A steady day yesterday, working on the many songs in progress. Most of the work was on Cat Parasites, an interesting tune with a progressive feeling so far. I also did some work on 'I'm In Love With My Car', which, in my head began as a hard rock song in the mould of 'Born To Be Wild', or 'Motorbiking', but now has a buzzy electronic bass. Hybrids are exciting!
Still, I can't spend too long creating new music ad-infinitum, and will divert for a few days. I have lots to do. I'd like to update my existing games to the latest engine, and add Bool and Firefly to Steam, and perhaps update Outliner too. That would leave only Breakout Velocity, but that game would need a lot of work, it's far too simple for a game design. Doing this and finishing the 20+ albums of sheet music notation would feel like a life achievement! But one then awaiting new music, new games!
These games are there as part of my legacy as a creator - the months and years spent on them means nothing if they are not on sale or available anywhere, and as a quest for some income which I need. I don't enjoy working on games, but I must. Perhaps all jobs are like this. We can't do what we feel or what we would 'like' to do, that's a terminal course. No - the best things and only benefits in life come from doing things we don't want to do, or at least 'want' is not relevant. We must do what we should, whether we feel like it or not.
Some sad news recently in that my oldest friend Simon has heart failure. This has played on my mind over recent days, and reminded me of the preciousness and brevity of life. It is a fair understatement to say that Simon does not consider life precious. He has wanted to die for some years, and we his friends have tried relentlessly but can do nothing to persuade him otherwise.
Today, a full day of work on updating Flatspace with the latest game engine. I always underestimate the work of this. I've added new main loop, updated the graphics code, the CONFIGFILE and TEXTFILE parts (the latter requires a LOT of casts), and updated the textfiles, main initialisation, report files, and Options. One more day should be enough, although there is a lot to do. I must create new fonts, update some graphics (pointer, lens flares, stars) and update the aspect ratio changes as present in Flatspace IIk.
I still have Yinyang to update.
In between programming, I've helped my parents fix up a new roof for our little shed. I'm also ready to cut the final mask for the Ly2 mural. A new pencil has arrived, an OHTO Promecha Pencil MS01. This is heavy, sleek, shiny metal. I love it. It doesn't really need the feature to adjust how much lead emerges per click, but the solid metal feel and adjustable lead sheath at the end are wonderful. It feels much better than the more expensive Pentel Graphgear.
