What I Got Into - NYC AGAIN - October 20, 2024
Only the weekend was worth reporting, so I’ll structure this one a bit more like a travel blog. (Is that a treat or a punishment?)
Back to NYC already. This weekend seemed like the last good one for camping, and fall in New York is amazing, so we finally made good on our threat to camp in the city. Having never done it, we had all kinds of dread, but it worked out great, with only minimal tweaks needed after the first day. The van rolled in around 4pm to claim a spot on Ave A & 2nd street, where we parked comfortably for 2 nights. Not joking when I say the 19-foot van was more spacious than a pod hotel.
I didn’t make it to New York Comic Con, but I did meet an actual celebrity* at an industry event on Friday, where I was also reunited with decades-old friends and childhood heroes, plied with candy, and given a wealth of books that my son is already halfway through reading.
I won’t bore you with most of my Saturday, some activities so generic I already can’t remember if I experienced them or read them in a bulleted “Kid-Friendly New York” list from the mid-00s. Much of what I do with my son is relive my former college/early-20s glory days, places that were already for kids but I didn’t really know it then, and are still a lot of fun. It turns out you can bring children to Sing Sing for karaoke before 8pm. The tech has improved and the rooms are just as grimy. After all these years I’m still having veggie dogs at Crif Dogs, playing 5 games of Ms. Pac-Man on their tabletop cabinet, and daydreaming about having one of my own before I die. (It would be sped up of course, which Crif’s management has sacrilegiously failed/refused to do.)
I stopped into Book Club on Saturday, picked up 2666 (Roberto Bolano, 2004) and have since put a hundred-page dent in it. Which isn’t much considering the book, but it’s pretty good for a busy Mom on the go, and the best of many false starts I’ve had with this book. A man saw me holding the book while eating an ice cream cone that night, and he asked about it. Between bites I told him it’s concise and delicious. Oh, how I love thinking and wandering and talking in New York! Moments later, I told my son New York sucks because I’d seen a man gushing piss from his penis three steps from our van, and we laughed about that for minutes.
On the last night I woke up at 2am for no particular reason and spent 2 hours reading the webcomic What Happens Next by Max Graves, which a lot of former Cohosters are talking about. This was a surprisingly good pairing with 2666, itself a story of sheltered people looking at life and sexuality through a media lens, while inflicting mundanely evil acts on one another, all while the sands of time and culture shift beneath their feet. This comparison is especially sound once you’ve replaced the works of obscure writer Benno von Archimboldi with “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”.
Got really great vegan biscuits n’ gravy at POST with some friends before heading home on Sunday. I found an “East Village” sticker to stick on the van’s souvenir wall, marking our last trip of the season. Then we stopped at a dump station on the way home and did the solemn task that every camper must do (watch a much larger RV dump its shit, while sizing up the owners’ technique).
*guy in an inflatable Dog Man costume
Dev Log: October 16, 2024
For the first time since the game entered a story-complete state, I have done a full playthrough. This was mainly to test for values in the code that, when left unchecked, will crash the game.
earbuds in the storm
Adventure Game Studio is a finicky engine, whose saved games will break if serious changes are made to the script, so I needed to do this in a single run between daily game dev. I started yesterday evening and finished this morning.
Observation #1: I’ve gotten so much better at programming! There were not nearly as many problems in a full playthrough as I encountered in PT1. I mostly credit this to a deeper understanding of functions, local variables, and general code hygiene practices I’ve picked up over the years.
Observation #2: Oh my god, this game is long. I knew I was dealing with something bigger than PT1. I occasionally stopped to read when I thought a scene needed my attention, and I needed to stop a few times to fix bugs. But even if I’d skipped everything and played cleanly, this would’ve taken hours. (For reference, I was able to do a clean playthrough of PT1 in 30-40 minutes.)
I’ve discussed this a bit with editor Matt (who, in hindsight, I could never manage such a beast without), and we agree the game will be best enjoyed in chapters, each one averaging around 60-90 minutes when the player is engaged. This is a game I envision the player living with for a few weeks.
That said, it’ll be out of my control when it’s released, and I’ll be delighted by how thoroughly I’m wrong. Looking forward to people’s multi-day insomniac streams, speedruns where Mara clips straight through to the credits, microdoses of 1 chapter per month, and the one guy who skips every word to chase Pure Gameplay.
What I Got Into - October 13, 2024
I’ll have to think of a better thing to call these posts, although I like how it conjures images of me rooting through trash cans like a raccoon. Nothing to report in games this week since I’m pretty much playing the same stuff.
Websites
Hey, it’s a new category! Believe it or not, I’m still finding these - maybe more now than I have in years.
Toy Theater
I’ve been slowly rolling out kid-safe web privileges for my son, and this one came up through Kiddle. I’m blown away at the quality of this website, hosting dozens of educational games made by a team of artists and designers. Apart from an ad on the side there is absolutely nothing tech-predatory about this website. If you’re a parent (or just an adult using the internet in 2024) you will recognize how rare a website like this is.
KidsMenu
Not a new find, but a good pairing with the link above. You may notice I’m not very trusting of what tech has in store for kids. This is a Windows shell replacement that starts a user account with only the software you want your kids to use. Again, you would not believe how hard it is to find a tool like this online. This was released in 2011 by a dad who’s just as grouchy as me. The developer no longer offers support, but I found it incredibly simple to set up, and my son loves having the freedom to tinker.
Movies
Bodies Bodies Bodies (Reijn, 2022)
Very fun horror comedy that I missed when it came out. It’s probably best I saw it now, when everything sounds truly old (as opposed to dated in its time). Stylistically it owes much to the GOAT Spring Breakers, but it’s doing its own thing too. Each character archetype plays beautifully off one another, like a balanced RPG system. For the most part restraint is shown in the sneering parade of Gen-Z therapyspeak, although one long and overly indulgent scene almost toppled it for me. Overall it’s a great screenplay with spot-on casting.
Books
I stopped by PCX in Philly on Saturday - the first I’ve been able to attend - and was blown away by the presence. Between limited time and wrangling my son, it was a little overwhelming to see everything on offer, so I had to skip a lot. I made a bunch of hasty purchases and shared a few brief, fevered chats with other creators, the kind that tend to energize me for comics the rest of the year. Wish I could’ve stayed longer, but it’s fantastic knowing this kind of thing exists in my back yard.
Hypermutt (Alex Hoffman, 2022)
I’ve only begun reading through my pile of PCX books, but this one is a standout. It’s rare that I’m blown away by the freshness and technical craft of someone’s cartooning while also loving what they have to say. I hear this will be published by D&Q soon, but the collected minicomic is a real treasure in my hands.
Cometbus #59: Post-Mortem (Aaron Cometbus, 2020)
Picked this up at The Beguiling in Toronto last month. Cometbus is like a warm bath for me, and this latest is really hitting, as a look back on the punk institutions that survived or (mostly) died, and the optimism Aaron stubbornly mines from their remains. With each year of web rot, my own optimistic scene years continue to disappear without even a physical trace. This book gives me a sense of what I will soon be mourning and struggling to preserve.
Music
What riches in Philly this weekend - I was able to catch some of the RoxYunk Porchfest on Saturday. This event is better every year (though I might be biased because I can walk to it). Blocks are made car-free, everyone throws out their chairs, coolers and bounce houses into the road, and the neighborhood lights up with music played live from porches and van trunks. I didn’t catch the names of these bands - I was kid-wrangling once again, and none of the acts were really my style. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the point. The fact that, like PCX, it was completely free to wander in and out from, just stresses the joy and handmade community feel of Philly life.
Forever (Charly Bliss, 2024) My darlings are back, but I got around to this one kind of late. I only recently learned that lead guitarist Spencer Fox was a child actor who voiced Dash in The Incredibles, and it’s got me thinking (as clearly the band is doing) about age and a long career in art and the possibility of hitting people more than once at various times in your/their lives. Age inevitably becomes part of what your art is about if you’re being honest, and I love that CB continues to lean into that with full hearts.
Food
If the long weekend wasn’t enough, Mike and I were still craving a fancy night in. We made up a charcuterie board from all the tastiest things in the fridge, while excitedly discussing possibilities for our 10th anniversary next year.
we’re freakin’ married ova heah
Mike’s not vegan, but he’s spent this decade cooking beautiful things for me, and we have a lot of fun optimizing the vegan ingredients in our house. We both agree Bored Cow milk is a game-changer. They ferment the whey in a lab, no cows involved, and it really does taste better than anything so far. (Muscle Mer Says: Decent macros, too!) I found a single serving in a grocery store fridge, and was excited to discover it’s also sold in shelf-stable cartons. According to Mike it whips up into buttermilk very easily. As of typing this I’m digesting the very best pancakes.