Memories & Nostalgia

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Socoder -> Off Topic -> Memories & Nostalgia
Tue, 09 Apr 2013, 15:10
Jayenkai	Damn, I really must be getting old.. A running theme, this year, seems to be looking back. I've hardly written a single game, this year, that hasn't been a remake of something I've previously done. Wel, except Karl's Tiny Adventure, but that's not exactly new!! As well as this odd retro vibe I've got going on, I've also added a new AGameAWeek Gold section to my blog, which looks back on old titles that I've released "on this day in history". It's quite good fun finding random old games lurking in my archive, and charting the progress of my current game ideas by looking at some of my old old old games from over a decade ago!! With both of these events coinciding, I've decided to give this year the subtitle of "The Year of Looking Back" This decision has been bubbling away for about a week, and I've been in two minds whether I wanted to make that an actual "thing", but it seems to be something that's happening, so I figure I might as well just join in!! What does this mean? And why am I posting about it? Well, tonight I've started something that I've been considering doing for a long time, but have never bothered to get around to. My current "recuperating" situation is leading to a lot of spare time. I don't want to cram 24/7 coding into my day, so have set aside the hours of 5pm and later to be specifically "not on a computer" time. ... I still have my iPad, but without the ability to code, I've had to come up with more imaginative things to pass my time. You've probably noticed my number of tweets and Facebook posts have increased, as well as my overall Internet presence. I'm almost back to pre-AGameAWeek proportions of inane crapness that I'm posting all over the place!! So, what big thing can I pad out my time with? I've decided to, day by day, email/otherwise every single person on the Socoder member list. .. Except for those that I'll be ignoring for obvious reasons. I'll be sending them a nice handtyped message, none of this mass mailed bullshit, and wondering if they ever get back. If and when they do get in touch, I'll let you guys know. Wish me luck!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Tue, 09 Apr 2013, 15:52
shroom_monk	That sounds like quite a nice idea, actually. Perhaps it might even cause a few people to pop back over here and say hi! Best of luck! It'll be nice to hear how things go. -=-=- A mushroom a day keeps the doctor away... Keep It Simple, Shroom!
Tue, 09 Apr 2013, 16:22
Jayenkai	Message #2 was sent via Facebook to our old friend Magicman. I spent about 10 minutes trawling through Twitter in the hopes that I'd find him before ICQ gently informed me that I already have him in my Facebook contacts!! .. Damn, that ICQs pretty handy as an all-in-one contact list!! Magicman is Socoder member number 4, and was last here in mid December 2012... Correction, he's been here tonight! Hello Magicman! Magicman Why hello there! How are things? More specifically how is good ole SoCoder going? Every now and then I will pop on there just to see how things are and you seem to still have a pretty active community going. I kind of got out of the whole video game programming thing a while back, hence my absence from the site, but i'm still doing things with programming and the like. I'm at uni currently getting my degree in Computer Engineering, so I havn't lost the geek bug. (I'm now going to have to check with him to see if that was ok to post.. Must remember to add that to all future mailings!!) -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Tue, 09 Apr 2013, 16:23
rockford	Good luck
Wed, 10 Apr 2013, 17:09
Jayenkai	Day two hasn't gone anywhere near as well as day one did. I've decided to contact two people a day, so it keeps me busy doing this for quite a while, but unfortunately today's proved fruitless. I got my first "Mail recipient failure" message .. Yayyak seems oddly difficult to track down. Anyhoo, carry on. There's Agent Smith. Hmm.. He didn't leave on good terms. Not sure he'll want to hear from me,if his email address even works. There's also CaffeineKid who regularly stops by, so I didn't bother emailing him, and then Oscar, who does regularly stop by, even if he never posts anything. Should I email him? shrugs I might do, tomorrow, not sure I should when I'm already getting irritated by the amount of issues I'm having tracking folk down, tonight!! Anyway, I've sent out a couple more emails that haven't insta-failed, so we'll have to wait and see what comes of them. I should try to sleep, now! It's gone midnight.. That took longer than expected!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Thu, 11 Apr 2013, 06:11
Jayenkai	Hurray! This has cheered me up a bit. I was slightly worried that last night's emails had all been a total waste of time, but I just heard back from Instinct, so all is well again! -=-=- Everything is going well right now for me, albeit very busy. Working for a company writing software for autonomous and unmanned surface vehicles (boats). Currently working on an 11 meter long vessel (www.asvglobal.com/military-and-security-vehicles/c-sweep). I'm actually in the UK right now (Portsmouth area) doing field trials! They've had me out here for a while (2.5 months, then in the states for 2 weeks, and now I'm back here again for a few more weeks), so I've had my fill of fish n' chips and jaffa cakes. I hope you're doing alright Jay; the blitzcoder/coders workshop/socoder community helped bring me to where I am today, so I really appreciate that you're still out there carrying the torch. - "instinct" -=-=- -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Thu, 11 Apr 2013, 08:33
rockford	Yay!
Thu, 11 Apr 2013, 15:27
Jayenkai	Four emails sent tonight, due to mistrust of the addresses.. two of which I don't expect to get to their targets due to how old the email addy's were (eeuw, none gmail!!) and one other that's already returned a mail-fail. I also sent a birthday greeting to MetalMan, assuming that's still his email addy.. And now we wait! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 00:09
MetalMan	Got your mail buddy Best mail of the day, I'll try popping by a bit more often as I usually do when I get that ol' BlitzCoder/SoCoder Nostalgia feeling. Oh..talking of memory and nostalgia, anyone remember Grisu's community memory game from bc with all our avatars in it? Is he still around? Yeah.. i'm getting old too. Woooooaaah.. just noticed the new top left logo.. cooool! -=-=- ---------------------- Science, development and SciFi ----------------------
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 01:48
Jayenkai	Blimey, Grisu. Now there's a blast from the past. I'll add him to my hunting list, but can't imagine getting too far on that one! Hello MetalMan! And Happy Birthday, again -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 02:25
waroffice	Welcome back and Happy birthday, did you get the memo about doughnuts?
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 04:42
MetalMan	Doughnuts??? where? when?? Agent MetalMan to the rescue: www.blitzbasic.com/Account/showuser.php?id=4750, Grisu's profile on BlitzBasic, shows he's still active over there, and in his signature he has a link to the download of..."tadaaa" CardWar! Now I'm gonna go crack a can of beer open and celebrate that my borthday is finally over! -=-=- ---------------------- Science, development and SciFi ----------------------
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 05:15
waroffice	the memo says, the birthday boy/girl has to supply doughnuts!
Fri, 12 Apr 2013, 18:27
Jayenkai	Ladies and Gentlemen, MisterX!! ( I REALLY wasn't expecting to get a reply from that one!!!) -=-=- Hi Jayenkai! Yes, I'm still here, although I haven't used that nickname for eons. I mostly go by "Lumpio-" or my real name online these days. I remember your site, I think I might have even posted there once (which prompted an "is everything all right?" from you if my memory serves me right). I however had gotten pretty bored of forums in general at that point and nowadays prefer more real-time things like IRC and Twitter. We still have the remnants of a BlitzCoder IRC channel, although most of the folk from the old days are no longer around. And I just realized that BC was like a decade ago, whoa, time flies... And I do remember you yourself very clearly as well, as that guy who just kept churning out new games all the time. I hope this doesn't sound weird, but I remember a much younger myself admiring your enthusiasm very much. And judging by your tweets you're still at it. I'm @mvirkkunen by the way. I personally have moved on from game programming, since it dawned to me that making a game people are actually going to have fun playing requires dealing with a lot of boring stuff, such as continuing to work on it even after I've proven to myself that I could do it if I wanted to. I'm really bad at finishing stuff if there is no tangible incentive. For my day job I do (mostly) web development at a small enough to be comfortable IT firm who hired me off high school, and on my free time I tinker with smaller personal projects (I should really start a blog or something) and lately, electronics. Thinking of it, I don't think I've ever really talked with you properly. Nice to know that somebody else still remembers our community. I do sometimes wonder where everybody went. - Matti "Lumpio-" Virkkunen -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Sat, 13 Apr 2013, 05:48
Dabz	MisterX... I remember that nickname... Its actually good to know these people are still floating around out there! Dabz -=-=- Intel Core i5 6400 2.7GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB), 8Gig DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD, Windows 10 64bit
Sat, 13 Apr 2013, 13:54
Jayenkai	I'm going to leave this until Monday, take the weekend off, mostly because my Twitter feed has currently \|edit\| gotten very busy \|edit\| with IGN outcries! More greets next week! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Tue, 16 Apr 2013, 15:53
Jayenkai	Monday.. I was about to start doing the email stuff when all the Boston stuff happened. Crikey! As you can imagine, I wasn't exactly in a well-wishing mood, once all that started. I've gotten back into the swing of things, tonight, though. Sent off two more emails, to members old, and will hopefully be hearing something back soon. I'll keep you informed. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Wed, 17 Apr 2013, 12:04
Afr0	Mr. X was my favourite user on BC
Wed, 17 Apr 2013, 12:28
rockford	Just who is MR X? View on YouTube
Thu, 18 Apr 2013, 15:23
Jayenkai	Awww.. Got another mail-rejection, today. So many emails sent, and only a couple of responses, so far. .. This isn't going well!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Fri, 19 Apr 2013, 02:26
Jayenkai	Aaah, a return at last! TNT! -=-=- Hey there, This was quite an unexpected email haha... Good to hear you and SoCoder are still around. As far as what I'm up to, I'm just finishing up my Bachelor's in Computer Science and then hopefully finding a programming job and starting "real life." Haven't done much in the way of Blitz or any game development in recent years, though I did stumble upon Monkey recently when looking into HTML5 dev. Other than that, nothing too interesting to tell; goes without saying how quickly the years have gone by. Anyway, I may very well try to log in again for old time's sake when I get a chance, but for now just figured I'd answer to acknowledge your email. -T -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Mon, 22 Apr 2013, 14:30
Jayenkai	Grrr.. Three emails sent, two rapidly rejected. Tonight hasn't been fruitful. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Sun, 12 May 2013, 05:15
Jayenkai	Just when I was giving up, a bolt from the blue!! Ladies and Gentlemen, Svrman!! -=-=-=- Hey James, It's me - Jim Le... formerly known as the svrman! How have you been? First, I want to apologise for taking so long to get back to you. I did actually read your mail the day you sent it - so, umm, sorry for that! Things have been busy around the time of your email and just recently, I could finally grab a breather from all the hoo-har. Hey if it's any consulation, writing this email was on the top of my list of things to do! Thanks for your getting-back-in-touch email, it was nice to hear from an old friend. funny that I've kept my old svrman gmail account around for so long, I cannot for the life of me remember the original reasons for doing so. Was I really number 3? haha I remember having a crap load of time back then - I was glued to the codersworkshop & the official blitzbasic.com for the community. I remember joining socoder to keep in touch with you guys but alas that life wasn't meant to last. So what's been up with me? Well, for one thing I'm writing you this email from the other side of the world haha but I don't mean down-under. I've actually been living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the last two years. Total culture shock (islamic country and all) but I reckon I survived out here pretty well (I can speak abit of the local dialect too). Did I tell you I got married the last time we spoke? Well if I did, then get this... I 'm now a proud father of one - my 2yr old son, Lewis. Geeeeez how times flies... Yeh, life has been... how to put it nicely... challenging. It's all good though, I've got a stories to tell, all types of people I've met, some of the things I would tell you, you wouldn't believe... but all of them pretty hilarious when I think about it. Sorry to hear about your situation and I hope your health has improved (I remember stalking your facebook for a bit, I recall some posts of you in the hospital). So how is socoder? did your community shrink or grow? I just took a quick look and it doesn't look like it's changed much? When I met my wife, I had to pretty much wipe away my old persona - the old me - and force myself to "grow up" (i was in my early 20s at the time and never-employed). This meant I had to leave all of the indie gaming scene and figure out what it was that adults did so I could do it too. Ofcourse, I'll always be grateful for the brief time I was active in the community. It was really my first intro to programming (I was an IT/art student) and I learn't some amazing tricks and concepts that have helped me in my career as a frontend web designer/javascript developer. To be honest, I don't have any intentions to return to the indie gamedev community. I think with my current responsibilities to my wife and son, I cannot afford to - life is just too freaking expensive. In about a couple of weeks time, I will finally be returning home to London after 2 years abroad. Damn, I can't wait! I miss the good old cod and chips My working life now is pretty much all about startups (well the ones that fail apparently) and I've already planned on starting one of my own (more details on my CV here: https://particlecannon.co.uk/about/resume). Have you considered doing something like starting your own biz/dev studio? You could work from home, fight the boredom and be somewhat productive at the same time? haha though I'm probably not the right person to ask for career advice. If you're ever in london, let's meet up! I'm planning to spend an unhealthy about of time at the google campus on old street (campuslondon.com) and just work in the cafe - check it out, you can find some really awesome game/ios devs there. ahhhhh sorry for the long email, I'm falling asleep just reading it over again (might also be becus it's 1am here). Sorry if none of the above makes sense, I've lived in malaysia for too long and my english needs some practice. Take care buddy, It's great to finally know your real name (and face!). Maybe we'll meet someday soon! Best regards, Jim -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''