Forty First Journal Entry
June 20, 2018
Mood: Mellow
Listening to: Guinea pig popcorning
Holy moly. It's been over four and a half years since I made an update here. Lots of things have happened. Let's see:
- 2018
- June: One more chapter of Fluidity in the Space is in the bucket, as I finally managed to write chapter seven.
- April: I didn't write any chapters of my novel, Fluidity in Space, at all last year, so I'm going to try to make up for it this year. I wrote two more chapters, chapter five and chapter six, this month.
- February: I have begun another translation through my Penguin Translations project. I obtained permission to translate the free RPG/virtual novel Wagamama Alice and The Hundred Days War from Japanese to English.
- 2017
- November: I did quite a bit this month:
- I resurrected my Penguin Translations project to help the ScummVM translations team translate the freeware, formerly shareware, adventure game Mission Supernova from German to English.
- I also decided to do a new NaNoWriMo novel this month. It's a prequel to last year's novel, where the captain is the mother of the gender fluid captain in Fluidity in Space. I only finished one chapter and put it on the backburner, so I can hopefully eventually finish up last year's novel.
- October: This month's Doug the Ogre comic is the most awesome one yet. Doug the Ogre #14 has two new contributors. Lazy DC contributed the story, Kewl Lemon drew some awesome fan art of Doug, and Double Fine gave their permission to use Costume Quest characters!
- August: It's been a while, but I created a few comics:
- Doug the Ogre #12 picks right up where the last one left off.
- Doug the Ogre #13 is a fun one, as it uses art from my artbook that I drew in an Open Studio art group in 2016.
- April: The most awesome part of the 2017 Amnesia Fortnight was that I led or co-led two prototype projects created by fans, but I contibuted a lot to the Amnesia Fortnight this year all around:
- I contributed music to the main fan prototype, Pongball, which was led by Cheeseness. This prototype was created using the Unity engine.
- I was the co-project leader, with flesk and TimeGentlemen, and contributed coding, game design, art, animation, music, sound effects, writing, and voice acting on Amnesia Adventure.
- I was also the project leader, and contributed coding, game design, art, animation, music, sound effects, voice acting and writing, on The Lost Dev Team. Both of these were created with the Godot engine, although The Lost Dev team was originally being created in Unity until I switched to Godot half-way through in order to better handle primary coding duties on two prototype projects at once.
- I also did the art, based on rough art by Cheeseness, and performed the voice-over for The Lost Dev Team pitch video.
- February: I wrote another chapter of my science-fiction novel, Fluidity in Space. It's slow-going, but hopefully I'll be able to finish it eventually.
- November: I did quite a bit this month:
- 2016
- November: I've done tons of NaNoWriMo challenges, but I've never been able to finish a novel. So I'm putting this year's novel, Fluidity in Space, online in the hopes that it'll give me motivation to finally finish one of my novels. I've written three chapters this month.
- August: I created two small adventure games with Wintermute:
- The Dreamcat Adventure was intended to create a small game that would accompany a guide on creating a low-resolution adventure game with a verb bar.
- To learn more about making low-resolution games with verb bars myself, I converted Michael Sheail's open-source adventure game, OpenQuest, from the Adventure Game Studio engine to Wintermute.
- July: while the Double Fine forums were being upgraded, I led a game jam titled the Double Fine Forum Downtime Funtime Adventure. There were two games:
- The main game, The Forum Downtime Funtime Adventure, was created with the Godot engine.
- The other game, DFAF Adventure, was created with the Wintermute engine.
- February: for the 15th anniversary of my Penguin Translations project, I combined Spinner8's fix that worked in all emulators with my title screen translation to create version 1.013 of my IPS patch that translates the Japanese Famicom game Penguin Kun Wars to English.
- 2015
- November: This month was a very busy month:
- I wrote some code, fixed some bugs, created some art, wrote some scenes, corrected some grammar errors, compiled with ScummGEN, and released a two-room version of Dominik Haslinger, Jens Doblies, and Sebastien Ronsse's formerly source-code-only SCUMM fan game, Indiana Jones and the Call of Thunder.
- I also participated in NaNoWriMo again this year with a novel about a multi-generational ship that finally makes it to a planet with a breathable atmosphere after centuries in space. After I began to write next year's novel, I decided to make this one a prequel to that one. I wrote three chapters of this, and like my other novels, it's on hold until I finish up Fluidity in Space.
- This month I also brought Marvin the groundskeeper from Doug's Moai Adventure into the comic proper in Doug the Ogre #10 and had Mary start to leave her lab in Jenni #44.
- To cap off this productive month a new contributor, Ingen_Nate_Kenny, wrote Doug the Ogre #11.
- October: For the 10th anniversary of DreamCon, I purchased a table for the Con on the Cob convention in Ohio that represented DC Evolution and Dreamcast-Scene.
- August: I recreated, and brought back the awesome team of, DC Evolution (I also still maintain the Indie Dreams wiki, which I founded in August 2006).
- July: To celebrate the day of Independence for the United States of America, I brought Doug the Ogre back to the other side of the portal to view fireworks in Jenni number 43. I had fun with this one, combining character drawings and word bubbles with real photographs of fireworks I took several years ago.
- June: It's been a while since I made any new comics, so I created Doug number 9.
- April: I participated in the Femicom game jam tribute to Theresa Duncan. The game I created, in the style of Theresa Duncan's interactive books for children, was Joy, a story about a transexual girl named Jamie.
- January: I joined the ResidualVM team as a wiki maintainer and occasional code contributor (I'm still a wiki maintainer and occasional code contributor for ResidualVM's umbrella project, ScummVM, as I joined the team in April 2006).
- November: This month was a very busy month:
- 2014
- November: I have participated in many National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenges, and have never completed one. This year was no different, although I really like the premise of this one. It's titled Visions in Hindsight, and a retired police captain begins having visions of her past cases, which soon become more than just visions. I might pick this one back up when I finally finish writing Fluidity in Space.
- September: I became a community moderator at the Double Fine forums, and later (as it is part of my moderation duties) the Double Fine Discord chat when it was created in September 2017 (I'm also still a community moderator at Telltale, as I joined the moderation team in November 2012).
- August: Bales resurrected the Doug collaborative comic with strip number 8.
- May: I discovered Sandy Maguire's adventure engine framework for the Moai engine, so I used it to make a short two-room adventure game starring Doug the Ogre called Doug's Moai Adventure.
- March: I've always wanted to create a collaborative comic where anyone can contribute. So, I made comic number 42 (my favorite number) of Jenni work as a springboard for comic number one of Doug the Ogre. It's attracted many different contributors:
- February: I participated in the first of Double Fine's two-week Amnesia Fortnight prototyping jams that included game prototypes created by fans. I contributed concept art, voice acting, and music to Bad Golf: Community Edition, which was led by Cheeseness. This prototype was created with the Unity engine.