fuzmeister: AMA...

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...but preferably about music, recording, songwriting, etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c0mjad/iaman_independent_musician_and_songwriter_im/

Mood: Ready

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fuzmeister: New Orleans

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You probably won't see this before the premiere, but check it out anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9QczAK6phM

My new album is out June 18 on Spotify, Amazon, Bandcamp, Apple Music, etc. etc. etc. It's called Bystanders.

I worked really hard on it for the past two years so even just listening to any of it means a lot to me.

Mood: Suspenseful


Tags (beta): bystanders, steve thompson music

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fuzmeister: I'm Heartbroken

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I'm heartbroken.

The indifference of the majority of today's Americans is astounding to me. That being said, I'm also guilty.

I'm guilty of being part of the problem. I know I don't do enough. I may be "woke" to some extent, but I have my own microcosm of problems and issues. I'm not taking to the streets for my brothers and sisters in peril.

How do we fundamentally restructure how we address issues and events? How do we eliminate the callousness that permeates 21st century America? How do we eliminate the dividing line between rich and poor - between powerful and powerless?

I guess it starts with one person. It starts with me. It starts with you.

The odds are I'll continue doing some small things, but still mostly facing inward to a small circle of people.

I feel bad. I feel guilty. I'm not sure how we can really change anything though.

Mood: Depressed


Tags (beta): philosophy, society

Comments (1)

fuzmeister: What

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I wish this community was more active because Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are all too mainstream for an aging hipster like me.

How's everyone doing around these parts?

Mood: Relaxed


Tags (beta): vent

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fuzmeister: Past Lives of Game Dev

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It's hard to believe that later this spring it will be 20 years since I first used the name S&F Software to brand a game project. While I can't remember exactly the first game I used it for, I'm sure it was super horrible as I was learning as I went along.

Interesting story about why I styled it as S+F Software for so many years - back in the Visual Basic days, using an ampersand before any character in a VB component field caused the character directly after to be underlined rather than actually showing the ampersand. I'm sure there was some escape string or something to actually show this character, but I had no idea what any of that stuff even was back then.

Lately I've been going through some old S&F Software game files and lamenting the lack of being able to actually play through any of these classics. In an effort for historical preservation, I recently wrote an extraction tool for several of the old file formats - FRX (Visual Basic's form binary file), SFP (uncompressed pack of binary files - graphics and sound usually), and the 2004 Iceman DX levels.

For some odd reason, the way VB handled writing the Iceman DX level files was really funky - despite using integers to store everything, it seems like VB decided to allocate 128 bytes for every "record" that was persisted. I'm fairly certain this wasn't by my own design. Either way, I wrote an extractor to downsize the old level files and was able to extract over 3MB of the original level data to just 25.6k in the new "format." It's insane the levels were so large in the first place all things considered.

Most of the old projects I have code for, but some of the big ones like Trevor 2 are missing. Ideally, I've always wanted to rewrite/port the code to something that could be run on modern computers, but I'm not sure I can justify the time it takes to do so. I did this with Helibomber DX a few years ago and released the game via a HumbleStore widget - turned out alright and was a fun trip down memory lane, but, again, it takes some time to do these little projects.

I'm grateful for the friendships formed and knowledge gained during my formative years of game development and design. I sometimes wish I had handled things differently on both the technical and social sides of it, but I think S&F was ultimately a good experience for all involved albeit a chaotic mess at times.

Mood: Nostalgic
Music: Audioslave - Revelations


Tags (beta): game development

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