I’m here to give a development update about the progress of my game, but given current political circumstances it is hard not to comment…
It’s been tremendously depressing to watch America burn like this. I guess we should keep with the doublespeak trend and call it alt-america now… Ok sorry bad jokes aside.
I’m not completely baffled by this. American history is rife with the oppression of others. We have had racism out in the open since its inception. It would be sad to act like this is a surprise now.
A lot of this is evil is evil that we have allowed to fester, and moderately tolerated for a long time.
What I am saying is maybe we should have started punching people sooner.
Although, what I am baffled by is the surfacing of “Nazi”. I mean, throughout our popular culture Nazi is associated with the purest form of evil, and “bad guy”. Did some people not get the memo?
I remember, the first time I moved to America, I went to one of the high-schools in the very thriving and colorful LA school district.
Teenagers can be cruel. As soon as they heard I lived in Germany they cracked relentless Nazi jokes (as in I’m one), and asked me if I could goose step, etc… I never told them that my grandmother was in a concentration camp because I kind of thought they where being idiots, so why stop them.
In retrospect tho: yes, you should stop them and call people out on bullshit.
Point is, Nazi? Really!?
Interesting observation: one of the last places I lived in Europe had a problem with Neo-Nazis. When I say problem, it was young people, subscribing to this hate, and using it as an excuse to break shop windows and try to set buildings on fire. A couple of shops where burned. Vandalism was a frequent thing that happened over weekends.
The irony is that they where from the group of people that Nazis also sent to concentration camps. I always felt like these kids subscribed to this as a form of rebellion — to hurt people. Some people exist just to hurt others. Unfortunately this is our government now.
There was a point in internet meme history where people were making fun of Hitler. As in painting him as a “fool” (along with the other things). I thought that was a good idea because if you see this as “fool” and strip it of it’s association with power, people would be less attracted to it. I think often the association of “pure evil” is overshadowed by power, and people are inclined to find aspects of this attractive…
At any rate… Maybe I should not find this surprising either. I’m not really from America, and did not grow up here. The most American thing about me is my passport. That’s how I feel most of the time. If I did grow up here, maybe I would understand all this better…
Encouragement: A long time ago I wrote this post about what my grandmother created when she was in a concentration camp. If anything, perhaps I can offer this now, and it may provide courage in these dark times. I go back to their life story, and my mom’s, whenever I get into the “we’re all going to die” mood.
A while ago Finji posted this fairly courageous press release: This Is Not OK …quite a while ago actually. This part in the disclaimer really got me thinking:
“We would not normally use any part of our entertainment company to make a political statement, but we do not believe these are normal times. And a part of us is wondering if dividing these things was ever the right choice.”
Considering the long argued point of “keeping politics separate from X” (“X” usually being entertainment related)… Yes, I think so too.
I am starting to feel like keeping “politics out of this” was always a bad idea.
Politics is the defining force in our lives, and this is the system that we are in. Ignoring it, and acting like it is somehow separate from art and entertainment, is foolish and naive.
We are not separate from this. This will have consequences on our lives, and our ability to make art and entertainment.
I hope more people, companies, and artists speak up. Acting like we should “stay out of it” is really starting to feel like a censorship tactic.
Ok, yes. So enough of that. I’m also here to share my game progress.
I finished 11 pages now in Everything Is Going To Be Ok. It also has a website!
The game is also ready to be shown to people (even if in early stages). I am happy to send a download link to anyone interested. If you would like one, email me!
Everything Is Going To Be Ok is getting pretty big. Although progress is super slow because I’m making each mini-game more and more complicated. It’s supposed to be simple little interactive pieces. I’m trying to discipline myself to keep it simple. I have that 40 page goal to reach.
Although, if I fail to keep it simple, I can just focus my efforts on making larger game-likes and there will just be fewer. The project is evolving…
On the other side of development, I am adding some additional content that will be packaged with the game. I usually do this, but I want there to be quite a bit of easter eggs, and extras, and treats for people.
Two things I made recently:
THE GAME DEFINITION GENERATOR
I plan to package these with the download, in a separate .exe that has more content. I think it would be cool to offer skeleton-subtexts.
…Ok. I just really wanted to say “skeleton-subtexts”, but I think I make my point. :)
It’s lots of fun to package not just the game, but also separate extra games/small-apps surrounding the big game… in many folders that someone can get lost in. You know, have people mull around in there searching for fun stuff.
For this I am using Electron and NW.js
I feel like it’s a cool idea to make HTML/js content (because that’s very easy, and a quick turn around), and this offers a good enough way of packaging it for desktop.
Playing around with this stuff is also just fun.
The thing I do not like (and never really liked about packaging anything) is that you often have to give the user all this extra “confusing stuff” to sift through so they can find the .exe.
I know that’s not cool, but I hear my mom’s voice in my head going “so what do I click on?”. It is a concern…
Cool solution is mentioned here.
and also here.
using Enigma Virtual Box and changing the icon. I think there was another alternative to Enigma Virtual Box but I can’t remember the name.
This will result in a single-file type thing to just click on, and I can avoid confusing moms.
I know there are quite a few ways to do this, and I’ve tried quite a few, but I can’t remember now…
Although this is all common knowledge, I am making note of this here so that I have a reference to turn back to when I decide to re-package something for the 100th time but forgot all about how to do that… again…
While I’m here sharing things for personal reference, I’ll just dump these links here too (they are good!):
http://docs.nwjs.io/en/latest/For%20Users/Package%…
https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/wiki/How-to-package-…
https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/wiki/How-to-package-…
https://github.com/nwjs/nw-builder
https://github.com/nexe/nexe
https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start
https://github.com/electron/electron/releases
http://electron.atom.io/docs/tutorial/application-…
https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-pack…
https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier
Also, another fun thing that I’ll be doing more of is silly .js stuff for websites. Basically more joke repositories on GitHub.
They have gotten pretty complex now. You can have falling potatoes, screaming javascript alerts, frogpets, and jump-scares for your website.
As a side note, I’m taking this more seriously so future ones will be written better!
Next one that I really want to make is baby Electric Love Potatoes for your website. I love doing these. It reminds me of what people used to do in the glory days of the web. When people made their own websites, or customized their pages, and had all these silly things going on.
OMG! Also, one of them is being used in the wild! lectronice has an OS like website and there’s JaaAAAaaaAAaaavascript.
It’s a beautiful site too. Lovely use of jQuery! Really creative, and inspiring to see. Go check it out!
Ok… I think that’s about it for my update. More soon…
