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WG Forums Back up
Posted 9 years agoThe forums are back up. There's a post on there detailing what happened.
Forums Experiencing Outage
Posted 9 years agoNot really sure how else to reach out to people, but the forums are currently experiencing an outage due to a power outage from the host. I'm doing what I can to get them up as quickly as possible.
WG Game Forum
Posted 10 years ago[BIG EDIT]
I've gone ahead and bought the new domain name. You should be able to access the forum with this:
www.weightgaming.com
I just set it up, so the DNS might be updated everywhere, if not, just use the old programancy url until it does:
www.programancy.com/forum
END BIG EDIT
I've gone ahead and created a weight gain/inflation/other related fetishes game forum that will allow developers that don't have the time, money, or desire to set up their own online presence the opportunity to do so easily. You can find the forums here:
http://www.programancy.com/forum
Right now, I'm inviting any developers with projects they want to share to create an account and request to become a developer on the site. I will then give them their own discussion board and the opportunity to upload their project for download on the web. I also invite any people interested in these projects to also make an account so that they can discuss and follow any/all of the projects easily in one spot.
I don't plan on just stopping with forum software, but providing other features like a github/gitlab instance for version control for people's projects, issue trackers for bug reporting, wikis for how-tos and game lore, etc. I invite anyone that has ideas on how to make the forum better to discuss them there.
That being said, I will probably post most of my updates on my project board there from now on. I might mirror them here for awhile, but I will eventually just post them there.
If you have any issues registering, please let me know and I can fix it.
I've gone ahead and bought the new domain name. You should be able to access the forum with this:
www.weightgaming.com
I just set it up, so the DNS might be updated everywhere, if not, just use the old programancy url until it does:
www.programancy.com/forum
END BIG EDIT
I've gone ahead and created a weight gain/inflation/other related fetishes game forum that will allow developers that don't have the time, money, or desire to set up their own online presence the opportunity to do so easily. You can find the forums here:
http://www.programancy.com/forum
Right now, I'm inviting any developers with projects they want to share to create an account and request to become a developer on the site. I will then give them their own discussion board and the opportunity to upload their project for download on the web. I also invite any people interested in these projects to also make an account so that they can discuss and follow any/all of the projects easily in one spot.
I don't plan on just stopping with forum software, but providing other features like a github/gitlab instance for version control for people's projects, issue trackers for bug reporting, wikis for how-tos and game lore, etc. I invite anyone that has ideas on how to make the forum better to discuss them there.
That being said, I will probably post most of my updates on my project board there from now on. I might mirror them here for awhile, but I will eventually just post them there.
If you have any issues registering, please let me know and I can fix it.
Status Update #1
Posted 10 years agoThanks to an inspiring note, I've decided to start updating here again, especially since its probably not very clear what I've been doing. Be forewarned, this journal is probably going to ramble a bit, but I'll be sure to leave a tl;dr at the bottom.
It should be said that the journey to Heavy Dust, the game that I ultimately failed to deliver, was a long one. While I had toyed with the idea of a WG-based game well before I knew how to program properly (was using Gamemaker and such), the idea for a large scale, serious game started with a homework assignment. The assignment was to make a text-based game centered around a bear getting enough food for hibernation. I recall taking that assignment and extending it into something a little more interesting, and then thinking about how far I could take it. That evolved into various other projects, the skeletons of which can be found scattered on the internet.
Then my first serious push, the WGRPG. It was a "game" made hastily, with half-hearted attempts to make it extendable for future updates. It was not my finest work, but I'm glad I posted it (after all, it did lead me to meet my wonderful boyfriend). I doubt I really need to explain much about its external appearance and functionality, but the code itself was an absolute mess (as some people that decompiled the code can attest to). I don't apologize for the shoddy codework, I was still learning (still am), but I will apologize for the path that that set me on. People might recall the journals of me complaining that I had to abandon the WGRPG because it was ultimately unstable, certainly way too unstable to use as a base. That caused me to become obsessed with "doing it right" the next time. Thus, the idea of Heavy Dust was born.
HD was going to be done by the books, using all of my knowledge of software engineering. It was going to be well documented, based off of use cases, UML class diagrams, the whole shebang. I was very focused on doing it from a topdown perspective, meaning that I often had to look at the project, which was immense, as a whole. This led me to become incredibly depressed (my other, much more serious depression at the time not withstanding) and nervous to make any decisions about the project because, what if I was wrong? What if I made a mistake about some key design element that would propagate all throughout the project? I had to consider every possible outcome, every possible use case, everything that might occur. Worse yet, any code I did get to work on was so abstract and removed from the core functionality that weeks worth of work would seem pointless. I had nothing to show for it.
There were at least 3 distinct attempts at this, at least in regards to HD. The first two were just direct attempts at creating something halfway resembling what I had promised, but I would always get mired in the fear/depression spiral I described above. The last one, I attempted to create a library just removed from everything else, a library not just for HD but for everything, something I called "Future Proof." Future Proof was supposed to save me from the fear that I could mess up at the top level design by adopting a purely modular approach, which every aspect of the library could be replaced with relative ease. However, Future Proof still failed because I was still attempting a top down design, still doing the UML diagrams, still trying to plan out every little aspect. When I realized this, I made the call, that I was finished trying to work on HD, and that I was going to work on an app based on Dragon Ranching.
The Dragon Rancher app was mostly because I was working on an Android app for my legitimate work, but also because I thought it could be successful. I actually had every aspect of the app detailed out, and was in the process of doing my usual design, when I started feeling the same feelings I had with HD and everything else. It was at this point that I had to ask myself "I program professionally. That's how I pay the bills. I design and implement software solutions for clients with no trouble what so ever. So why can I not do the same for my own projects?" Then it hit me. At work, I take a problem and apply a dirty version of the Agile process, which can be summed up as "produce a demo-able result as quickly as possible." Its very much a bottom-up design, and while it can lead to deleting a lot of code, you always have something to show, something to be proud of. I'm extremely successful at my job because of it, though, for some reason, it had never occurred to me to do things like that for my own projects.
At that point, I quietly stopped working on everything else, and started working on something I've been calling the Arrautza Engine. For anyone familiar with the Basque language (which is an awesome language, by the way), it should mean 'Egg,' assuming Google isn't lying to me. The idea with it is that I will "grow" it from the bottom up to a legitimate engine I can use to test and create my game ideas, and thus far it has been going great.
Arrautza is still written in Java (though it could easily be written with C++), but it utilizes LWJGL (Light-Weight Java Game Library) for rendering and other purposes, meaning I have access to OpenGL for rendering purposes. I've already created a layout manager for managing GUIs written with the engine, implemented text rendering, and an event (such as keyboard and mouse events) listening framework. This all means that I can now create new interfaces with absolute ease and control, which in turn means that I can prototype/implement pretty much any game interface I want. While it isn't much to look at, you can see the images in the following links:
Layout Manager Demo:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUIlfet.....R5cR.png:large
Text Rendering Demo:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUc-uKT.....FeTE.png:large
I also got the soft body simulation working in Arrautza. The following link shows it working in the first version of HD, though it works the same in the new engine:
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/C.....vLUsAAChT-.mp4
I'm now working on the comprehensive design for the side profile system that will utilize the soft body simulation to allow users to see their character in a dynamic and interactive screen that updates as the character eats or gains/loses weight. People might remember me promising this in HD a long time ago, and we can all agree that the design then was...complicated, to say the least. The new design, while still nebulous, is vastly simplified. A diagram of the higher level design elements can be seen at the following link:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVV4Edh.....iHac.png:large
Now, you might be wondering, where am I going with all of this? Arrautza will be made with one game in mind, which is basically going to be a series of tech demos of all of the ideas I want to incorporate. It will be an actual game (not like the non-game that the WGRPG was), and the "tech demos" will be fully fleshed out, but it will ultimately be a series of tests on the viability of all of those ideas. The game and the world it creates will grow with each successive update, piece by piece, bottom up. I will utilize the lessons learned from my previously failed attempts, utilize the programming style I've been cultivating with things like "Future Proof." I will utilize the vast canon I've been compiling for things like HD and other projects. I will not let any of that go to waste.
Most importantly, the game I will make will have fat things in it, fat things getting fatter. And it will be awesome. I've never felt better about working on a project than this one. I'm excited instead of scared to add new features, because I get to see the results instantly. Which means you all will get to see results as they happen. Which means you all will get more updates and actual products, actual games.
Arrautza will hatch.
So yeah, the long and short of it is, I realized why my other projects failed, stopped doing the things that caused me to fail, and am blazing through with the new project of mine, the Arrautza Engine, which I intend to use to create an experimental game that showcases many a fat thing.
Sorry if this journal was hard to follow, I will probably post more journals (depending on if anyone is even interested in what I have to say at this point), and of course will answer any questions.
Thanks for believing in me, those that do.
It should be said that the journey to Heavy Dust, the game that I ultimately failed to deliver, was a long one. While I had toyed with the idea of a WG-based game well before I knew how to program properly (was using Gamemaker and such), the idea for a large scale, serious game started with a homework assignment. The assignment was to make a text-based game centered around a bear getting enough food for hibernation. I recall taking that assignment and extending it into something a little more interesting, and then thinking about how far I could take it. That evolved into various other projects, the skeletons of which can be found scattered on the internet.
Then my first serious push, the WGRPG. It was a "game" made hastily, with half-hearted attempts to make it extendable for future updates. It was not my finest work, but I'm glad I posted it (after all, it did lead me to meet my wonderful boyfriend). I doubt I really need to explain much about its external appearance and functionality, but the code itself was an absolute mess (as some people that decompiled the code can attest to). I don't apologize for the shoddy codework, I was still learning (still am), but I will apologize for the path that that set me on. People might recall the journals of me complaining that I had to abandon the WGRPG because it was ultimately unstable, certainly way too unstable to use as a base. That caused me to become obsessed with "doing it right" the next time. Thus, the idea of Heavy Dust was born.
HD was going to be done by the books, using all of my knowledge of software engineering. It was going to be well documented, based off of use cases, UML class diagrams, the whole shebang. I was very focused on doing it from a topdown perspective, meaning that I often had to look at the project, which was immense, as a whole. This led me to become incredibly depressed (my other, much more serious depression at the time not withstanding) and nervous to make any decisions about the project because, what if I was wrong? What if I made a mistake about some key design element that would propagate all throughout the project? I had to consider every possible outcome, every possible use case, everything that might occur. Worse yet, any code I did get to work on was so abstract and removed from the core functionality that weeks worth of work would seem pointless. I had nothing to show for it.
There were at least 3 distinct attempts at this, at least in regards to HD. The first two were just direct attempts at creating something halfway resembling what I had promised, but I would always get mired in the fear/depression spiral I described above. The last one, I attempted to create a library just removed from everything else, a library not just for HD but for everything, something I called "Future Proof." Future Proof was supposed to save me from the fear that I could mess up at the top level design by adopting a purely modular approach, which every aspect of the library could be replaced with relative ease. However, Future Proof still failed because I was still attempting a top down design, still doing the UML diagrams, still trying to plan out every little aspect. When I realized this, I made the call, that I was finished trying to work on HD, and that I was going to work on an app based on Dragon Ranching.
The Dragon Rancher app was mostly because I was working on an Android app for my legitimate work, but also because I thought it could be successful. I actually had every aspect of the app detailed out, and was in the process of doing my usual design, when I started feeling the same feelings I had with HD and everything else. It was at this point that I had to ask myself "I program professionally. That's how I pay the bills. I design and implement software solutions for clients with no trouble what so ever. So why can I not do the same for my own projects?" Then it hit me. At work, I take a problem and apply a dirty version of the Agile process, which can be summed up as "produce a demo-able result as quickly as possible." Its very much a bottom-up design, and while it can lead to deleting a lot of code, you always have something to show, something to be proud of. I'm extremely successful at my job because of it, though, for some reason, it had never occurred to me to do things like that for my own projects.
At that point, I quietly stopped working on everything else, and started working on something I've been calling the Arrautza Engine. For anyone familiar with the Basque language (which is an awesome language, by the way), it should mean 'Egg,' assuming Google isn't lying to me. The idea with it is that I will "grow" it from the bottom up to a legitimate engine I can use to test and create my game ideas, and thus far it has been going great.
Arrautza is still written in Java (though it could easily be written with C++), but it utilizes LWJGL (Light-Weight Java Game Library) for rendering and other purposes, meaning I have access to OpenGL for rendering purposes. I've already created a layout manager for managing GUIs written with the engine, implemented text rendering, and an event (such as keyboard and mouse events) listening framework. This all means that I can now create new interfaces with absolute ease and control, which in turn means that I can prototype/implement pretty much any game interface I want. While it isn't much to look at, you can see the images in the following links:
Layout Manager Demo:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUIlfet.....R5cR.png:large
Text Rendering Demo:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUc-uKT.....FeTE.png:large
I also got the soft body simulation working in Arrautza. The following link shows it working in the first version of HD, though it works the same in the new engine:
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/C.....vLUsAAChT-.mp4
I'm now working on the comprehensive design for the side profile system that will utilize the soft body simulation to allow users to see their character in a dynamic and interactive screen that updates as the character eats or gains/loses weight. People might remember me promising this in HD a long time ago, and we can all agree that the design then was...complicated, to say the least. The new design, while still nebulous, is vastly simplified. A diagram of the higher level design elements can be seen at the following link:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVV4Edh.....iHac.png:large
Now, you might be wondering, where am I going with all of this? Arrautza will be made with one game in mind, which is basically going to be a series of tech demos of all of the ideas I want to incorporate. It will be an actual game (not like the non-game that the WGRPG was), and the "tech demos" will be fully fleshed out, but it will ultimately be a series of tests on the viability of all of those ideas. The game and the world it creates will grow with each successive update, piece by piece, bottom up. I will utilize the lessons learned from my previously failed attempts, utilize the programming style I've been cultivating with things like "Future Proof." I will utilize the vast canon I've been compiling for things like HD and other projects. I will not let any of that go to waste.
Most importantly, the game I will make will have fat things in it, fat things getting fatter. And it will be awesome. I've never felt better about working on a project than this one. I'm excited instead of scared to add new features, because I get to see the results instantly. Which means you all will get to see results as they happen. Which means you all will get more updates and actual products, actual games.
Arrautza will hatch.
So yeah, the long and short of it is, I realized why my other projects failed, stopped doing the things that caused me to fail, and am blazing through with the new project of mine, the Arrautza Engine, which I intend to use to create an experimental game that showcases many a fat thing.
Sorry if this journal was hard to follow, I will probably post more journals (depending on if anyone is even interested in what I have to say at this point), and of course will answer any questions.
Thanks for believing in me, those that do.
Social Media Links (Twatter and whatnot)
Posted 10 years agoSome of you might have noticed I got rid of the Twitter account. It was made for HD, at least originally, so when HD shut down, I shut it down. It was also a personal account (which the combination of the two didn't work).
So, if you want to follow a purely (and I mean purely) dev account for whatever I'm working on, you can find it here:
https://twitter.com/Programancy
There will be no personal updates on that, just stuff about my projects. I'll probably use Twitlonger or find some other means to release large pieces of text (forum not planned at the moment). Updates there will be posted as they occur.
If, for whatever ungodly reason, you want to listen to my inane bullshit, you can find my new personal account here:
https://twitter.com/Kilif67
Only things I'll post here are probably pictures and whatever is currently making me angry with the world.
We'll see how this works out.
So, if you want to follow a purely (and I mean purely) dev account for whatever I'm working on, you can find it here:
https://twitter.com/Programancy
There will be no personal updates on that, just stuff about my projects. I'll probably use Twitlonger or find some other means to release large pieces of text (forum not planned at the moment). Updates there will be posted as they occur.
If, for whatever ungodly reason, you want to listen to my inane bullshit, you can find my new personal account here:
https://twitter.com/Kilif67
Only things I'll post here are probably pictures and whatever is currently making me angry with the world.
We'll see how this works out.
Making it Official
Posted 10 years agoI would have figured interest in this project would have died out, but I'll make it official. Heavy Dust is not something I am working towards anymore. It was too ambitious for a single developer, something I would have needed a studio for.
I AM working on an Android app, the details of which are on my twitter.
I'll continue to use FA to browse for arts and pr0n, but that's about it, so don't expect any replies. I'm not ignoring you, I read every comment and such, its just that there's not much to say about the WGRPG or HD other than they've been abandoned.
Sorry for anyone that stuck with me this long.
I AM working on an Android app, the details of which are on my twitter.
I'll continue to use FA to browse for arts and pr0n, but that's about it, so don't expect any replies. I'm not ignoring you, I read every comment and such, its just that there's not much to say about the WGRPG or HD other than they've been abandoned.
Sorry for anyone that stuck with me this long.
