The Square Octopus

In a simple attempt to expand the contents of my blog, I’m writing this post to talk about Popego and a simple thought about the Web 2.0. Popego is that thingy that appeared on the sidebar, curiously labeled by myself as “Popego” for some reason I can’t explain.

What is that thing? That is the product of a company founded by a guy who can be considered to be ‘the face’ of the Argentine Game Development Industry (or used to be, he seems to be transforming into the face of the Argentine Web 2.0 industry nowadays). The widget feeds on the user’s Web 2.0 services such as Twitter, Youtube and del.icio.us, among others, creating an online identity, a splash of his digital life.
So, when you see a blog containing a Popego, you’ll be able to see his interests in one place, and even check how compatible you are with him.

Popego is changing the way I use these services a little. To begin with, I use them in two languages… so I’ll have to choose one, or completely be bilingual. Another change is that I’ll have to be more neat and tag more carefully my favorite things, so they’ll appear as I want them too.

So… how useful is it? Well, in Web 2.0 terms, I’ll have to say probably very. However, the real question to be asked is “How good is it to share your interests, your life, with complete strangers?” and the answer is “I don’t know.”
We are becoming our own Big Brothers here, and it kind of frightens me… You never know who’s reading and why. But when that fear strikes, what calms me down is to remember that I have a brain and I can use it to discriminate the information I publish about myself. I’ll be safe as long as I have a brain, much unlike most fotolog users but that’s neither here nor there. :)

By the way, if by reading this you got the feeling that I’m being a conspiracy paranoid, it’s because you exaggerated my thoughts, and you should wonder why you did that. Seriously.

I’m alive, but inactive. January was a deadline month.

I’ve been thinking about lots of stuff, but didn’t do much in this period. Almost haven’t touched the code for my IF, neglected the blog once again, etc.

I’m not gonna make it to GDC this year. That kind off took away a lot of my energy. It’s too expensive to fly over there, even as a CA the cost of the trip would be around 2000 us (which is around 6300 pesos AKA a LOT of money).

Some of my energy came back quickly thinking about vacations (GDC is great but it’s hardly a vacation, which means my last real vacation was two years ago). I want to go south, maybe San Martin de los Andes, and although I’d have to go alone (my friends are on vacations right now, and in Brazil) I crave the experience. But I lost that energy as quickly as I got it (if it can happen to Super Mario, catching a flower and then losing it in the following 1.49 ms, it can happen to me) since I’ll have to stay in the freaking asphalt during February due to an unfinished project that needs to be un-unfinished asap.

So… I decided that it was time to look for an apartment for rent and move away from my parents house. Turns out, I’m on a budget here, and the idea of barely reaching the end of the month for an undefined amount of time has me procrastinating a lot. But I’m still looking, and I haven’t gave up on the idea (I’m 24, it’s time).

Procrastination took the form of an ASUS Eee PC 4G. I love it. It’s a laptop the size of a book.

Anyway, I need a couple more days before I can get back to my game-related projects. I’ll post something under gaming diet today, or maybe tomorrow.  Keep me in your feeds!

Well, Christmas is over, which means the deadline for the TIG Source Interactive Fiction competition is behind me and I failed.

As it turns out, writing the parser wasn’t the problem. I reduced my idea to the point where I wouldn’t need a big parser, but one that could interpret simple commands with the occasional parameters, and I have that already done and working very well (although I do have all the text inside the code itself for obvious time reasons). No, the problem was me. I sat down on Saturday after planning a totally nerd 3-day weekend of writing the actual game without getting up, and having slept only a few hours god-knows-what reason my mind was completely blank. Same thing happened on Sunday, same thing the day after.

As promised, I will finish the game, but I’m going to take it easy. I don’t want this to turn into a mind-blocking thing (I already went through that experience and it’s not pretty) so writing a little bit every day will surely get me to the finish line.

Have a happy holiday everyone! keep reading this failure’s blog, someday I’ll have something to show you!

TIG Source is running “Text the Halls“, an Interactive Fiction competition that started on December 10 and ends on the 24th.

I was tempted to enter this competition by evil himself, and I decided to do so because an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia took over my brain.

Problem is, though, my idea requires three things: A simple parser, lots of text and lots of time. I don’t have any of those, and time is running short so I don’t know if I’m gonna make it.

For the parser, I’m being persuaded to use one of the standards for these kind of games, such as Inform 7 or Tags. The thing is, my idea doesn’t require a lot of spatial navigation nor item manipulation so anything pre-built would require a lot of workarounds and as I stated before, I don’t have the time.
The other solution is to write the parser myself, which is a lot of fun but probably more time-consuming than the last.

So… I’m doing my own parser (my brain wants the fun, so screw logics). I got freeBASIC, in order to make the nostalgia more complete, and I’m already feeling as I did when I was 11.

If I don’t make it to the competition, I promise to finish it and post it here.

Cheers!

Patrick Dugan told me about this beatiful game called Passage, by Jason Rohrer.

As with Fly Guy, I won’t get into the ‘it’s not a game’ problem with this one, since I don’t have that much experience as to start my own definition of what is a game. I’m adding a category to the blog under which I will post these conflictive pieces of interactive art in order to help myself eventually reach my own definition of games, toys and such. Also, I don’t want to use another game designer’s definition because it would create a game designer fanboy war in some part of the planet.

The game itself is perfectly wrapped up, it attempts to transmit an emotion (sucessfully, if you play it as it was intended instead of worrying about mundane details or how crappy you personally think the art is) using a 25:4 aspect ratio world you ‘have’ to explore.

I won’t get into much more detail than that, because the whole thing is a metaphor waiting to be revealed, so go ahead and take 5′ of your life (literally, five minutes, it’s what it lasts) and enjoy it.