Coding Frustrations and Space Battles

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Coding can be an extraordinarily painful, irritating thorn in ones side sometimes. Tonight it feels as though my only consolation is that experienced coders go through the same thing, and my unfailing passion for technology.
I say this because the track parser I’ve been implementing into S Quad Racing is not turning out the way I want it to. Basically, the procedure I want the program to initiate when a player selects a track is as follows:

  • Open the file that corresponds to the track that was selected. For example, if the player chose Beginner, the game would load tracks\Beginner.track into memory.
  • Read through the text of the file. It would then:
    -set the track size as determined in the file.
    -set spawning of obstacles properties such as how fast they would appear, and the maximum number that was allowed.
    -Finally, the turns and straight sections would be generated, laying out the track structure.

  • After all of this, the idea is that players would start the game, and be placed on the track that they selected, exactly as it was structured.

However, as is the main focus of my frustration, I’m encountering some major mishaps. On the first three or four compilation trials, I couldn’t even get the game to load the track file. Rather, it would create a file called “0” with no file extension inside the tracks directory, and attempt to read from that instead. The result was a barren, completely straight track that, if raced upon, would likely last forever, as there were no defined finish line boundaries set. And though the player could move forward, the enemy could not. Instead, he would just sit there at the beginning of the lap, winning first and second place, thus eliminating the player’s chance of winning. šŸ˜›
After tweaking the code, and by that I mean changing two characters of it, I resolved this issue. However, I still cannot, get turns working, no matter what I try, and ever since I implemented this system, obstacles refuse to spawn.
Though it might seem almost hopeless, there is some good news. As has already been mentioned, God has given me the blessing of having a best friend who is quite efficient when it comes to audio game coding. In the coming days, I will be examining the code for his snowboard racing game. Hopefully, this will help me come up with a working solution to this issue.
Once this blows over, I will look into adding more environmental features such as rain pockets, road hazards, power ups, wall sections, and perhaps some more turn types. Stay tuned!
In other news, I’ve had a rather active week on Death Match a New Beginning, engaging in some intents battles with pirate ships of various hull strengths, one of which rendered my ship useless for 35 hours. Since I spawned all of the enemies I fought this week, I was able to give them creative names. Vladdiator, Chad Dungie, and Virwag14 were just some of the names I came up with, the latter being the most recent battle I was involved in.
In fact, after Virwag14 was destroyed, I founded a colony in its honor. But the twisted thing is, I docked the very ship that was used to kill Virwag14 the ship, on the barren grasslands of Virwag14 the planet. šŸ™‚
That concludes the posting for tonight. The next time you will be hearing from me is on Podcast Episode 34, when I will be performing a bounty mission on Death Match. and once again, Danny will most certainly be there!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Life and technology updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Disregarding the poem I wrote on Monday, it’s been roughly 10 days since my last blog update. And during those 10 days, there have been multiple blog worthy events.
To start off, Danny has decided to take a break from administrating Death Match: a New Beginning, (the game demonstrated in podcast episode 32). As a result, He placed me in charge as main admin, a position I’ve held for four days now.
Secondly, I was also promoted to administrator position on Survive the Wild, a realistic wilderness survival game developed by Sam Tupy, and featured on this week’s pod cast episode.
Funny thing is, I’d gone from having zero experience running an online game, to being co administrator on one, and main administrator on another, in the span of 30 minutes.
In other news, I once again opened up the S Quad Racing code, something I haven’t done in three weeks as a result of an extended break I took to prevent from pushing and burning myself out on coding it. Rather than doing the wise thing and check where I left off in the change logs, I instead decided to begin implementing track creation.
Track creation is quite simple. For the time being, it is possible to edit tracks within text files, and they use an extremely simplified language; one so simple, in fact, that some one who knows little about computers can create their own tracks. To make matters even less complicated, I plan to include a track builder that will make it so that one need not type out tracks by hand. This is not due to the complexity of the track language itself. Rather, I’ve learned the hard way that the procedure of track creation can get very repetitive when typing it out.
The following is just a little example of how a track should be built. track size is the length of each lap, spawn is how fast obstacles, and max obstacles is the maximum number of obstacles that are allowed.

Excerpt from beginner track

This will create a 400 square long track segment, with two left turns, two right turns, and one right turn. Notice how each track part has two lines–a start, and end. These are to insure that the parts of the track keep within their boundaries.

track size 2000
maximum obstacles 50
spawn 10000
straight start 0
straight end 150
left start 151
left end 170
straight start 171
straight end 280
left start 281
left end 300
straight start 301
straight end 370
right start 371
right end 400

At the time of this writing, this system has not been propperly tested, in fact I have not compiled a version of the code with this system implemented at all. So as you can gather, this is just about as stable right now as a rotting wooden fense in a hurricane. However, I’ll update on the progress, and resume production of audio demos should any changes be made to game play.
On a final note, Choir UIL was last Wednesday. We made mostly all ones, except for one little two, but even that still averages to one. So while I didn’t like having to get up early and go to school and sing at such an early hour, I dare say it paid off in the end.
That is the end of this post. I’ll blog again later this week. Enjoy this week’s Survive the Wild pod cast, (episode 33), and be looking for Episode 34 next week when I’ll be demonstrating bounty missions on death match if my ship, Lightstar, manages to survive that long.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

A Great Week of Bringing Poems to Life and Other Things

Hey guys,
Steve here.
You’re not going to believe this! It turns out that “Flamity Flame the Lame Audio Game,” the poem I wrote and published on last Wednesday’s blog post, has become…exactly what it talks about–an audio game!
Though I’ve indeed brought this game to reality, it is a twisted one; the audio game is not exactly as it was depicted in the poem. Nonetheless, I tried to structure it around most of the rules outlined therein, so that the result was mostly as expected: You are placed on a game board, James is there as well, he does not make a sound, and you must kill him.
However, I strayed a bit from the main idea. James is able to shoot back, if you give him time to anyway. When you square up with him, he is raising up his gun, and you’d better fire like crazy before he has time to. However, if you’re too slow to fire enough shots to take him down, as is likely to be the case, it will be necessary to step to the left or right one time to get out of the line of fire, and take a small 5 second break or so, before moving back to where James is and proceeding to blast him to oblivion. This system helps to test one’s quick thinking and reflexive skills, while also laying the foundations for an action packed, quick paced arcade style shooter game, something that was definitely not described in the poem.
Secondly, rather than killing James once, there are five levels; James has five lives; four less than your average cat, four greater than your average James. In each of these unfortunate, short lives, James’s is more angry than in previous ones. Proceeding the burning out of one of James’s lives, you will advance a level, and hear a threat. As you achieve higher levels, you will notice that these comments grow more angry and bloodthirsty. This is only the precursor to a level filled with faster shots from James that could easily slice off a significant chunk of health, and result in your quick and almost, and I emphasize almost, painless death.
There is some good news for you, though. Unlike poor old, slow, angry James who cannot actually walk, You can move away from him safely and confide in the fact that he won’t follow. Also, though your health does not reset following the start of a new level, you’ll notice that it takes less shots to kill James in the higher levels; though the main goal in those levels is still to kill James, the underlying goal is to time your attacks so that James doesn’t have time to shoot back, a task that can be quite daunting.
Another perk is that unlike James, the firing time limit on your gun is not directly set in the game; this means that you will be able to fire as fast as you can press the space bar. So while the game gets increasingly challenging, there are several constant factors that place the game mostly in your favor.
For the first time, I actually have a reward for those of you who just read that–a download link! Since Flamity Flame was such a small project, it is already released, and can be Downloaded from this link.
In the package, I’ve included both a documentation, and an audio strategy demo, and I recommend that you have a look at both.
Moving away from Flamity flame, I suppose I’ll include a short update on my life, by that I mean a quick summary, since the previous part of this post went a lot longer than I intended it to.
My birthday went exactly as I thought it would. I overloaded on some great food, relaxed, and went to school, that list of events being in order from most to least important. The only unexpected occurrence, was that I bought a space upgrade for the blog, meaning that instead of having to upload pod casts and such to Drop Box, I can now upload those files to my blog, and have been in the process of doing so. Since I transferred pod casts first, both the feed and page work, though for those of you who are subscribed to the feed you might be asked to download all episodes again.
As for the weekend, there’s not much to say there. My sister and dad were out of town, so it was just me and my mom. I basically spent the weekend relaxing, eating junk food, and then Sunday we were at church all day. Also, I recorded a podcast on Death Match A New Beginning, and had the privilege of having Danny on the podcast over Skype. You should seriously listen to it.
That concludes this quite lengthy post. Enjoy the new little game, and Happy Flaming!
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

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 personā€™s life when one realizes that they
were not in fact made ā€œperfectā€; 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 ā€œnormalā€ 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 ā€œnormalā€, 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. šŸ˜€
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!

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. šŸ™‚
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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An Update

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I found this really cool, blind accessible Solitaire game for the IPhone. It’s $2.99 for the full version, but you will definitely get what you paid for. Here’s a very well done review of the game that I listened to, and if what I’ve already said about it won’t convince you to buy it, this surely will: http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/blindfold-solitaire-audio-version-classic-card-game.
Speaking of games, I’m happy to say that I’m making a lot of progress on the racing game that I’ve been developing. It’s only been 10 days, and the player interface is complete. I performed several rounds of testing earlier to day and can’t seem to detect any bugs so far, so if any do exist they’ll likely be found once I create some opponents to race against.
Speaking of which, I’ve coded the structure for the opponents thus far, but as of yet haven’t done anything with it, and don’t think I will until tomorrow. The reason for this is that coding them will be far more complex than it was to program the player interface. The reasons for this are as follows:

  1. Unlike the player, the opponent can’t think about what decision it will make; if an obstacle appears in its path, it can’t decide it wants to move out of the way. While I could easily program it to automatically turn to avoid the obstacle, this would give it an unfair advantage over the player: one would be hard-pressed to win if the opponents that they raced against avoided every single obstacle while they hit at least one.
    Fortunately, I have an idea of how I could code the opponents’ intelligence in such a way that it’s not always perfect, though I’ll not say what it is until I’ve proven that it works.
  2. Player Interaction.
    In this game, I’d like it to be possible to slow ones opponents down temporarily by coming up behind them and bumping them. Of course, if an opponent were to intentionally bump into the player, I’d like it to have the same affect on him. In theory, coding this should be a piece of cake, but previous attempts to do similar things proved this to be falsehood. Nonetheless, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this can be accomplished.
  3. It will likely take a good chunk of time to program all necessary opponent actions. Despite the fact that I knew what I was doing and had very little trouble when coding the player interface, it still took a significant amount of experimentation and testing to get it fully operational. And now that I’m coding players that are out of my control during game play, it will be harder to notice smaller less significant bugs that occur.

Despite the challenges outlined above, I’m optimistic about this game. As I stated on the audiogames.net forum, I’m programming it because that is something I love to do, and I enjoy playing audio games very much.
For those of you who want to stay informed of how the development process is going, I recommend that you visit the S Quad Racing Game Page. It is where I post the daily change log, and weekly audio progress demos.
Off the topic of game creation, I had a great rest of my week. The snow storm that came in early Wednesday morning didn’t give us another day off of school, though I hardly expected it to. In fact, all of what actually fell as snow melted right after the event was finished; much of the precipitation was sleet and rain anyway.
Yesterday, though, was a completely different story. Temperatures, as they did on Monday, didn’t rise above freezing, and it snowed all day. I still had to go to school because the snow didn’t even start to fall until around 9 in the morning though. Today, while I’m sure the roads were quite treacherous, it didn’t affect me at all, that is to say, none of my plans were affected. I don’t think we’re done with winter weather yet; we could get some sleet on Wednesday. I wonder, will it actually happen?
Aside from what’s already been written here, there hasn’t been much else to talk about, though I got my 6-weeks report card and discovered that I made all A’s except for algebra, but I still made a B in that class.
Well, I’m signing off now. Have a good rest of your weekend, I’ll blog again some time next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Programming and Winter Storms

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Wow. A lot has happened in the last 4 days, as you can tell by reading the title of this post.
Yes, we got a direct hit from an ice storm. I’d known about this possible storm since about Thursday, but didn’t think it worth posting about as all other winter events that were possible this season missed us. This one, however, did the exact opposite.
As a result of the 1 and a half inch sleet accumulations we received this morning and a sustained temperature in the middle 20s, school was canceled today and will be tomorrow as well.
Though temperatures are expected to rise above freezing tomorrow afternoon, a second winter storm is possible tomorrow night, which could bring up to 3 inches of snow to the area. This one depends on some key factors, however, unlike the ice storm that just hit. for 1, the storm system that will be the catalyst for this second bout of precipitation must move directly over us in order for the precipitation to fall as wet snow. If it doesn’t, we could end up with just rain, or no precipitation at all. Secondly, the high temperatures on Wednesday will exceed 40, turning what accumulates in the morning into slush by the afternoon. Knowing Texas and it’s erratic weather patterns, though, this could very well change for better or worse.
In other news, I’ve once again had an active programming week. For now, I’ve set aside the word pad application that I was working on, as it is very low priority and has most of the features I was planning to implement. However, I have an actual audio game in the works now, something I’ve only attempted once before and discontinued due to lack of new ideas.
The current game I’m working on is a racing game. There’s nothing too special about it: turns, obstacles to make the game more challenging… that’s basically it. I’ve been building it for about 4 days now, and was only able to compile a half-working version tonight. Even still, this has a significant number of bugs, and lacks several features that are to be included in the actual release.
Since I’ve never worked on such a project before, the hardest part has been fine-tuning it: the opponents have to have just the right amount of speed, because we don’t want them to fall too far behind, but then again we don’t want them to go as fast as the player, as that could cause some problems, especially if obstacles are present on the map. In addition, I’m still experimenting with other things such as sound (panning, volume), initial placement of opponents, and track size.
At any rate, I’m making considerable progress on this game. It will definitely be addicting once I finish coding it.
That concludes this post. I’ll blog some time this weekend.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Site Updates and Exciting News

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Well the last few days were good, in contrast to the period of time before last weekā€™s post. Though itā€™s only been a few days and obviously not a whole lot of things has happened, Iā€™m posting this because I do have a few things to tell you aboutā€”and some of those are very important.
Well to start things off, Iā€™ll be going to D Now this weekend. It was a last minute dealā€”on Thursday, the friend I go with called me, and asked if I wanted to go this year. I think that things will be a bit different this year than they were in past years, but Iā€™ll let you know. At any rate, Iā€™m looking forward to D Now, and also to having next Monday off of school.
In other news, alter Aeon was a big part of my life for the past week. So far, Iā€™ve spent almost 12 hours total playing the game, but thatā€™s still not close to the 72 hours I accumulated on swamp during an 11 day period back in 2013 and early 2014. I have a good feeling that Iā€™ll be addicted to this game for quite a while, so expect to hear more about Alter Aeon in the future; thereā€™s so much to do, that I donā€™t think Iā€™ll ever run out of new places to explore, story to read, and monsters to fight.
As a result of this Alter Aeon, I havenā€™t read much, so Iā€™m still on Xenocide: Ender Wiggin #3. Nonetheless, I still read some, and have come to find that said book is highly philosophical. Itā€™s a great book, but the amount of philosophy, mainly regarding evolution, the beginning of civilization etc., makes my head spin.
Moving on, I did something I havenā€™t done in a long timeā€” changed up the site a little bit. Since I donā€™t create much in the way of software, but mostly create game books and swamp campaigns, I renamed the software page to computer creations. Of course, if I actually decide to create and publish some software, Iā€™ll put it there, but you can also find game books such as the Stranded series there, and swamp campaigns such as twisted egg hunt, sniping mania and some others.
As you know, Iā€™ve done quite a few podcasts, and 31 episodes of a podcast on one page is quite a bit. So, Iā€™ve decided to organize the podcasts by year of releaseā€”if you visit the podcasts page, youā€™ll see 3 optionsā€”podcasts from 2015, 2014, and 2013. I thought this organization would make it easier for you to find the episode of the cast that you want to listen to.
On a related note, Iā€™m finally back on schedule with the Steven D podcast. I didnā€™t release ep 31 last Sunday because I was feeling bad, and when I actually tried to record the podcast a few times last week, all attempts failed due to technological difficulties, so I decided to wait until yesterday to record it. At any rate, weā€™re back on schedule now, and if you like RS Games, or want to hear about it then stay in tune for next weekā€™s episode.
That concludes todayā€™s post. If anything interesting pops up this week, Iā€™ll blog on Friday, but otherwise expect another post sometime next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.