Month: June 2020

Testing, testing

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Another short run today…

…and then I got back into my game. I finished the graphics this morning, and after a bit of tweaking I’ve managed to get the first set all implemented and working on the Spectrum +3 emulator. Tomorrow I’ll do the same for the Spectrum Next and Adventuron versions and start putting the finishing touches on everything, and hopefully there’ll still be a bit of time to run it past a couple of playtesters before the jam deadline!

I’ve had a couple of hours free every evening for the last few days to play videogames as well, which has been nice. I’m currently working my way through realMyst: Masterpiece Edition on the Switch (so cool to be able to explore the world properly as opposed to the static images from the 1993 version that I grew up with!) and Final Fantasy 1 on the PSP (I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m planning to play through the mainline Final Fantasy games in order… I’m only allowing myself an online map to help with the first game as apparently the original version came with a paper map!).

More making and playing games tomorrow, I hope!

Laptop stack
It’s time for the LAPTOP STACK. You can only run one Adventuron tab per browser, and I’ve got to a point where I need to work on multiple versions of a game at once. As such, the backup laptops will be pulling their weight tomorrow!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Harry Nilsson – ‘One’
Catatonia – ‘Road Rage’
Michael Jackson – ‘They Don’t Care About Us’
Manami Kiyota – ‘Frontier Village’

A week of finishing off

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The usual-for-marathon-training Monday mile today…

…and then I spent the rest of the day working on my game. Five days to go till the jam deadline! This week’s game creation tasks are mostly related to polishing and playtesting – I’m very nearly finished with my graphics now and looking forward to putting everything together in the next few days.

Planning a similar day tomorrow – I’m hoping to be able to post about one of the side projects I’ve been working on during this jam period too!

Pixel garage take two
My pixel cars from last week are looking a bit better for some colour. I’ve created two sets of graphics for this game jam – a Spectrum-compatible set for the Spectrum +3 version (which are a bit, um, ‘zany’ as I’ve never tried making Spectrum-compatible graphics before!) and another set for the Adventuron/Spectrum Next releases, made with the hept32 palette. Never thought I’d enjoy making graphics this much when I started out last year!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Robyn Miller – ‘Myst Theme’
The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’
Harry Nilsson – ‘One’
The Sisters Of Mercy – ‘Temple Of Love’
Manami Kiyota – ‘Forest Of The Nopon’

RED day 180

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Today’s earworm playlist:

Manami Kiyota – ‘Satorl Marsh’
The Rolling Stones – ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Duran Duran – ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
The Sisters Of Mercy – ‘Temple Of Love’

All about that Friday evening!

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Another warm mile this morning…

…because the storm hasn’t arrived here in Newcastle yet, even though it was supposed to this evening. I’m feeling a bit disappointed now! Hope we still get some impressive thunder and lightning by the time I go to bed (and preferably not in the middle of the night, thank you).

I spent the bulk of today getting my day job work finished for the week. All done now, so I can get back to my game over the weekend! Hoping I might get some actual playing of games done as well if I have time…

A non-parkrun three-miler to do first thing tomorrow though. That would be a good time for a storm not to be happening as well!

Stuff in the post
Today’s postal haul. I heard about the text adventure t-shirt on one of the text adventure Facebook groups and somehow managed to yoink the last one! I also completed my ‘seven of each running item for seven days’ shorts collection with the Tikiboo Run London shorts in yet another colourway 😀

Today’s earworm playlist:

Melanie C – ‘I Turn To You’
Queen – ‘Somebody To Love’
Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian – ‘Atlantis’ Last Moments’

The weekend approaches

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A very warm mile today…

…and then I spent most of the day doing day job work again. I’ve broken the back of it now and am hoping to finish early tomorrow so I can get back to my game creation!

Geth and I are semi-celebrating tonight, because his academic project bid is very nearly ready to send off (he just needs one last letter from a collaborating party). As we also both did well with our weight loss this week, we are treating ourselves to takeaway pizza as a bit of an early weekend treat. Waiting on it now and getting a bit impatient 😀

Another hopefully early start tomorrow before the storms arrive, and then I can settle in for the weekend…

Blue summer sky
The weather has been beautiful the last couple of days, but sadly I’ve been too busy to spend much time outside!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Carter USM – ‘And God Created Brixton’
Andy Taylor – ‘I Might Lie’
Carter USM – ‘Glam Rock Cops’
Duran Duran – ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
Manami Kiyota – ‘Satorl Marsh’
The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’

Phone Box Thursday: Porthpean Beach Road, St Austell

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So… when I said last week that we’d be moving back up north, just pretend I actually said ‘west’ – I’d forgotten which phone box series I was scheduled to do next!

Bill very kindly sent me a few phone box pictures from a trip to Cornwall in February, so we will be enjoying the land of pirates and beaches for the next couple of weeks (I wish I was there for real right now – I bet it’s glorious at the moment).

Red phone box
Red phone box, Porthpean Beach Road, St Austell, 19th February 2020.

(Coordinates 50°32’15.5″N, 4°77’00.4″W.)

A nice smart defibrillator box, which means it will hopefully be of use for some time. The defibrillator company posted on Facebook about the installation of the defibrillator – it has been in place since 2018, apparently!

https://www.facebook.com/duchydefibs/posts/630043694055271

More from Cornwall next week.

Hours in the day

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A four-miler in the heat today…

…and then straight into work, as it’s been one of those ‘clients are like buses’ weeks with everybody sending projects at once! I’ve been keeping an eye on my hour-by-hour time management today and making notes, as I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated recently by busywork taking up more time than it deserves. Hoping to be able to streamline things a bit over the next few weeks, as I’ve got a lot of projects to be getting on with and I want them all finished by mid-July so that I can start getting some day-long videogaming sessions in! Might as well make the most of not going anywhere for summer holidays this year 🙂

Looking forward to an evening of graphics creation, and hoping for another earlyish start tomorrow so I can get another good chunk of work done.

Red diary
Geth’s new diary for academic year 2020-21 arrived today. He ordered it early so that we can start planning out CoronaYear 2: The Rescheduling. I LOVE the colour so much that I might be adding a red diary of my own to my Christmas list this year 😍

Today’s earworm playlist:

Melanie C and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes – ‘Never Be The Same Again’
Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Daniel Bedingfield – ‘Gotta Get Thru This’

Project addiction

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The usual mile today…

…which was fine with me, because I had a lot of things to get on with today!

The day job work is continuing to trickle back in, which is great. I’ve also got lots to do on the text adventure front as mentioned yesterday, and because I’ve obviously not got enough projects on the go at the moment, I decided to start revamping my business website today! This was a planned thing for this summer, because from August I’ll be updating my terms and conditions and putting my prices up for the first time in a few years. However, the website revamp is going to take me a few weeks, I expect, because between the running, work and game creation, I don’t have an awful lot of spare time right now!

I’ve not been at all successful at dragging myself out of bed early in recent weeks, but I really am going to try tomorrow as it’s meant to be quite hot and my four-mile run could end up being a bit miserable if I leave it too late.

Pixel garage
An in-progress scene from my latest game. For games with non-goblin settings, I always end up writing in a ton of cars for some reason, and then massively regretting it when it comes to doing the graphics. Drawing cars is tough!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Duran Duran – ‘Late Bar’

All the retro

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Back to the mile route this morning…

…after a very productive weekend of longer runs! I’m actually really enjoying being back on my marathon training schedule as it requires less thinking and less guilt – I just go out and run whatever’s on my plan.

Other than running, I’ve spent about 90% of the last few days working on my game. I’m in at the sharp end now and have got a lot of sub-projects on the go – playtesting, graphics, compatibility. I’ll probably do a dedicated blog post about the process in the next couple of days.

Until then, I’d better get back to it…

Sugar-free juice
Geth brought this back from Sainsbury’s today. It’s sugar-free but is giving me the equivalent of a sugar high, presumably due to containing a lot of chemicals. Gotta balance out the halo effects of Slimming World cooking and intermittent fasting 🙂

Today’s earworm playlist:

Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Melanie C – ‘I Turn To You’
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – ‘Come On Eileen’