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What creative projects are you working on? (June 2019 edition)
it's time for another one of these threads. the last one racked up an impressive 100 comments in its run, by far the most of any of these threads so far, so that seems like a good sign for this thread. anyways, here you can share/provide updates on some of the projects that you're working on. they can be of any kind--digital, physical, work related, passion project, whatever. pretty straightforward, i think.
november thread • february thread • march thread • april thread • may thread
I feel like this one thing is two creative projects:
I just launched and am working on The Missing Quests, a website where I profile and celebrate indie games from small creators. I'm trying to build a bit of a following, so the site is actually relevant in the indie games space, but for a few weeks in I'm pleased with my ten-ish followers so far.
I count The Missing Quests as two projects because:
I'm quite proud of it. If anyone has any feedback, I'm open to it in comments, Tildes DM's, or Twitter DM's. If you're really into indie games, follow me on twitter at @MissingQuests, I'm sure it'll have something for you.
If you're not into indie games, we'll, I've been working on creative stuff you might not be into, and that's okay. 😜
Your site has no RSS feed, which is a shame since I use them to follow anything I find interesting. Static site generators usually have the ability to create rss feeds from a template.
Additionally, the "voracious reader" link in your About page is malformed:
https://www.themissingquests.com/books.alexguichet.comThanks for the feedback! I now have RSS and JSON feeds available. (Naturally, JSON took 15 minutes to implement, RSS took far too long.) Please give it a subscribe and let me know if it works—it validates and works for me in my clients, but I know RSS is always a thorny area for sites.
I semi-appreciate the drag for not using a static site generator. You're right, I would have gotten RSS from a template nearly for free, but hey, I'm building a CMS to learn, and to build something that fits my opinions for the content I want to create. So, I'm happy to implement it my way, and learn. (Just with increased time cost.)
And thanks for catching the malformed link—fixed it. Cheers!
The JSON feed works perfectly for my client, but the first 26 lines of the xml feed (which older clients will use) are filled with an error like this:
As far as I can tell, that's the only thing wrong with the xml feed.
Haha, here's where I learn my lesson for using PHP 7.1 in local, and PHP 7.3 in prod—fixed, thanks! 😅
Something fell down, went boom, because the RSS and Json feeds are broke.
fixed!
This is very cool, and I love your commitment to optimism and constructive commentary. The idea that each new creative output is an addition rather than a subtraction is something I think the internet at large loses sight of too quickly. We tear things apart for what they're not way more than we celebrate them for what they are. Thanks for being a voice for addition.
I'm not a web designer, but the site is beautiful, easy to read, and responsive. Well done! I've bookmarked it and will be checking in. I've played my fair share of small-scale itch.io games and am looking forward to what hidden gems you're able to unearth.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I took a look at your reading list and saw that you read the novelization of Dear Evan Hansen. What were your thoughts? I love the music (well, mostly the first act), but is the story able to stand alone as a narrative without its songs?
I'm glad that you like the conceit of the site. I'm really cautious to not use the word "review" here, because I think that carries the burden that I might tell you to not play the game. I'm instead being more careful to say "if you enjoy X, then you'll probably enjoy Y". It's also harder than I expected to be politely critical—it's important to say that a game has polish or design issues, but do it in a way that 1) won't deter people from playing it, 2) won't hurt the feelings of the dev's (because they're small fish in a big pond—and these sorts of things are usually side or portfolio projects).
The Dear Evan Hansen novelization is interesting. If you're a fan, and you've seen the musical, it's worth the read. It certainly gives more body to some of the characters, but am not sure that it's what I would have wanted? It kinda read like more vanilla fan fiction that had the goal of sticking really close to canon but providing more context. Rather, I'd have liked to see sharper edges on Connor Murphy, and more depressive moments from Evan—not just name dropping pills and referencing the internet because, oooh, we can do that in this medium.
And of course, everyone loves the first act of DEH, and then the second act is just....okay.
I really enjoy your explanatory writing on Missing Quests. The High Entropy entry is a great starting point for the blog as a whole, because of its perfect layout and brief stay. It looks and feels like a highly in-depth, 20-minute-read type of website that manages to condense all of that nonsense into much more manageable blocks. I hope you keep up with it, I'm excited to read more!
Thanks so much!
I'm trying to roughly tie game length to article length. High Entropy is a longer than usual entry, because it's a longer game—about three hours. There's plenty of short experiences on itch worth covering too, and I don't think I should write a ten minute piece about a ten minute game, so that's also a challenge.
I'm definitely in an experimentation phase, so please feel free to shoot me any further suggestions by pm/email/twitter. I'm happy to have new people reading along.
Love the design of your site! It looks really clean and fresh, and I love the shadows and gradients.
I'm debating on whether to make a political/social commentary or gaming channel on YouTube. A few things put me off of both ideas:
As for other things I'm doing this month. I'm doing a muscle gain challenge complete with a spreadsheet to log how many sets and reps of weights and other exercises I've done for this month. This was inspired by a similar exercise challenge my boss imposed upon us at work last month.
All of those points are pretty valid for why not to start a YouTube channel but maybe you're already thinking too big and getting Analysis paralysis. For example, they changed the rules on YouTube so you can't monetize anymore unless your channel has at least 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. snip Because of those requirements, if you start a channel, it shouldn't be because you want to make money right away, but because you like or enjoy what you're doing. A lot of channels move the monetization aspect elsewhere for example Patreon, streamlabs, etc.
Likewise for art, your can start with shitty art that you make yourself and scale up as you go.
Anyway, good luck if do go through with it!
Edit: I used to think in a similar way, then I started streaming on Twitch. Over time it helped me not think as much and get into the "Fuck it, we'll do it live" mentality.
@Apos has a really good point. I know I suffer from Analysis Paralysis frequently (so much so my wife has taken to reminding me I should write "for funsies" whenever I say I don't feel like it, because she knows the only reason I don't feel like it is because I feel like there's no point if I'm not getting immediate compensation) and obviously I'm not sure if you do, but I think it's much more common than we give it credit for.
If you want to make a political/social commentary or gaming channel on Youtube, I say go for it. You've already got one viewer in me. What specifically would you cover? Do you have any examples? A lot of people use art under creative commons licenses for their videos, saving you the hassle of having to "know somebody". If at some point you encounter someone who wants to make the art for your episodes, great! If not, no biggie. It's yours and it can be whatever you want it to be at any time, and if anyone has anything poor and nonconstructive to say, just remember that they're only lashing out because they don't know how to fulfill this part of their creative selves like you're able to.
here are my two contributions to this thread in the immediate term since i haven't worked on much in the past few days for uh... annoying reasons:
and i'm trying to finish off this interesting one which has a bunch of patterning in it that makes it kind of a bitch to write. this is legitimately like a month of on-and-off tweaking in the making and i still don't exactly appreciate the results, lol:
Do you write often? Do you have a preferred format and/or genre? The second work I think answers my first question but this is the first time I remember seeing your work (or at least seeing it and connecting it to your username) and I love picking the brains of fellow authors. What inspires you, do you think?
yes, and no in that order. most of my stuff looks like o'er yonder, though or esoteric documents and file formats, and not like this.
you have probably seen it around at some point. here's the shortlist of stuff i've posted to tildes that i have easy access to:
dunno, honestly. i just do stuff because i like it most of the time. there's not usually any particular other reason why i do things other than that they interest me. i'm not really one of those people that sees an overarching purpose in the things i do--if they happen to interest people, that's a bonus, but most of this stuff is so interwoven with other things that i never bother to post anywhere because there's so much and a lot of it isn't really written with public face in mind, lol. maybe i'll anthologize it all on here at some point.
Trashfire Magical Girl Comic continues. Got some work done this month, and I know that something got done because I'm looking at other ideas that are more appealing to me right now trying to procrastinate. Wanted to ask you all which one of these would me the more interesting setup for when I am done with what I'm working on, the second one has my attention because it's newer, so but I think they both show promise.
Shonen Leader/Red Ranger archtype of a team of Mecha Pilots who saved the world in high school is trying to adjust to life 15 years later, working an sales job where his formal rival is his middle manager, selling to members of the alien empire that he decimated the military of, and getting together with the tsundere best girl straight out of high school left him in a dying marriage, spending late nights stalking his childhood friend's Instagram wondering what could have been. Eventually he volunteers to coach a blended Human/Alien Mechaball team to try and recapture his glory days and learns something about how to survive your life peaking in highschool just because you saved the world.
Our Main Character is a ordinary college intern who get hits by a truck and dies, with the final request in his heart to not get fired from his job and miss a bill payment just because he died. Since he did have the potential to reincarnate as an overpowered fantasy protagonist, but only had ambition to keep his job, he ends up as an employee of the reincarnation agency, sending other people to live out their power fantasies while he slowly undies inside.
Do either of those sound interesting to this crowd?
I'm glad to see your work on the project progressing! I'm still just as excited about TMGC as I was last time you posted about it.
With regard to your two future works:
This one is definitely more fleshed out and you'd likely have an easier time getting started with it. It's a bit tried and true, and that's not a bad thing. Especially now, we can never have too many stories preaching understanding and comaraderie in the face of our many differences. To be honest I like my genre fiction to lean in heavy, so without copious amounts of Mechaball and tense emotional moments during training for said Mechaball, I'm not sure how easily it would keep my attention. Especially with the concept being rooted so heavily in anime and manga storytelling, which I'm not at all opposed to but have never greatly enjoyed myself. Then again I guess what I think doesn't matter much, because chances are I'd still give it a try, along with everyone else here on Tildes.
This one stands out more to me because I'm a sucker for stories about the people behind-the-scenes in these epic tales of magic and the weird. There was a graphic novel called Hench by Adam Beechen (who also co-wrote Countdown to Final Crisis, more recently) that sowed the seeds of this love in my youth; if anyone is interested and hasn't read it I highly recommend seeking it. It tells the story of a career henchman who is suddenly presented with a world-changing decision. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: I would read this one. It's a simple premise with which you can do so much; I'd love to see how it plays out.
I think the second one sound interesting -- reminiscent of Dead Like Me but with a bit of a twist.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Some combination of Dead Like Me and Fantasy Island, but it's mainly a riff on Modern Isekai Fiction that's trendy in Anime and Manga circles, where the audience surrogate dies and gets a new life as a naked wish fullment character, divinely inserted into a generic fantasy mmo setting at max level. Take that context, and have a character who escaped his 9-5 and should be min-maxing some realm in peril with every potential love interest hanging on his every word, only to work eternity at the place that decides who gets to be fantasy heroes amuses me.
That sounds pretty hilarious! I don't know much about the Isekai genre/convention, but I've definitely heard of the trope in anime of overpowered characters. I'd definitely read it if you wrote it!
Staining the Timbre is chugging along. I've also got myself on some new medication that will hopefully help with my motivation to write more. Reviews are fine and I push them out as fast as I can, but before you review something you have to experience it and unfortunately, with a fulltime job and a family, time can sometimes dwindle. Plus fiction is where my real passion lies.
Anyhow, if you missed my posts this past month I spent May reviewing Bedroom Music by Steph Castor, Season One of Chambers on Netflix, and The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre by Jonathan Raab. The first was based on a review copy graciously provided by Stubborn Mule Press and I enjoyed it quite a bit, while the other two had flaws that kept them both from scoring above 3 Jakes out of 5 possible Jakes.
If anyone has any recommendations for any type of media you'd like to see me review, or anything you think I may enjoy, please let me know. I'm not running out of ideas or anything, I'm just always prowling for things to add to my ever-growing list of stuff to read/watch/play/listen to. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!
working on some documents rn. they're fairly skeletal:
Homaitist Figures: The People Behind a Revolutionary System
by Alyaza Birze
Introduction
Many Yaraan figures have played their own parts in the creation of the Yaraan Homaitist line of thinking. It has been a literature genre, a politcical theorem, and a philosophical tendency among many other things since 1894. [...]
Yan Dŭwesy Vidiga (1841-1926)
Oyŏn Dowoyin (1873-1950)
Kŏzy Owel Ŏndayagas (1873-1967)
People of the Revolution: A Chronological History of the Yaraan Homaitist Groups
by Alyaza Birze
Introduction
Our politics are abuzz nowadays with the perception that radicalization is widespread and growing, and that soon the fertile, peaceful grounds of Yaraa will again be awash with blood and shattered by an endless staccato of bombings. This is mostly spectacular fantasy; democracy, although never particularly popular among the radicals on either side of the political spectrum, is almost exclusively the means by which these groups now express themselves.
[...]
The term "Yaraan Homaitist Group" in Kryfona politics refers to any number of groups which adhere to a Yaraan Homaitist tendency. There are a very large number of these groups both historically and in present day, most of which have not been significant in the history of Yaraan democratic politics, but have been quite significant in its activist politics and revolutionary politics. Most Homaitists today are now democratic in their politics as opposed to militant (see [[Homaitist Parties]]), however Homaitists have been major players in various acts of revolt against the Kryfona state and Homaitist groups tend to be militant, even when they are democratic.
The Early Yaraan Homaitists: 1895-1906
Most early Homaitist groups followed the tendency of Yan Dŭwesy Vidiga, who was the translator of many of the seminal Old Homaitist works into Yaraan.[1] Although Homaitism by then had been well expounded upon by more radical (and more conservative) figures, and the Homaitist movement was in throes between the Old Homaitists and the Modern Homaitists, Yaraans only found themselves exposed to the former by Vidiga, in part because Vidiga was of an agricultural background. Vidiga was a farmer-turned-policy wonk mostly seeking answers to a Yaraan agricultural crisis he saw coming, and to him Old Homaitism was the answer.
[1]: Vidiga is generally considered the first contemporary Yaraan Homaitist, at least in the view of most Yaraan researchers today. Some researchers dispute this in favor of a more collective understanding of Homaitism in Yaraa; however, regardless of this dispute Vidiga is universally considered the first significant Homaitist.
[2]: The term "anti-propertarianism" (nepŭlarjazieis) was applied to Homaitism originally in Yaraa by Vidiga and his contemporaries; the standardized term homaiteis eventually replaced it as Yaraan Homaitism became more widespread.
another one of these, now with actual prose! at some point i might write the rest of this out and post it as its own little thing but for now it's just this.
Fascism comes to Elunessia
by Darlo’en Calta
There is a one-two, one-two rhythm to which the vaunted guardians of all that is just and right in this world like to time themselves to, and there were no such exceptions to be made for the Elunessi Anhai, the Equestria First movement, when they processed themselves through the once-lively streets of the city of Ruziy to what little fanfare the remaining population had to offer. Ruziy, a glimmering little settlement in the sweltering, humid hinterland of the Equestrian midland, had once boasted a population so mixed against the largely homogeneous Equestrian nation that ponies were but a minority of the population in a sea of Aetalis and Chanslinnorsi; now, but a fraction of those remained and ponies found themselves in comfortable majority.
There were reasons, as the course of history always offers to those who pay it heed, for why few Aetalis or Chanslinnorsi now remained in a city they had called home for as many generations as either could care to remember. It was not because either population wanted to—far from such a state, really—nor done of their own volition. It was equally not because the city had little to offer them or little to quell their restless desires to be a part of something—although Ruziy, glimmering as it was said to be, did seem quite a desolate little place for a city. For all its affliction of being a mixed city in a nation with little comfort for such a mixture, and for all its miscellanies that seemed to make living in such a city an undesirable prospect even in Ruziy's beauty, the city had truthfully died for want of a single war hundreds of miles south in a place few of its citizens could have ever hoped to name.
I just found out about #AudioMo and so I've been recording for that here.
Otherwise, not much. I want to get started on a photography series, but I've been wanting to do that for about a year and a half. I'm still trying to write a commissioned sonnet about a baby, which is way difficult.
I've been working on a project I call the oMIDItone. I took a silly 'instrument' from Japan called an otamatone and decided I would turn it into a MIDI synth. I first made a prototype with just a single otamatone head and realized the range was too limited to make a functional synth that could play a recognizable song. I ended up hacking together a newer version that uses 6 heads at once to allow for it to play music somewhat coherently.
Here's a direct link to a video of the oMIDItone playing a song for those of you who don't want to read through the whole blog post to get to it.
This month I just finished designing and ordered a new PCB for controlling all 6 heads without all the wires and hacking-it-together of the current version. I'm hoping that if this new PCB works well, I will be able to add servos to control the mouths and make them open and close in time with the music as well.
I'm really late to this thread, but I figured better late than never.
Got no links, but I'm in the last stages of wrapping up a draft of the second story in a sci-fi series set about 60 years in the future about an experiment in AI that uses advances in neuromapping to merge with a suite of sophisticated software to create a simulated digital consciousness from real, deceased human beings. The first was a bit rough around the edges because it is the first novel-length anything I've written as an adult. This second story feels a lot better, and not just because I know where it's all heading finally. I feel like I also got a lot better at it.
Feeling pretty hype, tbh.
As a US born Asian American, I've started to interview my mother and her 5 other siblings on their journey immigrating to the US starting in 1970. A small part of me thinks it could be a collection of stories of what it took to provide myself and 15 other cousins the opportunities to grow up in the US.
Having a 6 sibling family lends to quite a bit of drama.
Grandma on mom's side had 6 kids, 3 boys and 3 girls.
There were many twists, turns and sacrifices on the story prior to making it in America living basically in poverty to an upper-middle class socioeconomic standing. Things from grandma attempting suicide at the eldest son's house (Asian obsession with eldest sons), to siblings fighting over the smell of food using their respective English and Korean vocabulary, to how the eldest daughter never got past an elementary school education because she "lied" about being the eldest child during her middle school interview because the family never reported the deaths of infants in order to get more rice rations.
As the only one in the family fluent in both English and Korean, it seems like I need to step up and capture these stories before all my aunts and uncles time comes for they are all getting up there in age.
I started working on a so far very ugly website, mostly for funsies and partly just so I can get a better idea of how css and html works. I honestly probably won't do much with it, beyond getting it to look decent. I didn't have any real plan on what it would necessarily be used for but oh well. It's kinda fun to figure this stuff out just by diving right into it, I'm not that great at learning this kind of stuff so I'm pleasently surprised with how much I've done lol.