thinking out loud
I have 5k of WoW fic written which won't be posted until it's actually done (5k = 2 chapters with one or two more to go depending on how the pacing goes.) I'm pleased that it's long-ish but still finite and not epic, and that it's on my list of fics I want to write (it's the one in the series that's sequentially after Wolf Cub, right after Legion starts). I've actually managed to write most days, which is making me happy/satisfied.
Remember when I used to spit out long posts about story related fandom things at the drop of a hat? Whatever I was enthusiastic about at the time? I don't know how to do that right now. I've had this post open for hours, just tabbing in and out of it on my browser inbetween other things, wondering how to start. Not because I'm not enthusiastic, but because I feel like I "can't" or maybe "shouldn't", because what I'm enthusiastic about is something I'm a newcomer in - it's like a fandom you're brand new in, on a forum you don't know, and you don't know the rules or if you're saying something stupid and people are going to mock you or anything, and maybe it's better to just shut up and keep quiet until you learn the lay of the land, but OMG ENTHUSIASM.
That's actually pretty much exactly what it's like, really. Why? Because it's not fandom. And I'm not sure how to flail and share enthusiasm and squee and the trials and tribulations of something that isn't fandom. I mean, if I said "omg this fic", everyone I know on here could relate. You don't have to know the characters or source material to know what I mean. But it's not writing or art or fandom, and I feel like a n00b with no clue if I'm proposing the stupidest idea ever because I *know* that I don't know enough yet to know how stupid it may or may not be.
Hi, please don't laugh, I want to code and I don't know where to start. >_<
Actually, let me rephrase that. Hi, I want to make a video game/app and I don't know where to start, or if it's been done, or if it's too dumb to even discuss.
My experience with coding, to date, is programming some very bare bones games in BASIC on a Commodore PET back in highschool. Like, hello world, hangman, and guess the number levels of bare bones. Granted, the highlight of that computer era was the original Oregon Trail game, which I legit didn't know came in a color version until I looked it up because we only ever had the green on black monitors. Then late in college (ahhahahaha, early 90's) I got online with my first computer and learned HTML by creating web pages using a text terminal in a shell program - basically writing the html directly to the ftp site (look, I skipped AOL, I was using TIN and the like).
Since then, I've learned HTML and CSS, enough Javascript to make me dangerous, and crash coursed my way through Swift for knocking together a bare bones iPhone app in the last few years (most of which boiled down to HTML and tiny bits of manipulating Xcode.) And that's pretty much it. I've gotten through roughly the same beginner "install, hello world, print to screen, this is a variable, this is an array" lessons in both PHP and Python, and now I'm stuck because I don't know where to go next.
I haven't really talked about what I want to build. Originally I was aiming for a top down old school JRPG because I was playing around with RPGMaker, but that really was just the dime bag of crack cocaine to get me hooked. =P What I really want to do is make a gamified writing program. You know how there's "gamified" productivity apps? Chore Wars, Habitica/Habit RPG, Challenge Accepted - etc, etc. I've tried lots of them. I like bits and pieces of them, but eventually end up dropping all of them as not quite what I want, but really, that boils down to the fact that making long to-do lists for myself usually ends up biting me and just making me depressed and feeling like a failure.
But the IDEA - incorporating game elements into something so you get the little endorphin rush of checking something off, feeling accomplished, and being rewarded - is appealing. And mostly, I want to apply that to writing, even if it's just a private thing for myself and my dragon. I've seen at least one "turn writing into a game" site - I couldn't find the link but it was very pretty, had an RPG theme, you had to meet word count in a certain period of time in order to win battles and collect loot, which contained things to unlock more battles.
I tried it for a day and gave up, because it didn't work for me at all. It did give me the idea, though, because yes, something LIKE that, but not that, because I ended up spending more time wrestling with the "game" aspect of that site than writing. Also, I hate timed writing. =P
So.... I want something that feels more casual RPG, where XP and levels and loot are all earned via word count. "Casual" in that quests are dailies, not "half an hour" or "hour" timed bursts (like WoW dailies - you can take them and complete them immediately, or hours from now, as long as you complete them before server daily reset). And there's currency (rewards) and crafting (achievements) so when you're not in the writing screen you have your avatar of you, plus a couple pets and a little area of "home" to decorate. The things you earn in the game part are pure decorative, nothing that decreases or makes the word count easier, because that would defeat the purpose of using it as a gamified writing program. As you earn XP you unlock new zones (backgrounds and music) which in turn have new NPCs offering new quests (different word counts, prompts, a faction of NPCs that offer bingo cards, a dungeon/battleground with timed bursts, etc), which reward new pixel pets and collectibles, as well as titles and achievements, and you can travel between zones depending on your mood, writing style, etc.
My first thought was PHP, because I'm relatively certain this could probably be wrapped around a wordpress blog style core for storing the written words, plus it would give the players the option of tagging and saving and organizing their stuff. At least, that was my thought? I honestly don't know, but it seems like it might work, and goodness knows a simple wordpress type thing is something I could install easily on my web server for private use by my wife and I. So that's thought one.
Thought two involves either Python (which installs more easily on a Mac) or C# (which requires some hoop jumping on a Mac) in order to create an actual stand alone sandbox computer program that is compatible with either Mac or PC. At this point, I'm starting from scratch with no idea what I'm doing.
Thought three involves using either GameMaker Studio or Unity engines to easily create a cross platform compatible stand alone game... but then I'm struggling with the question of how to make them handle and store and retrieve large amounts of text for the writing part, and if I can give it any of the bare bones word processing features like fonts, text size, bold, italic, etc.
And that's not even getting into the idea of graphics for the hypothetical app, because if it's just a private thing then let's face it, I'll be using WoW graphics and Dragovian and I will be write questing our way through Pandaria. =P BUT, if I actually wanted to do it legit and not just as a coding exercise for personal use, then there's graphics and music and I'm an illustrator, not a game artist, and I don't know where to start THERE, either. At least not without feeling dumb and stupid and like I'm doing it all wrong. "Don't post it online you'll be laughed at" levels of stupid. Because games are all about environments and objects and my only main strength is in the human form - nothing ever pressed me to master perspective or object life drawing so I coasted by and didn't, or how to do a simplified game cartoon style, or vector or pixel art, and I feel like I'm back in my first lab art class in the Art Institute, on day one, realizing I'm not only not a hot shit artist but actually have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
(For the record, I would totally just buy the music. I am a lot of things, but I am not a composing musician, and at this point I'm lucky if I can remember how to read the treble clef music notes. =P)
What do y'all think? Either in terms of "this programming language might be better for this" or "have you thought about XYZ" or "sounds crazy wtf" or even "hell yeah, I'd give it a try". Any feedback rather than rattling around in the vacuum of my brain would be awesome.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. ::
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Remember when I used to spit out long posts about story related fandom things at the drop of a hat? Whatever I was enthusiastic about at the time? I don't know how to do that right now. I've had this post open for hours, just tabbing in and out of it on my browser inbetween other things, wondering how to start. Not because I'm not enthusiastic, but because I feel like I "can't" or maybe "shouldn't", because what I'm enthusiastic about is something I'm a newcomer in - it's like a fandom you're brand new in, on a forum you don't know, and you don't know the rules or if you're saying something stupid and people are going to mock you or anything, and maybe it's better to just shut up and keep quiet until you learn the lay of the land, but OMG ENTHUSIASM.
That's actually pretty much exactly what it's like, really. Why? Because it's not fandom. And I'm not sure how to flail and share enthusiasm and squee and the trials and tribulations of something that isn't fandom. I mean, if I said "omg this fic", everyone I know on here could relate. You don't have to know the characters or source material to know what I mean. But it's not writing or art or fandom, and I feel like a n00b with no clue if I'm proposing the stupidest idea ever because I *know* that I don't know enough yet to know how stupid it may or may not be.
Hi, please don't laugh, I want to code and I don't know where to start. >_<
Actually, let me rephrase that. Hi, I want to make a video game/app and I don't know where to start, or if it's been done, or if it's too dumb to even discuss.
My experience with coding, to date, is programming some very bare bones games in BASIC on a Commodore PET back in highschool. Like, hello world, hangman, and guess the number levels of bare bones. Granted, the highlight of that computer era was the original Oregon Trail game, which I legit didn't know came in a color version until I looked it up because we only ever had the green on black monitors. Then late in college (ahhahahaha, early 90's) I got online with my first computer and learned HTML by creating web pages using a text terminal in a shell program - basically writing the html directly to the ftp site (look, I skipped AOL, I was using TIN and the like).
Since then, I've learned HTML and CSS, enough Javascript to make me dangerous, and crash coursed my way through Swift for knocking together a bare bones iPhone app in the last few years (most of which boiled down to HTML and tiny bits of manipulating Xcode.) And that's pretty much it. I've gotten through roughly the same beginner "install, hello world, print to screen, this is a variable, this is an array" lessons in both PHP and Python, and now I'm stuck because I don't know where to go next.
I haven't really talked about what I want to build. Originally I was aiming for a top down old school JRPG because I was playing around with RPGMaker, but that really was just the dime bag of crack cocaine to get me hooked. =P What I really want to do is make a gamified writing program. You know how there's "gamified" productivity apps? Chore Wars, Habitica/Habit RPG, Challenge Accepted - etc, etc. I've tried lots of them. I like bits and pieces of them, but eventually end up dropping all of them as not quite what I want, but really, that boils down to the fact that making long to-do lists for myself usually ends up biting me and just making me depressed and feeling like a failure.
But the IDEA - incorporating game elements into something so you get the little endorphin rush of checking something off, feeling accomplished, and being rewarded - is appealing. And mostly, I want to apply that to writing, even if it's just a private thing for myself and my dragon. I've seen at least one "turn writing into a game" site - I couldn't find the link but it was very pretty, had an RPG theme, you had to meet word count in a certain period of time in order to win battles and collect loot, which contained things to unlock more battles.
I tried it for a day and gave up, because it didn't work for me at all. It did give me the idea, though, because yes, something LIKE that, but not that, because I ended up spending more time wrestling with the "game" aspect of that site than writing. Also, I hate timed writing. =P
So.... I want something that feels more casual RPG, where XP and levels and loot are all earned via word count. "Casual" in that quests are dailies, not "half an hour" or "hour" timed bursts (like WoW dailies - you can take them and complete them immediately, or hours from now, as long as you complete them before server daily reset). And there's currency (rewards) and crafting (achievements) so when you're not in the writing screen you have your avatar of you, plus a couple pets and a little area of "home" to decorate. The things you earn in the game part are pure decorative, nothing that decreases or makes the word count easier, because that would defeat the purpose of using it as a gamified writing program. As you earn XP you unlock new zones (backgrounds and music) which in turn have new NPCs offering new quests (different word counts, prompts, a faction of NPCs that offer bingo cards, a dungeon/battleground with timed bursts, etc), which reward new pixel pets and collectibles, as well as titles and achievements, and you can travel between zones depending on your mood, writing style, etc.
My first thought was PHP, because I'm relatively certain this could probably be wrapped around a wordpress blog style core for storing the written words, plus it would give the players the option of tagging and saving and organizing their stuff. At least, that was my thought? I honestly don't know, but it seems like it might work, and goodness knows a simple wordpress type thing is something I could install easily on my web server for private use by my wife and I. So that's thought one.
Thought two involves either Python (which installs more easily on a Mac) or C# (which requires some hoop jumping on a Mac) in order to create an actual stand alone sandbox computer program that is compatible with either Mac or PC. At this point, I'm starting from scratch with no idea what I'm doing.
Thought three involves using either GameMaker Studio or Unity engines to easily create a cross platform compatible stand alone game... but then I'm struggling with the question of how to make them handle and store and retrieve large amounts of text for the writing part, and if I can give it any of the bare bones word processing features like fonts, text size, bold, italic, etc.
And that's not even getting into the idea of graphics for the hypothetical app, because if it's just a private thing then let's face it, I'll be using WoW graphics and Dragovian and I will be write questing our way through Pandaria. =P BUT, if I actually wanted to do it legit and not just as a coding exercise for personal use, then there's graphics and music and I'm an illustrator, not a game artist, and I don't know where to start THERE, either. At least not without feeling dumb and stupid and like I'm doing it all wrong. "Don't post it online you'll be laughed at" levels of stupid. Because games are all about environments and objects and my only main strength is in the human form - nothing ever pressed me to master perspective or object life drawing so I coasted by and didn't, or how to do a simplified game cartoon style, or vector or pixel art, and I feel like I'm back in my first lab art class in the Art Institute, on day one, realizing I'm not only not a hot shit artist but actually have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
(For the record, I would totally just buy the music. I am a lot of things, but I am not a composing musician, and at this point I'm lucky if I can remember how to read the treble clef music notes. =P)
What do y'all think? Either in terms of "this programming language might be better for this" or "have you thought about XYZ" or "sounds crazy wtf" or even "hell yeah, I'd give it a try". Any feedback rather than rattling around in the vacuum of my brain would be awesome.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. ::
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