An Exciting Steve Day Celebration Post!

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Yes, I posted yesterday, and I know that I had decided upon a four to ten day blogging routine at the beginning of the year. However, it has become an unofficial tradition to post a little something on the night of my birthday. I don’t know why, but it’s happened every year. And don’t worry, you’re gonna love this one!

a little poem

I’ve been wanting to share this with you since I first came up with it on Saturday, but didn’t have enough time Yesterday morning to do so. So here it is. Notice the rhythm I use.
I remember the day,
when I dared to play,
an audio game,
that was very lame.
The audio game,
that was very lame,
that I dared to play,
had a stupid name.
The name of the game,
was Flamity Flame,
and Flamity Flame,
was such a horrible game.
Because in Flamity Flame,
The goal of the game,
was to attempt to kill,
a man known as James.
Now what made this game,
so very lame,
Is the fact that James,
had no sound at which to Aim.
And what kind of game,
that is audio by claim,
has a guy named James,
at whom you cannot Aim?
So to this day,
I don’t know who to blame,
but all I can say,
they made a terrible game!

a declaration of independence rendition for the blind

Note: this is a project my sister had to do for English class.
Also note: source of the end of it: the actual declaration. I put this so we don’t run into copyright issues. Again, the end of this declaration was copied from the origional.
There comes a time in every person’s life when one realizes that they
were not in fact made “perfect”; As we age we learn that we have to
figure this world out on our own. This is not to say that God is not
there to guide us, but we are limited by our fears and lack of
knowledge. And the situation is exacerbated when one has a disability.
One is forced to shape their life around their disability. They are
forced to live by different standards than the “normal” ones. And
while we learn to manage, there are still the harsh realities that
those with disabilities must face, that those without a disability do
not. To narrow it down, the blind are forced to learn to cope, and
navigate the world.
In reality, the blind are, at times, viewed as less than the
sighted. And because of this, certain rights are taken from us. The
right to be seen and not immediately judged, the right to be
considered “normal”, and the right to be treated with respect are only
a few of the rights taken away from us. On top of the rights denied to
us, we also face many struggles that could be easily resolved if only
the sighted tried.
Firstly, architects do not take the needs of the blind into
consideration. We are forced to navigate around poles and columns,
that not only confuse us, but are a serious hazard.
Secondly, Any sighted person with a knack for decorating, that seems
to believe that fake plants and glass vases and figurines make nice
decor, have no respect or consideration for the people who are not
able to see and therefor find these needless decorations as dangerous
and as an irritant.
And thirdly, manufacturers who do not braille their products, as most
manufacturers fail to do, have absolutely no respect for the blind,
and are only losing customers. If a blind person cannot read the
labels on a product, we will not buy it.
There is room for improvement in all of these matters. For centuries
we have fought for the rights and accommodations that we deserve, and
that the sighted have. And for centuries, these pleas have been
ignored, or viewed as unimportant. And, here, we are once again asking
the sighted community to simply take a step back and take us into
consideration. We have made compromises, and we have relented to
letting them get away with ignoring our natural rights as humans. Yet,
they have been deaf to our struggles and needs. We must, therefor,
continue to fight for what should already be ours. We will be heard.
We will not let this world turn against the blind community. We,
therefore, the Representatives of the blind community, Assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of
the blind populace, solemnly publish and declare, us, as, human
beings, are, and of Right ought to be respected and taken into
consideration; that we are Absolved from all unjust acts committed by
the sighted; and that as a respected and valued people, we are granted
the same rights and luxuries as the sighted; And for the support of
this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes
and our sacred Honor.

Finally, a good old set of updates!

My birthday was definitely great, despite it being a school day. I had plenty to eat, and an overall good day. There were even a few funny incidents:
So I was eating M&MS in Spanish class, because I was like “it’s my birthday so I’m gonna eat these, because the teacher won’t get on to me for it.” Anyways, someone saw me eating them, and asked for one.
“What do you say?” I asked them.
“May I please, have some M&MS?”
“no… that’s not right. Happy…”
“Happy birthday!”
Of course I gave her some, and then I guess more people in the class saw and heard that because the whole class started singing to me! Lol! And the bad thing is,
Oh yes the bad bad thing,
I only gave them to like 4 people. 😀
In all seriousness, though, I did have a wonderful blessed day. I hope you all did as well! Also, I got a space upgrade for the website, meaning no more Drop Box imposed space limits–We won’t have to deal with them for a long time! Currently, I’m in the process of transfering all files from dropbox to wordpress. I will let you know when I finish that.

a few notes

  • just in case you wanted to know, the last person I talked to before I turned 16 (3:01 PM) was god. The first people I talked to as a 16 year old were those on my facebook friends list!
  • My birthday falls on National Make Up Your Own Holiday Day! No, that’s not why I came up with Steve Eve and Steve Day, that was purely coincidental, which is why I’m telling you this in the first place.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I hope you all have a wonderful blessed day, and weekend. Come on, it’s my birthday! Just grant this wish for me!
Oh yes, and also, just this once, I ask that if you like this post, please follow my blog and share this to your social media. Also please hit the like button on this post. And be sure to tell all your friends and family about Steve Eve and Steve Day so they will be ready for it next year!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve, the man who made the awesome Steve Day and Steve Eve holidays happen!

Happy Steve Eve!

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Happy Steve Eve to you all! 🙂 For most of you, that name sounds familiar. But for those that haven’t been, enlightened, if you will, Steve Eve is the funny little name I came up with back in 2012 for the day before my birthday. The reason I even still remember that is the fact that this day actually causes more excitement than my birthday itself; mostly all of my friends and family that know about it aare “looking forward to steve eve.”
Anyways, with that aside, my party was on Saturday. It was pretty exciting. Basically, I had a mechanical bull, hamburgers, hotdogs, a lot, of cake, and the company of some great friends and family! Another cool thing is, that there had been a 70% chance of storms, but by the grace of god, there was no rain during the whole entire party! It only started raining as soon as we were all back inside the house!
Aside from the party I had a mostly pleasant week. Playing death match, (a more in depth review of the game will be coming in a future post), skyping my friends, counting down the days until my birthday, and going to school.
As for my actual birthday, that won’t be too exciting, as it is a school day. I’ll get to eat some very good food, though, and since my party was on Saturday, it’s all good.
Anyways, that’s about it for this post. Have a great steve eve!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve!

A Week of Progress

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I had a wonderful spring break. As my last post was published on Monday, most of you already know that I went to Winter Jam 2015 in Fort Worth, Texas. But that aside, the rest of my week, though not nearly as exciting, was still good. Besides coding on my proverbial racing game, I worked out mostly every day, Spent time with my friends, chilled a little, and did a bit of gaming.
Due to the situation with reality software that I wrote briefly about in a post a few weeks back, I’ve played little to no Death Match: A New Beginning since then. Recently, though, things have calmed down considerably, thus I started to play it again. Last week, Danny took me on a bounty mission which took a good chunk of time to complete but was worth it. I myself do not possess any ship(s) required to do such missions, but am gradually working my way up.
Off the topic of Death Match, more work has been done on my racing project. As per the programming aspect, I’ve slowed down a bit, but progress is still being made and, that being the case, I have some stuff to report.
First of all, as suggested by someone on my forum thread, I’ve added the ability to drive backwards. I will demonstrate this on Wednesday night’s demo.
Also, I’ve put in some more work on the stats system, fixing some nasty bugs and having to rework it a couple times. I designed it so that all player stats are stored in the character folder which is located in the s quad racing program directory, as it currently stands. However, before this is over, I’d like the data to be stored on a remote server, to prevent cheaters and other such pests from having access to easily changeable content.
Anyways, I’ve not yet added anything in the way of upgrades. For that matter, there’s still only one track in the game, but that is soon to be changed. I had quite a busy weekend, so didn’t have much of a chance to code, and I really didn’t code much today as I’ve been taking a little break.
Besides that, there’s not much else to report. I’ll blog you all later.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

An Update On Game Development and Other Things

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Over the last few days, I’ve done quite a bit of coding on the Racing project I’ve been working on. Now that I completed the basics such as driving and such, I was able to begin on some things that should make the game much more interesting. One such implementation is the opponents’ rather comical ability to “rage” at you while in the midst of a race. As it currently stands, opponents driving by you can: glare at you, yell at you, or honk. I plan to add more amusing possibilities, but the aforementioned were just tests to insure that the system was working.
Similarly, opponents can now crash into obstacles, but at the time of this writing there are still some major bugs to fix: instead of Enemies always dodging obstacles, they now crash into nearly every single one. The most probable cause for this issue is that I coded it so there was a 1 out of 6 chance that the opponent would hit an obstacle, which averages just over 8 obstacles per lap. Considering that an average player only hits 1 to 3 obstacles per lap, I’ve come to the conclusion that this must be reworked.
More importantly, I’m currently in the process of coding in a stat management system. It is now possible to earn money at the end of the race, and level up as well. A detailed summary of this can be found here.
At some point this week, I’ll begin to work on some more built in tracks. In these next tracks, I’ll be adding more items: walled navigation sections, and perhaps power ups. I already have a good idea of how I want to build track two, and very much look forward to playing it.
Aside from the racing game, my weekend was awesome! Yesterday, I took a break from my coding and relaxing to attend the 2015 Winter Jam concert with my church. It was a total blast, and I wish I’d gotten pictures or something. It was a whole bunch of worship, rock and roll, Gospel singers, and… Skillet! :))
Well, I guess that wraps up tonight’s post. Expect another one later this week, along with an audio progress demo of my Racing game. Also, though I might need some assistance, I need to come up with a name for the game, because “My Racing Game” just isn’t gonna cut it!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Spring Break?

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’m really confused. Here I am, a citizen of Texas, on the Thursday before spring break, out of school for a snow day. A quite large winter storm blasted us with around 5 inches of snow and ice last night, making this the 4th episode of winter weather in northern Texas since last Monday.
This time, however, I was not so unlucky as to be trapped in the house all day. In fact, despite the cancelation of school, my day started at 6 this morning, with a trip into the back yard to check out the left overs from last night’s storm. Against the common unwritten rules of being a teenager, I was neither tired or grumpy even though I went to bed just after two in the morning: these days, oh the few rare days when snow blankets the ground, are when “getting efficient rest” is the last thing on my to-do list. However, as I type this post, I reap the outcome of such a fun filled day of snow ball fights, sledding attempts, and no sleep.
Since the sun was out pretty much all day, most of that snow melted away, tipical for Texas. So, we’ll be going back to school tomorrow, but thankfully it’s only one day; next week is spring break, if you can call it that in light of recent weather patterns. 🙂
Moving on, I’ve officially entered week three of audio game development. Though it was very late last night, around midnight I think, I posted the audio demo for this week on the S Quad Racing Page. This reflects most of the changes I’ve talked about in the change log and blog post from the last week; the sound of the player’s car is noticeably quieter, the turning system far less flawed, and there are now opponents that can drive on the track as well, though that’s about all they can do.
As of yet I’ve not completed a fully functioning opponent intelligence. This is still being worked on, though, one step at a time. As I said in my last post, I began working on opponents on Sunday, and have only been making minor changes and additions since.
Moving on, my week has been relatively pieceful for the most part save the winter weather and asociated impacts. On a more negative note, amidst my normal routine of school, relaxing, gaming, programming, and reading, I was involved in a pressing matter that had to do with Reality Software, Danny’s game development company, for the first half of the week. Thankfully, it was finally resolved yesterday evening.
Aside from all of what’s been said, there’s not much to report, except that I’m really looking forward to this Spring break, regardless of what season and/or weather it happens to proceed.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. The following are pictures from the snow day.
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