First I wanted to say happy birthday to a special person in my life,
whose name is Sara!
I hope that she has a wonderful birthday weekend.
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Now today I wanted to divulge with new information about Dark Zeta current progress and my new years plans having to crumble with the events of this month and last.
Since May 26, things got bumpy. To fill you in on it – my dad had a stroke on my birthday – in where my family had to change things. Mostly my two sisters are picking up the bulk of the work that has to be done. I’m just there to support and help out as much as I can. But my limitations show up everywhere and that doesn’t really make me feel good at all.
I do try to make myself stronger but there are rules that ones have to stick by. One of them is driving. I can’t drive none of the vehicles that are owned by my family because I’m not on the list of insurance. Since forever I’ve been an afterthought of my dad’s plans. So I was never really there when he was doing those important family choices. So when he had a stroke, things started to come out of the woodwork with a very long list of what I couldn’t do.
Since I moved back to boston, it has been very rough for me in every way possible. Firstly I had to put my desktop computer in storage, where I have a very big bulk of work and tools from school to help in my 3D creations. Second I can’t drive the cars because I live in the same house as my parents (insurance). Third I’m soul dependent on the income that comes from my family’s business, where 90% of it goes to my school loans.
so all of that makes me feel trapped and useless.
With all of those things coming to mind, it makes me feel really bad. Then in february, my grandmother passes away, injecting more of that bad vibe into the environment from last year’s retreat from San Francisco. Fast forward to my birthday, and you have another acute turning point. Many in my circles have been placing opinions for me to “step up”, but with the current chains, there is nothing really I can do.
The knowledge of the transportation family business, my first sister has training on it. The online advertising service company, my baby sister knows it very well. As for me, I don’t know much of anything, and I’m the first born. If I was alone, everything would have burned to the ground, and I would be in the streets right now.
I’m the prototype child that was experimented on in the younger years, so I have initially rebelled against everything previously. Thus how I am here just doing what I can to assist, but really can’t be a leader because I have nothing to really be in my family. I’ve been pushed aside and mocked. My art isn’t really appreciated and usually thrown out without much fuss. I have to really come out in a rain of anger to be heard, but in most cases I am not paid any mind.
with it I do feel lonely here.
In the light side, the only true thing that is left is the pure interface with my dad after the stroke event. The only real thing I have really is the father-son connection besides all the survival/financial conundrum. That’s really what is truly my value in my point of view as “stepping up”.
My creation and learning new points of information, I put them all in one jar. That jar usually I use to form many things. So I continue to flow in my game creation with different worlds within worlds concept. Dark Zeta isn’t that ordinary single serving game as you usually would expect it. My ambition for it will have many different layers of consciousness that people can explore. The simple graphics only pushes that abstract feeling of the world within. But it becomes much more define in it’s own when you do take time to see it.
So my emotion guides the game, and currently my heart is trying to feel through the programming with a tribute to Sara, a love letter in electronic form. That sprite on the banner is her. I’ve been pixel drawing her slowly, following the mario guidelines, to put her in a platforming game that she couldn’t really play because of her health effects. She suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, where anything in the nervous system can be affected. When I noticed she couldn’t jump the first pit of level 1-1 in SMB, even in various tries, it caught my attention to figure it out. Hand-eye coordination are critical to fast action reflexes in platformers, especially SMB. Thus something that may look so simple could be tremendously difficult for someone with the afflicted symptoms of such illness. So I’m re-inventing the game of mario for her, so she can feel much more empowered when she gets to play it (I hope). I as well am thinking about doing a MS drive to create more awareness to this devastating disease. The thing about it is that anyone can be diagnosed with it. So part of my long term goal is to help find a solution besides as well help the crohns community as well.
but for now It’s going to be a special edition just for sara, with the newly released indie console, Ouya, I’ll have it gift wrapped in. I’m going to side load (unofficially install it), and any other extra setup, and send it to her as a gift. I think it’s light years better than flowers, in my honest opinion.
As for intrigued gamers, I’ll have it as an double extra bonus when you get the book of the tribe at the end of the side quest of Dark Zeta. The password name will show up, and you can then put it the password screen to play it.
So until I finish on assembling together the mario physics game engine, I won’t continue the main game programming objectives. It will be well worth it when I’m done with it. I know it’s going to take lots more time until then.
Its been 2 months since I started on the platform engine, and a year and 7 months on Dark Zeta as a whole.
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