Progress is picking back up on Reluctant Valkyrie. Turns out that, while I am way more in the swing of coding in my manic phases, I can still get really into it once they wear off. That's a pretty good thing, considering I only get those hyperproductive episodes every couple of years or so! Anyway, no new releases to post, but the current working version has remappable keys, a title screen, various menus and windows that pop up, and a town that gives you a choice of powerups (that you can keep with you when you replay the level with Continue instead of New Game). I'm not sure if I'll make the level designer next, or if I'll just get scripted town scenes running and call it good...but I'm at the point where content production will be a big part of the project, not just coding!

I'm learning to regulate my moods better and kick depression's tail somewhat, but my sleep schedule is still entirely out of whack. I blame the drugs. Who knows if they're even working? In about a week I'll be checking up with my psychiatrist to see if they're doing what they're supposed to. I can keep a good schedule for a few days at a time, but inevitably something throws it out of balance.

I was going to write this long drawn out *thing* about how today sucked even though there was nothing especially sucky about it and how my mood is shitty for no particular reason. And then I realized I could just go ahead and write that instead.

So there.

.

It means I'm still kicking butt and taking names.

Which is actually not technically champagne but sparkling wine since it's not from France.

st_respect is throwing a Ship War and I volunteered to captain team Pirk (Kirk/Pike) because I am dumb awesome.

Go drop a line here with your name and a proclamation of Pirk's obvious badassery to join the fun.

.

Title: as clean and sweet a tale
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Jim Kirk/Christopher Pike (references to Jim/McCoy and Pike/Number One)
Warnings: Sex, angst.
Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of these characters nor do I court any profit.
Notes: Written for brilligspoons in the st_santa fic exchange. Many thanks to leftarrow and nearfamily for amazing last minute beta work. This has since been edited and updated from the original post

Summary:He's thought about it, the things that might be in his head if he and Jim ever made good on the hungry threat of sex that seems to infuse everything they do. Chris has wondered how much of himself would be helplessly wrapped up in GeorgeGeorgeGeorge while Jim panted ohohoh beneath him and whether or not he'd be a decent enough man to feel ashamed of himself.

*

If his life were a trashy romance novel Christopher Pike would have fallen in love with Jim Kirk the night they met. But his life isn't a trashy romance novel and when he looked down at Jim's battered, punch-drunk face that night he didn't fall in love.

He didn't fall in love.( Read More )

Soooooo Christmas was awesome. Zephie felt very loved when I took him over to two family celebrations--first to Pa and Susie's on his birthday (Christmas Eve) and then to Aunt Debbie's on Christmas day. (Having previously gone to Pa and Susie's on the 20th for cookie decorating.)

Long story short, I gave stuff, I got stuff, but what made it all warmest and happiest for me was spending time with family and not having to hide the fact that I have a boyfriend.

One of the things I got was Left 4 Dead 2, if anybody wants to play that with me. :3 THANK YOU, Siraj and Zephie!!

[EDIT: The following is no longer accurate. Jasu got it for me. THANKS JASU!]
Steam's having a huge sale on games until January 3rd, which just so happens to be my birthday. I'm looking over at Zephon playing Torchlight and it looks awesome, and it's only five bucks. To put it bluntly, if any of you are planning on getting me that as a birthday present, let me know now or I'll buy it myself. It looks COOL.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and whatever other holidays you celebrate, have an awesome one of those, too.

*hugs*

Some background: This is a pet project I've been working on for a while. And by 'a while' I mean 'about a week'. Actually, make that two days. So what if those two days were nonconsecutive, and had somewhere around 44 hours of solid work in them? I've been feeling VERY creative lately, and I'm taking it out on this game. It's a vertical arcade shooter (IE a shmup), and the eventual plan is for serious RPG and plot elements between stages.


Since someone asked me to share build updates, here's the first one that's decent enough to actually link from LJ.

You'll need the XNA 3.1 redistributable, which is a change from last version (which used XNA 3.0). XNA requires at least .NET 2.0, but pretty much every computer will have that already.

Here is the current game version, a Windows binary. WASD to move, up to fire, ESC to quit, +/- to turn bounding box display on and off. It has about a minute and a half of playtime, including a boss fight! For reference, my usual score is somewhere around 9000, and I lose probably two lives on average.

Yes, the music is shamelessly swiped from Evangelion, but that's kinda fun, isn't it? Player sprite is from Star Ocean, I believe. Ground texture is from a free online site. Everything else is custom. The enemies that show up as blue-gray boxes (most of them) are placeholder graphics; the spinny black critters are from maskedretriever, and the boss is my pixel art. The shameful, shameful pixel art of someone who can't even draw. Anyway, I'll replace all the placeholders as soon as is reasonable, and I'm hoping to nudge a title screen in there soon, and maybe even customized controls and joystick support.

Speaking of controls, how's the control scheme for people? I'll make the WASD/arrow thing changeable in the future, but I'm doing it this way right now because directions are on the left on most controllers and because I play more FPSes than anything else. (Honestly, fire should be the down arrow, to be most similar to the PS2 controller that I use for my joystick. Maybe next version.)

Computer's back online, newly formatted.

Merry Christmas to all! Shiny new install was my present to myself.

I was starting up some programming just before my computer died, and now I'm back and working on it again. It's a vertical arcade shooter in C#/XNA, and it's coming along /so/ well. I'd forgotten what it was like to be good at what I do...it's a good feeling.

Because I might have the chance to say it during my ski trip,


HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

My Windows installation got trashed.

Well, trashed in that it won't run the game I'm working on anymore, and it also can't uninstall/install .NET or XNA or anything like that. I think some bad sectors are to blame.

So I get to reinstall Windows. Fun! Backing everything up...