So what I have been up to, what am I working on, when is the CRPG going to be done? What’s going right or wrong? Time for some answers…
Real Life
In real life, work is actually going pretty well! But, if you spend all day doing software design, you’re kind of burnt out by the end of it. You’d rather read, watch TV, play video games, anything else to recharge the batteries. I also have other chores to deal with such as home care, laundry, dishes, taking care of my cat… As a result, my time to work on hobby software projects is not as much as I’d like. I need to step up efforts to win the lottery. 🙂
Hardware Woes
Recently, I’ve been getting very frustrated with running TI software on the actual console. I have one of the CF card reader systems (now called a NanoPEB) but it’s been getting hard to work with. It doesn’t work with memory image files that are larger than a certain size. For example, bitmap drawing programs fail to save or load files. When I tried loading my recent Extended BASIC game it fails to load the low-memory assembly routines, giving a cryptic IO error. Argh!
The problem with vintage hardware is you’re either all in or out… you have to spend a considerable amount of time and money if you want to get a hardware setup that works correctly with modern computer systems for transferring software. I’m not sure I want to do that, because I’m just NOT a hardware guy. If something goes wrong, I can’t grab a soldering iron and fix something.
Other Projects
I got a bug in my brain to do another software project on the TI, which has been consuming more of my attention. I don’t want to say much about it yet because I’m not sure I can get it done to a satisfactory level, but it is an arcade game…
I’ve been using the TI’s advanced memory system (which I don’t have but is emulated well in Classic99) and it’s been a refreshing change of pace from the tight memory constrictions I’ve had with the CRPG. I’m even considering saying “Screw it” and just using it for that project as well! It won’t speed up work on the CRPG (content generation isn’t something more memory will fix) but it at least makes the engine work less of a trial.
CRPG Work
Things are basically about the same here.. I’m generating content. I think the big fear I have here is, am I writing good content or not? Is it lame and stupid? Reading the CRPG Addict’s experiences with various games and how some have great story lines and others are terrible has me feeling a bit under pressure to deliver something much better than old tired tropes. (“There’s an evil wizard… in a castle. Uh, slay him. Yeah.”)
Yahoo Concerns
So as we all know, Yahoo is NOT doing well… and they are my current web provider.
Sometime last year, they split their web service into a separate business called Aabaco. Unfortunately, this hasn’t improved service all that much, and I am concerned that I may be asked at some point in the near future “Hey, where did your website go?” I’d better do some local FTP copies of all my content soon…
It isn’t the first time I’ve had to relocate my blog, but I’d like to try and preserve the WordPress version of it if I can. (Not a fan of Blogspot) And I’d like to take my domain with me if I had to leave Yahoo, not sure if that is doable. If I had a choice of new webspace, I’d probably go with either AWS or Azure.
An Apology
Finally, I am sorry that I don’t update often enough. I know the CRPG work has been going on a ludicrously long time now… I really should just sit down and finish something, even if I’m not happy with the design.
I was reminded of the importance of communication recently when I saw a video on YouTube called “Whatever happened to…” concerning a video blogger I like and followed. In the last couple years their content generation of funny movie/video game reviews dropped to nothing, their Patreon account dropped from 5k/month to under 1k/month, etc. And worst of all, they have been utterly silent in social media, confining themselves to Twitter and banning anyone who asks why there hasn’t been any new content.
I don’t ask for money to do any of my hobby work, but I realized I didn’t want to be THAT kind of person. I want to make sure everyone knows where I’m at and where I want to go with things.
“I’m generating content. I think the big fear I have here is, am I writing good content or not? Is it lame and stupid? Reading the CRPG Addict’s experiences with various games and how some have great story lines and others are terrible has me feeling a bit under pressure to deliver something much better than old tired tropes. (“There’s an evil wizard… in a castle. Uh, slay him. Yeah.”)
Personally, I would worry more about making the engine great than procrastinating and contorting yourself into a pretzel to fit somebody else’s approval. Since you are making the very first grand CRPG for the TI99 platform, you’re allowed to recycle the “slay the evil wizard” trope to your heart’s content as far as I am concerned.
You can move beyond the tropes for the sequels!
Maybe it’s crazy, but you could create an engine that creates the story (with some fixed points)!
I recently found these online tools for RPG world generation:
http://donjon.bin.sh/
So if you’re drawing a blank as far as content generation goes, just use the tools there and modify them to fit your main storyline?
If Ray Kurzweil is correct about the singularity, not too long after computers can emulate the human brain we could feed the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe to a story writer engine and then conceivably produce new works that closely resemble the writing style of Poe, for example.