March 3: Talking about this site and how this blog will work

Well, I just had the idea to start this blog (or whatever you could call it) on this site too. To be honest, I kind of decided to do this blog on a whim, and I'm probably going to handle it as a kind of "public journal" or as a way to talk about basically anything, really. I'm most likely not going to make a post every day, probably every few days on average, if that, and make each month have it's own page. I might as well also talk about the site as a whole here, and my reasoning for making it.

Honestly, I went into making this site with basically zero HTML experience. I mainly got all my HTML knowledge so far by reverse engineering the layout I generated from Sadgrl's layout generator and by viewing the page source of a few other Neocities pages to find out what's even possible. Thankfully, Sadgrl's generator does apparently add a bunch of comments that help with showing you what to change to do certain things, like replacing the header image or fonts. Even then, I kind of want to take a couple of days to just get into the nitty-gritty and truly learn HTML.

I may not add too many new pages until then, I'm mostly going to be messing around in a kind of HTML "playground" page I'll make before starting. I'll put the link in the "Experiments" section (after making that page) so you can check on what I'm doing if you want.

Shortcut link to playground page: HTML Playground

March 7: Bizzare Monitor Glitches and You! (Also a Minor Site Update)

My monitor must be starting to go. I've been having weird glitches with it for a while now. The main one is that certain patterns seem to cause my monitor to "crash", for lack of a better word. When it crashes, the screen goes dark, like it's turned off, but the power button is still lit up like it's on and working normally, and none of the buttons respond, not even the power button.

The only thing that works it unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in, and hoping that it doesn't happen as soon as it tries to display anything. In that case, the monitor displays for a fraction of a second, then crashes again. If it keeps crashing, I usually have to find some way to click off the website or progam causing problems or otherwise "break up" the pattern to stop it by using the brief moments I can see what I'm doing.

The only saving grace is that it only happens fairly rarely, but with the things it does happen with, it tends to happen fairly frequently. I've even had to remove some backgrounds from my PC's background rotation purely because they've been crashing my monitor consistently.

I've had this monitor since at least 2014, going by it's release date on Amazon after looking it up, so I'm honestly not suprised I'm starting to have issues. It's mainly how these issues are manifesting that is the weird part, as I can't find anyone else online that's been having this issue anywhere.

And you want to know the unfortunate part? A few months ago, one of my aunts tried to send me a couple of monitors she happened to get in an estate sale for very cheap, including a high end curved monitor, but they were seemingly lost in the mail. They just seemed to disappear, and they couldn't find the package after initiating a search. This was back in September, and I'm still honestly holding out hope that they will turn up eventually. I don't want to buy a monitor only for those monitors to turn up in a month or two, but with my monitor issues, I may need to buy one soon anyway. I've decided that if those monitors don't turn up by the end of April, I'll just buy a new monitor and whatever happens happens.

Also, about this site, updates may end up being a bit more sporadic for a bit. I want to make an honest effort to learn HTML, so I'm going to look up a guide and start experimenting and focusing on that in terms of this site. I may make my next blog post to let you know when I know a bit more about how to do more things.

March 26: Thoughts of an Aspiring Game Dev

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I've actually wanted to get into game development, for a while actually. I even have several game ideas written down, but I'm unlikely to actually make any of them until I make a few smaller-scope games first to test out several engines and practice making games. Specifically, I have 4 or 5 different major game ideas of varying complexity that I want to make.

I don't want to go into too much detail, just in case someone decides to steal one of my ideas, but I will say that the ideas range from "an unconventional collectathon platformer/metriodvania hybrid", to "a mystery-focused and exploration-focused farming sim/3d platformer/action rpg with multiple endings and a large world", to "an rpg/survival horror hybrid loosely inspired by a fake mobile game ad I saw in a youtube video one day". Those aren't all of my ideas, by the way, just a few.

I've also been researching game engines off and on, and have an idea on what engines I'll use. I'm thinking on starting on an engine called GDevelop, which seems to be kind of like Scratch but a bit more powerful and meant for slightly larger games, mainly to learn how to make games and make a couple of smaller-scale games. After I make a few games, though, I want to switch over to Godot, starting by making a few more small games to learn the engine before starting with one of my "bigger" ideas.

I do have an idea for potential pricing for my games. First, don't worry, all of my smaller games and any game I make to learn GDevelop and Godot will be completely free (in fact, all of the games I make in GDevelop will be free). Also, I'm making a hard cap for all of my game's prices to be at 20$, with most of my larger games likely being around 5$ or 10$, mainly because I want all of my games to be relatively cheap and affordable.

The first "major" game I may make will probably be that "farming sim/3d platformer/action rpg" idea, but with all the ideas I've had for it I'm a bit worried it may be a bit too ambitious. It is honestly my most ambitious game idea so far, I've just got so many ideas on how to make the game interesting and unique to all other farming sims. I'll probably mention more things about that game (or whatever other large game I decide to make first) in this blog when I'm working on it. I will mention about it, though, that the "farming sim" aspect won't be the focus of the game, and it will be more on the action rpg and 3d platformer side. I'll likely also make a section of this site that has links to all of the games I make later once I make some games.