DZ-Jay

Great job, guys! I'm still watching the video, but I am very excited over this -- it's something I've been dreaming to find out more about for ages. So thanks for doing it. One thing, though... I was a bit surprised to see my avatar printed on a sheet of paper. What's that for? Just keep in mind that it is intellectual property too, not a generic freely available image.

LOL! I see what you did there...

Oh, you two, get a room!

You mean, like North Carolina?

You releasing games. It needs to stop.

I screwed up. Not majorly, but I made a mistake in my story and painted myself in a corner. Darn. You see (well, I guess "I" see, for I don't expect anybody else to be reading this blog. I do read it, so I'm just talking to the other "me" who's going to re-read this one later). Anyway, where was I ... Oh yeah ... You see (tsk! tsk! tsk!), Carol found herself in the Candy Cove -- the last cave explored by the guy who made the map. He left it incomplete, and it's up to Carol herself to learn new details of it. One such details (and a rather important one at that), is that the cave has a tunnel connecting it to two other chambers. These two chambers are brand new to us all; they are not on the map, for nobody has charted them ever (well, perhaps the Ghost of Christmas Presents, who lives there). The Candy Cove cavern is laid out like a snowflake: with a hub in the center, and six prongs stemming from it, each ending in a small room. Oh, and it's full of candy, hence the name. It turns out that one of those prongs does not end in a cul-de-sac as her unfinished map shows, but actually has an extended tunnel that leads to the next chamber to the east. The plan was for Carol to discover this new tunnel while looking around and continue on her adventure. It looks like this: So, I came up with a clever device: while she's searching each individual room, when she came to this special one, she would notice a draft blowing her hair or something. She would then examine the walls and find a crack, large enough for her to slip through, et voilà: Carol now has a new area to explore. Except that I let the "writing me" alone on the computer for a brief moment and he wrote that Carol searched the entire cavern for presents. DOH! Sure, I could excise that paragraph completely and re-write it. I tried, but the problem is that I like how it reads right now. To make matters worse, that special chamber with the new tunnel is not the first nor the last one. It's right in the middle. That means that either I figure out how to express Carol searching each tunnel randomly for that one to just happen to be last by pure chance, which sounds awkward; or any organized search clockwise or counterclockwise will have to be interrupted in the middle, which breaks the flow of the passage above. Darn. So, I decided to keep it as is: Carol already finished searching the tunnels, found all the presents and ate more candy -- but she didn't find the hidden tunnel. How do I solve this? I came up with an idea which I think works, although seems a bit convenient: Yes, Carol just does a last minute check for presents and -- oh, look at that, there's a hidden tunnel in there! Let's explore it. It'll have to do, at least for the moment. Anyway, she'll find the tunnel which will lead her to the Snowflake Garden. This is the first time that Carol comes across the magical snowflakes that Santa warned her about. I don't know what I'm going to do with those yet; I have some ideas, but nothing concrete. In the game, they are just power-pellets, like in Pac-Man; but in this story, I think they need a bit more character. I'll come up with something. On to continue Chapter 8, which according to my outline, puts me three chapters before the conclusion. Not bad. I think I'll make it on time. Well, that's it. Going back to writing now. See ya'! -dZ.

He only uses that on formal occasions.

I am in the process of releasing the latest SDK, it should be out by next week. It will have the latest IntyBASIC compiler as well and many updates. -dZ.

Tolkien?

I understand, but I would imagine he would have been kicked out by now. Notice that this drama went from outrage to "well, he re-wrote it, so it's fine now." Some have even suggested in the last couple of weeks to re-allow Dinoy back to the forum because ... "it was all a misunderstanding." Apparently, most people don't care, and it seems that includes the moderators. Oh well. -dZ.

I hear you, and I agree, but that's probably not what is going to happen. Most people will just ignore the whole drama. The most you'll get is a few people agreeing publicly -- some of which will then go and purchase the game secretly when it comes out. -dZ.

*sigh* It doesn't really matter. This game will be released, either here or outside, and people will buy it at whatever cost, at least some -- even if they do it quietly. It'll then show up on e-Bay several months later at an even higher price. Oh well. -dZ.

There is not a line of text on the above that was not typed by me.

I know it's been quiet around here in the past couple of days. You (if anybody other than myself) may think that I gave up on the blog or something like that, but nope. What happened was the best possible thing for such a procrastinator like myself: I worked on the Christmas Carol story. That's right! While trying to motivate myself to write another blog entry, my procrastinating mind conspired to find a distraction in order to avoid it -- and what did it find as the most appropriate distraction? Writing the story. Go figure. Yes, my mind is weird like that; but, hey! I let it get away with it. That's how I get most of my personal projects done. The rest I get done with deadlines, the procrastinator's most powerful secret weapon. There's no stronger motivator than an imminent deadline looming menacingly over your head. If you ever wonder how procrastinators get through college, survive at work, or participate in hobbies, it's deadlines. Have you seen the pilot of the old "Incredible Hulk" TV series, where Bruce Banner cuts his hand with a tire iron, which causes his gamma ray-mutated cells to trigger a "Hulk" transformation, and he ends up lifting the car with his bare hands? Well, that's sort of what a deadline does for the procrastinator -- except that instead of gamma rays running through your veins, it's panic; and instead of turning green and muscular, you just somehow get a super-human sense of focus and motivation to figure out a way to weasel out of the task. This sense intensifies the closer to the deadline you get, with the focus becoming so acute and the motivation so strong, that you will move Heaven and Earth to find a solution, including (and this is the best part) actually doing the task you've avoided for the past several days, weeks, months, or years. And you'll do it at the last possible moment, while marinating in the great guilt and agonizing anguish that comes with leaving things to the last minute. Don't laugh. I published an Intellivision game, completed multiple projects, and have actually been promoted -- twice -- at my job for (get this) exceptionally high performance. Suckers! If they only knew. Anyway. That's a bit of an exaggeration. I'd like to think I am very productive at the office. It's not like I just goof off and surf the Web. I actually fill my time with tasks from our own team backlog, so in the end, I end up procrastinating by doing more work than I needed to. That's kind of sad. But, hey! promotion. Alright, that's enough procrastination about procrastination. Back to work -- er... on the story. Until next time. See ya'! -dZ.

My name is DZ-Jay, and I approve of that message.

There are just too many people in this community. I would like to go back to the days when it was all wheat fields and tumbleweeds around here.

You will need one. How else do you plan to shuffle the cards?

Maybe, but just until about a year ago, we tended to joke that all we needed to do to make money out of the collectors was to put a rock inside an empty box and seal it, and they would never know the difference. It turned out that we don't need the rock nor the shrink-wrap. Heck, we don't even need the game depicted on the box to be real! -dZ.

An unsustainable business model... Like the selling of empty boxes for games that never existed?

The spike in 2012 was mostly due to re-releases and the release of Mattel unreleased ROMs. In reality, there were like a handful of newly developed games that year, just like before and after, until 2014.. dZ.

Personally, I think it is good for the community. The tools are more mature, the resources available to programmers a more accessible, the market has expanded, etc. This are all good things. That said, you have to take the good with the bad. Increased productivity and a larger pool of programmers means that there will be wide variances in the quality of games and production values. Such is life. Do we really want to return to the days when each game required 5 to 10 years of gestation and an almost superhuman ability from programmers to figure out the intricacies and complexities of the hardware and tools, with primitive resources and very little chance to transport knowledge and experience? I don't. dZ.

Carol just discovered the Candy Cove, the last cave on her map, left incomplete and unnamed by the original cartographer when he was scared out of his wits by the Ghost Of Christmas Presents. It's the last cave on the map she has right now, but not the last cave in the Ice Cube Cavern system. Before the end of the story, she would have discovered two additional major chambers. Being a sweet elf from the North Pole, Carol's language is full of idiosyncratic idioms to describe alarm and excitement. For instance, when she is very excited, she will say "sweet candy canes!" She also uses "prancing reindeers!" as an exclamation. When she's annoyed, she says "licorice sticks!" And today I learned she also has an "F" word. Just like we use the "F" word to spice up some other idiom like, "oh my f-- god!" or "holy f-- sh*t!"; Carol does the same with her "F" word. It's not intended to be an insult nor an obscene expletive, more like a superlative modifier. Yup, her "F" word is "Frosted." My wife thought of it, and I think it's just so very fitting. As a matter of fact, my wife also came up with "sweet candy canes!" as Carol's version of "OMG!" and I think it's the cutest, sweetest little phrase, just perfect for Carol Greenleaf. Well, that's it for now. Carol just discovered the Ghost Of Christmas Presents' secret stash of Halloween candy and she's about to pig out on bon-bons and candy canes. I can't wait to see what happens next! Until next time. See ya'! -dZ. P.S. Back at the end of part VIII, I suggested that perhaps the "story-writing me" would fill the Candy Cove with licorice sticks or lemon drops instead of bon-bons like in the game. Well, I was wrong. Turns out it's packed with candy canes! Who knew that those were Carol's favorite treat!

A small leap for elfkind.