There’s two possible reasons for not updating Sentimental Gamer as much as I should.
Reason 1: I’m just so darn happy with life that I feel no need to comment on it.
Reason 2: I’m just so darn depressed with life that I feel no need to comment on it.
Actually, it’s probably a mix of the two. Funny thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is that I sort have a love-hate relationship with what I’m doing in life. On the one hand… man… I’m friggin working on Spore!!! Fairly sure that it doesn’t get much better than that. Then, on the other hand, I get the nagging feeling sometimes that this is a really hollow life and I need to pull a 180. Feel the same way a lot at Cornell too. I either feel “wow… this is it! This is the apex of life!” or “God… this is just a poisonous way to live.” I’ve really not sorted out for myself which of the two is true.
Then again, maybe it just means that only select bits of my life are either great or poisonous. Maybe I’m doing ok on average (to quote The (British) Office that I just watched… maybe I’ve rolled a three?). *shrugs*
Ok, so, pending the final submission of the installer to GDIAC site, I’m just about done with Stage IV. It’s something I really wanted to make, I made it, and it was …. well, it was. Let’s just leave it at that. Next design..
One of the stories that I replay in my head a lot is one of those “Wizard of Oz” type things where the character is whisked off to some weird universe and needs to confront specific task to make things right again. I guess It’s a common device because you get to isolate the specific issue you want not by dealing with the real world (which has thousands of intersecting influences), but by simply making up your own world with just what you’d like :). Cheap? Eh, p’raps.
So, mostly it’s inspired by the Enigma song “The Gravity of Love”, which is pretty high up there in terms of songs that I treasure. I actually just watched the music video this morning on YouTube… funky….
So, god help me, I’ve no friggin clue what the video’s about, or what the song was originally supposed to be about, but when I listen to the song, it makes me envision a strong female character who’s trying terribly hard to convince herself that her romantic love is “it”. What do I mean by “it”? I mean that it’s a character who’s totally convinced that the ultimate feeling we can have is love… it’s what defines us, what makes life worth living, etc. But not just love in general… a specific love for a person.
I dunno, I’ll talk more about the story later I’m sure (much to the dismay of I’m sure every citizen of the internet), but I’ve felt in the past few years that a lot of people get hung up on love (romantic love in particular). It’s treated like some sort of panacea, as though it solves any issue. Ok, so it’s certainly not a bad thing, but it feels like the “easy” solution to life. It feels tangential to a lot of issues, yet it’s always readily applied. It’s like how you would treat somebody putting grafitti on your house. If you’re in it for the long haul, you figure out why people are vandalizing your property, you work to solve youth delinquency, and in general spend far more time than is reasonable to solve the issue. But you have solved it, rooted it out and removed it completely. Conversely, you could get a bucket of paint and just blot it out. Boom. Done. Root of the problem is still there, but hey… you got a quick solution.
That’s what I feel love is like sometimes… a quick and easy solution when we would do well to find a more robust meaning.
Posted in Stage IV on May 11, 2008 by sentimentalgamer
Ok, so I don’t actually feel like talking about my final thoughts on Stage IV now. But I just thought I should put down my current feelings on it for future reference.
Showcase? Well… it went pretty badly. Not many people played it; no surprises there. The bigger issue for me was that I’d pulled an all-nighter just before it. That wasn’t what I was planning for. You gotta be well-rested for showcase, ready to extol the greatness of your game. Additionally, I had my CS 322 final soon after showcase, so… yeah sleep would be important. Ooo boy… I can’t imagine that test will give me anything higher than a C for the semester. Peachy. I was too tired to pull an all-nighter on Monday… so I needed to to it last Tuesday. And what can I say? You always want the game to be that much better… there’s always a little more work you could do for it.
So yeah… I was kinda already exhausted coming in, so by showcase, I was pretty on edge. I just wasn’t able to interact, or talk about the game, or face people playing it. I was just totally useless. So… yeah god that was awful…
Right now, I just feel like the game is total crap. Writing? Awful. Design? Misguided at best. Programming? Hacky. But whether I feel that way because I have a bad impression from showcase, or whether I’m just being honest with myself, I couldn’t say. I’m kinda leaning towards the latter.
Either way, I wanted to make the game, I did it… end of story. Was it as meaningful as I’d hoped? Not in the least; I’m just hoping the end result isn’t too comically awful now. But it’s time to close that part of my life. It’s always annoying to learn that you’re not as great as you wish you could be, but people deal. I guess I don’t try to worry too much about failing; I figure it’s only worth dwelling on it long enough to be motivated to do better next year. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Oh, and I’ve been at home from last Thursday until today. I won’t get a chance to go home before I go to CA for Spore internship after I finish on Friday, so it was wondrous to see my family these past few days. Now, onto work…
Posted in Random, Stage IV on May 6, 2008 by sentimentalgamer
Games showcase is tomorrow. I’m mostly just fixing up bugs and editing the story. Wanna know how you can tell that you need editing? It’s when you see lines like this:
”Not now… I just time, ok?”
Wow… it’s like bona fide Engrish. I wish I could integrate some sort of grammar/spell check into the editor :).
Fun gif animation… pretty clever stuff, especially if you remember playing Pokemon:
Source: http://www.gamewithabrain.com/2008/04/24/news/if-politics-were-more-like-pokemon, though they’re not sure of its origin themselves. Now if only it weren’t just a GIF and had that wondrous battle music…
” “I’ve had a few people ask me if I think Spore will help teach evolution,” Wright said, “and the ironic thing is that, if anything, we’re teaching intelligent design. I’ve seen a few games that relied on evolution — I’ve even designed some of them — and it’s just not as fun.” But, of course, there’s one crucial way in which Spore breaks from intelligent design. The universe of the game is not dominated by a single, all-powerful creator. It’s a universe governed by a million intelligent designers, each unleashing his or her creations to be fruitful and multiply, to conquer and befriend, to fly spaceships and fashion planets.”
Funny, because I was wondering earlier whether the game would receive criticism from intelligent design groups. Of course, just because Will Wright says it’s not about evolution doesn’t mean that it’s not (wow… negatives), but, something to mull over I suppose.
