Oh, Twin Peaks. I steal so many things from you.

Really having trouble with the inaccuracy of GML floating point nonsense.

Finally did some work on Cloud Cats again. Put the title screen in, and an “ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE TOO WEAK TO CONTINUE TO PLAY DOOM” screen.

Pause screen took a long time to put in, but I finally figured out how to deactivate instances without hanging the whole damn game.  Hooray, me.

WITH TETRIS.

SHE LIKES TO HIDE UNDER THE BLANKETS TO MAKE MY LIFE DIFFICULT.

WE LISTEN TO JOY DIVISION ALL DAY AND WE CRIED.

after spending WAY too much time tweaking a simple explosion and wondering how i was going to handle explosions in the game without totally aping cactus, i realized that i had already implemented the ideal explosion with sgt. barbery_wilkins. since sgt. barbery_wilkins emulates the qotile from yars’ revenge, i had thought it would be funny if he exploded like the qotile, too, so i made this:

and set it to a surface, tiled it, and stretched it to approximate the atari explosion, which looks like this:

(1:28)

it worked really well (you wouldn’t think so, to look at the neon hamburger i made), but i hadn’t thought about using it for much more than that, because it’s not practical to have every enemy blow up the whole screen. but! i realized now i could basically use the same object, except scale it into a horizontal beam that shoots out briefly after the nuke-type explosion finishes:

i’m excited to try it, but it is way too late right now.

these took awhile but i think they look nice.

two more ruins for the cloud stage:

i think one more ruin ought to do it, and then it’s on to the cloud friends. after the cloud friends, i believe i am done with assets for the cloud stage.

spent most of today putting the finishing touches on SIDEWALK FRINDZ, our first full-length. 28 minutes long! not much to show for two years of distracted, intermittent work. everything is done now except for the vocals and the live keyboard parts. and the book. and the center video. and the dioramas for that video. and the plush landscapes.

hhhhhhhh oh dears.

dubbing NERO’S DAY AT DISNEYLAND / ABIKU right now for heart gardens. going faster because it’s a shorter tape, which actually makes it more annoying to dub.

i’m trying not to think about all the plans i had for august releases.

nullsleep makes excellent dish-doing music! DISHES DOING.

had a nice time in port orchard today visiting the tiffany family. we played some bomberman and some tetris and ate crépes and i worked on LAZERCATZ VOL. 1 which felt good. it’s almost done and i might finish it tonight or i might do the WATCH A MOVIE which who knows?

i was mega productive at work tonight and relocated lots of things and signed up customers and made them feel EXCITED about renting movies which hardly ever happens; usually the unspoken conversation is:

“HELLO I JUST WANT THIS PAUL BLART I KNOW IT IS SHITTY.”

“YOU ARE ASS.”

“I WILL NOT BE BACK I WILL STEAL THIS.”

but tonight someone signed up so they could watch TWIN PEAKS! it was the best ever. i totally barfed david lynch love all over them but they seemed ok with it. also lots of people seem to be wanting to rent Big Man Japan. that is weird, guys. all the fighting is way good and the BIG BATTLE at the end is amazing, but most of those in-between conversations go nowhere. scott, i am sorry, but that is my true beliefs.

reminder to me that i need to take it home and tape the end. this is pirating.

speaking of!

i accidentally took the Mega Cartridge home with me which has tetris and bangai-o and lots of other good things on it. i felt mega-bad about this! i still do, obviously. i remembered about at this point:

which is to say, damns. i doomed tiffany to an evening only playing bomberman and not trying all the other weird games i want her to play, which is to say, i only hurt my selfish self.

tetris (cat version) has been extremely happy to see me and also very difficult to contain. she is determined to ruin all of the blinds in the house by charging in and out of them rapidly.

i ate too many of these:

but come on, that is the point of going to any gas station in portland, orchard.

YOU ARE NOT A GOOD CAR GUARDIAN.

went to see dimples at healthy times tonight. was bummed to miss the first two bands but that is called having to be at work to earn dollars. teen suicide was bizarro town. it was like a tiny little puke-baby of a play put on by juggalos who later decide to sing adorable glam anthems and there is a drum machine that is sort of just there; lots of costumes and props and no-tech lighting. so much glitter. it was thoroughly great. i didn’t take any pictures so i guess you’ll have to take my word for it. it was, though.

san francisco dimples were pretty alright. one of the teen suicide dudes pretty much precluded any audience dancing by dancing SO CRAZAR that after awhile my feeling was a little bit sad because it seemed like he was making a joke. when you see someone dance for every song like their arms are going to be rocketships for nickelodeon it is difficult to think they are actually enjoying themselves. he probably was, though. anyway, i like to see people go SO CRAZAR so the mixture of bummed feelings that i get when i see PHYSICAL SARCASM 2009 is mostly irrelevant. SF DIMPLES were fun. they did some ROCK SONGS and some BORED SONGS and they all had great hair and pretty good clothes. THAT IS WHAT IS IMPORTANT. no pictures.

seattle dimples went last which i think was partially to their chagrin. 1/2 of dimples did some twee guitar-ing and then nervoused into the microphone a bunch and then there was some tuning. it was to no avail, however, as the band fails spectacularly to be anything other than awesome pogo times for your heart. i did some grins and i snapped this grimy photo with my phone, which made me feel like i was LIKE SEVENTEEN AGAIN:

their set was the perfect amount, just slightly too short. they somehow play like being rock and roll without making me want to hide. this music is the music of friendship. they are putting out a 7inch soon AND I AM GOING TO BUY IT.

i rode my bike to healthy times which marks the first occasion of riding my bike to capitol hill from the central district. not so bad! only had to walk one block on the way there, four (?) blocks on the way back, due to steepness. there are lots of creepy buildings to ride past on 19th: there is a huge catholic church and plenty of we-irdly lit houses. RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE…the creeps?

i will take this opportunity to post some other photos my phone has accumulated over the past year or so: in reverse chronological order:

this is Tetris. she is yawning but DOES SHE NOT LOOK INSANO. the answer is NO.

i have provided the book for scale, but it does not adequately convey how huge this spider is. this was taken at rain city video at the market street location while i was working. confidential to chelsea? I LET IT LIVE.

scully and mulder, being largely invisible in the black lodge. RABBITS.

from my (not too long ago) student teaching days. note that the picture has been constructed for my mentor teacher, and not for me. thanks a lot, tally!

that’s right. none of the math equations are correct. clarification: those are signposts, not nails.

and it is simply a very unfortunate configuration of roads and rainbows and not intentional.

AMAZING.

finally finished making the crystals and trees for cloud cats, after hours of fussing. i’m continually amazed at how long it takes to get decent pixel drawings to the point where they look finished, but i can’t deny that i like my finished sprites a lot better after the work has been done. it’s still humbling to look at someone like ptoing or derek yu, but i’m pretty happy with how things have been turning out. the next thing to do is to put the procedures in for generating the crystals (easy, as I’m mostly copying the cloud generators, with some depth adjustments for parallax effects) and the trees (hard, as i’ll need to fake some isometric stuff so trees don’t appear on top of each other).

always something. and here i thought i would have the cloud stage done by now. just today i was tempted by the ghost of an old idea when i ran across some procedurally-generated caves article. trying to buckle down and focus as the last thing i need right now is another project. but someday i will make an awesome dungeon hack with all these aborted impulses.

just finished dubbing the last of the tapes for HG_07, which is the birdwatchers united / trans-mittens single. feels good to have a huge stack of finished tapes sitting around again. it’s also a good reminder to finish things i start and not to let cloud cats become like the many many other half-dead projects lying around the house.

Thought that Sgt. Barbery Wilkins needed more for his stage than stars.

Some background elements for the cloud stage.