marzipanjamdev

[marzipanjamdev]

"Okay, but it's not a dragon, a dragon has" if putting it in the sky would be sick as fuck, it's a dragon. Whales are dragons.

[marzipanjamdev]

Something something the fact that post-apocalyptic Usamerican media sees the post-apocalypse as a way to play with a colonial frontier fantasy something

[marzipanjamdev]

crossword on one monitor, erotica on the other. "jerking off" both my mind and my penit. #sapiosexual

[marzipanjamdev]

the stupid fucking atlantic libgen post is still going around after several days so im gonna say my thing on piracy over here also. my position has been the same for many years, but now i have some credentials or whatever in case you like appeals from authority.

i'm a lambda award winning author who's been below the poverty line for more years than not. there were a couple months there where i could only afford to eat because the book i'm in sold way, way better than anyone expected. there was a month or two i got a little fucked up budgeting for a second printing that never came. i don't make a full-time living off of my writing but it is a major part of my budgeting, it's sometimes the difference between stability and danger.

i say all this to let you know i've got fuckin skin in the game, and i am putting my whole self on the line when i say that i would rather a thousand thousand people pirate my work than not read it. art should not be exclusively in the hands of the wealthy; the people deserve bread and roses and i would never criticize anyone for stealing bread, why would i possibly criticize them for stealing books? have you never had a day where you thought, if it weren't for this album, this movie, this book, my life would be diminished?

like, that's what it all comes back to. you, the artist who thinks pirates are vile because they're taking money from your pocket, money you need to survive: do you believe art is an essential part of human existence? if you do, knowing that poverty and access inequality are huge fuckin' problems for people all over the world, why are you against piracy? if you do not, why the fuck are you making art?

[marzipanjamdev]

The Kiaat Tree (Pterocarpus angolensis, also called “bloodwood”) releases red sap when cut. Species of Pterocarpus native to southern Africa, in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zaire, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.

[marzipanjamdev]

[marzipanjamdev]

[marzipanjamdev]

does anyone else feel me. can anyone hear me in here.

[marzipanjamdev]

let me save after the choice selection appears on-screen or die by my blade. it can't be that hard to understand that people A) want to save before making choices and B) can't predict exactly when a choice will show up to make a save before it

[marzipanjamdev]

Do you prefer your potions with or without pulp?

[marzipanjamdev]

April 4th devlog ; the humble watering can

prototyping projectile tools has been more complicated than anticipated. had a few days off. watched and rewatched tutorials. poked around at other engines (seriously considered Godot) but returned to game maker because the nesting hierarchies of Godot make me feel as though those containers need to exist well before they're every truly used. Game maker, I've found that you're able to get stuff into the mix a lot quicker but there's some fuss getting it to be ideal.

For example I was basing my code for tool movement off the advice in many top-down shooter tutorials to draw a sprite of the weapon/tool rather than create an object instance. For my purposes however, I need the variable position of an object's bounding box in the room, which I cannot get by simply drawing a sprite of the tool.

but Marzipanuel, what the fuck does this have to do with watering cans

well. I hate watering cans in video games; the watering cans that are mechanical staples of the life sim and cosy genre. I despite them.

Some of my peers have reported they find a lot of the genre defining cosy game coziness stems from a repetitive task mediated by a small degree of precision i.e. lining up to water either a specific tile or ideal cluster.

I think that's farts. Because watering cans are dynamic and feel really good to use in real life and that hasn't been translated over yet.

I think a more dynamic tool system will hopefully encourage curiosity in their associated skills.

I think the scythe in Stardew feels really good to use and I'd like to replicate that same feeling. Essentially spawning object instances in a spray within a set radius and set life-time on screen. These have the opportunity to collide with various room layers to change properties (plant, medic crop, and soil wetness and if it's considered watered today)

APRIL 5TH

Today I need to alter the drawing of the watering can to spawning an instance of the watering can at a set offset from the player's base point.

Then once the watering can is in the room, I should be able to call on game maker to identify the variable position of the bounding box for the tiny collision mask Ive set for the watering can itself in order to make a realistic spawn point for the water "bullets"

[marzipanjamdev]

you are home

[marzipanjamdev]

Source details and larger version.

My collection of vintage fish imagery is swimming along.

[marzipanjamdev]

All you need in life is a color picker willing to expose you to the unbounded madness we call color vision.

me, absolutely clueless: "I want a color just like this one, but in red" color picker: Fuck you think you are, a Mantis Shrimp? Don't talk to me again until you can afford a wide gamut monitor.

[marzipanjamdev]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[marzipanjamdev]

what Work is the most important? the work you have to do next. narrow the scope of focus down to that singular glittering point.

[marzipanjamdev]

The opposite of anxiety is not calmness, it is desire. Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility of relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. There is nothing mysterious about the anxious state; it leaves one teetering in an untenable and all too familiar isolation. There is rarely desire without some associated anxiety: We seem to be wired to have apprehension about that which we cannot control, so in this way, the two are not really complete opposites. But desire gives one a reason to tolerate anxiety and a willingness to push through it.

Open to Desire

Mark Epstein