hello world

[willow]

this is the first thread on paralogue! just wanted to say hi and ask how's everyone's day is going. or just feel free to check in and tell a story. it is up to u

[maru]

Hi Willow! Umm, it's been a long day. I was in New York still, I had just gotten in from San Francisco.

The day before that I was on a quest to get Windows back on my Thinkpad so I could get it to my coworker, but I had "SmartWiped" the drive so that it was nuked after I had mistakenly put Ventoy on it to install Win11, which had issues, and the only other machine was a Mac without USB-A ... yada, yada, yada. I had to go to an internet cafe to get the flash drive set up, and even then it took a few hours to copy it over with Rufus. I don't know why.

By the time I did that I had spent all night onto, like, 2am to do it. And I had to get a presentation ready, or at least some draft of one ready, so that my coworkers could give it Monday morning, so I was just, cranking that out, I guess.

Now I'm home again and I've been putting Windows on my gaming laptop. I thought KDE Adaptive Sync was the only reason Nobara couldn't play games full screen; it's something much more convoluted. So I'm just accepting my fate now. I like the laptop and I don't see the point in spending the money.

[Pogckets]

Hello loggers,

Hot Girl Summer is upon us. My day is going well, a good balance of work and play. The sun is strong and with it come warmth and contentment.

Am in talks to coordinate an appearance with a new qt together in regency attire.

Stay tuned

[sinku]

hi paralogists,

i started a new job over a week ago and im waiting on my first payday. everybody there says i look 5 years younger than i really am. idk if i really look like a teenager

im composing for an indie game and im an idiot that didnt ask how long the tracks ought to be, so the length of the track im finalizing rn is way under what it ought to be for 20-30 min levels. thankfully, the guy is happy with what im cooking. he wants me to make a bunch of warp-style mid 90s idm modeled after tim koch and afx and autechre. i like what he's sent me as reference; he leans towards melody and 8bit sounds and doesnt like noise. so im flexing my melodic muscles and pulling out every technique i know, and as a result, im thinking way harder about it lol. this bridge section I was writing was probably the most frustrating 8 bars ive ever had to write for such a simple modulation.

im sketching out a 2d game engine for a top-down shooter game cuz im all nostalgic for flash. there's this one thats on my mind that id like to clone called the museum of science fiction. idk why it stuck in my head, cuz its so goofy looking. anyway, it's a study project, but i want to do it right, because what I really want to make is a 3d software renderer, then design an engine around that.

my cs and math study habits are embarassing, ive had this technical interview book gathering dust for about a month now, just not making time to read it and do the problems in the tree chapter. most likely because im vain and dont want to recognize where im weak yet.

[watermoon]

heya! life is life, i guess, perhaps. though at work today i got interviewed by a college student for a paper she was writing and that was kind of interesting. her questions were adorably ill-defined!… but we all develop these skills in time.

i've been working on my one song for the year and i gave myself until the end of april to finish it, and a few days ago i decided that the best way to meet that deadline was to just cut out the parts i didn't want to write anyway. so perhaps now it's more of a sketch, but maybe that's ok. (then again, 2023's song was kind of just a sketch too…)

<a href='https://www.kartkrew.org/' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>srb2kart 2</a> is finally out… i'm excited to see how much of my life it sucks up. seeing as how i put many hundreds of hours into the original srb2kart, my feelings are complicated. like, there are the ones i have about the game itself, but those shouldn't matter right now since i'm still going through the five stages of grief over subtle mechanical changes. but there are also the thoughts i have about the fate of srb2kart itself… will ring racers completely supplant it and everyone will be moving over to the new game before too long? or will there be a dedicated sub-sub-subculture that sticks around, devoted to the original kart? after all, we've seen that happen with other online games… though maybe not when there were only ever 150–200 active players at the height of its popularity.

current album: <a href='https://youtu.be/3YiMVePdAis' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>kidorikko - c'est l'elegance na tanoshimi</a>
current anime: cardcaptor sakura

[maru]

im sketching out a 2d game engine for a top-down shooter game cuz im all nostalgic for flash. there's this one thats on my mind that id like to clone called the museum of science fiction. idk why it stuck in my head, cuz its so goofy looking. anyway, it's a study project, but i want to do it right, because what I really want to make is a 3d software renderer, then design an engine around that.

What is it that appeals to you about Flash? I just remember it being like, Interactive Buddy and Xiao Xiao and whatever. I think my positive feelings about Flash got transposed onto Game Maker somehow...

<a href='https://www.kartkrew.org/' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>srb2kart 2</a> is finally out… i'm excited to see how much of my life it sucks up. seeing as how i put many hundreds of hours into the original srb2kart, my feelings are complicated. like, there are the ones i have about the game itself, but those shouldn't matter right now since i'm still going through the five stages of grief over subtle mechanical changes. but there are also the thoughts i have about the fate of srb2kart itself… will ring racers completely supplant it and everyone will be moving over to the new game before too long?

I am not sure where I would've heard about this. I feel like I should've. How did it change?

[thursday]

I just remember it being like, Interactive Buddy and Xiao Xiao and whatever. I think my positive feelings about Flash got transposed onto Game Maker somehow...

my history w/ flash games - flash was like the only kind of way i really got to play indie games before like, cave story with maybe a handful of exceptions (like, rpg maker stuff, or traditional roguelikes). there were always examples of stuff to play but like this was before youtube/soc media so it was pretty hard to find whatever. i spent a LOT of time both before and after i found 4chan (oh yeah, 4chan had a flash board too that got some of this in between its endless loop posts) on sites like albinoblacksheep and like, kongregate or whatever. lots of tower defense games, weird little rpgs, platformers, whatever. it's been so long i can't really give you any titles, but i know it was like a significant chunk of gaming history for me.

edit: oh yeah neopets. like 2/3 the games on neopets were flash, i think

[JennyDog]

Hiii!

I had some bad milk over the weekend so I had tummy ache, but aside from that doing alright -- I've started working with a personal trainer and I chatted with a friend about side project management, so I'm starting to use Pivotal Tracker for it. I always feel like if I talk about what I'm doing (especially if it isn't an established Thing yet) it's going to like, jinx me into not doing it haha, especially if I want to juggle a few things. I've tried Notion for this before but I don't think I was comfortable Committing to it and thus kinda sabotaged myself, although notion is lovely for bundling stuff together. And the other bit of advice I got was about having your various projects fit into a theme or structure, and I've been trying to nail that down. I think part of doing side this as an adult is that sometimes I do have to say "Ok, there's no time in my life for that", and it feels like I am giving up on a little side of myself that could be, and I feel sad about that. I think once I started reaching the latter ends of my twenties I really started appreciating the time we have and how it's limited.

A lot of my drawing skills have decayed so part of that side project management is grinding them back up into shape, which I think is working . And a new cafe opened relatively nearby and it's really cute and there's a lovely older lady there who thought me and my friend were sisters. I hope it does well.

I just joined so I'm also hammering down finding an avatar, I wanted to spice things up but I'm not sure what a good place to look art is anymore.

[in1tiate]

Hello paralogues. It's been a long past couple weeks on my end. I lost my old job about a year ago now and have been working odd jobs since, and this week I am moving into the city for work in foodservice. No one believes me when I tell them I was a software engineer 12 months ago. :blink:

On the other end of my life, I have been continuing work on <a href='http://aceattorneyonline.com/' rel='nofollow noopener' target='_blank'>Attorney Online</a>, as well as managing a small private server for it (holding to my maxim that the best beta tester is the developer, and the next best beta testers are the developer's friends). The Qt-based software renderer continues its long history of having bizarre bugs that I usually don't have the time or energy to fix. Nothing mission-critical though, the ones that remain are slightly irritating at worst and mildly amusing at best.

It's been hectic these past few days, but the end is in sight, so I can be grateful for that. Hoping for a much more extended period of uneventful days going forward.

[watermoon]

I am not sure where I would've heard about this. I feel like I should've. How did it change?

it changed, well, quite a lot. in terms of presentation it feels much more like a proper game, with fully-developed single-player modes, a massive smash ultimate-style unlockable board, a tutorial mode with an eggman x tails story [s]that makes me kinda regret abandoning my own eggtails fic[/s]… and this is cool. i love this a lot, and you can really feel the passion that went into making it.

mechanically, the best way i can describe it is that it's srb2kart but more. more techniques to master, more mechanics to juggle, more variables to consider when racing. more buttons in use, and some of these buttons are overloaded with multiple actions depending on context. it's unapologetically maximalist.
in a way, this outcome makes sense, since this is similar to what kart itself became over time. nobody online ran their server completely vanilla – that'd be rather dull – and most stuffed their servers to the gills with addons that rewrite the mechanics of the game, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically.
and i find it neat how ring racers acknowledges the popularity of these addons by "canonizing" them into the base game. so some of the new mechanics come from those, and a lot of the addon features that smoothed out the rough edges of kart 1 were poached for this as well. but then they went from there and kept adding more and more and more…

the end result is that, if kart 1 is a game with controls that are relatively simple but difficult to fully master, right now kart 2 feels like a game with so many movement options that it's hard to know what even is the right way to play…

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>(this is what happens when you ask the nerdy girl about her special interest kart racer)</span>

[sinku]

No one believes me when I tell them I was a software engineer 12 months ago. :blink:

people seem surprised when i describe my arc before i started working where im at too lol

What is it that appeals to you about Flash? I just remember it being like, Interactive Buddy and Xiao Xiao and whatever. I think my positive feelings about Flash got transposed onto Game Maker somehow...

i was a really stupid kid that didnt much money to spend on games. i usually bought secondhand old games b4 i got steam. i was also wary of downloading games and wasnt very social online so i didnt know about where to get free games, so i spent my time on roblox or on flash game sites.

the flash game culture is really interesting cuz you were paid to make games for these sites to drive traffic and ad revenue for them. a lot of flash sites became mobile dev houses and shifted to microtransaction models. people are nostalgic for that time because they arent aware of the money behind it. im nostalgic for it though because the games were quaint. more complicated than old atari games for sure but still shockingly simple for how compelling they are. a few leap to mind like mud and blood 2, or jmtb02's games, or the countless sniper games that were like violent point-and-clicks. among those, some were more complicated and simulated bullet fall-off and sound travel and had upgrade systems and stories. there were some pretty good top-down shooters like SAS zombie assault that I think have a stream directly to a game like darkwood, which I love. there was also armor mayhem which was like a sidescrolling multiplayer riff on halo. lots of variety.

[maru]

I feel like this is the journal thread, inadvertently.

I've been really stressed out the past few days. We lost a promising thing at work and it hit some old traumas. I did end up going to a Belle and Sebastian show that was actually really swell. I was front and centre and met many nice people and got a tote bag.

I feel like, overall, this year has involved a lot of ... well, reintegration?

I heard once that depression brings a regressed ego to the surface in order that it might interface with new experiences and reintegrate a healthier self. So whenever I'm really depressed, I seem to fall back to childhood experiences; I tinker with computers, I play Guild Wars, I listen to nerd rock or whatever. But by doing all this I seem to get myself into a mode where I can process what I'm feeling and re-emerge.

I also feel like whenever one is most childlike -- that's the ideal for a partner. When I'm most happy, I act like an enthusiastic kid. But then it falls away to a sort of weary, melancholic default. As though I can't remember why the world is beautiful.

So overall I feel like this year has involved the most literal re-enactment of childhood patterns. But also that it's actually good? I no longer think regression, per se, is egodystonic. I think it's necessary. Even if it's extended. I feel like, this entire time, the most childlike among us should have been my teachers.

[Lapis]

jmtb02's games

Ball Revamped my beloved... I downloaded the flash archive late last year and replayed 2-4, it was such a trip down memory lane. (Turns out I am way worse at III.1 and III.2 when playing them on non-laggy computers!)

In HS I had a googlepages site that was rehosted a couple flash games, including those... It lasted about a year before googlepages were blanketbanned by our network admins.

[Lapis]

I also feel like whenever one is most childlike -- that's the ideal for a partner. When I'm most happy, I act like an enthusiastic kid.

Huh. I might be misunderstanding you, but I think the hyperactive wonder-filled / inner-child piece of me is - definitely missing what I consider my most important / valuable qualities w.r.t. being a good friend and partner? The wonder enthusiasm are good and important and very central to my self-conception, but - those emotional states aren't always what the people I care about want or need. For me, at least, there's a separate personalityshard that is running the kindness / patience / helpfulness / nurturing module that's been really important and valuable for building and sustaining the relationships that are important in my life.

[maru]

I didn't mean exclusively. I meant if I can get into that state with someone, it's a good sign. I feel like I don't have a strongly constant self; it's about what someone else brings out of me.