Nova Storm @NovaSquirrel@chitter.xyz

I feel smug whenever I put PTO on work calendars (to tell people I'll be out) and I get to use the recurring event feature

I really like my "Camera += (Target-Camera)/Speed" game camera systems, but I didn't like how they would seem to slow down and then awkwardly move over one pixel after appearing to stop.

Looks like I can fix that by just preventing it from changing the camera at all if (Target-Camera)/Speed is too small.

I'm realizing that there's not really any reason to stay in chats I made just because I made them, if they turn out not to be places I would've bothered to stay in otherwise.

I guess making a place for something really isn't enough to find people interested in a thing you like, because you might not click with any of the people who show up.

Now in Tilemap Town, maps, users, inventory items, and user groups are all just "entities" now (with additional data in dedicated "Map" and "User" tables)

Entities can contain other entities arbitrarily, and entities can give other entities arbitrarily. And entities can do commands! I can have non-player entities that appear on maps, move around, have inventories, and do commands the same way players can, without needing to have a connection associated with them.

I think I finally got Tilemap Town all refactored, and everything seems to work as it did before, just with a much more flexible system underneath.

That means I can start doing all of the really cool ideas I wanted to do that needed that refactor. (or some other kind of change, but this felt like the best option)

I think I'll do those cool new things sometime later though. I've been working on this project a *lot* over the past few days and a break sound great.

I figured the best way to show off just how massive my Care Bears backpack is would be to put an Xbox in there, but then I saw I still had a ton of space left so I put an NES in there too. And there's *still* plenty of space.

Hmm I don't think sugar free syrup really works a a replacement for me. It seems like it mostly just gets my pancakes wet, and that's about it.

I think I finally have it set up where rebooting my server will restart all the stuff it's hosting. I do like to make sure everything is updated rather than going for a big uptime, and if the only inconvenience is being disconnected from IRC for a few moments I think that's ok.

I've gone this entire time using Python for years and I've never once used the "match" keyword because I didn't know about it. Oops.

I also learned a few things about making my code more efficient, like using generator expressions instead of list comprehensions where possible, and to use deque where applicable instead of using lists as queues.

Realized it's probably a good idea to read through the Python manual because there's probably tons of stuff I haven't picked up on through looking at others' code or from college. I've already learned several things.

When working on Tilemap Town I keep thinking about efficiency and how things would scale, but I should also probably keep in mind that I can always go back and make the server more efficient if it actually becomes a problem.

As-is I'd be very surprised if it ever has more than 5 people online at the same time, and that only happens when I actually try to organize something. So "probably scales poorly, but simple and unlikely to have bugs" is fine.

I went on a walk earlier, where I focused on the architecture of the houses I was passing by, and the variety of shapes and colors, and there really are a lot of very pretty, very different houses.

I even came across some sort of art gallery, that was just next to all the other houses? http://www.castlegallery.com/

This is part of the reason I'm glad I live close to downtown instead of in suburbs.

I'm not sure if my Second Life store actually gets visitors (based on the free item giver I made always saying it gave out zero items when I check on it) but that doesn't bother me. It's still nice to have some dedicated place for the stuff I make that I can point people to.

For the longest time I really wanted hash browns and couldn't find them for sale anywhere, and then I managed to get some at ALDI, and the local Walmart started stocking them again very recently!

And now I'm in a spot where I'm out of all potato products except for hashbrowns so this is all I've got until I go to the store again haha. It's funny that it's reversed a bit.

I've noticed a long while ago that the way I approach game dev is a lot closer to fan game stuff than normal indie games.

I thought it was just because I outgrew romhacking and a lot of stuff stuck with me, but it's also true that I'm a huge fan of my own characters and worlds and that passion is a big part of what fuels game dev for me.

Hopefully the desire to go explore outside (that Second Life somehow managed to make me feel) lasts until it's actually warm enough to do so without a coat. I wanna go on so many bike rides.

My big Tilemap Town server refactor is going great and a lot of the game is working again. I managed to make a few things cleaner too. So from here I guess I just need to go over the commands and protocol messages and adapt the few things that actually need changes.

Giving Tilemap Town a more MU*-like internal structure is making me really appreciate that I'm writing it in an object oriented language. I think this is actually the first time that OOP actually significantly helped me.

Digging around in Tilemap Town's code and making big change to refactor it, and it feels nice to work on something like this again

I'm excited for when the new redone version of Mesen comes out. I got to try it early and it's really great.

Though I'm not sure what that's going to mean for my forks. I won't have a reason to use them anymore; the whole reason I forked Mesen-S in the first place was to add missing features that Mesen had, and now they're here but even better.