New Base of Operations

I've now moved from one forested mountain to an area of even more forested mountains. (Very forbidden stuff in Complex 0b1, I tell you! 6R-33N would know.)

This whole thing's been an unexpectedly long process since it wasn't just about the move itself, but dealing with funding and logistics on several fronts, both at the old place and the new one, and multiple related parties, including some with serious issues... it's been kind of a stressful mess I'd rather not have to deal with, but these things tend to happen eventually, just gotta deal with 'em.

View out my window's good, though!

Still not quite done with all that, so haven't settled into any kind of routine yet, but getting close.

My room/office will have to wait some months for its final form since there are still some leaky window issues to resolve, so I've basically just got a mattress on the floor next to my computer desk. All I really need anyway, yeah? That and a little Mak. Table made out of boxes (that still contain stuff) to have somewhere else to place items for convenience. Well, the folding chair I'm using right now is less than ideal, having recycled my now-ancient and shabby work chair which will need replacing...

My son walked in and said "you know your room looks like a garage, yeah?" Haha.

I guess the main thing to figure out first will be exactly where my desk goes, since placement relative to light from the window during different daylight hours will affect that, and therefore where everything else can fit in to accommodate it. I've shifted it around it a few times already, but the real test will come when I'm sitting for hours working while it's sunny out, which hasn't happened yet so I'm sorta guessing. (Would rather not have to put down the curtain and turn the great view into more of a basement madman feeling :P)

In the meantime I've been taking the opportunity to prep other life adjustments, like transitioning r/RoguelikeDev to new management. (More on that in a future public announcement there.)

Gonna need to be hyperfocused on Cogmind for a while, which is what it's going to take to get through this next stretch. (But I do expect to release a little something for you sooner than that... (!))

Funny enough I got another pretty serious concussion at the beginning of the month (I know, I know, should wear a helmet like 24/7 or something...), but whatever I was already preoccupied with moving rather than staring at screens most of the day, and I'm pretty good at treating it so the overall impact was at least fairly limited compared to what it could've been, however it'll likely take some months to return to the typical 90% normal.

Old Times

It's been a long time since I moved (most of Cogmind was developed in the previous apartment), so I'd naturally accumulated a fair bit of extra stuff over the years and this was a convenient chance to filter through all of that and donate, recycle, or trash as much as possible.

This included plenty of things that have accompanied me for decades but really just don't need to be around anymore--at one extreme it doesn't make much sense to occupy space with things you don't even remember you own :P. While in Toss All the Things mode my personal belongings were slimmed down to just six boxes*, plus a bag of clothes. (*excludes primary laptop and monitors, since these get special treatment! wrapped and transported them myself via scooter)

At the same time, digging through old belongings means another chance to reminisce, or maybe pick out things worth sharing with someone one last time. On that note I rescued some paper bits here for show-and-tell, roughly ordered by date.

The pre-RL age

One of the early projects I was working on before roguelikes, into which I put thousands of hours as that evolved, was survived by a thick stack of paper notes (these were from over 20 years ago). I flipped through it to pick out a couple interesting pieces to share, and the rest have already been recycled, probably off to become a paper bag somewhere.

As you can probably tell those are regarding interface design. Interestingly, I wrote the interface directly in Win32 API. Learned it from a book :P

Cogmind 7DRL

I apparently still have the handful of original paper notes for Cogmind 7DRL, jotted down over a several-day trip in Thailand as 7DRL 2012 was approaching. It's not much, but I did share one image from this small set back when I wrote an early article on Balance.

You can see that relevant one there, but here's another summarizing the foundations for procedural map layouts/connections.

Cogmind

For the longest time I've saved a small representative stack of my daily work records that I use to intermittently update spreadsheets for tracking and analyzing total hours and task categories. I've mentioned it before, but not shown a more complete set like this. So for example below you can see the entire lead up to and including the Alpha 14 release, itemizing what was accomplished each day, the time spent on it, amidst other daily TODOs and often some quick notes in the extra margins.

As you may know, this is where those pen clicks lead during my Cogmind streams ;) (on streaming day in particular there are generally more additional notes that I'll later rewrite and transfer to my proper docs).

Polybot-7

My Polybot-7 postmortem from 2018 included a few shots of my paper notes for that game in the relevant sections.

Although you may find the postmortem itself interesting, rather than requiring you to wade through it if interested in these (it's long) I've copied them here, plus more I didn't show at the time:

Scraptown

I also still had some early Scraptown layout sketches tucked into the Cogmind-related papers. I probably? maybe? shared this one somewhere before? Anyway, here it is while we're on the topic:

Not long before the move I also had similar Hexidium sketches sitting on my desk for a long while, but you can't see them since I later did a preliminary digital version in RP so didn't need them anymore and they've already become entangled in paper bags somewhere. Let's see the Unchained find their way out of that!

"Oh look, little Timmy's about to rip V4-D3R to pieces." --69-RNG

"Why gift wrapping paper?! Noooooo..." --V4-D3R

And that's the end of the trip down memory lane. Now to get making new memories :)

I should add that before, during, and after the move I've had to spend money out the wazoo, so a big thanks to all the family, friends, and fans who've helped out <3