – Via @lilablauerhimmel

Ships: Negan x Reader – Platonic Words: 1,390 Warnings: Curses Category: Fluff

***

You had joined a small community only a few months back. The community only had about thirty people including yourself.

You had been on the road before then, wandering aimlessly through Dante’s seven circles of hell (or that’s what it seemed like). You had been alone since the beginning, since the very first day that this shit storm hit. For all you knew all your friends and family were dead. Yet you would still look up at the sky and hope against hope that they were somewhere looking up at it also.

It was a small community but it was close knit and everyone knew everyone else so it had taken you a while for them to trust you, but when they did that might as well have handed you the leadership position on a silver platter. You had been organizing them, sending them out on constant scavenging trips and making sure that everyone had a job to do and that everyone was organised.

You were all hold up in an old bank; the high security vault was the perfect place to store food and supplies and also a good panic room. On the roof there was a small garden that right now only supplied tomatoes but you were working on fixing that.

You now sat in your comfy leather chair, your feet on the dark oak desk before you as you whistled a solemn tune. The thoughts that you had tried to forget started to creep into your mind, the thoughts of the past.

You hadn’t forgotten your family, you were sure of that; it was just that your memories of them were a little fuzzy for you had been shipped off to boarding school since you could walk and talk. The one person who still stood stark in your mind’s eye was perhaps your only friend from when you were locked in the prison you called school, Negan.

You remembered how on the first day you met him you playfully teased him about his name, about how it sounded like something out of Pokémon. He hadn’t been pleased and as a stubborn and emotional five year old he had ran off and told the terrifying teacher who demanded that you apologise. You had apologised and earnestly told him that you liked his name.

From then on you had been like brother and sister. You had bantered and cursed your way through childhood with not a care in the world. He had been your first kiss, you remembered with a reminiscing smile on your face. You remember how he had been terrible at it.

You spun in your chair and turned to face the window. It was a grey and overcast day outside; the stench of the dead was stark on the air. If you strained your ears you could hear them moaning and groaning from outside your small perimeter.

You wondered subconsciously whether Negan was looking up at the same sky you were.

You came out of your trance when the door of your office banged open making you jump in your chair. By the time you had swivelled the leather seat around to face the sudden noise you had your gun cocked and ready too fire.

You saw a young boy of thirteen or fourteen stood before you, his face flushed and his chest heaving at the apparent speed he had rushed to you. He had one arm clutched at his side as he hunched over, drawing in great lungful’s of breath. “Michael!” You exclaimed as you promptly lowered your weapon and stood up. “Are you okay?” You asked, your brows furloughed in confusion.

“D-don’t put down your g-gun.” He said in-between large intakes of breaths.

“Why?” You asked as you rounded the impressive desk between you and placed a soft hand on his shoulder. “What is it?” You asked in a suspicious voice, checking behind him cautiously.

“People- they followed us- demanding half our stuff.” Michael breathed as he stood up straight and placed both his hands on his head, trying to steady his breathing. “I came as quick as I could.” He continued.

You moved away from his heaving form as he caught his breath, making your way instead toward your large window which gave you a clear view of the courtyard. You cautiously peeked behind the curtains, clutching your trusty pistol close to your chest. You saw two large, black, vans in the courtyard and one heavily armored car stuffed between them. You saw men beginning to file out of the car and the trucks, each of the men carried at least two armed weapons and one melee weapon. You cursed under your breath.

You withdrew yourself from the window swiftly and turned back to face the acne ridden face of Michael.

“Did they say anything?” You asked in a quiet voice, as if they could hear you.

“That they wanted to talk to the person who ran this place.” Michael replied, matching your quiet tone.

“If they want to talk, we’ll talk.” You said in a stubborn and lethal tone. Let them think they could take half your stuff and get away with it.

You moved through the bank quickly and quietly. You had left Michael, telling him to gather everyone still in the building and to get them in the vault and not to open it until they heard your voice. You had too put your people first, that’s what all good leaders did.

You crossed the marble floor of the entry hall which was now dirty and cracked in places. The once grand chandelier that would’ve once hung from the ceiling now was left abandoned in one corner of the room, looking dishevelled.

You pushed open the tall, grand, doors and emerged into the daylight.

“What the fuck it going on?!” You shouted loudly, your tone was commanding and fierce.

You saw some men talking too your people, or perhaps threatening was the word for your people were pale faced and some looked on the verge of tears. All heads snapped toward you as you descended the stairs and eyed your surroundings.

“Everyone get inside.” You said in a low voice as you viewed the intruders with a suspicious gaze.

“That won’t be necessary.” A man with a handle bar moustache said as he gripped onto one woman’s wrist, tears ran down her face as she looked pleadingly at you.

“Let go of her.” You said through gritted teeth as the rest of your people filed into the bank with fear marring their pale faces.

“And what if I don’t? Huh? What’s a little lady like you gonna do?” The man said with a sly smile on his face. Quick as a flash you had withdrawn your gun and levelled it at the man’s temple.

“Don’t test me.” You replied in a low voice. The man shook his head slightly, a smile caressing his lips.

“Fine, fine,” he let go of the woman’s wrist. She immediately ran into the bank without a second glance. “hey, we just want to be friends, okay?” He said with a large smile on his face.

“Like hell you do.” You said as you pushed your gun close toward the man’s forehead. “Where’s your leader?” You said in a dark tone. The man with the handlebar moustache smiled, not like the smiles before which were humorous, but a triumphant smile. A smug triumphant smile.

“Well, don’t I feel goddamned mistreated!” A masculine voice echoed from somewhere in front of you. Your head snapped upwards but you couldn’t find the source of the noise. There was something familiar about his voice though. “We come in here, looking for a fucking friend? And this is how we’re treated?” The voice continued. Yes, you could definitely recognise it. “It’s a lonely world out there, and we just want a goddamned shoulder to cry on? Is that so much to fucking ask?”

You looked up directly in front of you and on top of the heavily armoured car was a lean man clad in a tight leather jacket, a baseball bat slung lazily over his shoulder. He was smiling, an unnervingly wide and white smile that made you shiver. Then you met his eyes and you realised who it was, you cursed yourself for not recognising it sooner.

Negan.

***

Thank you all so much for reading! I will be posting the next part later today or tomorrow, we’ll see C:

Also! I’m feeling better now and I’m not as sick! C: Thank you all for reading and have a great Valentines day!

@negans-network

#Negan #Negan x Reader #Negan TWD #TWD Negan #TWD #The Walking Dead #Negan The Walking Dead #The Walking Dead Negan

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its-negans-lucille · 7 years

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Old Friends - Part One

You can find my Masterlist HERE! You can find Part Two HERE!

Prompt: I want to request something 🙊 - The reader and Negan were/are best friends (or more) before the apocalypse started, they were together everyday and had lots of fun! They got seperated when it all began and they were thinking of each other everyday 'til the day comes they see each other again. (Hope you understand what I mean, haha) – Via @lilablauerhimmel

Ships: Negan x Reader – Platonic Words: 1,390 Warnings: Curses Category: Fluff

***

You had joined a small community only a few months back. The community only had about thirty people including yourself.

You wondered subconsciously whether Negan was looking up at the same sky you were.

“Michael!” You exclaimed as you promptly lowered your weapon and stood up. “Are you okay?” You asked, your brows furloughed in confusion.