Sometimes The Things People Say Dont Make Any Sense. Someone Might Say Something So Tangential To The

Sometimes the things people say don’t make any sense. Someone might say something so tangential to the conversation, so out of place, that it catches us off guard. Other times people may seem to make a big deal over something that seems inconsequential, or focus on a particular detail that no one else seems to care about.

However random it may seem, it makes sense to them. It’s obviously relevant or important to them, although it may not seem that way to you. A thought usually doesn’t cross someone’s mind without meaning! So instead of discounting or disregarding it, try to figure out why they said it. Who knows, you might learn something new.

But especially don’t shame them for it.

Your Stretchmo levels are incredible!

Oh, uh, thank you! I worked hard on them ^_^ Here’s another one I didn’t post here yet:

Update!

It’s 2am as I type this, so I’ll make it brief ^^;

I feel I’ve been pretty quiet as far as posting goes. I’ve just sort of fallen out of the habit I guess, I’ll try to get back into it in the next couple of days.

Life is treating me quite well recently! Maybe I can detail that soon, but my general silence hasn’t been due to stress or anything.

I’m trying to get into drawing with limited success. There’s a story I want to tell, but it’s best told without words. Hopefully it pans out.

Stay fresh!

In my first year of gifted school, I asked my English teacher to look over a paper with me that I was working on for his class. We met in his office and he pulled up the paper on his computer. As we discussed it - me being the easily distractible person I am - I couldn’t help but notice he was scrolling the page using the Page Up/Page Down keys.

I asked, “How come you scroll with the keyboard and not the mousewheel?” “The what?” he replied. He seemed confused, so I showed him what I was talking about. When I finished, he said, “Oh, that’s what that does.”

He used the mouse to scroll for the rest of the time. I still can’t tell if he was joking or not.

Saying “I’ll do it in a few minutes” is a death sentence every time.

Mazes, pt. 2

(continued from pt. 1)

In 2008-ish I found a pocket-sized graph paper journal. As an avid filler of pockets, I decided that I must have it.

Poor thing has been used so much that its cord is broken.

My other graph paper notebooks were too clunky to carry around on a regular basis (though I certainly tried), so having this one literally on my person allowed me to make mazes whenever I wanted. Car rides, waiting in line at the store, during my father’s sermons... no matter where I was, when inspiration struck, I always had a way to jot it down.

It was also around this time that I got a Nintendo Wii and DSi, easily my two most-used systems growing up. Thus, video game references were quite numerous. I copied down my many Mario Kart DS avatars so I could switch between them at will, and even wrote a list of Super Paper Mario recipes that spanned multiple pages!

All in all, this notebook was my sketchbook, my journal, and my portfolio. I have no idea how many dozens of people I’ve shown it to.

The maze on the top has been digitized already, but perhaps I need to do the second one as well.

The mazes in this notebook simply blow the older ones out of the water. Not only was I able to actually finish more of them (because they were smaller), I was also coming up with more original ideas. I drew one of my first 3D mazes in this time, but as the pages were too small, I couldn’t flesh it out as well as I’d hoped.

By this point, I knew I wanted to be a game designer, but I had little access to tools made for that purpose. I had no computer and no reliable internet access, after all! There were a couple of games with level editors (like Mario vs. Donkey Kong), and while I used them to death, they never really scratched that itch. So I continued making those Sonic-like level things - and the ones in this book are probably the best ones I have.

Mad props if you can actually understand these.

There was just one issue, albeit a major one - I could make as many as I wanted, sure, but it’s not like anyone else can read them. All these animations and gimmicks and ideas are still stuck in my head, because without interactivity, it’s just a bunch of hieroglyphs on a page. No one would know that in the second picture (for example) hitting the volume switches changes how some of the level elements work. Heck, can anyone even point out which ones are the volume switches?

This was my best way of making a game, however, until I went to gifted school, where I learned about Mari0 and my life changed for the better. Now, graph paper is purely about mazes; I haven’t touched these levels since.

Of course, my story doesn’t end there. I have one more notebook to cover before reaching the present.

(concluded in pt. 3)