Virtually indistinguishable from magic

 Back in September of last year I resolved to change how I think about food, as an experiment. I have always strugged with my weight in my life, and have had many plus/minus 20 kg fluctuations. My most recent set of weight problems in decending severity: I have a non-alcoholic fatty liver . I have a bit of IBS.. I began to snore to the point where my wife would give me a jolt in the early hours to be able to sleep. I'd wake up confused feeling my sleep hadn't been as good. Gen X are horrendous to each other for this and I feel Gen Z solved it in the way they solved many things, but as a millenial my sense of self worth is still coupled to some extent to my waistline. Thankfully I almost eliminated this, and will come up again later in this post. I live slightly farther away from a swimming pool and started going less, yet this remains the only excercise I like to do. So I opted to listen to information I had dismissed before that food is more important than excercise in determi...

 That's a silly title isn't it. At some point I confused believing that ego is a negative trait with believing that I am not vulnerable to it. But now I look out for it and see it everywhere. I see my fearful responses to others, the constant threats I look out for, how competitiveness has crept in. How long have I been held back in relationships and learning because of this? What can I now accomplish if I allow these feelings to exist without reaction? Muslim means one who submits [to God, but also maybe more often in other arenas?]. I hope I never stop striving to better myself.

Multimedia is the description given to a product of sound, visuals still and animated, text and so on. Earler versions of software products leaned into being multimedia products as it was exciting to see how forms displayed by a computer monitor could appear more living to us. However, games were more primitive back in the day, and a lot of activity happened in the mind to fill the gaps left by low bitrate audio or abstract visuals. Some of that activity relied on confirmation bias. You are playing a game about submarines, so the form you see in front of you is a second world war era battleship. You were mentally primed to see that in the dynamic Rorschach test you're seeing on screen. One of the components of this paritcular form of multimedia or software product for me then was the priming material that helped the mind along in understanding the world is was being presented with. So how did we see the perfectly ordered, 3 or so frames of tiled sprites of SimCity 2000 as if it was...

I've reached a bit of clarity and peace and don't have anyone to talk to about it, and so I need to write it down. I've let the ego or fear that others have, And a negative perception of neutral information, And panic that happens in the gap between not understanding and the mind comprehending, Prevent me from enjoying my apportion of God's gift to us. It is a deep regret that I did not arrive at this earlier, But with some optimism that I can use the time I have left to a better job of it.

My hot takes reflecting the last decade of my life working in the games industry, my experiences in growing as an amateur musician, and my frustrations with governance now go here. I started writing here as a joint venture with my friend who I love Ali who blogged once about chilblains , once about dating (not dating), but I kind of possessed it since. I want to acknowledge that this happened if he ever reads this. I doubt he thinks about the bollox I have polluted this with since.

I find my creative push and pulls are difficult to process.  I am someone who is getting more comfortable with the idea that if I lack a certain skill, it is not proof of personal difficiency or moral failing, it is not a challenge that needs to be overcome and I can ask for help or choose to spend time acquiring that skill, or choose not to do that. I think that is an expression of confidence and something I am still working on.   A constant challenge though is pinning down what I want to do and why I want to do it, and then sticking with it. What is the point?  I have this questioning with music. I can put it to the back of my mind because I go out and jam with other people regularly, and there's enough there to keep me distracted from the question.  I have a strong and unfulfilled compulsion to also create interactive experiences. I find it harder to let my imagination pull me into virtual environments than when I was younger, though that does still work on ...

I don't need to make a UI for an experiment Maybe the effort is becoming too much because the expectation is  People will get excited about a little something though and recognise a good idea....... Maybe 

I have decided that I will list some games I enjoyed or made a lasting impression in the last ten years ("recently") and then separately things before, so I can better understand what it is I like and spend less time fretting that I am wasting my time by playing things and not actually enjoying doing that. Recently New stuff The Forgotten City . This game compelled me forward with its mysteries. Outer Wilds . This game captured me with coseyness and tragedy. Rogue Aces . This game tempted me for a few minutes and keeps me for longer. FAR: Lone Sails . This game made me horde petrol in a world that didn't have any more need for it. Hands of Fate . This game make me feel like I was having a dialogue with antagonism. ADIOS Amigos: Galactic Explorers . This game has only the most fun bits of orbital mechanics. Grow Home and Grow Up . These games were full of playfulness, character and dynamism, The Magic Circle . I replay this often, it reminds me of my own creative failures...

Big brain moments thinking of how games consumers are being sold more and more vapid experiences in the same way we've all been sold on the idea that potato starch is food. I'm not enjoying games anymore because they are a whole lot of nothing there's a sweet spot between short arcade xperiences and what was being offered in the early 2010s if there's a glimmer of hope it's that the big players dilute their ips so much that they become meaningless is this becoming old biasing my view on things?

An entire generation has been trained to dangling the promise of fun,  Or otherwise try to provide infinite fun (naval gazing, infantile and useless), And waste the beauty of working together to make something bigger than we can on our own

 Z stands out. It comes from a time when command and conquer (following on from Dune 2) was busy setting the tone for RTS. Arguably until Ground Control again doing away with base building, and more modern touch points of the Dawn of War game bringing it solidly into the collective consciousness. These comparisons have already been made in the "have you played" series on RPS in "have you played... Z" The above is a simple comparison making exercise, cherry picking examples of popular games, ignoring the melange of RTS ideas at the time and those ideas inherited from the board game or war game worlds. The prevailing narratives about which game first introduced what mechanic lack nuance and are most likely false. Like the histories of many other fields. My own comparison is between Z and Men of War.  I feel that the micro in Z resembles the randomness of Men of War quite closely. Several light tanks can sometimes destroy a medium, or just as well not. Moments of Heroi...

 The lack of closure on my older ideas means they take up more headspace than they should. Even a small illustration that can be viewed as a "complete"work will convey the original idea and is better than a half finished thing on GitHub "Kill Your Darlings" is something I've heard this expressed as

No one will pay for your lucid dreams but you can show other people something beautiful you have seen

 Most games are made by groups of people. If you need to act as if you are a group of people you'll need to find (buy) products acting like the  virtual output in a team. By buying others output you are put in an awkward position if you want full aesthetic (assets) or functional (code) control. Leaving slack for this is good. Ultimately I'm not even convinced by the opening as very large teams use unreal but I also find it very easy to get things done using it. But remembering that the act of coding is only one part of the process, and isn't the most rate limiting part, maybe pulls back this argument. As always the goal is to be achieving something and not spending time waiting on the computer - I don't have all day. I don't have the time that my employers have to absorb delays in my tooling. So what an I left with? GM 1.4? 2 is already too slow to navigate for my liking. I should consider modding,?

 In Outwars, dipping underwater changes the music drastically - I think that's really fun

 Did Bullfrog's Tube come before Syndicate Wars? R* made a tennis game.