I love Terraria. I really do. I've logged around 400 hours of Terraria-time, and that's not including the time I spent with the game accidentally running. Considering the fact that I might have payed 7 bucks for the game and I probably got it on sale for 5, I'm pretty pleased with the return on that particular investment.
If you're not aware of what Terraria is, follow that link up there. If you're too lazy for that, lemme 'splain. No, is too much. Lemme sum up.
Terraria is sort of like Minecraft in 2D. If that doesn't mean anything to you, then imagine, if you will, a game where all materials are mineable. Your entire purpose in the game is to explore, mine important materials like gold and diamonds and iron so you can build weapons, armor, and other tools. The game is presented in 2D, which I feel is a good choice for something of this nature. Minecraft always felt out of scale to me, and I didn't care for the blocky aesthetic that everything in the game has. Terraria has a much smoother look to it, even though it's still pixelated.
The thing about Terraria that I love is the fact that you get to play how you want to play. Yes, there is a sort of progression that you can follow, but you really don't have to. Yes, there are deeper, more dangerous regions of the game to explore, but again, you don't have to. Obviously that sounds like a lot of video games. Don't want to leave the Kokiri forest in Ocarina of Time? You don't have to! But, the difference is that you will definitely run out of things to do in Kokiri forest, where in Terraria you can spend your time building a nice house, chopping down and planting trees, building furniture and fending off zombies at night. Now, that's not how I play, of course. I'm all for delving too deep into the earth, searching out gold and diamonds and chests filled with treasure. I love getting that next tier of armor and weapons so I can deal out (and take) more damage. And that's the beauty of Terraria. Whether you're a cautious player who wants to take things nice and slow or you're reckless and filled with the spirit of adventure, Terraria can provide a satisfying experience.
Now, one of the few things I wish Terraria had was a bit more scope. Even the largest world you can generate in Terraria still isn't that big, and, when it comes down to it, it's the only one there is.
Enter Starbound. Starbound really looks and feels (at least in the gameplay videos) like Terraria's older, more mature brother. The graphics, while still 2D and pixely, are more complex, with sprites having several more animation frames for different actions. The movement and combat seem more complex as well, but the crowning jewel of what Starbound offers is the scope: Starbound procedurally generates planets, equipment, even enemies, with a complex algorithm that promises endless unique experiences. In Starbound you can travel from planet to planet, mining, exploring, and crafting, just like in Terraria. Apparently there are NPC-given quests that are procedurally generated as well, which means that you'll never run out of things to do. Each planet is supposed to have different materials, enemies, and treasures, making it important to actually explore as many different places as you can. The addition of different player-races, persistent NPCs that can be recruited to help your cause, and a fancy, upgradeable spaceship that serves as your base of operations all serve to give Starbound that added scale that I feel Terraria is missing. Now, as has been mentioned, Starbound is still a 2D side-scrolling type game, but that's ok. In fact, in my opinion, that's actually better, for now. Maybe in an immersive VR environment a 3D sandbox mining game would be fun and feel ok, but until then, if you feel the need to explore large worlds, find materials to craft new and ever-better equipment, and discover secret treasures, Terraria and Starbound definitely have what you need.
EDIT:
I realized that I didn't really get to express what I wanted to about this topic. Yes, Terraria and Starbound are cool, but the important bit is what they indicate for the future of gaming.
For a long time, video games were pretty much linear. A lot of games still are. Even games like the Civilization series and games in other genres are still fairly linear, in a way. Yes, you may have a lot of options on how to play the game, but you're still basically progressing towards a single end point.
With Starbound's procedurally generated content, we're starting to see the beginning of true open-world games.
Other games that are "open-world" like Skyrim, Borderlands, etc, still have a linear storyline that you can choose to follow at your own pace, but not really in your own order, most of the time. Additionally, something that bothers me in a lot of games is the questing system. "Please hurry, bandits are raiding this village!" and yet, in most games, whether you hurry or not, you always get there at precisely the right time, as if by magic. In reality, you just trigger the beginning of the event when you arrive, regardless of when you arrive. In games where the quest is important to the story AND the timing is important, they generally make you repeat the mission or revert to a save point if you don't arrive in time.
Why not make a game where the events of the world are based on the same sort of procedurally generated algorithms? Make a game where stuff happens whether or not you're there. Make a game where the story isn't told in cutscenes and voice acting, but is told by the actions of the player.
Obviously Terraria still has a sort of progression. However, there are some things that definitely deviate from the norm. For example, the first boss you generally encounter, the Eye of Cthulu, can be summoned once your character is ready for it, but if you find enough heart crystals to bring your max life above a threshold, there is a chance that the Eye could spawn whether you are ready or not. This means you may have the health, but not the equipment when the Eye spawns, and, in that situation, you will probably die. The same goes for several of the bosses and events. You can trigger many of them at your leisure, but they'll happen on their own if certain conditions are met.
Now, if that sort of concept were implemented into a game where the presence of a boss monster like that could have a permanent and lasting effect on different parts of the game, say, by killing NPCs or destroying resources, and the longer they roamed unchecked, the worse the effect becomes. Then it's up to you to decide if you want to risk facing the enemy head-on with less-than-ideal equipment in order to save people or resources, or if that risk is too much.
I think this is the direction gaming needs to go, or at least a portion of the industry. I think the idea of a dynamic environment that is affected by more than just the actions of the player could create an extremely immersive universe. And, when it comes down to it, isn't that the point?
Monday, December 9, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
The AR revolution
Ok, so in my new vein of writing about things that I think are rad (and really, when it comes down to it, isn't that what any writer wants to do?) I decided to start with something that really excites me: Augmented Reality.
Here's the thing. There is a spectrum between Reality and Virtual Reality. Reality is, of course, completely real, meaning not affected by digital technology at all. This is specifically in terms of the way we experience the world through the 5 senses. Reality means there's no tech in between our senses and the real world. Obviously you could argue that glasses and contacts and the like "augment" our senses, but that's not really what I mean. I mean computer-like tech. So, in terms of gaming, LARPing is basically as "reality" gaming as you can get. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Virtual Reality. That's where 100% of the world with which you interact is virtual. All video games are basically virtual reality, but generally what you think of when you think virtual reality are things like the Oculus Rift, which is actually really cool. VR tech is exploding right now in the wake of the Rift, and is starting to expand past the base of just visual virtual reality to include wearable motion sensors and things like the Virtuix Omni, which is billed as an "omni-directional treadmill", which basically means you can walk on it in any direction and it translates your movements into the game.
These things are incredible, and I'm super excited about them. Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be a bit of an escapist, and the more immersive my chosen escapist destination, the better, in my opinion. Combining the Rift, the Omni, and whatever flavor-of-the-week motion sensor to completely immerse oneself in a video game is a nerdy wet dream.
However, and this is a big however, for now, we kinda have to return to the real world periodically. No matter how immersive this tech may be, it's not going to provide nutrients or relieve your bowels for you. Maybe if you're lucky you can find a way to make money by staying in a virtual world all day, but that's not going to work for the rest of us.
Sometimes, the more immersive a game is, the harder it is to come back to the real world. That's how I feel about some books, movies, and TV shows sometimes. When they're well-made, you feel as though you've actually entered the universe they're depicting, and leaving that can be hard, especially when the world you come back to is so mundane. No interstellar travel, no magic, no clear-cut battles between good and evil, light and dark. Just boring jobs, small apartments, junker cars, and homework, or, in other terms: THE LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO ESCAPE. So, wrapping back around to Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality falls around the middle of the Real-Virtual spectrum. The concept of Augmented reality is to put a layer in between the real world and the senses of the user. This has been around for a while in some form or another, of course. Ever since smart phones have had cameras, there have been apps that use the live camera feed and add different elements to the image. I had a game for a while where you were a gunner shooting down TIE fighters. As you moved the phone around, you could see various TIE fighters flying around in your very own sky and you were supposed to shoot them down. Simple, of course, but neat. Most games take you into a different world, but Augmented Reality brings a different world to you.
The problem with the cell phone-based AR is that it isn't very immersive. (Immersion really is going to be a buzzword for this topic, since that's been the goal of video games for the last decade or two). So, what do you do? How do you make augmented reality better? Vuzix has had different video eyewear, including "see-through" video eyewear for a couple of years now. The issue is that it's basically still the same concept as the smartphone: a screen depicts the camera view and a program adds elements to the image. Vuzix's stuff is neat, but most people don't really want to walk around with what looks like a slimmed-down pair of nightvision goggles on their face, looking at the world through a camera. Enter Google's project Glass. Glass is trying to be the augmented reality that doesn't block your reality, and they're appealing to a wide market. Their product is really similar to a bluetooth headset: basically it's trying to be an unobtrusive way of providing hands-free access to functions currently offered by your cell phone. Where bluetooth headsets only really offered you a hands-free calling, Glass is trying to provide hands-free picture-taking, video-recording, information-gathering, and video-chatting, among other hyphenated actions. The issue is that Glass is little more than a corner-of-your eye HUD. Basically it sits really close to reality on the real-virtual spectrum. The position of the screen doesn't allow glass to do much to augment your entire reality; rather it tries to provide useful information and features more conveniently than pulling out your smartphone. In a nutshell: NOT IMMERSIVE. Neat idea, to be sure, but NOT IMMERSIVE.
I want immersive AR. I want to have every aspect of my real world augmented by a virtual one. I don't want a HUD in the corner of my eye. I want to see the virtual world intermingling with my real world. So, I did some searching. The first thing I found that looked incredible was a product produced by a company called Meta. Their AR glasses sounded like the exact thing I wanted. It uses tech based on the kinect sensor (their prototype legitimately had a kinect sensor mounted on top of it) and projects images to the screen of the glasses. Since it has a separate projector for each eye, it's capable of showing 3D images out in the space of the real world. The kinect-like sensors allow you to interact with this virtual world using hand and motion tracking. Supposedly, you can create and place virtual objects "in" the real world and the glasses would be able to track your motion relative to the fixed real-world point where the virtual object was placed. If that's a little confusing, imagine this: You design a virtual vase and place it on a real table. Then, as you walk around the table, changing your view angle, the vase stays put. You could decorate your whole house like this, but that's small potatoes. I'm imagining how you could use this for some sort of IRL combat situation. Imagine you and your friends out in a field somewhere with some sort of motion-sensing laser tag-esque weapons. The glasses are projecting virtual enemy combatants running along the surface of the real world, hiding behind real trees and walls and rocks, pathing around real objects. You throw a virtual grenade that bounces off of real world objects and explodes, sending out virtual shrapnel that interacts with both virtual and real components of the game.
That sounds pretty incredible, right? One issue: the Spaceglasses, as the website is called, have to be tethered to a computer, and probably one with some relatively serious processing power. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to strap on your back when you're running around. Obviously, at the rate tech is progressing, computers will get smaller and more portable, and maybe, if we're real lucky and all eat our wheaties and obey our parents and look both ways before crossing the street, batteries will get better too!
So, really disappointed with Project Glass and slightly disappointed with Meta's spaceglasses, I kept my eyes open for new stuff. And then I found something: Lumus. Unlike Meta, Lumus is a company that's been around for over a decade, and they started the company with the invention of their optical tech: see-through lenses that reflect the image from a projector to the side of the glasses. Now, the Lumus products are actually somewhere between Glass and Spaceglasses, in the fact that they do a full-lens projection like Spaceglasses, but they have less sensors and are designed to work more like Glass. The reason they excite me, however, is because they have OEM projectors and lenses that could be incorporated into a more comprehensive product. You add a couple of cameras to those bad boys and you have everything you need for a fully-immersive augmented reality world.
Imagine walking through the real world, except with Pokemon everywhere! Imagine strolling through the park when a velociraptor runs by and a pteredon swoops overhead. Imagine having a virtual companion that can accompany you wherever you go and can take whatever form you desire. Want a pet dragon? Or a Wookiee sidekick? Want to see flying cars and 30 moons in the sky? Those are just the nifty possibilities, the games and the world-mods that are possible. But imagine the way it'd change other things. Imagine having directions to your next destination projected in the space ahead of you. Imagine getting separated from your family at a theme park and being able to look around for a big floating "they are here" arrow. Imagine travelling to a foreign country and having written and spoken words translated for you. What about being able to type on a virtual keyboard, or eschewing the keyboard altogether and having a giant, interactive computer projected into the world around you? What if you could have notifications at the edge of your vision, or teleconference with a 3D projected image of your friend or business partner? What about looking around while you drive and seeing signs for various businesses and points of interest? Would you like to have the game running in the corner of your vision, alerting you to every fantastic moment, even though you're away from your PC or TV?
Every time we've found a new way to interface with computers it has revolutionized the way we use computers. Punch cards meant computers were only good for math-like calculations. You couldn't really play games or design things in 3D. As we progressed to monitor and keyboard interfaces we began developing text-based interactions and simple graphical interactions. Then the mouse was invented and graphical operating systems. Laptops and smartphones changed the way we use computers even more. Now the next real leap is going to be wearable computers, augmenting our reality with virtual elements. Even for the non-gamer, this is going to be big. I'm an engineer, and I know that having a part that I can "see" in the real world would rapidly change how I do my job. Having a part that I can manipulate in 3D space and get a proper feel for its size and proportions without having to have it prototyped would be incredible. Being able to build assemblies and manipulate them by hand the way they'll be manipulated once realized physically would save me a lot of time. Plus, it'd be super cool.
These are exciting times in which we live. I suppose technophiles like me would feel that way regardless of the era, but for some reason I think I'd be more excited about Augmented Reality than about the three-field system. But I guess we'll never know.
Here's the thing. There is a spectrum between Reality and Virtual Reality. Reality is, of course, completely real, meaning not affected by digital technology at all. This is specifically in terms of the way we experience the world through the 5 senses. Reality means there's no tech in between our senses and the real world. Obviously you could argue that glasses and contacts and the like "augment" our senses, but that's not really what I mean. I mean computer-like tech. So, in terms of gaming, LARPing is basically as "reality" gaming as you can get. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Virtual Reality. That's where 100% of the world with which you interact is virtual. All video games are basically virtual reality, but generally what you think of when you think virtual reality are things like the Oculus Rift, which is actually really cool. VR tech is exploding right now in the wake of the Rift, and is starting to expand past the base of just visual virtual reality to include wearable motion sensors and things like the Virtuix Omni, which is billed as an "omni-directional treadmill", which basically means you can walk on it in any direction and it translates your movements into the game.
These things are incredible, and I'm super excited about them. Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be a bit of an escapist, and the more immersive my chosen escapist destination, the better, in my opinion. Combining the Rift, the Omni, and whatever flavor-of-the-week motion sensor to completely immerse oneself in a video game is a nerdy wet dream.
However, and this is a big however, for now, we kinda have to return to the real world periodically. No matter how immersive this tech may be, it's not going to provide nutrients or relieve your bowels for you. Maybe if you're lucky you can find a way to make money by staying in a virtual world all day, but that's not going to work for the rest of us.
Sometimes, the more immersive a game is, the harder it is to come back to the real world. That's how I feel about some books, movies, and TV shows sometimes. When they're well-made, you feel as though you've actually entered the universe they're depicting, and leaving that can be hard, especially when the world you come back to is so mundane. No interstellar travel, no magic, no clear-cut battles between good and evil, light and dark. Just boring jobs, small apartments, junker cars, and homework, or, in other terms: THE LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO ESCAPE. So, wrapping back around to Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality falls around the middle of the Real-Virtual spectrum. The concept of Augmented reality is to put a layer in between the real world and the senses of the user. This has been around for a while in some form or another, of course. Ever since smart phones have had cameras, there have been apps that use the live camera feed and add different elements to the image. I had a game for a while where you were a gunner shooting down TIE fighters. As you moved the phone around, you could see various TIE fighters flying around in your very own sky and you were supposed to shoot them down. Simple, of course, but neat. Most games take you into a different world, but Augmented Reality brings a different world to you.
The problem with the cell phone-based AR is that it isn't very immersive. (Immersion really is going to be a buzzword for this topic, since that's been the goal of video games for the last decade or two). So, what do you do? How do you make augmented reality better? Vuzix has had different video eyewear, including "see-through" video eyewear for a couple of years now. The issue is that it's basically still the same concept as the smartphone: a screen depicts the camera view and a program adds elements to the image. Vuzix's stuff is neat, but most people don't really want to walk around with what looks like a slimmed-down pair of nightvision goggles on their face, looking at the world through a camera. Enter Google's project Glass. Glass is trying to be the augmented reality that doesn't block your reality, and they're appealing to a wide market. Their product is really similar to a bluetooth headset: basically it's trying to be an unobtrusive way of providing hands-free access to functions currently offered by your cell phone. Where bluetooth headsets only really offered you a hands-free calling, Glass is trying to provide hands-free picture-taking, video-recording, information-gathering, and video-chatting, among other hyphenated actions. The issue is that Glass is little more than a corner-of-your eye HUD. Basically it sits really close to reality on the real-virtual spectrum. The position of the screen doesn't allow glass to do much to augment your entire reality; rather it tries to provide useful information and features more conveniently than pulling out your smartphone. In a nutshell: NOT IMMERSIVE. Neat idea, to be sure, but NOT IMMERSIVE.
I want immersive AR. I want to have every aspect of my real world augmented by a virtual one. I don't want a HUD in the corner of my eye. I want to see the virtual world intermingling with my real world. So, I did some searching. The first thing I found that looked incredible was a product produced by a company called Meta. Their AR glasses sounded like the exact thing I wanted. It uses tech based on the kinect sensor (their prototype legitimately had a kinect sensor mounted on top of it) and projects images to the screen of the glasses. Since it has a separate projector for each eye, it's capable of showing 3D images out in the space of the real world. The kinect-like sensors allow you to interact with this virtual world using hand and motion tracking. Supposedly, you can create and place virtual objects "in" the real world and the glasses would be able to track your motion relative to the fixed real-world point where the virtual object was placed. If that's a little confusing, imagine this: You design a virtual vase and place it on a real table. Then, as you walk around the table, changing your view angle, the vase stays put. You could decorate your whole house like this, but that's small potatoes. I'm imagining how you could use this for some sort of IRL combat situation. Imagine you and your friends out in a field somewhere with some sort of motion-sensing laser tag-esque weapons. The glasses are projecting virtual enemy combatants running along the surface of the real world, hiding behind real trees and walls and rocks, pathing around real objects. You throw a virtual grenade that bounces off of real world objects and explodes, sending out virtual shrapnel that interacts with both virtual and real components of the game.
That sounds pretty incredible, right? One issue: the Spaceglasses, as the website is called, have to be tethered to a computer, and probably one with some relatively serious processing power. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to strap on your back when you're running around. Obviously, at the rate tech is progressing, computers will get smaller and more portable, and maybe, if we're real lucky and all eat our wheaties and obey our parents and look both ways before crossing the street, batteries will get better too!
So, really disappointed with Project Glass and slightly disappointed with Meta's spaceglasses, I kept my eyes open for new stuff. And then I found something: Lumus. Unlike Meta, Lumus is a company that's been around for over a decade, and they started the company with the invention of their optical tech: see-through lenses that reflect the image from a projector to the side of the glasses. Now, the Lumus products are actually somewhere between Glass and Spaceglasses, in the fact that they do a full-lens projection like Spaceglasses, but they have less sensors and are designed to work more like Glass. The reason they excite me, however, is because they have OEM projectors and lenses that could be incorporated into a more comprehensive product. You add a couple of cameras to those bad boys and you have everything you need for a fully-immersive augmented reality world.
Imagine walking through the real world, except with Pokemon everywhere! Imagine strolling through the park when a velociraptor runs by and a pteredon swoops overhead. Imagine having a virtual companion that can accompany you wherever you go and can take whatever form you desire. Want a pet dragon? Or a Wookiee sidekick? Want to see flying cars and 30 moons in the sky? Those are just the nifty possibilities, the games and the world-mods that are possible. But imagine the way it'd change other things. Imagine having directions to your next destination projected in the space ahead of you. Imagine getting separated from your family at a theme park and being able to look around for a big floating "they are here" arrow. Imagine travelling to a foreign country and having written and spoken words translated for you. What about being able to type on a virtual keyboard, or eschewing the keyboard altogether and having a giant, interactive computer projected into the world around you? What if you could have notifications at the edge of your vision, or teleconference with a 3D projected image of your friend or business partner? What about looking around while you drive and seeing signs for various businesses and points of interest? Would you like to have the game running in the corner of your vision, alerting you to every fantastic moment, even though you're away from your PC or TV?
Every time we've found a new way to interface with computers it has revolutionized the way we use computers. Punch cards meant computers were only good for math-like calculations. You couldn't really play games or design things in 3D. As we progressed to monitor and keyboard interfaces we began developing text-based interactions and simple graphical interactions. Then the mouse was invented and graphical operating systems. Laptops and smartphones changed the way we use computers even more. Now the next real leap is going to be wearable computers, augmenting our reality with virtual elements. Even for the non-gamer, this is going to be big. I'm an engineer, and I know that having a part that I can "see" in the real world would rapidly change how I do my job. Having a part that I can manipulate in 3D space and get a proper feel for its size and proportions without having to have it prototyped would be incredible. Being able to build assemblies and manipulate them by hand the way they'll be manipulated once realized physically would save me a lot of time. Plus, it'd be super cool.
These are exciting times in which we live. I suppose technophiles like me would feel that way regardless of the era, but for some reason I think I'd be more excited about Augmented Reality than about the three-field system. But I guess we'll never know.
Generic money rant
Ugh. I am so sick of money issues. I really am. This week alone we were hit with over $100 in overdraft fees, despite my bank's assurance that I had opted out of overdraft coverage. Of course, as it turns out, that's only overdraft coverage on purchases with the debit card or cash withdrawals from an ATM, so all the bills and the like that keep going through before I'd like keep pulling us under, and every time there's a $36 charge.
I tried looking up ways to make quick money, but all the freelance writing jobs are offering a dollar or less per article and I really hate having my blood drawn. Small, deep veins, you know? Makes it tough.
So here I am, writing a blog post. Maybe I should just try for a really fun blog. Something that will draw people in and generate ad revenue. I need a topic.
Well, I'm not really in a position to review videogames, since I refuse to shell out the money for new games unless the price is around $5 or less, and if I review the games I have played, I'll be kinda behind the curve.
I'm also not really set up to review music. I like what I like, and most of what I like is older and definitely not as mainstream as I would assume is required for traffic-generation.
I could just do a kinda "news of the moment" thing where I comment on some new thing that I read about. I enjoy doing that. Maybe I'll do that.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Parking job
Ugh. I hate people. I think I've made that obvious, but I really hate people. This guy just pulled into the parking lot in his weird H3 knockoff, started looking like he was going to park in the same spot as my car, theb started backing into another spot behind him. I thought this was a little weird at first, but then I realized he was making a 3 point turn to go back the way he came. The real issue here is the fact that there was a COMPLETELY OPEN SECTION OF THE PARKING LOT NOT 20 FEET FURTHER DOWN THE WAY! Why would you ever pull your car close to other cars when the obvious owners are mere meters away when you could have driven a bit further and made a single point u-turn? What a maroon!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Musings
Turns out it is a LOT easier to write on my phone when I use the blogger app instead of the mobile website. Who knew? I think some of the reason I feel so much anger is because I'm tired and forced to spend time in locations where I don't have access to things I want to do. For example, right now I'm working on a design for a ship. I can see a lot of it in my head, but I can't really draw it, especially at isometric angles. I really want to fire up Creo and start making the model, but I can't because I'm in class and not at my computer. This, of course, makes me feel more antsy and less tolerant of my continued presence in this class than normal. I really need to get my tablet fixed so I can at least browse the internet a bit better. Even that is less than satisfying when it comes to these sorts of feelings, but at least it'd be something, right?
mean thoughts 11/12
I figured any time I feel like saying something mean or writing it on someone's post, I'll put it here, instead. A Mormon facebook page posted something about agape love, saying it was Greek and it meant unconditional love. What I WANTED to write was "The Greeks also believed that only 2 men could have Agape love and that love between a man and a woman could never be more than Eros, or erotic love." I figured that might throw a wrench in their effort to promote good values and all it really does is make it look like I'm posting to show how smart I am. And, while that may be the case, I didn't post it because I know what they're trying to accomplish, and I don't want to get in the way of that.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Mean thoughts
Sometimes I can barely suppress the urge to say the things I want to say about the idiots I run into out in both the real world and the virtual one. For example, someone posted today (Veteran's Day) "Just took a vet out for breakfast. What did you do today" or something to that effect. What I WANTED to write was "Well, I didn't falsehumblepost (it's a word now) on Facebook about how great a person I am and inviting other people to compare their lesser greatness to mine." What I DID write was nothing. Just saw some other individual post just the one word: "Miserable" as his Facebook status. What I WANTED to write was "NO ONE CARES!" What I DID write was nothing. I try really hard not to be a mean person. Well, sorta hard. It's really hard for me to NOT be mean sometimes. But sometimes I slip a bit. Today on a forum about development ideas for a game I like, someone posted something that was kinda relevant to the current thread, but wasn't a development idea at all. What I STARTED to write was something like "We're trying to have a discussion about the future of this game, not your mediocre ideas about how we can work around the current limitations of the game." What I DID write was a bit more subtle. I merely pointed out that his idea was interesting for the current limitations of the game, but that integrating something similar into the game would be a good way to go. See, I actually do control myself most of the time. But it's difficult. Really difficult.
Today my Capstone project group members scheduled a meeting for the big chunk of time in the middle of the day, the same chunk that I have repeatedly mentioned is the time when I have to be at work. Apparently none of the rest of them had to work today (Veteran's Day, remember) and so doing the meeting earlier in the day was more convenient or whatever. Meanwhile, I'm feeling more and more the outsider as they continue to schedule meetings for times when I'm not available, which means the project moves forward without me. I'm not really complaining, mind you, just nervous about my grade. I've already missed out on the meetings with the writing guy that we're supposed to have, and the syllabus is unclear whether that's recorded individually or as a group. The group is meeting with the professor on Thursday, once again in the middle of my work schedule, so that's also great. I really hope I'm not required to be at that meeting, but I fear that I actually am supposed to be there. I emailed my professor, of course, but I have yet to hear back from him.
I want to take these people and yell at them. I'm really not TRYING to be difficult with the whole "having to work to support my wife and 1.5 chillens" thing. No, I don't really want to be part of this group working on this project, but I'm willing to do my part, IF the rest of the guys are willing to work with my schedule, which they don't seem to be.
Oh, another instance of me being a lot nicer than the thoughts in my head: Right as I arrived at work, as I was on the way up the stairs, I was stopped by a certain co-worker that I just CANNOT stand. He had a request for a project that REALLY shouldn't be my responsibility, since it's a programming thing and I'm not really a programmer, I just play one on TV, you know? But because I'm the only guy in the company, apparently, who can program in VBA, I get to do the work for a bunch of departments to which I don't even belong. That's what I get for being curious about something new and teaching myself how to do it. But I digress. Anyway, as I'm talking to him I WANT to say "No, I don't want to be responsible for that anymore, it really should be sent over to IT or teach one of YOUR engineers/interns how to deal with this crap." But instead I find myself saying "Yeah, probably, I might have time, etc." In times like this I think I really should tell them to turn it over to someone else, but I just can't, you know?
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