HereComesTom

According the the banner, I'm lively!

Wow.  I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing New Horizons, and I found this:

I don't have this villager, but the animation and music are impressive!

I've essentially joined the furry fandom at this point; it was shorts by Starberry and SaySupShelley and Twinleaf that got me interested, and the joy of making something with my own hands got me to the point where I want to make a frog headpiece with animatronics and a noisemaker.

But I had an interesting experience these past few days---it's essentially all transpired as ideas in my head so far, but my story might be worth a chuckle---or at least make you think:

Day 1:  I think "Hey, games are art, and Starberry likes fanart, and my Weather Factory Meltdown fangame's level editor lets you make custom playable characters that look like whatever you want, so why don't I make a fangame with Starberry's cat/fox hybrid fursona as the playable character, and submit that as fanart?!"

Day 2:  Deep worldbuilding and lore, each witch-guild has an elemental affinity to earth, water, air, or fire, and each of those elements has a secondary element to go with it:  earth/nature, water/ice, air/lightning, fire/light.  Metrovania aspects of the game are starting to come together, alliterative level names, plot taking shape in my mind, additional features I'll need to add to my game engine to make it all work...

Day 3:  ...Now...where WAS that line in between being an admiring fan and a disturbing stan?  Did I...cross it?  Oh well:  dreaming up all these ideas for the game is SO much fun; I don't want to stop now!  If I'm crossing that line, I'ma do it with STYLE, baby!

Day 5:  Wait a minute---if I actually get Starberry's permission, then I can stay on the "admiring fan" side of that line while doing all this!!

Day 7:  Uh...should I be disturbed that it took me THAT long to think of something as obvious as asking permission first?  Am I a creep?

Day 8:  Spoke to a friend about all this, and she was just disturbed by this whole thing.  So yes, I'm a creep, all right.  Albeit one obsessed with worldbuilding and metrovanias.  And as it turns out, the more style you have when you cross the line from admiring fan to disturbing stan, the more disturbing you are when you cross that line:  this is not something to be proud of! 

...This realization is NOT my finest moment...

Man...you save a lot of money living with your parents after you get out of college and get a job, but there's a downside: your brain gets into this "I'm a kid again" mode. Then when you move out...if you have an anxiety disorder like me, it's depression and anxiety for you!

Welp, tomorrow is the Whinny City Pony Con...and it's going to be online.  Who knows what that'll look like?  I'd hoped to get a chance to promote my fangame---not even just as a fangame, but as an editor that lets others create their own fangames!

I wonder if I'll still get a chance to do that with the online convention...?

I just watched the Uprooted episode...it almost felt like it was the writers assuring us that, even if FiM is over, it still lives on in our hearts.  I know it lives on in mine!

But there's more---it'll live on in a new form, just like the Tree of Harmony does.  I hope it's a good form!

I think I might need to log into Facebook so I can see Facebook Marketplace.

I took a long hiatus because it was...well, so political.  But looking at some of the deals on the marketplace for arcade1up stuff...it's the best source for cabinets at reasonable prices, I think!  I hope to get my hands on a cabinet that either is empty, or that is very cheap and only has games that I already own, so I can take the guts out of it and do a custom project with it.

Well, the Whinny City con got postponed a few months...I was really rushing to get everything ready to head to Chicago, too.

On the plus side, I was able to cancel my old hotel reservation and get a better reservation at a cheaper rate at the same hotel where they're hosting it!  This coronavirus scare has a few upsides, I suppose!  I shouldn't say that; it'll jinx it!

/sigh...

So far, my FangameFactory hasn't gotten much exposure at all at this online convention...I need to pick the right times to be in the hotdog-stand and pizza-joint chatrooms...!

Well, looks like Twilight got fat in one Pony Life episode.  Reminds me of an item from the Grand List of Things Hasbro Won't Let a Brony Do in a Fangame:

238) First of all, Twilight is not allowed to get fat, even if she did in the very first episode of the cartoon.  Secondly, even if she did get fat, that would not be a reason to replace the trumpets that announce her arrival with tubas!

Merry Christmas to all!

Gate's open!  68LT0

THE GRAND LIST OF THINGS HASBRO WON'T LET A BRONY DO IN A FANGAME:

1)  When naming OCs for the Canterlot Royal Guard, the following names are off-limits:  Cannon Fodder, Red Shirt, Brown Pants.

2)  Adding random tie-ins with other Hasbro franchises like Mr. Potato Head are okay.  Making a GLaDOS Mr. Potato Head as a boss is not, until and unless Hasbro secures the rights for a GLaDOS Mr. Potato Head toy.

3)  Pinkie-Swears aren't the kind of things I should need to bleep over.

I'm getting over feeling pretty shaken up. I love this site called tvtropes.org, but it's got a liberal slant, and someone posted something that looked like hate-speech aimed at Christians on it. The moderators put up a decent argument that it wasn't, but their reception of my formal complaint was otherwise less than warm...

Wow...for the first time in weeks, I had no notifications. I doubt that'll last very long...

Aaaaaand iTunes doesn't have the finale yet---it looks like it won't be available until tomorrow; it's Sundays that I get notifications that a new episode is available :/

Know what's getting under my skin these days?  It's the talk about racism---and not what I'm hearing, but what I'm NOT hearing.

See, different cities can have very different race relations:  in one city, racism can be a huge problem, while in another city, racism isn't an issue at all and people are generally treated equally.

That means that you can't make blanket statements about racism...but people are making blanket statements about it, anyway!

Well, I just submitted my seven thank-you videos to Spike and the Main Six.  But I forgot to check the "Permission to Use" checkbox for Rarity's video before I submitted it; I'd like to edit it and mark that checkbox so they have my permission to use it, but I don't see a way to edit it.  I wonder if I should do the whole submission again...?  I'd feel like I'm spamming if I did, though.

Dang...hard to believe the series is over...and my fangame is probably still a couple of years away from being done!  All because I just HAD to have a level editor for it...

I don't quite consider it a failure; the level editor makes it versatile to the point where it can be used for other, non-MLP related stuff.  And even if it's after the series finale of G-4, that doesn't prevent other bronies from making fangames or other fan content---with or without my game.  Still, when I started, some part of me wanted to present it to Hasbro and get it approved...though I knew that'd be a long shot then, I know it's not even that now.

What's really got me cut up, though, is the sheer finality of this finale.  I kind of wish I had some IRL friends who're into FiM, as then I'd have someone to talk with about it.

Well, I'm exhausted!  My brother and I (with some help from our parents) moved all the big pieces of furniture from our apartment to the condo I bought!

I sure hope this condo starts feeling like home, soon!

Has anyone else seen 4everfreebony's latest piece?  It was gorgeous!

I rarely post in my feed, but I have a video that I made that I'd like to share---feel free to share it around; it's some really good news about G-5!

I've seen the finale and Jeric's/Say My Name's thank you video, and I've decided what I want to do:

My Weather Factory Meltdown game engine was always meant to be versatile and to give other users the ability to make their own games.  And IIRC, when Lauren Faust was first asked to create Friendship is Magic, she was actually approaching Hasbro about making a franchise out of her Galaxy Girls characters.

So...since my game is all about having a lot of characters in your party and letting them play off each others' strengths and cover each others' weaknesses, how would it be if I approached her with my game engine and let her use it to make a Galaxy Girls platform game?

It's not ready today:  I'm still in the middle of working on equipment, items, and playable character buffs.  And I need to add customizable enemy attacks (including debuffs for playable characters) and customizable playable character abilities (including debuffs for enemies) before it'll actually be useful for Lauren.  And...well, ideally I'd have a better items system and a shopping system in the game, as well.

But Lauren Faust gave us so much when she created these characters and the world they live in and the story they've been through; I'd like to give something back to her.

Wow.  I step away for a few days, and I have almost 80 notifications!  Was there an epic new episode while I wasn't paying attention?

You'd think that playing my own Java fangame while I'm updating my graphics driver would be a bad idea, but when it went into a kind of a safe-mode-esque state with lower resolution, it actually made the game feel a lot more retro! Plus it seemed to react instantly when the screen went black and I hit escape to pause it...