2014 Retrospective and The Future

This is from my blog.

2014 Retrospective and The Future

DEAR DIARY,

2014 is over already? It feels like it hasn't even started. As a kid, years felt at least 10x as long as they do right now. Years were enormous expanses of time where a great deal of unique events took place and new experiences were had, akin to what a decade is now. January 1998 Me did not feel like January 1999 Me, and not just because January 1999 Me had a Nintendo 64 and the underlying fear of the world ending in 365 days stricken into his mind (I actually probably wasn't aware of Y2K that early into the year, but I'm a shitty writer and wanted to fill a sentence). I'd seen and heard a lot of shit in that year, man. I changed.

It was so easy to have such long years as a child. The realm of what I hadn't experienced towered high above what experiences I did have. When I thought back upon years as a child, a million first time experiences would pop into my mind. It wasn't easy to recall everything that had happened because of how much there was to recall. But now, as a 22 year old young adult who's often mistaken for being a teenager, when I think back upon 2014, I struggle to recall a handful of experiences that are worth being remembered. Most months for me in 2014 are absolute wastes of time; remove them and nothing changes, for better or worse. I think that's what makes a year seem short; not having significant anchor points for your mind to latch onto when reminiscing. 2014 was short because with a little determination and elbow grease, every noteworthy occurance could be crammed into a single month. A year long and a month deep.

When recognizing the perceived shortening of years and the ticking away of his numbered days, a wise man would try his best to make every moment of his life count. But this isn't the first time I've recognized this problem, and if 2014 was any indication, I'm no wise man.

Will I wisen up in 2015 and make it count? How am I going to do that? What did I actually do in 2014? Did the world actually end in the year 2000? All those questions and more will be answered in this shitty tumblr blog post that I'm mostly making for my own benefit but also just to actually make use of this blog for once.

Things I Did In 2014, Chronologically

JANUARY: San Diego

In January, I traveled west of the Mississippi River for the first time (I live in Tennessee) to visit two of my best friends and fellow Stencyl users in San Diego! That was a great, new experience and I'm glad I did it.

Not only was it my first time leaving southern redneck land, (no offense to southern redneck land) it was my first time traveling alone, which was accompanied by a sense of newfound freedom. I'm a big boy! I can fly on airplanes all by myself and walk through airports to other airplanes and be entrusted to make it to my gate on time! Yeeeah! YES MOM I MADE IT TO MY FRICKIN FLIGHT OUT OF ATLANTA ON TIME. STOP CALLING ME. I'M NOT DEAD. MY FRIENDS AREN'T RAPISTS.

That trip was also the first time in years I had hung out with people who I'd consider to be friends in person. There's a bunch of shit I attribute to me not being around friends IRL, like being homeschooled-ish from the 7th grade, to moving a couple years after and seeing my friends decreasingly less and becoming more of an internet nerd to compensate during the important transitional period that are the high school years, not knowing how to connect with my old friends anymore because of not seeing them during that period, etc. Anyway, it's good to be around friends. Go figure. This was an embarrassing paragraph. I'm going to end it now.

FEBRUARY: Flapbound

In February, I made a game for Flappy Jam called FlapBound, which was like Flappy Bird except with an EarthBound theme and unlockable levels and a pencil erasing mechanic and text scrolling at the bottom of the screen that you hopefully want to read but can't easily because you're playing fucking Flappy Bird.

That was practically my only game released this year. It was made over the course of two weeks. I am very disappointed. I mean, I enjoy what I made, but that shouldn't be the only game I release in a year. This is my biggest problem as a developer.

On the bright side, it was covered by Tim W on freeindiegam.es before it shut down. That was a good website. RIP. It was also covered by Mato on EarthBound Central which made me happy since I always visit that website. Also some babbling bafoon who's apparently really popular on YouTube did a let's play of it.

Actually, I think I had a lot of fun making FlapBound, looking back on how I was acting on my Twitter feed during its development. I seemed really content and happy. That's cool. At this point in time, 2014 was great so far.

JUNE: Kotaku

I made a silly video with a friend about Link in the new Zelda game totally being a girl. Patricia Hernandez put it in one of her "articles".

Yeah, I'm really reaching for content.

AUGUST: Perihelion

I did the art for a game where you went in circles called Perihelion that you can't buy anymore because poe can't afford the hosting. The game was released in August.

AUGUST: Depression?

I think I fell into a state of depression for a little bit with no obvious causation. I won't harp on it since it was benign, but what was interesting about it is I felt disgusted by independent games and didn't want to work on them anymore. Specifically and exclusively indie games made me feel awful. Weird. Good thing I'm better now.

AUGUST: #gamergate

#gamergate happened and is still happening. I saw some people in the games industry act like children. It made me simultaneously hopeful and worried at the same time.

DECEMBER: I wrote this blog post.

Hi.

Super Mario 3D Land/World

I played through Super Mario 3D Land in November and am currently playing through Super Mario 3D World as a result of the Wii U that I got because Christmas. These are good games. I like them way more than Nintendo's completely overrated Galaxy games (I liked when Tim Rogers called Super Mario Galaxy a game about looking for parking spaces).

Aside from the unnecessarily low skill ceiling of Super Mario Galaxy being lifted back up to acceptable levels in these new games, something stood out to me: the level design. There is no wasted space in any level. Every part feels necessary and different from what you've done before. Ideas stick around for as long as they need to and never overstay their welcome. It's not just the level design that impresses me, but the way all the levels relate to one another. Each and every level feels distinct. It's always exciting to enter a new level, because you don't know what to expect. All of these new experiences and surprises are just a button press away. Each. And every. Level.

This amazes me as an amateur game designer. My games aren't like that. The level designs in my games are fairly stale and void of any surprises. If you're expecting things to be different in the next area, fuck you because you're wrong. I <em>want</em> my games to be like these Mario games in that sense. Not just my <em>games</em>. No. I want <em>my life</em> to be like that.

Each year should be a new Mario game, and each day a new level. What's in store for me tomorrow? It should be different than what was in store for me today. What will next year bring? I have no idea.

New Years Resolutions

The Earth went in another circle, so that means we should set goals for ourselves.

Learn How to Make Thematically Strong Games

Theme can make a game stand out. My games don't have themes. If I had made The Binding of Isaac, the theme wouldn't be religion, loneliness and feces; it would be NOTHING. How boring.

I think I'm always afraid of committing to something so my games just wind up being generic and poorly melded. I'm going to make an effort on my next and all future games this year to make thematically strong games.

Improve At Level Design

I hate my level design. I touched on this already. I want to fix that.

Release Twelve Games

Twelve of them. One each month. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to do this.

Go to Nashville Game Developer Meetups

I met local developer Wolf Wozniak recently and we chatted about the local Nashville game developer scene. It sounds, uh, interesting. I'm going to try going to their monthly meetups, starting with Global Game Jam in January.

Get More Involved in "~THE SCENE~"

It's weird how uninvolved I am in the gamedev scene. I've had a TIGSource account since 2011 but I've only made like 400 posts and have only made a couple connections. I also have a Braingale account I've never used. I want to surround myself with more creative people and have folks to talk to about game development and art with. Why aren't I doing that? Why do I post so much on the creative vacuum that is the Stencyl forums instead?

Get Job

I should probably work and earn money like a normal person. I'm guessing a life that feels like a well-designed Nintendo game doesn't come cheap.

2014 Projects

Welcome to the game graveyard.

FlapBound



Hey, this came out. Neat.

Rely



I have no idea what to say about this game. It was just a bunch of bullshit about becoming independent represented by shapes, gradients and minimalistic sounds.

House Adventure



Same "theme" as before, except more contrived and with even less gameplay.

Zelda



This was supposed to be a combat focused top-down game with dodging and stuff.

Water The Sun



Extinguish the sun.

Only The Mouthless May Speak



Game about free speech.

Lord of the Trench



pew pew shoot da fish

World Across the Sea



Metroidvania. I put a good two months of solid work into this.

Food For Aliens



A game about aliens who want to eat cows. Featuring satisfying fork-stabbing mechanics.

Speed Jesus



SPEED JESUS is an autoscroller based around controlling the speed that the screen autoscrolls at and trying to get a GOD TIME.

You want to go AS FAST AS POSSIBLE but sometimes AS FAST AS POSSIBLE is too FAST and you'll RUN INTO BAD THINGS so ideally you'll go AS FAST AS POSSIBLE WHILE BEING SAFE.

The graphics were sort of boring and there was no theme. I thought the mechanics were fun though.

EarthBound 2



I was making an EarthBound engine for a friend in Stencyl. I feel bad for not finishing it. It was around that time where I randomly became depressed.

Today's World



An action roguelikelike where every day, the world around your house regenerates. Not canceled! I think this could be really cool and I like the design.

Feel Good Platformer of the Winter



I wanted to explore allowing the player to move around quickly and freely. Inspired by Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine speedruns. Might turn this into a game. Graphics aren't mine.

Four Room Zelda



A game I started for Ludum Dare a couple weeks ago. Theme was "entire game on one screen". Zelda-like. Will try to finish in January.

In Conclusion

Fuck 2014. The first couple months were great but everything else was mostly mundane.

I've always felt like the reason years seem so much longer when you were a kid was because you had been alive for less time. If you're 8 years old, a year is 12.5% of your whole life. Even more of your conscious life where you actually have a concept of time. When you're 20 a year is only 5% of your life. You've done it a lot by this point. Kind of like how a "dog year" is 7 human years. An actual year would seem way longer to a dog than to a human (even though dogs have very little concept of time for anything beyond 5 minutes). Of course, there's also the factor that as a kid you have tons of things to do, many of them new experiences, as you said. A child's life is usually packed full of activities where as many adults just go to work, go home, watch TV, use the internet, and don't have many moments during a year where there's anything memorable, so in that case a year seems to go by quickly because there's nothing to break up the monotony.

ANYWAY

I still haven't played Super Mario 3D Land, but 3D World was so much better than I expected. I remember talking with you about it when it was announced and we both were disappointed because it just seemed like New Super Mario Bros. but with 3 dimensions. But like you said, the level design is just awesome, and there are so many levels that feature something new to do. It doesn't really ever feel like you've been doing the same thing over and over again (very much) unlike NSMB or even Super Mario Galaxy. It's not as great as I think another Mario game in the vein of Super Mario 64 or Sunshine would be, but it's still really good and very well done.

Yeah, my life is really monotonous and predictable compared to what it once was. If I were 12, anything could happen tomorrow. I could have gone to see any of my friends and done new things. Now it's not quite as easy. I know what I'm doing tomorrow, and it's pretty similar to what I've been doing lately.

It would be really cool to see Nintendo take what they've learned about level design and apply it to a 64-like game. SM64 was Nintendo's first 3D platformer and Super Mario Sunshine's level design was lacking in the platforming department.

I spent most of 2014 waiting for it 2014 to end. This year started out pretty negative, since...day 1. Around this exact time last year (3am, Jan 1), I was rushing home from Malson's house in response to a call that my kitty wasn't going to last much longer. Followed by the car accident, dad losing his job, changing my mind about my career (again) and being in the "now what" phase (again), and many other personal events...shit was pretty miserable. Up until the end of the year, when things started to go uphill again.

Anyways...Fuck 2014.


I don't know if I feel like time goes by slower when I was a kid, but life definitely seemed more exciting. I think it would benefit us all at some point to take ourselves back to that every now and then. ;o There's nothing wrong with being a kid again sometimes, right? In fact, that might just be the cure for a lot of those 2014 blues.


New Years resolutions? Here's my top three (I can't think of anything else right now...too tired lol)

-Find the perfect career...something I actually love. I keep going for things that seem "stable", when all I really want is something I'm passionate about.
-On that note...become a more decisive (and assertive) person.
-Shape up and slim down, of course. ;[


2015...let's do this. B(