Self reflection; 2020

2020-12-31 ◦ 7 Minute read

# I never have ideas for these quote sections.
# So here, Have some pseudo-python!

class Year2020(Year):
    def end() -> Year2021:
        rantAndRamble()
        print("Happy New Year!")
        return Year2021()

Well, there's the year closing.
It seems to have just flown by, and feels like only yesterday I was in total lock-down.

One of the main take-aways from our Coronavirus situation - that I've had, at least - My ability to tell the time is quite weak.
I'm a creature of schedule, And when that schedule breaks down - I break down!
So that'll be my resolution for 2021, Figure out how to better tell the time in the absence of schedule. I'll just need to fit it into my schedule...

Writer's block is really difficult. I've been sitting with my editor open unable to write anything. Even just mid-way through that sentence, I disappeared to my local Reddit equivalent for a few hours before realising what I was doing.
So perhaps a more realistic resolution would be to stop procrastination? But in the past, forcing procrastination away has destroyed projects.
See Platformer and BobGUI for perfect examples of projects that... aren't dead per se, but just don't receive any more commits.
Both projects were promising in their initial phases, 'Platformer' even receiving help from badhaloninja. Platformer's issues are closer to it being an absolute mess (seriously, what are some of these decisions?) than procrastination, but it still counts.

BobGUI's issues are almost certainly procrastination. There's a few issues it has at the moment, Issues that I'm neglecting to fix.
For instance, It can't be imported like a python module. And widgets are completely missing certain attributes that are nigh required for GUIs (such as basic events)! There's also practically no capacity to style it. Sure, there's constants you can override before creating your widgets, but it's so limited that you shouldn't really bother.

Procrastination also plagues this website itself, There was a good month or so where the style was royally fucked¹ in some hodgepodge because I was going to explore different styles for the site, and accidentality pushed it. It lasted for a month, because despite seeing that I'd done it, I only fixed it a few days ago (as of writing)!

This whole article's going to be a mess, I don't blame you if you skip it. It's going to touch on things that I probably wouldn't of dreamed of discussing in my blog - Politics for one! - but it's all in the nature of self-reflection.

This year has certainly been quite radicalising in both directions. I don't like using the political compass, but most people do, so I won't cut around it - I'm certainly still a libleft. Blah blah freedom, blah blah socialism, etc. But there's been some pretty... damning stuff for even just the quadrant I identify with. Not touching on specifics, But there was some racial tension that really rubbed me the wrong way. ...This is actually what causes most of my gripes with the compass system, Because I may not agree with another lib-left I come across, but I still hold my values of freedom.
And it doesn't end there, It's a political compass, so it only measures what I think should be possible. Not necessarily what I want to happen, nor what I think should happen - That's a more moral thing, And I think most people forget that morals are even... well, a concept.
Take for instance Circumcision - a lovely topic, no? - with my political views, they would 100% make it the freedom of the parent to choose. But my morals come in and say that you shouldn't circumcise children. It's all a clusterfuck².

And those issues don't just affect me! Freedom of speech means all speech, And most people I've talked to - or listened to - that want 'free-speech', also want to ban hate-speech. But unfortunately, Hate speech is still speech, so it MUST be allowed for freedom of speech³. You may not want racism, But free speech allows racism - not to say that free speech WILL bring racism, or that free speech causes racism. Free speech doesn't cover harassment, that's a different, much much larger issue.

Admittedly, I've let arguably political topics bleed into my blogs before. Take the cloud flare one, for example. I've rewritten it a few times, And still don't like it. It's taken me until now to actually realize why - It's a mostly political opinion.
Now, I may think that centralised services shouldn't be a politics thing - but it is. I'm so unhappy with the article, Because I let the politics get in the way, And I end up misrepresenting the points I was making.
I think I'll try to avoid politics for now, It's an icky subject and I don't feel anywhere near enough qualified to cover it justly.

I certainly hope I'll make some progress towards my 'dream game' come this time next year. I've dabbled with small parts of it (It's a farming game, not the hardest thing in the world) through 2020, but nothing came of it. I'd like it to be first-person 3D, but that doesn't mesh well with some of the other features I want. Ignoring all that though, I don't even have a base level to work off of - I can't seem to choose an engine to use.
I've tried making my own, but OpenGL makes my head hurt. I've tried Godot, Source™, and hell - I've even tried using idTech 2, which powered quake 2.
The main issue I run up against, is one of design. Do I want to try learning the nodes of Godot? Do I wanna butcher the Source SDK 2013 and be bothered with engine-level issues (where there is no source code)? Or do I wanna rip out quake 2's game code in its' entirety and bother with idTech's downfalls (or hell, do I want the game to be GPL-licensed⁴)?
Furthermore, would map-seperated chunks be best, would entity-based be best, etc. With Godot and even just my own Engine, I find it really annoying and limiting there's no standards for these types of things. Hell, It's surprising for godot that there's no 'best-practice' way of separating your game into levels, and I'm surprised there's no 'standard' Wavefront .obj equivalent for animations.

I have way too many projects.
This is a realisation that has stuck with me through most of the year, and yet with it, I continue making projects. Even now, I can think of;

• Source-Mod (Facility, Unannounced)
• Farming Game (Unannounced)
• Animated Show (Space-Void, Unannounced)
• Animated Episode (Space opera: IN SPACE!, Unannounced)
• Doctor Who Parody (Time-Void, Unannounced)
• This Website
• Probably a few books (reading/writing)

But there's probably plenty more I can't remember at the moment. I've filled my proverbial plate with so much food, and I'm very much stuffed.
I haven't the heart to cancel any of them, Despite not having the working files for Facility, nor an engine after nearly a year for the Farming Game. Lack of voice actors for Space-Void, and unfinished scripts for Space-Opera and Time-Void.
It's a big issue, and my current method of working on one when I want to, Isn't working well.

This blog article's very much a mess. I'm forcing it out of myself, As my procrastination - as usual - has lead to me riding right up against the deadline.
It's not even like I can delay the changing of the year. I hope at-least someone enjoys reading this. Although, I'm not actually sure how many people read my site, lol. There's at-least one!

From me and Jim, Happy New-Year!