Some Stuff

I figure I’m due for blogging about blogging, so here I go.

Why do we actually make blogs? There are lots and lots of them, and for the most part, I don’t care about very many of them.

Typically, when I am regularly doing a blog or blog like thing, I will get discouraged at some point because I’ll take a look at the stats, and it becomes patently obvious that few are reading, and even fewer are commenting, which indicates that, just like I don’t care about most blogs, mine is just another one hidden in the woodwork.

But then again, am I saying anything worth reading? Not really… I mostly blither on and on about the development of my games.

Lately, with Diamond Maze, some things have been happening:

1) I am mildly disinterested in progressing because I am pretty much doing a clone of a game I already created. Sure, I changed the number of types of keys in the game, but that doesn’t exactly make it a different game, you know?

2) I’m having another “why am I writing games in the first place?” moments. I don’t play my games. My wife plays Connect!, but Diamond Maze has not, to my knowledge, been heavily played by anyone.

3) The group project I joined on sourceforge has dried up. Good luck next year, Tom.

4) I decided to actually play some games. I like Castle Wars although I’m not entirely certain it has been properly balanced. I played the first Submachine game, and I found out that Stick RPG has been finished, so I played that a little, but quickly lost interest.

5) The desire to write one of the big three games is back again. For those who don’t know, the big three are Dungeon Delver, Island Interloper, and Medieval Micro-manager.

And really, anymore, I would divide Dungeon Delver into multiple distinct games:

A) A text-based interactive fiction design tool and player

B) A roguelike game

C) A graphical adventure creation system and player (a la ACS on the C64), something Inaria-esque.

Island Interloper could also be Interstellar Interloper, and the game would basically be the same, it is still a “travel between outposts and trade commodities” games. I would also like to port Space Trader to XNA. Basically, it is turn based Elite. Of course, I have a long history of starting ports of this game but never finishing.

Medieval Micromanager is like Hammurabi on steroids.

There are also a number of BASIC listings of games that need to be brought up to the current generation of tools.

Monthly Blog Entry About Blogging

I think it is appropriate to blog about blogging about once a month. I figured I’d get it out early in the month, so as to leave plenty of time for actual content the rest of the month.

I still haven’t changed my wordpress theme from the default. I have, however, gone into several areas like the blogroll and “about” sections and fill them out.

I’ve also spent some time looking at the blog stats. Most days, it makes me feel like a tree falling with nobody around to hear it.

Which makes me wonder why I am doing this at all (ah, yes… now I’m in full “blog about blogging” swing, complete with self-examined angst!).

If one considers a blog mostly to be a sort of “diary” where one explores his thoughts and feelings, then I’m failing to do that. I mostly talk about a silly game I’m writing. I don’t even have my real name posted anywhere.

First Post

This is a traditional first post. Typically, a blog’s first post points out that it is the first post in the blog. This means that the first post is breaking one of the fundamental rules of blogging, which is not to blog about blogging.

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This blog is meant to go alongside http://www.playdeez.com and to chronicle the developments there. Currently, I am working on a new game, tentatively titled “Connect!”, which you can see here.

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Oh, and this is the first post.