Monthly Blog Post: July 2022

Let’s get to it.

Internet Vibes

I’ve been thinking about what I want this blog series to be about.

I originally envisioned these blog posts being high effort affairs, with lengthy essays about game design and other topics. In practice, I’ve found that I couldn’t find the motivation to write those lengthy essays. Basically, I figured that the value of writing those long posts was not worth the time it took to write them. These laid-back posts make more sense to me.

One example of a laid-back blog is this old Blogspot site (CW: IDK I haven’t read it all) by Ezra Koenig, who is the lead singer of Vampire Weekend. That band is actually one of my favorites! Spotify put “Oxford Comma” into one of my “daily mix” playlists one day, and I really liked that song. So I listened to the rest of their discography, and I liked (almost) all of their other songs too.

Anyways… Ezra’s old blog, in addition to being a time capsule of sorts, also functioned as a place where the author could just write about random things they wanted to write about. Sort of like what I just did in that last paragraph. Expect future blog posts to have a similar tone.

The Illusory Infinity

Here’s an excerpt from a draft of a “long post” I wanted to write:

Minecraft is a game with worlds that are infinitely big. Puzzles in Opus Magnum have an infinite number of possible solutions. No Man’s Sky offers an unlimited number of planets to explore. <Some other statement that’s an example of infinite space>.

All of these statements are selling points to their respective games. And all of these statements are incorrect.

The blog post then goes on to explain that computers don’t have infinite memory, despite the fact that a lot of software operates as if they do. I then ask an important question: why does this matter? The best answer I could think of went along the lines of “not properly capping your space will eventually lead to bugs.” But in hindsight, I think that was kind of missing the point? You can make a pretend-infinite game that’s robust. Minecraft used to generate glitchy terrain if you traveled far enough, but nowadays the game’s been patched with a non-glitchy world barrier that bounds the size of the world.

So, in conclusion: the answer to “why does this matter” is “it doesn’t matter that much.” Which is why I never bothered finishing it, and partly why I’ve changed my mind with regards to the kind of blogs I want to write.

Still Developing…

N Step Steve: Part 2 is still being worked on. I didn’t work on the game a lot during these past two months or so, but it’s still on track to being released by the end of the year.

I don’t have a lot to say about the game right now, and I might not for the next few posts, either. The finishing stages of video game development tend to involve a lot of tedious work

I’m definitely glad I have a lot of experience with making and finishing projects. Otherwise, I don’t think I would be able to finish this one in a timely manner.

Cool Links

The second Thinky Puzzle Game Jam took place this month, and there were a bunch of cool games made for it. There’s even a game in there by yours truly.

Squish Craft (CW: slight crude language, humor) may look like a weird joke. And in many ways, it is one. But it’s also a joke that functions as a really well made (but difficult) puzzle game! It’s as if the Mona Lisa was drawn in crayon and had googly eyes affixed to the eyes of its subject.

That’s All

Thanks for reading!