Nya ha ha!
Now that us vaxxed humans are emerging from our COVID isolation like so many Groundhog's Day rodents, I'm kind of intimidated by what I can do again.
Oh, crap, I'm out of rice vinegar. I'll need to wait until the next grocery run. WAIT, no I can go RIGHT NOW! Yes there are (presumably) horrible people out there, but I can just wear a mask to keep a sense of insulation and continue giving them a wide berth, but now I can do this whenever I want!
I can (and have) seen friends, go eat at places, be slightly leisurely at Target, or whatnot. That's all open now!
Still kinda want to stay inside, tho.
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The game, A Cure For What Ails You, is developing apace. I'm now developing it digitally on a game called Tabletop Simulator which allows people to make their own games or play ones available. It's an amazing resource and one I'm really working to utilize. I'm learning to code in Lua, which seems to be common language for game developers, and while my progress is slow, there is progress. I mean, I do miss punching/kicking my frustrations/problems into oblivion, but learning to overcome an error in my code is fairly satisfying.
If you want to try my game, you'll need to download Steam (a free program that acts as digital distributor for PC games), get Tabletop Simulator ($20), and friend my Steam account handle "Doc Cheetum." I've put my game on a "friends only" setting as I'm not ready to let just anybody play with it, but it's definitely good enough to let friends and circles start trying it.
Oh, and I've got a Discord channel set up where I talk about what I'm doing in weekly updates. You'll get to see new images, read about how the game works, and see me criticize myself about the bugs in the game that I need to fix. Hopefully it's marginally entertaining.
https://discord.gg/a5BeUbee
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In related news, Beemer is heading back to New Orleans for AGU this year, which makes me stupidly excited for the trip! I get to follow up on leads for my game, see some friends, do further research on topics of interest, and expand my knowledge of the area. Delightful! I'll probably also get a cooler for the hotel room so we can store fresh produce in the room since we had the hardest time locating it in our last visit. I should look into getting a bike or some other transportation method to enable ease in procuring these resources. Hm. Logistics, ho!
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Gaming-wise, I've been enjoying/cursing R-Type Final 2. Yes, the "last" of the R-Type series has a clumsily named sequel! You can read up on the original here - https://kung-fu-monkey.dreamwidth.org/209227.html#cutid1 . OMG I WROTE THAT 11 YEARS AGO WHERE THE FUCK HAS THE TIME GONE I'M SO OLD NOW AAAAAAAAAA~~!
Anyway, I will say that while it's a worthy and fun game, it's also fails to live up to its predecessor in a number of ways. Previously, you'd unlock a new ship by spending time with one of the earlier models of it's line, do something nifty during a stage, or something like that. in RTF2, each stage awards one of three currencies and you need to gain enough currencies to buy your next unlock. While this may give you more freedom in choosing which ship you unlock next, it reduces the game to a boring grind as you just keep replaying the levels that you need over and over again. The charm and skill have been drained, making it a rote exercise. Furthermore, the core game is pretty short, with only 7 levels and not all of the ships are finished by the designers! The game isn't complete even now, and I'm writing this a few months after getting it! There are new DLC levels, but they're designed to be even trickier than the core levels, which has probably killed some gamers who have abnormally high blood pressure.
On the other hand, the ship designs are varied, you can change their color, put on decals, and swap between 12 different ships during your game, so there's definitely some neat aspects to the game.
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Originally posted at https://kung-fu-monkey.dreamwidth.org/