Well, anonymous user who doesn't know me, doesn't care about me, doesn't like me or wont have my children, I've been quite busy.
For the past few days now, I've been aiding my father in the construction of the new games room he's building. The garage which used to contain a pool table, booze fridge, a large television (that I purchased long ago) and copious amounts of pornography (it was on sale!) is ever so slowly (and expensively) being transformed.
The garage in itself was pretty useless, as it couldn't possibly hope to fit the station wagons my parents and brother drive (seriously, they're all Ford station wagons), so after being ignored for a while (the only use it got was... well, thousands of games of pool within the last year) father finally decided it was time to make use of it.
While my brothers are providing the funding for things like CAT6 network cables, a 10/100/1000 switch and the various things necessary to run a proper network through the walls, my father has been learning me up some knowledge and having me contribute labour, seeing as funds currently aren't possible. And it's a good way to justify giving me $30.00 every fortnight (all of which goes to the server. I quit smoking for you people!).
So my resume of useful skills grows by the day. Which I'm quite happy about. When it comes time to find things like DVD racks and shelves and what not. I can take the cheaper rout and build them myself. Which is a pretty exciting prospect. I get to give it a shot soon, too!
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On another note, I've been looking into programming in C#. I believe I once mentioned it was a puss spewing troll humping language. And I certainly wasn't mistaken. But that isn't making it any less fun to learn. When and if I have something to report on that, I'll make it known.
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Zero progress has been made on my own BYOND projects. Every time I attempt to do something to spark motivation, I end up shooting myself in the foot. I really do want to finish what I've started, but it's impossible to find any motivation in my current situation. Sorry my loyal fans, you'll just have to wait until my own situation improves. Which should hopefully be in a couple of weeks.
There's a slim chance that employment might be gained relatively soon. But as stated, the chance is slim at best. I'm not holding my breath, and I certainly have no expectations, but there is still just that little part of me which has hope. More on that as news develops.
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I've been struggling desperately to draw some attention to the BYOND RPG guild. Which is working (we went up three members!), but not very well. The guild receives activity, but only in spikes, and generally only after a post. I'm trying to make it active enough that people put checking BYOND RPG into their BYOND schedule. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing there and hoping for the best.
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In the anime side of things, I spent a good six hours watching Ghost Hunt the other day. Probably wasn't a good idea to start at midnight. I was released from my torment at about 6am. They pack a lot of episodes into two DVDs.
Unfortunately, AFAIK, there is only four DVDs summing up to ~25 episodes. Which sucks, because I was really enjoying that series. My brother is collecting the Manga, I might end up reading it (I enjoyed it that much.)
If you're an anime fan and enjoy a good thriller, I do recommend it. Once you get into the middle of the cases, it really gets exciting. Blood Stained Labyrinth had me on edge the entire time!
I'll post more on the other anime shows which have taken my interest.
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Well, my laptop is now out of power, and although I can just reach down and plug it, I think I'm going to return to watching my clock hoping I can fall asleep reasonably soon. It's now 4:18am. Remember kids, staying up late might seem cool, but don't make a habit out of it, you'll soon learn being cool isn't so crash-hot.
SilkWizard wrote:
Tiberath wrote: Who cares? I'm just eager to hear more about his new garage set-up, It sounds awesome, and dude... I thought your whole family was poor, how the heck can you afford several CAT6 cables?!?! | |
SilkWizard wrote:
You've put in plenty of effort and seem to have a good vision for what the guild should be. The problem is that the games just aren't there. It does naturally represent something of a struggle. Ideally there would be some scope for introducing genuinely interesting design discussion into the mix. I'm probably a bad marker for what qualifies as "interesting" as my idea of fun is writing C for operating systems, however it does feel as though there is rarely any meat on discussion blog posts coming from RPG. The ideal is actually not unlike your personal blog approach, Silk, in that you are comfortable with going into some depth on your posts, which for those interested in that topic becomes a genuine draw, presumably hooking repeat views. Would you perhaps agree there? One thing I would love to see from ... well, any of the official guilds is a broadening of their target market. There is a billion or more people out there on the internet and yet the official guilds don't seem to even flex remotely outside of BYOND itself and their own blog-space. Widening the target with posts that are tailored to newcomers to BYOND affords us the benefit of respectfully link-dropped them in other communities, if they are of suitable quality. Similarly it should bring about another positive in the notion of reminding BYONDers that there is still a world out there, one that they opt to ignore. The latter case is one that really bugs me about BYOND, in that it essentially leads to a kind of in-breeding / cabin fever, much to the detriment of both our games line-up, the enhancement idea and problem solutions we're carting about and finally our collective maturity. BYOND's official guilds are very well placed to help alleviate this issue, in no small part due to their relative autonomy. | |
Haywire wrote:
Who cares? I'm just eager to hear more about his new garage set-up, It sounds awesome, and dude... I thought your whole family was poor, how the heck can you afford several CAT6 cables?!?! CAT6 is only nominally more expensive than CAT5 or CAT5e. | |
Stephen001 wrote:
...it does feel as though there is rarely any meat on discussion blog posts coming from RPG. The ideal is actually not unlike your personal blog approach, Silk, in that you are comfortable with going into some depth on your posts, which for those interested in that topic becomes a genuine draw, presumably hooking repeat views. Would you perhaps agree there? Yeah, I think that getting repeat viewers for general BYOND RPG guild discussion is a matter of providing content that people aren't going to find anywhere else. I think that a lot of the game design discussion could benefit from being specifically geared towards typical BYOND design issues. Discussions about the pros and cons of using Verb panels, whether or not RPG Maker sprites turn people off, about setting reasonable expectations for what a solo BYOND developer can actually accomplish etc. | |
I've been struggling desperately to draw some attention to the BYOND RPG guild. Which is working (we went up three members!), but not very well. The guild receives activity, but only in spikes, and generally only after a post. I'm trying to make it active enough that people put checking BYOND RPG into their BYOND schedule. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing there and hoping for the best. I wrote up a post for the RPG guild, but it got deleted by Nadrew without any warning or reason; according to Mikau, it's because the post mentioned my game- but I thought the whole idea was to promote our games? If I had known I'm not supposed to talk about BYOND RPG Games in the BYOND RPG Guild, I never would have mentioned it. /shrug | |
Haywire wrote:
Who cares? I'm just eager to hear more about his new garage set-up, It sounds awesome, and dude... I thought your whole family was poor, how the heck can you afford several CAT6 cables?!?! No, I'm poor. My family is not. | |
Zaole wrote:
I wrote up a post for the RPG guild, but it got deleted by Nadrew without any warning or reason; according to Mikau, it's because the post mentioned my game- but I thought the whole idea was to promote our games? If I had known I'm not supposed to talk about BYOND RPG Games in the BYOND RPG Guild, I never would have mentioned it. I didn't get to see it so I can't verify it's validity. If you have a copy of it, which BYOND should have emailed you, post it on the RPG forum and I'll go through it with you. | |
Have your children, you say?
I'll think about it. | |
Haywire wrote:
I thought your whole family was poor, how the heck can you afford several CAT6 cables?!?! What are you talking about? I can get cat6 for $0.30 USD per foot, and cat5e for half that. | |
Zaole wrote:
I wrote up a post for the RPG guild, but it got deleted by Nadrew without any warning or reason; according to Mikau, it's because the post mentioned my game- but I thought the whole idea was to promote our games? If I had known I'm not supposed to talk about BYOND RPG Games in the BYOND RPG Guild, I never would have mentioned it. No no, I didn't say you couldn't mention your game. I just asked if you could reword it so it sounded less like a giant game advertisement. Subtle hints and subliminal messages are the best way to go. The article was actually good, it just had too much "PLAY MY GAME" in it. | |
I don't really have a problem with PLAY MY GAME, by the way. As long as it provides activity and encourages people to play RPG's it's fine by me.
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But with that said, I also don't have a problem with my staff using their own judgement. If they think it's unworthy, then so be it.
Just be sure to post the article in the forums so I can read through it at some time. I don't have a problem going through it with authors to provide the best possible experience with the author and reader. | |
The problem with letting people post blatant "PLAY MY GAME" is that we'll just end up with everyone and their grandmother wanting to post random crap on the blog. The last thing we need is 6 blog posts a day saying "BYOND RPG wants YOU to play [generic crap RPG]!"
I find the reason that we get the boosted sparks of activity from blog posts is because we don't make them all that often. So when a blog post does happen it's usually interesting. If we start posting a "PLAY MY GAME" every other day, when we do post something interesting, we're going to lose what little interest we did have. So we really need to at least make the game advertisements at least sound like interesting articles, that was when they happen every other day, people will just think we post a lot more often, and they'll keep coming back. I personally wouldn't want to sift through 10 random posts about games that suck just to find one interesting article, but that's just me. | |
xI'll reply to that when I'm soba. 'Night.
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Mobius Evalon wrote:
Haywire wrote: Well wherever you live, I only can hope that the same prices are found here, in London, England it is so much more expensive, a good $10 GBP for a decent CAT6 cable. | |
Haywire wrote:
Mobius Evalon wrote: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ 1m-CAT-6-RJ45-UTP-Moulded-Patch-Cable-10-100-GbE | |
Mikau wrote:
So we really need to at least make the game advertisements at least sound like interesting articles, Didn't you say that's what mine was? >_> To clarify, though, I have no problem with what you said/decided, Mikau. I appreciate that you notified me about it instead of abruptly and silently deleting it like the other guy. | |
You've put in plenty of effort and seem to have a good vision for what the guild should be. The problem is that the games just aren't there.
Think about it: when was the last time a BYOND RPG came out that was worthy of anyone's attention? Covering games in development is great, but I think that in the face of so many incomplete projects, most BYONDers have adopted the attitude of "I'll believe it when I see it".
I imagine it's like being the editor of a small town newspaper. You could be the best editor in the world, but if nothing is happening then you're screwed.