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Weekly Update (Sort Of) - Mish-Mash of Miscellaneous Musings

2 years ago2,227 words

My mind's been all over the place this week! Old games! Pokemon! Me-made new Pokemon clone?? CBC platformer sequel?? Random computer issues??? Nothing on Atonal Dreams though.

As I said in a recent post, I'll likely not bother tackling the stressful next steps for Atonal Dreams until January - over the Christmas period seems a terrible time to try and rally funding or attention anyway! - but I do want to at least try to maintain my habit of posting here every week, so...!



Though I didn't update last weekend! I wrote ∞ a post on Tuesday ∞ instead, about the now-implemented website changes. Thankfully the site's not come crashing down due to some missed issue, so that's a relief! A couple of people reported weird layout issues though which I'll need to look into at some point.

After that, I tried at least looking at my old Flash games for a bit... though I couldn't really focus. I played a couple! At least for a few minutes. Though others just didn't work at all? Or gave weird, new bugs, like Miasmon just failing to progress after selecting the protagonist. So that's disappointing. I'll need to hunt down old versions of Flash player and - more importantly - the Flash editing software... though I've gone down this path before and ran into roadblocks, and I suppose I've lacked the motivation to push through those this week.

Mostly I've just been working on some personal projects and playing Pokemon Violet (I haven't touched Horizon: Zero Dawn all week, but I don't want to leave that unfinished... bleh). I'd say I'm productive for maybe 70% of the day, and really focused... though it's because I'm working on things free of worrying about what other people will think of them. A shame they're not things I'd want or even be able to monetise, but I suppose it's better than just spending all my time browsing Reddit and YouTube?

I still don't know exactly what the community thinks of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, but I've at least glanced at Reddit and YouTube and the impression I get is that people are complaining about (or mocking) various aspects mostly. Pfff. I'd rather just enjoy it in peace, so I'd really rather not know. Because I am enjoying it, and knowing others aren't would spoil that for me.

Even though I complained in that other post about people posting pictures of new Pokemon and how I really wish they wouldn't because I don't want to see that, I shall now be a complete hypocrite by showing this thing I caught yesterday:




I felt I kind of had to train that! Though I also like the weirder designs in general. It seems odd to me when people complain about those when right from the beginning there were designs like this:



Every time I play a new Pokemon game, the urge to make my own similar game revives. In the past it's manifested as projects like Beast Signer and Miasmon. For a while I've been wishing I could work on some non-narrative game where you could just dive straight into the gameplay, maybe something I'd release through regular updates like a lot of games do these days rather than all at once as a finished thing, and this week I wrote out some plans for such a thing where you'd catch figmon or something...

Though Atonal Dreams is already meant to scratch that particular creative itch, so I really shouldn't get too distracted! I'm itching to actually continue with the development aspects of that though, things like making new dungeons and monsters and music, but I know I probably shouldn't until I've done the Kickstarter/marketing/etc. I did at least spend 15 minutes crudely sketching out the beginnings of a concept though:



More amusing, I'd say, than my previous axolotl-based monster designs!

I also got thinking about the other game I worked on a few months ago which I don't have a proper name for - I've been referring to it as Belief, but that's just a placeholder - and how that was supposed to be Pokemon-like, except you'd collect human archetypes and 'battle' by trying to convince other people that your belief/religion/cult/whatever was right and they were wrong. This thing:



So I actually did some more work on that. Now you can move between rooms, and battles start within the room rather than a separate battle arena. You can also convince people to join you and they continue accompanying you into future battles. Basic gameplay loop stuff.

(I'd include a gif of the additions, or at least a screenshot... but I can't be bothered making one, honestly!)

Normally I'd be extremely energised and enthusiastic during the early feature building stage of a project... but I wasn't really able to focus much on that at all, so I only spent about a day on it. Bleh.



Getting back to Pokemon for a moment, I've always loved the music in Pokemon games, and Violet's no exception. It does some interesting things with dynamic music that previous entries haven't that I'd write more about if I could be bothered, but I can't, so I won't. Well, except for one thing:

In Sword/Shield, gym battles had music that started as a fairly empty anticipatory texture, but when certain conditions were met (Dynamaxing, maybe?), it'd erupt into some grand chant like you might hear at a football game (which I assume was the inspiration for it). While it's probably less thematically relevant in this new installment, it's been continued here - to my delight- and I found the triumphant chant that amps up the tension when the leader sends out their ace so memorable that, after hearing it only briefly during just two gym battles (in which I one-shot the single Pokemon it played against), I had it stuck in my head so strongly that I tried to transcribe it from memory:




This wasn't immediately after or anything; I'd battled the gym the evening before, and I wrote this out the next morning after waking up with it stuck in my head.

I think there are some inaccuracies though - or so I noticed when tackling a third gym the day later - but it got me wondering to what degree this ability to memorise and then repeat exact melodies after hearing them just once or twice is common. Am I special?!?! Was it foolish to use it as the basis of Memody: Sindrel Song?!?! Or maybe it's just the result of a lot of practise making music. Probably that!

I don't have perfect pitch though so the key's likely wrong, and I only remembered the melody so the harmony was just a guess (maybe more reflective of my own composition style than the actual in-game piece) and the percussion - an important part of the actual piece - didn't stick in my mind at all. I wonder if it would have done for a trained drummer, while the melody might not have? HMM.

Also it seems to be in Mixolydian mode, which I regularly compose in and like a lot, which is probably why it appeals to me to the degree that it does!

I could probably look up the OST on YouTube to check my transcription's accuracy, but I'm looking forward to doing that when I finish the game, so I'll do it then!

(I'm only half way through because I've been unfocused and busy trying to evolve every new Pokemon I find. I've at least checked Bulbapedia a few times to reduce the frustration of doing that blind though. I hate how one requires me to have in-person friends! Ugh! But I suppose that was a thing right from Gen 1.)



I can't remember if I already posted about this or if it was in one of several draft posts I wrote then rejected (as I did several times over the past few weeks due to my even-worse-than-usual mental state), but I spent some time playing old games from my childhood recently. Platformers for DOS (most notably Commander Keen) and the SNES (Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World) and Gameboy (Wario Land). All big inspirations, those!

This got me recalling my own platformers, especially Clarence's Big Chance, as I'd finished and released that one:




I also did a lot more with Raider back in the day, but... ehh. I rarely think and don't much care about that anymore and often forget I ever made it! Several versions of it!

But I did play through CBC in its entirety, which only took a couple of hours. While some bits made me cringe - mostly the intro and ending 'cutscene' things, which are really mean-spirited and use humour which was more appropriate back then than it is now - overall I enjoyed the experience, and got wondering again whether I maybe should give it its own Steam port.

Its gameplay is nothing fancy, but maybe the absurdity of it - and nostalgia - would be enough to be worth it? I'd want to edit some of the story bits, though, maybe.

But if I'm editing the story bits, why don't I REMAKE the whole thing in Unity?? Since I'm using Unity, I could do it in 3D!! Or 3D in the sense that the New Super Mario Bros games are 3D, at least (which I've seen called 2.5D, though some googling suggests other people interpret that differently). I wonder what Clarence would look like in 3D??



Like that, apparently! And I could do a 3D platformer sequel too!! Yes!!!

...Or so I got carried away with thoughts of, which led to writing out plans for such a sequel which would include some absurdist platformer scenarios that I've had in mind for many years and would enjoy being able to finally make manifest.

I don't know if I'll actually do that though. The point is that my mind's been all over the place recently, jumping between one idea and the next without really focusing on anything.



Oh, one other thing: I was working on various things yesterday, enjoying myself, when suddenly my screen went completely black. My music was still playing! But no display. I waited a while to see if it'd recover, but it didn't, so I did a forced shut down, rebooted, and everything was fine again.

...For a few hours, until randomly it all went black again without any warning. I waited this time, and after a while it did come back on, with this message:



Everything also slowed down to a crawl, like how things were on my old computer. Just opening right-click menus took between 1 and 10 minutes. Worrying.

I assumed it was due to some RenderTexture thing I'd maybe set up with a too-high resolution, so I changed that, then shut down my PC... but when I started it up again, the issues persisted. I googled stuff and ran things including 'sfc (slash)scannow' and 'DISM' which were meant to generally resolve Windows issues - to repeat something I've said a few times over the years, I'm not a tech guy, so those of you who are might be amused by my naivete - but they didn't seem to find any issues... after taking like two hours in total just to open and then run because every task was taking an eternity.

But then I restarted and everything just magically worked again for reasons unknown. Maybe something I'd done fixed something??

Anyway, long story short, it was most likely an outdated driver issue, since I noticed my graphics driver was many months older than the computer itself (why??), and the Windows Update thing which is supposed to automatically update drivers just didn't for this one, so I had to get it from the NVIDIA website.

I've had no issues since, but ugh, I lost like three hours in a state of high anxiety - due to subconcious worries that I'd lose this fairly new and expensive computer or some valuable data, despite internal attempts at seeing reason - when I'd much rather have been doing something else like writing this post! Pfff!



Anyway, I'm really eager to get back to doing some creative stuff now, so I shall do that!

I'd like to try and get back to my old Flash games next week... but we'll see how that goes.

(I've also been avoiding stuff like emails, still... Is it better to reply months late or not at all??)

Oh, and sorry about slow approval/replying to comments; I've just been too unfocused, but I know I should do better! I do read them all eventually!