popfan95b

...Shit, I almost forgot I still had this.

Well, there's not much to say, anyway. See this blog post for a download link, as well as this blog post for important information, particularly in regards to the use of assets.

Heeeeeeeey...

Yeah. I'm still alive. And still using DeviantArt to some small degree. Amazing, innit?

I don't even have anything terribly interesting to say. Progress on chain of lucidity has been coming along well enough (I've implemented furigana support into my dialogue system yesterday).

You know what else happened yesterday? Team Gaijin Alex's website got a complete overhaul after languishing in shittily-designed pages with little content for nearly two whole years. Here's what I changed:

• replaced the tacky diamond-patterned background with a simple three-color gradient
• recreated various image assets and improved the page layout for a more professional look
• commissioned wodkanna for a group drawing of the current three members of the team in order to finally have something to put on the "Meet the Team" page (although she unfortunately wasn't able to accept payment, so she ended up doing it for free)
• made a page for each game now, even the incomplete and/or abandoned projects (which is basically all of them); also, the Games page now has a more compact design
• moved the twitter feed from the side bar to the Contact page
• completely rewrote all of the text (special thanks to nekokomancer for proofreading the Japanese translations)
• custom error pages!
• now using Meiryo for the Japanese font instead of MS Gothic

If you want to go see for yourself, then knock yourself out!

No, DeviantArt. Fuck you. Perhaps you shouldn't have jacked up the cost of premium membership. Better yet, perhaps you should actually give a fuck about your userbase before asking us to give a fuck about you. You're basically the new YouTube in that you keep shoveling stupid shit upon stupid shit that no one cares about or even wants. All the while, when someone is getting their art stolen, you don't do shit. And you ESPECIALLY don't do shit when someone's being harrassed relentlessly by someone else. Instead, no matter how many complaints you get about someone, you always resort to the stock response of "block and ignore", as if that's gonna make the problem go away. You don't even go after people if they're spreading obvious hate speech or slander/libel about someone, instead claiming that it doesn't count as harrassment if you're seeking out comments (yeah, right. As if you couldn't find them on submissions showing up in your watch feed, you one-track-minded fucks), and that, basically, you can say whatever the hell you want if you're writing a journal. The amount of times you actually get off your lazy hedonistic asses and actually do some good for the community for once can be counted on one hand - if the hand belonged to a man who had both his arms amputated.

You don't care about any of us, so what gives you the justification to come grovelling, asking us to enable ads with an obstructive notice that takes up upwards of a fifth of the entire window? I have never supported you financially, and I never will, nor will I want anyone to support you financially in my stead. In other words, I refuse to buy premium membership or to have it renewed, because you have done nothing to deserve my support, nor have you done anything to retain my interest in your service.

Go fuck yourself.

Lately, it seems like the cool thing to make a journal entry explaining what you've been up to if you haven't shown any activity on dA for months, so I want in on that fun.

Except... well, I can't really say I've been as productive as I'd have wanted to be. As some of you may know, I was at A-kon last June, along with Spaztique, FullHitPoints, BleachBummer, HTFCirno2000, ChibioChen, LikeThisRLYMatters and Ceej39. That was fun, and I got a taste of just how massive and intense the Undertale fandom could be when assembled in a single room (hell, I was half an hour early for the panel and the line was already curving three times). On Sunday, my father gave me a phone call because I completely forgot to text him, so he got worried about me. Outside of that, I was also texting everyone else quite a bit, which really ran up the phone bill. Totally worth it, though.

There's also this game I've been working on, but since I need to make the rest of the soundtrack and the ideas just haven't been coming to me, I barely got anything done in the last couple months, which is frankly a shame, because I wanted to go all-out and be really productive, yet here I am, just wasting day after day by faffing around and doing other crap. I have no discipline, not even for my own personal projects. How pathetic.

Instead, FullHitPoints recently got into Phantasy Star Online 2, which in turn got me out of my hiatus with that game to the point where it's once again taken control of my life, although I'm mostly just doing emergency quests in order to quickly level up. I've also been getting back into playing Phantasy Star (the original entry on the Sega Master System), having reached the endgame. Phantasy Star II is also waiting for me to beat it (preferably before the backup battery dies, which it miraculously hasn't yet), but the endgame grind that awaits me is frankly off-putting.

Most recently, however, I've been working on some lesser tracker projects, which I'll showcase below:

Dangit, I had a journal written up that I intended to post on the first of May, but I completely forgot about it, and now it's nearly 4 days later.

Oh well, just pretend we're living three days in the past as you're reading the following...

---

It's May 1. This day marks the third anniversary of my membership at the Walfas Station Wagon, but to be honest, if it hadn't been that specific day, I probably wouldn't even be able to remember it.

In these last three years, I've grown as a person a lot more rapidly than in the preceding 17-ish years. I was kind of a problem child, really. Getting bullied by what seemed to be pretty much the entire school back in elementary school does that to you, and having autism to cope with doesn't exactly make things any easier. The internet was the only place where I could forge lasting friendships, but even then it wasn't always easy. When you're a kid as socially inept as I was, covering up your eccentricities is hard.

Well, long story short, I had a bad tendency of causing drama whenever things didn't go my way and I wasn't very good at handling criticism. Compare 16-year-old me to 20-year-old me and chances are you'll be wondering if they're really the same person.

This isn't meant to be a story about what I used to be, though. This is meant to be a story about how I got into the WSW and my experiences therein. And it starts in the early February of 2013, after Spaztique introduced FullHitPoints and me to each other and we formed a doujin circle that eventually ended up being called "Team Gaijin Alex" (entirely my idea, by the way). Spaz convinced us to join the WSW since we were both dabbling with create.swf.

I don't remember when exactly I first joined the U-Haul, but I wasn't exactly making a good first impression. I got a lot of "Who the hell is this guy" moments from others, and trying to join ongoing calls didn't go very well, either. If it wasn't my headset causing severe echoing, then I was saying inappropriate or obnoxious things. One of the members, Mr. Heart (yes, that guy), took me aside at one point and, while trying to argue with me about a game series I was talking about with people in the chat at the time, noted that I was being condescending towards others without even realizing it. That, and he would always find a way to call me arrogant whenever I brought up evidence supporting my case in the argument we were having, which eventually caused me to break down, upon which he immediately softened up and offered to help me grow as a person. Needless to say, he had me right where he wanted to, so I got suckered in without effort, but despite his ulterior motives, it was this conversation that made me more considerate of others, so while I can't exactly say "Tracy dindu nuffin rong", he still helped set me on the right path. So, thanks. You may be a complete asshole who was trying to destroy the WSW from the inside by turning the members against each other for his own sick amusement, but you still jumpstarted my growth.

By the end of my first year, I didn't exactly have a big circle of friends from the WSW, but I was pretty close with those who I did call that. Aaron, Spaz and I would occasionally play Minecraft together if we weren't working on Endless Blue, but both of those things kinda began dying down after a while. 2014 had me gradually stop working with create.swf as I instead began focusing on drawing and making my own Touhou fangame, Rampant Crescent Flora (currently in development hell alongside EB). This was also the year that I graduated from school, much to the surprise of many of my teachers as my work ethic was severely lacking and I mostly just winged everything, up to and including my final exams. After that, I moved into a student dorm early September, followed by that awesome HRtP race with DeityDiz93, BleachBummer and keinecat, and after my birthday, I briefly began taking drawing requests. There was also this moment of sheer existential crisis that I had in November, when I damn-near threw everything I had worked for in the last year-and-a-half out the window.

...Followed by my resignation from the WSW in early January of the next year, in which I didn't rejoin until well into May. I was pursuing drawing in that year, but I was quite deep in a rut, rendering me quick to scrap everything I attempted. Not even the requests I reopened helped. In fact, I think they just made it worse.

But a lot of good things came from 2015, as well: For starters, Aaron and I joined forces with Michirin9801 to make her Mega Drive-style platformer, MajiKana, and also Touhou-freakin'-con. (I made a whole series of journals about my experience there.) Getting to meet people I've met on the internet in real life for the first time was a surreal, but at the same time utterly exhilarating experience, and one that I'd love to have again someday.

Well, that's a summary of things that happened. But what I owe thanks to the WSW for the most is not just my growth as a person, but my acquisition and honing of a broad variety of skills, including but not limited to drawing, spritework, interface design, composing, programming, game design, web design, and being a pro Reimu. I owe it to the following people for having enabled and encouraged me to always better myself one way or another:

, for getting the whole thing started in the first place. Sure, I was the one contacting him via YouTube PMs with ideas I had for EB, but he was the one to seek me out on Skype, found TGA, and coerce me into joining the WSW in the first place, and that's not even getting into showing me the ropes in regards to making music and always being there to be talked to - well, the latter of the two doesn't apply so much nowadays since he's got some issues that need sorting-out, but still. Thank you, Dave, for being a great friend and mentor. You have no idea how honored I was to get to meet you in person.

, who, for all intents and purposes, might as well be my other half. Ever since our first few dev sessions, we've been forging an inseparable bond, and while we've had our fair share of severe arguments, I still consider you one of the best friends I've ever had. Besides, you were the one to get me into programming and initially tutor me as I was starting out. So thanks to you, too, Aaron.

, who I remember taking a while to become friends with. You're great to talk to, though, so I don't regret the effort.

... oh Diz, you're the embodiment of feels, and I love you for it. You've always had a way with words, and a lot to say with them... unlike me, because I really don't know what else to say about you. You're simply a joy to be around.

, for also being a guy who's making a game. Your experience with Danmakufu helps a lot when it comes to writing my own bullet hell engine.

, that wacky Polish guy who's good for having game ideas dumped on for evaluation. Love you, Sebbie-boo~

, whose expansive knowledge on audio production and his ear for mixing is a huge help in learning a thing or two about post-production. If it weren't for him, my compositions would still sound like shit.

And last, but definitely not least, . We definitely got off on the wrong foot early into your game's production, but I couldn't see myself where I am now without you. Talking to you about practically anything (but especially retro game systems and their capabilities) is a joy, and the prospect of having a game I helped work on be ported to one of my favorite consoles is an exciting thing that you also got yourself to blame for.

Now then, here's to another three years of success!