The very concept of evil or temptation

Quote from: The Silver Spike, LIVThere wasn't no place in the world you could put it that somebody else couldn't get it back from [...] My best notions were to get a bunch of sorcerers together who could elevate it to the other realm and stick it on a passing comet or to have a bunch break a hole through to another plane, pop the spike through, and plug the hole.

Both ways was just cheaters that put the problem off on somebody else. The people of the future when the comet came back or the people of the other plane.

I recently watched Jailbirds as well as Unlocked, a couple docu-reality shows about inmates, which had me reflecting on the nature of prisons/jails. Places where you put people who you need out of the population. In both shows, it revealed a fractal problem to the approach of imprisonment: within the subset there will always be another subset to isolate, to separate.

Putting the problem off on somebody else.

Deadlines. External pressure. Sometimes these things can feel draconic. (There's a right word I'm looking for and that's not it.)

Doing something every day has been very satisfying. There's a website, "750 Words," which is a writing tool to help you build and maintain the habit of writing 750 words every day. It's nice. I don't keep my streaks long there.

I of course also made 31 unmarked games, and more recently droqever, both 'game-a-day' pursuits. Sometimes I would be proud of a game I made in a day, but I think their primary function was to shake me loose, to act as sketch, to get me doing instead of doubting.

And yet, it's the thinking and reflecting that produces an intentional work, something with real shape, something with a goal, a function. Making it a daily habit removes the questioning and becomes too unconscious.

-

There is a missing step which is gathering, living, asking "Why?" and stumbling upon a sharp answer. Sometimes the answers don't come, they aren't there, and while it's possible and useful to create something regardless (make a doodle, a sketch, operate on automatic), it can undermine the habit of searching for answers to questions, it can undermine the habit of conveying something meaningful.

Quote from: The Silver Spike, p 111/365"We thought you were dead with the rest of them, Timmy. Forty thousand people they killed that night. . . ."
"I was out of the city, Mrs. Cisco. I just got back."
"You haven't been home yet?"
[..]
"I said I just got in."
Smeds saw he did not like the woman much.
She went all sad and consoling. Even Smeds, who did not consider himself perceptive, saw she was just busting because she was going to get to be the first to pass along some bad news.
"Your dad and both your brothers . . . I'm sorry. They were trying to help fight the fires. Your mother and sister . . . Well, they were conquerors. They did what conquerors always do. Your sister, they mutilated her so bad she ended up killing herself a couple weeks ago."
Timmy shook like he was about to go into convulsions.
"That's enough, madam," Fish said. "You've buried your blade to the heart."
She sputtered, "Why the nerve . . . "
Tully said, "Piss off, bitch. Before I kick your ass up around your ears."

I remembered reading this the first time. It was striking and memorable then, too. Something that I like about reading books. It illuminates little corners of humanity. The ways that people act and the ways that people are. Yesterday (or I guess this morning) before I wrote playing the rain woggle I wanted to touch on this weird topic... I feel like being an author means thinking about these things in a way that being a single-player videogame designer doesn't. But maybe it is, considering that we have all these ideas about what it is that players, that people, want.

It's very different though. I don't want to cater to all these types of people, and not only people who are playing the games, but I want to spend time reflecting on and noticing things about other people, people far beyond the walls of the cyborg.

The wonder of plant life cycles... the strange feeling of watching things spread across the earth

Why do trees flower, and why do flowers turn into leaves?

Are the constraints meaningful?

It's important, learning these things. The very structure of droqever has two problems, then.

1 - Because of the way they are presented, every one must explain itself as if from scratch. This is sort of exhausting. I need a way to write a 'second page' to the 'first page' that is each game, that is not hamstrung by the link-any-game structure, as much as I wanted it for 31 unmarked games.

2 - There are some motifs that keep coming out. I really like when the player's mode is switched -- when a button performs contextually different actions. Picking up a block, then dropping it . . . depending on the dropped block, that contextual button does something very different. (See Starseed Pilgrim.)

Nope :) That's it. They can go to bed now. I find the mobile control scheme which I have imposed upon myself is too limiting: one stick (four directions) and one button is too restrictive a control scheme. Can I put this into a pattern? There are ways to combine inputs, but I feel a distinct need for two types of action: ONE TO SELECT, ONE TO ENACT. This isn't entirely true, because I make a lot, a lot, of platformers . . . a jump button is not exactly a "select" button . . . and yet it also is.

Anyway, I found myself itching to make games where you "pick up" and then either "use" and/or "drop" items. See and and perhaps others. YRKKEY'S PARADISE also has a pick up and drop control scheme -- actually, it does it with only one button as well...

but in a mobile context, I suppose that the jump button does not come across as well as on a keyboard. On a stick, "up to jump" brings a lot of distaste to my mouth.

...

What does it mean? I think I want to make a longer game where I can teach you the basic controls and build on top of that understanding. Every droqever game has to allow you to drop in on it anytime. What would it mean to make a droqever that requires previous knowledge? Maybe I can set up relationships? I'm not sure. Not sure.

April 15
The droqevers... maybe I've been thinking about them wrong.
The thought occurred to me to make "Museum I" today, an expression of a more general pattern of creating projects designed to be built upon—but still, ones with some self-sufficiency.

They should inspire, as much as they functionally enable

April 14
Wrote a short story (sort of) abt a character's death.
I've been thinking about the end of droqever for a little while.
The practical benefit of d.e. has been me getting in touch with the feeling of doing the work and finishing something each day.

droqever.com proper is not the perfect bound over that entire problem space; what I mean is that there are other things that do not abide by the rules of droqever which a daily creative process must enable, for me.

I came into it with the assumption that I wanted to make a game every day, but that's not true. Godot, I should note, is not a blocker, as much as the necessity of making something public facing ("releasing" a game every day, rather than creating something worth building on top of), and the constraint of it being game-shaped (rather than e.g. an entire story).

However. Both those incorrect constrains contain rough details of correctness.

There was and is something critical about producing something "finished" which I can capture by releasing a game that is hard to capture in other ways.

I must learn these other ways.

At the VALU VILLAGE, looking at books. These are written for somebody, for a function, but not for me, not at me.

I like the feeling of engaging with a thing that has a function.

next id like to make something like the black company, like the game that rips from the black company (battle brothers?) but with more secrets in the recruits, people who carry hidden powers, hidden traumas

maybe that's a little Darkest Dungeon-y, i dunno

my old idea about secret levels of confidence that affect how likely a character's reports for success are true

This calls for a Kinopio. I need to understand how these things connect, so that I can understand how I feel about them.

Sylvie writes.

> Once a common language of patterns is established, designers can speak by subverting them. But they can also speak by building on them, and combining them in novel or idiosyncratic ways.

> One way for the designer to speak is to establish a pattern themselves, then subvert it. But designers can also subvert patterns that were established outside the game . . .

> . . . the designer initiates the dialogue with the player. They present their game to the player and wait for a response.

> My reason for writing this article is to better understand the mechanics of the dialogue - the ways in which designers and players speak.

> What do you want to share with the player?

> . . . the journeys you invite players on, and your beautiful constructions are used to reveal things about yourself instead of the game systems.

> "One Clever Mechanic" games often feel to me like they speak in a stiff and dry manner, almost more like a lecture than a dialogue, while "Anarchic Maximalism" games are wild and chaotic, like a conversation that runs off into new tangents every few sentences.

> Subverting patterns gives the designer a presence

> . . . a conversation instead of a call-and-response . . .

> . . . the designer can try to predict how the player's headspace evolves through the game. And if this process keeps the player engaged, they learn more and more about the designer's fixations, and begin to decide whether they share the designer's feelings.

Quote from Shadow Games (The Black Company)

I am not interested in understanding why Glen Cook wrote this passage, as in, why he wrote it as an artist, but I am interested in resonating with why Glen Cook wrote this passage, as in, how it came out of him as a human being, how he learned to illuminate such a part of himself, as well as how such a part of himself resonated with me, and how such illumination inspires me.

I do not read The Black Company to understand Glen Cook, but through reading it I feel a connection to another person. I read The Black Company to feel connected, which is part of what Sylvie writes here.

But not the whole part, and this non-wholeness is the beginning of where I feel disconnected from the idea of art as communication. . .

Through the course of my life, I have come upon a total stranger's diary, which I have read several times over and no longer possess. I will never meet its owner. This is the diary of someone so unlike myself, and yet it illuminates my sense of humanity more than most things I have ever read. I feel deeply conflicted about the role of art. Art must present itself in order to be seen. And yet I find that the most resonant art is often that which is not presented, which is not designed to be seen, which is not thought of as public, which is not shared easily.

This is a great and painful paradox, this paradox lies at the root of this space I've created for myself, this newforum -- it lies at the root of droqever, which is a site I hesitate to share, or to share broadly. It is just discoverable enough that it is indeed discoverable, but not so discoverable that I cease to treat it like a diary, like an extension of my self. I use my newforum, I use droqever, these are things which I maintain for my own purposes.

I just leave the door a crack open.

A trick of the mind.