February 9 Updates

There’s another week in the books. I can feel things slowing down a little bit. My game dev streak is probably past 30 consecutive days now, but I’m sort of losing interest in actually keeping track of it. I have still been working on game dev every day though.

Speedrunning is getting tougher. That’s kind of the way it goes. The longer one project goes, the more its novelty fades away, and the more you have to will yourself to keep at it and continue improving.

My personal life is getting a little boring. I can tell that I need to find some new avenues for socializing. I haven’t been doing much for fun. I’ve found it difficult to find time to play Baldur’s Gate 3, which is what I’m supposedly playing in my free time. Game dev, speedrunning, chores, watching TV with Erika, and walking on the walking pad is just about everything I’ve been up to.

At the same time, that stuff is really all I’ve set out to do. Whenever I’m doing other things, my focus is on getting back into speedrunning and game dev and fitness. This might be all there is, so I should probably try and be more excited about it.

The reality is that life is often boring. You can use cheap and temporary escapes, which then adds a new to-do: quitting whatever cheap and temporary escape that you’re using. The good thing about being bored is there’s probably nothing too bad happening to you. I’ve both worked hard and gotten really lucky to be blessed by this much boredom.

I know someone who adopted a bonded pair of cats recently. She named the two cats “Party Hat” and “Pete”. It’s an interesting duo of names isn’t it?

I mentioned at the end of last week’s post that I started reading The Situation’s book he released in 2023. I learned about the book because I’ve been watching Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, a reality show that follows the cast that was originally on The Jersey Shore. When The Jersey Shore first came out, I was a senior in college, and as the subsequent seasons came out I was in my early 20’s. Much like the cast, I partied a lot and was, generally speaking, an idiot.

Part of what makes Family Vacation fun to watch is that the cast has aged in much the same way I have. They’ve gotten sober, adopted dogs, and go to bed early now. The Situation’s post-sobriety weight gain caused by a love of Funfetti hits close to home. Snooki opened a bunch of retail stores, Vinny became a stripper for Chippendales, and Pauly is still an extremely successful DJ. It’s interesting to see these lives unfold.

Family Vacation has also caused me to think about some of the complexities of friendship. I’ve lived a fairly solitary life. I have not seen anyone I went to high school with since I moved out of Boston, and that was already six years ago. I haven’t talked to anyone I went to college with in a few years at this point, and I didn’t have that many college friends to begin with. I have scarce contact with old coworkers. I don’t need to put my phone on silent. It simply is silent.

When I watch Family Vacation, the thing that strikes me is how valuable it is to be forced to go hang out with people. These folks get paid to go on vacation with each other like once a year for filming purposes, but you can tell that this does get them to be invested in each other in a real way. It makes me think about people I knew from high school, for example. If I were forced to go on vacation with them once every single year, we’d probably feel really intertwined and connected. As it stands, we actually feel largely estranged.

But, no one is going to pay us to hang out with each other once a year. We have to actually want to do that. As the years tick by, I get the feeling that even if you really like people, it becomes increasingly unlikely that you’ll continue to justify flying around the world to see them.

Similar to how the Family Vacation crew is being prompted by filming obligations, it really helps to have something other than ‘just wanting to see each other’ prompting the seeing of each other. Some of the people I know via Twitch have started attending a specific event annually - this is the sort of thing I see being successful. This event will continue happening whether these people attend it or not. There’s an external source available to do the prompting.

Now, in the case of the Twitch folks, the event I’m referring to is a video game event. That’s the other piece of this. Just because you went to college together doesn’t really mean that you have anything to do together ten years later. The older I get, the more I see that friends are really people you do things with. What do you actually like doing? I ‘like’ some people from my past just as much today as I ever have, but our friendships continue to dissolve anyway. Liking each other is less predictive of being friends than it seems like it should be.

What does this mean for me and my social life? I’m not sure. It would probably be healthier if I made some more friends though. Given that video games are clearly the primary driving passion of my life, the fact that none of my high school friends, college friends, or former coworkers like video games was probably not a good sign for their longevity.

I’ve also got my week 2 weight loss chart. We’re still looking pretty good. I’ve been walking at least 60 minutes on the walking pad per day, and mostly eating whole foods though I have had some lapses. I’m doing enough to keep our orange line ever-so-slightly moving down, so I’m happy with that.

Last week was a good speedrunning week. I moved from #96 on the leaderboards all the way down to #70, so we’re definitely on the move. Here’s the latest PB if you didn’t catch it in the updates to last week’s post:

I’m going to need to do some lab work before I’m ready to go live again and attempt to PB. The PB above is fairly close to what I think I can achieve at my current skill level, so I’ll be practicing and learning new strategies. Ring Man’s level is the first major opportunity. The first mini boss has a faster but less consistent strategy that it’s probably time for me to adopt, and the hippo mini bosses’ damage boosts can be done in a faster way that I haven’t fit into my practice sessions yet. I’ll be starting there. Once I feel like I have a reasonable shot at PB’ing again, I’ll be back live. Stay tuned!

In game development I’ve been steadily working. I shared a bunch of new art environments in last week’s post. This week coming up I want to try and actually get those new environments in the game and working within the code of the game. For example, I want to be able to walk around Friendship and enter the doors and such. I’ve also got the woods outside of town starting to take shape, as well as some fruit themed enemies. One step at a time…

I think that’s it for me today. I’ll be checking in throughout the week with some updates. For now I’m going to go play Baldur’s Gate 3 for a while, since I can sense that this project is going to die if it doesn’t get some attention soon.

Have a great day everyone! Enjoy the Super Bowl if you’re into that. Go Pats. Let’s chat again soon. I believe in you.

Thursday Already?

Ouch, I’m a little sad to see it’s already Thursday. I’ve been putting in good speedrun practice, but no live streams yet this week. I might be able to stream tomorrow depending on how today’s practice goes, we’ll see.

Not much to report on the game dev front. I’m feeling a little bit stuck , which I recall as being a very common occurrence once I try to switch from a time period of focusing on artwork back to programming. I’ve had a few days that haven’t produced much even though I’ve technically been sitting in front of the keyboard and hitting keys.

So, it’s a slow week so far, but I’m here to stick with it. Hope everyone is doing well.

Friday Stream Incoming

Hey y’all - I am going to be streaming today so make sure to stop by if you want to check out the recent work I’ve been putting into Mega Man 4. I recently caught the stream of Frenchman and #3 ranked Mega Man 4 player Aurel509, and he was nice enough to let me pick his brain on a number of topics, even stopping his streaming activities to give me some demonstrations on his technique.

I learned a lot by chatting with Aurel, though one piece of his advice in particular feels like it’s ringing in my ears today louder than the rest: “You can’t implement everything all at once.” By this he meant that if you try and add in every top-tier technique right away, you’ll get overwhelmed. That has definitely been one of the lessons of the Mega Man 4 adventure. The increased Mega Man 4 competition relative to what I’ve seen in my prior projects necessitates a slower, more deliberate rise toward the top.

In that vein, I am going to be streaming today. Some of my instincts are to just keep practicing. I have a clear-cut list of things I would like to get better at. But, there’s also some newfound intelligence suggesting to me that it’s time to stream. My most recent stream was already over a week ago (it was last Thursday), and I am trying to keep the right balance of going live and competing and hiding away in the laboratory and practicing in solitude.

Another thing happening this week - I can feel my diet coming together in a more real way. I have some lofty weight loss goals for 2026. Through the first few weeks of this I’ve been very slowly ticking down on the scale, but I can feel healthy attitudes starting to win-out in my mental game. I probably won’t have a ton to show in terms of scale progress at the start of next week, but I can tell that I’m getting somewhere. I’ve currently got some caramelized onions slow cooking on the stove for tonight’s chicken, onion and sweet potato dinner. Keep eating real foods y’all.

I will say it’s a slow game dev week. I’m going to take until Monday off of game dev to regroup a little bit. It feels like I need a small break to recharge with it.

Anyway, we’ll chat again soon. I’ll probably post some update post-stream in case you miss it. You can also always watch the broadcast after the fact on Twitch if you’d like. Bye!

Prestream update: I whipped up a new emote that any of my Twitch followers can use on my channel now. I never, ever go to DD, but it’s part of my heritage.

Post stream: no new personal best time today, so we remain at #70 on the leaderboard. At one point I managed to be ahead of my PB by 16 seconds, so I could feel the improvement that I’ve made over the past week’s practice, but I didn’t quite have it in me to carry the higher level of play through the entire game.

I might stream again as soon as tomorrow. It feels like I need to improve my consistency with the beginning of the game. The first four levels (of sixteen total) in Mega Man 4 really are the hardest…so I think there’s opportunity to continue improving simply by going live and attempting runs. We’ll see how I’m feeling about that prospect tomorrow. If not tomorrow, I think certainly by Sunday I’ll be live again. Stay tuned! Also a major thank you to everyone who joined me for the live runs. Mega Man 4 has been my most watched project so far, and I’m grateful for everyone who stopped in.