Tag: Hours I Have Lost To Videogames

Occasional normality

Dee Leave a comment

It’s been another busy week at work and I’m really glad it’s the weekend. Geth and I are going to parkrun tomorrow morning! It’s finally back in England for the first time since that strange weekend in March 2020, and I’m very excited to return. Our home parkrun has a new name (formerly Newcastle, now Town Moor due to several other parkruns now existing in Newcastle) and a new course and a mostly-new core team running it, so it’s a bit of a new era all round. It feels very strange that we can finally parkrun again after so many false starts, but it feels like the right time. I hope Scotland and Wales aren’t too far behind.

Other than that I’m going to be chilling out with videogames this weekend, both creating and playing. I have returned to Final Fantasy I this week so I’ll be spending some time with that! I’ve also still got a lot of ParserComp entries to get through before the voting deadline next weekend, and I’m really excited to get some coding done as well.

The weather is still hot and not conducive to long runs. I’ve moved my long run day to Thursday, both because of events happening later in the training programme (to be precise, due to COVID-induced race lag, the rescheduled GNR falls precisely three weeks before the rescheduled-rescheduled London Marathon, and in a marathon training programme you’re supposed to do your 22-miler three weeks before marathon day, and I’m not doing an extra nine miles before or after the GNR! …so I’ll do it on the Thursday and have a gentle plod round the dodgily-rerouted ‘GNR’ three days later, no racing it) and because mental health wise I need FULL WEEKENDS at the moment that are not completely taken up with running, so it’s best to squeeze the long run in on a weekday instead. My last two long runs have ended up being cut short due to heatwave collapse, so next week I’m going to grit my teeth and attempt an out-and-back in the hope that, by the time I’m struggling, I’ll already be ‘on my way home’ and so it’ll be mentally easier.

Lots of groups and classes from pre-pandemic life now inviting me back, but as I’ve always said, these things will need to happen very gradually for me as I don’t want to jump straight back into Constantly Doing Stuff. Ignoring the FOMO and doing my own thing for a while longer.

Weeping willow
My favourite tree in the garden. It looks great in the summer.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Yuna’s Theme’
Crowded House – ‘Weather With You’
Don Henley – ‘Boys Of Summer’
Duran Duran – ‘Give It All Up’

Sunday

Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Cosmo Canyon’

Monday

Paul Weller – ‘You Do Something To Me’

Tuesday

Calvin Harris – ‘Summer’

And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:

Nobuo Uematsu – ‘To Zanarkand’

Wednesday

Therion – ‘Summer Night City’
Duran Duran – ‘To The Shore’

Thursday

Boston – ‘More Than A Feeling’
Levellers – ‘The Fear’
Duran Duran – ‘Shadows On Your Side’

Friday

Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Airship Theme’
John Waite – ‘Missing You’
Manami Kiyota – ‘Satorl Marsh (Night)’

Flying Monday post

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No adventures in coding to report this week. I would like to have been playing with a few experimental games I want to make and working on my ongoing projects, but I’ve been snowed under with day job work and haven’t had the time or energy. Hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel by the end of the week!

Switch Lite
I also need to switch this thing on tonight and check it’s still okay, as I haven’t had time to use it for a few months now. Maybe I’ll actually have chance to play games on it one of these days!

Adventures In Coding: Downtime Post-Release

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I know I’ve mentioned it once or twice already this week, but here’s another link to my latest game!

I had a really good time making Waiting for the Day Train once I let go of the hope that I could somehow finish Marie in time for the ParserComp deadline (having actually sat down and properly scheduled everything out, it will most definitely be going into one of the early 2022 competitions instead). I had fallen in love with the game idea when wandering around the beautiful vicinity of Causey Arch during Mum and Dad’s visit a few weeks ago, as I wanted to do a relaxing adventure accompanied by the photos I’d taken. In the end the adventure was not portrayed as relaxing – it’s a timed game, as the aim is to catch the last day train so that you can escape the night and its associated evil spirits forever… but there has to be some sense of danger in an adventure game!

Waiting for the Day Train

I really loved making the two themes for the game (there’s a day theme, for the playable part of the game, and a night theme for parts of the framing story). I’ve had some very nice feedback about it so far, which has given me a few ideas for future updates.

It’s going to be a fun few months as I have a lot of game ideas to play with. Marie is still trucking along in the background as well, in a slightly more sedate way than she was doing before.

For a week or two, though, I’m taking it easy and carving out some time to play all the other ParserComp entries!

Adventures In Coding: A Deadline Approaches

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At the time of this post it’s fifty-four hours and twenty minutes until the deadline for ParserComp, which is the competition into which I’m putting my new small game. Very exciting! I’ve had some useful feedback from testers and so will be incorporating all of that into the game this evening. That gives me a forty-eight-hour ‘buffer zone’ in case anything breaks horribly. It shouldn’t, but you never know.

I’ve also been digging out a few other small projects that I’m excited about finishing over the next few weeks. I’ll still be working on my big game as well once the competition deadline is past, but at a much more sedate rate, so I’ll have time for side projects. Experimenting with several things at once (and no deadline pressure) is going to be a really nice way to spend my summer.

Wagon
This wagon picture isn’t in my game, but it did inspire an object!

Of course, I’m also excited about the best part of any competition/jam, which is getting to play everybody else’s games! I’ve already tested five of the other entries, but I’m really looking forward to playing the released versions as well as all the games I’ve not seen before. Thursday will be a good day 🙂

Saturday ’80s Photo: The BBC Micro Still Works

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And so does the five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy that holds all the games we used to play on the BBC Micro in the late ’80s, surprisingly. Or at least they both did in December 2019, when Dad and I booted everything up for the first time in decades.

BBC Micro

I can’t wait to be able to visit Mum and Dad in Edinburgh and play with this amazing old machine again! There’s an Acorn Electron I want to try booting up too…

We used my old TV (my gift for doing well in my Standard Grades in 2000) as the monitor, because it’s the only CRT screen left in the house. It was really trippy to boot up all the programs and suddenly remember games I hadn’t even thought about for thirty years.

Virus is still my favourite, as that was about the limit of my gaming ability when I was three or four. However, I’ve got a real soft spot for Cheese, Planets and Tarot (imaginative names!) too, just for the pure nostalgia rush when they appear on screen.

The real eventual test will be getting some of my own programs to run on the system!

Making space

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I found myself burning out a bit this week. The last couple of months have been very productive but also a bit manic, and I’ve realised I need a bit of a break, so I’ve pared down a few of my activities. I log daily or weekly streaks for just about everything I do, because I find it’s the only way I can keep up with things – I’m very obsessional about my hobbies but also very fickle, so I’ll spend a few weeks obsessed with playing videogames and then a few weeks obsessed with making games instead and then a few weeks where running is my main passion… Maintaining daily streaks such as my run streak is the best way I’ve found to make sure that hobbies don’t get neglected during times when they’re not my main ‘thing’. However, when I have a lot of these streaks going, they become overwhelming and take over my life. As such, sometimes I have to decide to let go of some of them, and that can be really hard when I’ve put so much effort into keeping the streak going for so long.

This week I had to quit the Fetchpoint game again. The game involves going out every day and collecting tokens, including a red bug token that appears daily in your local circle and needs to be collected and taken out of the circle in order to be ‘squished’. You get bonus points for a bug-free circle at the end of the day and minus points if there are any bugs remaining. If you squish your bug for thirty days in a row, you get a badge. I have been chasing this badge for a long time and very nearly had it in September – unfortunately, after I ran the Virtual GNR, I felt too ill to collect my bug for that day and so the attempt came to an end. I started playing again in March to make a fresh attempt, but other areas of life have meant that some days I just don’t have time for the two-hour walk that a bug hunt often requires. It’s been a frustrating experience, and so I’ve given up again for the time being. Hopefully there’ll be a time in the summer or autumn when things are a bit quieter.

I’m looking forward to a quiet bank holiday weekend. A bit of running and walking, but mainly just sitting on my sofa with my game code 🙂

Next door's cat
It really makes me laugh when I open my front door to find this familiar figure sitting on top of my car and staring at me balefully! He was still there when I got back from my run thirty-five minutes later.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Michael Land – ‘On The Hill’
Sia – ‘Cheap Thrills’
MC Hammer – ‘U Can’t Touch This’

And a bonus track that Geth was humming that day:

Michael Land – ‘Phatt Island Waterfall’

Sunday

Michael Land – ‘Upstairs At The Hotel’
Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé – ‘Barcelona’
Public Image Ltd. – ‘Rise’
Levellers – ‘Julie’

Monday

Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
Michael Land – ‘On The Hill’
MC Hammer – ‘U Can’t Touch This’
Michael Land – ‘Upstairs At The Hotel’

Tuesday

Michael Land – ‘Upstairs At The Hotel’
Princess Superstar and The High & Mighty – ‘Bad Babysitter’

Wednesday

Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
Pride & Fall – ‘December’
Michael Land – ‘On The Hill’

Thursday

Michael Land – ‘The Barbery Coast’

Friday

Cole Porter – ‘Anything Goes’
Michael Land – ‘On The Hill’

A mellower, more behind-the-scenes week

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This week has featured a lot fewer deadlines and manic last-minute things than last week did, so I’ve been able to get back to some semblance of normality in terms of the house upkeep and the exercise/training programme. It’s been especially nice to get back out for my walks, as it’s been really clear and sunny all week. This has meant that early morning runs have been a bit chilly, but afternoon walks have been the perfect temperature. Hope the sunshine continues.

As often happens when I release a game, I feel a bit bereft of my project and am already eagerly planning out the next one. This covers many things: the long planning document acts as my project for April’s Camp NaNoWriMo, and the new game itself is the full version of the excerpt I released for IntroComp 2020 and will also be entered into ParserComp 2021. Planning out the puzzles is fun, but I can’t wait to dive back into coding. I’ve got two and a half months to finish the game, so an important mission is not to get distracted by anything shiny in the meantime!

A blissfully quiet weekend awaits. Looking forward to finishing off the last of the other games from the jam (I’ve been playing the Spanish ones this week and it’s been a really fun way to get some language practice in) and also getting in some time with my much-neglected Switch Lite.

Blue sky
Spring is behaving this week.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’*
The Crüxshadows – ‘Dragonfly’
Dee Cooke – ‘Intro And Exit’

Sunday

Dee Cooke – ‘Path And Tree’
Michael Land – ‘Governor Marley’s Mardi Gras Fish Fry’
The Beatles – ‘Ticket To Ride’
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
Lily Allen – ‘The Fear’

Monday

Michael Land – ‘The Barbery Coast’
Lewis Capaldi – ‘Someone You Loved’
Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
George Fenton – ‘Bergerac (Main Theme)’

Tuesday

Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
The Crüxshadows – ‘Ariadne’

Wednesday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
Michael Land – ‘Scabb Island Overview’

Thursday

Michael Land – ‘Scabb Island Overview’

Friday

Dennis Martin and Takeo Miratsu – ‘If You Still Believe’
Michael Land – ‘Scabb Island Overview’
Dee Cooke – ‘Intro And Exit’
Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’

*Like last week, I have spent an embarrassingly large chunk of the last few days with my own compositions stuck in my head after making them for my game. Given that music is planned for most of my future game projects, this could become a regular occurrence.

Gaming time

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I spent all of the Easter weekend working on last-minute polish stuff for my new Adventuron game. It was a really fun project, but these things always get a bit manic just before release and so I now most definitely need a quiet weekend of playing games instead of making them! As such, for the next couple of days I’m going to be curling up on the sofa and playing all the other games that were made for the jam (along with a bit of Bravely Default II, which I’ve been neglecting for the last couple of weeks!).

I submitted the game on Wednesday and have just been catching up with day job work since then. I’m looking forward to a more normal week again next week and am excited about getting out for my nice long walks again 🙂

Easter tree
My Easter tree (all the rage this year from what I’ve read!). The LED lights have started to go a bit dim as the batteries have worn down but they were really bright last week.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
Clean Bandit and Louisa Johnson – ‘Tears’

Sunday

Michael Land – ‘Herman Toothrot’
The Goodies – ‘Funky Gibbon’
Michael Land – ‘Club 41’
Duran Duran – ‘Planet Earth’

Monday

DNCE – ‘Cake By The Ocean’
Johann Pachelbel – ‘Canon In D’

Tuesday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
Walk The Moon – ‘Shut Up And Dance’
Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’

Wednesday

Michael Land – ‘The Underground Tunnels’

Thursday

Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’
Dee Cooke – ‘Monster’*
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’

Friday

Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’
The Firm – ‘Star Trekking’

*Yes, the tunes that I composed on BeepBox for my new game have spent a lot of time stuck in my head the last few days. It’s good that they’re catchy… right?

Slowing down… and a much-anticipated break

Dee Leave a comment

It’s been a busy week getting everything done in the run-up to Easter weekend. At the start of the week I was frantically finishing my jam game, but we’ve got a week’s extension for that so I’ve been able to take my time a bit more – I’m looking forward to settling down and getting it finished over the weekend. I also had a lot of day job work that I needed to get cleared before the holiday, which has been pretty much full-time this week.

Still, I got everything done yesterday, and today I’ve been enjoying the time spent drawing graphics!

Running and walking has suffered a bit this week, as I didn’t have as much time for it as I usually do. I’m looking forward to getting out exploring on longer routes over the weekend though.

I hope everyone has a great weekend, whether or not you are celebrating Easter or anything else 🙂

Street art
Some street art I saw in north Newcastle this week.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Stormzy and MNEK – ‘Blinded By Your Grace (Part II)’
Slade – ‘Run Runaway’
Pet Shop Boys – ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’

Sunday

Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse – ‘Valerie’
Johnny Hates Jazz – ‘Shattered Dreams’
Clean Bandit and Louisa Johnson – ‘Tears’

Monday

Revo – ‘Savalon Desert’
Tim Heintz, Randy Petersen and Kevin Quinn – ‘Sister, Sister (Main Theme)’
Charli XCX and Troye Sivan – ‘1999’
Scandroid – ‘Thriller’
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé – ‘Telephone’
Michael Land – ‘Governor Marley’s Mardi Gras Fish Fry’

Tuesday

Alexandra Burke and Flo Rida – ‘Bad Boys’
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé – ‘Telephone’
Dawn Penn – ‘You Don’t Love Me’

Wednesday

Steps – ‘One For Sorrow’
Marilyn Monroe – ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You’

Thursday

Owl City – ‘Fireflies’
Blur – ‘Parklife’
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Tim Minchin – ‘White Wine In The Sun’
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé – ‘Telephone’

And a bonus track that Geth was humming:

The Human League – ‘Human’

Friday

Michael Land – ‘The Drinking Contest’
Olly Murs and Flo Rida – ‘Troublemaker’

And a bonus track that Geth was humming:

Counting Crows – ‘Butterfly In Reverse’

Finishing off the month

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A fairly hectic week this week as I’ve had a lot of things to get finished before the end of the month. My ear is feeling a lot better after finishing my antibiotics course, and my energy has seemingly returned, so I’ve been able to start improving my running speed again.

My main focus this week has been getting the bulk of the work finished for my current Adventuron jam game. I’ve spent this week finishing off the coding and am looking forward to getting stuck into the graphics over the weekend. I’m really excited about getting everything put together and spending a few days working with playtesters before the deadline!

I’ve also been continuing with my long walks and increased-distance runs, which are really nice now that the spring weather has arrived. It means that I’ve pretty much doubled my pace on the LEJOG challenge I’m doing and should be well on track to finish by the end of the year!

There’s been quite a bit of day job work this week too. Business has picked up a bit recently after last year’s slight COVID slump and I’ve got some important plans for going forward that I’m going to start implementing soon.

Finally, I’ve made sure to get some quality downtime with videogames when possible. I’m still really enjoying Bravely Default II and expect it will take me a good couple of months to finish. So many games on the list afterwards that I can’t wait to play…

I would say I’m hoping that next week will be quieter, but there’s a Camp NaNoWriMo month starting and I expect I’ll end up doing something for that! Maybe not with a super high wordcount this time though…

Jesmond Dene
Still enjoying my spring return to Jesmond Dene!

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Bucks Fizz – ‘My Camera Never Lies’
Sting – ‘Englishman In New York’
Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz – ‘Talk Dirty’

Sunday

Camila Cabello – ‘Liar’
Captain Ska – ‘Liar Liar Ge2017’
Kevin Gillis – ‘Run With Us’

Monday

Lauv and Troye Sivan – ‘I’m So Tired’
Revo – ‘Savalon’

Tuesday

The Midnight and Nikki Flores – ‘Because The Night’

Wednesday

Revo – ‘Savalon Desert’
Kirsty MacColl – ‘Days’
Lauv and Troye Sivan – ‘I’m So Tired’
Coldplay – ‘Fix You’
The Midnight and Nikki Flores – ‘Because The Night’

Thursday

Demi Lovato – ‘Heart Attack’
Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz – ‘Talk Dirty’

Friday

Sia – ‘Cheap Thrills’
The Proclaimers – ‘Make My Heart Fly’