3/17

5p0- Woke.
6p1- Groomed myself for date.
10p5- Ended date. Wasn't actually a date. She invited me to dinner to break it off with me. It could have been worse. She could have just ignored my texts, but instead she took the time out to dine and talk with me as a friend, so it was a very kind and respectful gesture on her behalf that I won't forget.
11p6- Sat in car for 30m, (depressed), went home and called my friend over. We sparred, so I guess that counts as exercise. Good cardio at least, I'm pretty bruised up otherwise.
2a9- Friend went home. Texted milf, told her I would eat her out if she taught me how to code. She said she'd accept the offer but she doesn't have much experience in my specific field. Once you know a programming language, you sorta know 'em all, but she specializes in database work, so apart from the classes she took, she wouldn't be much help. Guess I'll just have to hit the books.
3a10- Threw some texts around.
6a13- Found a new programmer. My initial impression of him is good. He contacted me through here, not through the shitty "find-a-coder" channels, so he's already passionate about the project. Spent a bunch of time talking to him, and got him set up. (thumbs up)
7a13- Woke from nap.
10a16. Readed programming stuff for four hours, focus deteriorated near the end, ate. Whattaday.

3/16

5p0-Woke
6p1- Internetted. Exercised.
7p2- Exercised. Friends came over and took me out to birthday dinner.
9:30p4- Got back home.
10p5- Got a little bit of programming reading in.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 4/10
11p6- Readed moar programming.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 3/10
12a7- Readed moar programming.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 4/10
1a8- Learned programming stuff.
Difficulty 6/10 Efficiency 10/10

2a8- Woke up from nap.
6a12- Worked on some private affairs.
7a13- Reading code.
Difficulty 7/10 Efficiency 10/10
8a14- Readed some more.
9a15- Prepared for my get together.

3/15

6p0- Woke. Good sleep, 14h.
7p1- Exercised. Ran to CVS to get groceries. Clerk awarded me $2 extrabucks for alerting her to an expired bottle of V8. I've done this a few times, because not nearly enough people drink V8 as much as the bottles just go bad, but this is the first time I've been awarded for it. Anyway, I think getting the $2 loot is a 20% proc, and it only procs if you never choose the "hit on attractive clerk" option.
8p2- Internetted. Ate.
9p3- Ate. Showered.
12a6- Felt like crap. Played games for a few hours.
3a6- Woke up from nap.
4a7- Readed programming stuff.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 5/10
11a14- Continued reading. Right now, my biggest hurdle is trying to figure out everything that's going on in the previously written code. I still need to learn more though. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably need three weeks before I actually write any more code for AD3. It sounds bad, but I have written plenty of UI code... and I just need to sort out the code, figure out all the references, and step up my own skills, so that's the dealio. Hopefully I'll be able to stay on task; today was not too bad in terms of focus.

3/13

7p0- Woke. Yesterday, a friend from out of town came over uininvited, but he was very welcome, so we spent the day together. Apparently I'd forgotten that my birthday was coming up.
8p1- Internetted.
9p2- Ate.
10p3- Internetted, got back to reading programming stuffs.
Difficulty 2/10 Efficiency 4/10
11p4- same as below
12a5- Readed up on programming.
Difficulty 4/10 Efficiency 6/10
7a12- Kept reading and forgetting to update. Helped a friend with stuff.
9a12- Woke up from nap.
10a13- Alright, let's get shit done. I readed some more.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 10/10
11a14- same as above
12p15- Talked to sister.
2p17- Arrived at "Pi Day Party (the day was 3.1415)". Brought a Mudd Pie for the occasion. Snuck an hour of nap into the party, as well as probably 30 mins of exercise in a remote room. It was a board game party. Despite having no sleep, I managed to win a game of 7 Wonders. Hadn't played a board game since.... maybe last year. That goes the same for seeing old faces.
2a29- Got back from party. Slept.

3/12

Aching Dreams 3: The Dark Planet, delayed until tentative October release.

Ready for a trainwreck? Here it is. The main programmer left. Art and Story assets are mostly done. By last February, I expected him to pick up the slack on coding, and he's just not here, so I'm taking over his responsibilities. Where did he go? Well, I'm sure he'd love it if I wrote that he died, but he didn't, and it's probably a very bad idea to shame him on a professional level, so we'll just say "He's just not here", and we'll leave it at that. I'm replacing him.

When I made the announcement of a February release date, that announcement came with the self-assured assumption that the programmer would be finished with his half of the code (the hard stuff), and we'd merge it with my half (the easy stuff). But he's not here, so I'm going to finish the rest of it. It's going to take a lot more time than originally anticipated because I'm still figuring this out. I basically have to go level 2 Super Saiyan.

This blog has been quiet, and I've two reasons why: First, it's inherently difficult to show the progress, because the nature of code is itself not easy to show. If you take a gander at any other developer blog from a different game, you'll see concept art, game design decisions, and posts on the story or the lore. Given that this is now a one man show, concurrent development is impossible.

The second reason is embarrassment. I wasn't showing any code from the lead programmer because, well, he's not doing it, and I wasn't very particular on showing my side of things, because showing any of that shit would have given you the impression that we had no idea what the hell we were doing. I'm going to go ahead and ditch that embarrassment from here on out, because the product is late, and the customers deserve to know what's up. As a first gesture of transparency, I will go ahead and say that I now have some idea of what the hell I'm doing.

With that second reason gone, I'll be posting more often, so you can read what I'm up to, but I cannot assure that the posts will have much of anything interesting to say. Hell, just the other week, I spent all day and wound up writing a single line of code. Since it's safe to assume he's not helping, I can go back and finish up the remaining 5% of art/story because they're of equal priority as code is now.

We were mistaken. I apologize. If you can't accept that apology, then I suggest you stow your anger 'til October because I am still very much at work on this game. October is a guesstimate. Out of all the things I've worked on for this game, programming is definitely the hardest to give a concrete estimate on how long it'll take to finish. When I say "October", I'm saying that's when I'll understand wtf the Matrix is, and I'll apparently be able to see everybody as green lines of floating code....and then I'll finish the damn game by then.

Also, if you haven't seen it, I posted up some cancelled content from AD2 here. It's old, so it's kind of shitty now, but I assume you somehow managed to fap to my old art, so I posted it as is.

4p0- Woke.
5p1- Ate brekka. Told Ex-lead to put more comments in his code. (in programming, comments help programmers that didn't write the code understand what the original coder was intending)
6p2- Wrote the stuff above.
Difficulty 1/10 Efficiency 10/10
7p3- Packed up some story stuff for a friend to read and critique.
Difficulty 1/10 Efficiency 8/10
8p4- Posted up a programmer job query. Studied programming. I have to go back and read things that I skipped before.
Difficulty 4/10 Efficiency 8/10
9p5-Did some autohotkey scripting, to improve scripting speed ofc.
Difficulty 1/10 Efficiency 10/10

Free one handed keyboard script

This is not an Aching Dreams/Cartoon Pornography post. This is not an ad either, this is just a free one handed keyboard script for anyone on the interwebs that needs it. I post this on my blog in the hopes that someone that's looking for this will come across it on google.

Do you need to work on your computer with one hand? Are you tired of having to shift your right hand from mouse to keyboard, to keyboard to mouse, over and over? Do you have at *least* a moderately sized hand, or smaller-than-normal keyboard if you have a small hand? Do you suck at scripting in autohotkey or have utterly no idea what that is? Well, I've got the perfect program for YOU! (sorry, I'll quit it out)

This script is just an advanced form of the one made by "jonny", which you can find here:
http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/1257-half-qwerty-one-handed-typing/

One-handed typing as a theory has been floating around for a long time. In fact, the first prototypes of the mouse were tested while using a one-handed keyboard, which usually mirrors both sides onto one. For more information on one-handed typing and the Half-qwerty layout I used for this, visit this link. There are already programs that do this, but I have yet to find a free one. Of course, if you really like this, you might consider a half-qwerty keyboard, a true half-keyboard, or a more exotic (and more proprietary) Frogpad.

What this script does is it remaps the spacebar to be a modifier. When space is held, the keyboard is inverted, with the line of symmetry between g and h. Thus, e would become i, b would become n, p would become q, and so on. If the spacebar is depressed and released without pressing any other keys, a single space is sent. Modifier keys such as shift or control can be used in conjuction with Half-qwerty.

My refinement to jonny's original script is that you can now input all keys (with the exception of f1-f12) on the keyboard by using the Win key and Spacebar key. Furthermore, Win+C will now temporarily suspend the script altogether so that you can type with two hands at no hindrance.

How to install:
Download this program (here) and run it every time you want to use it OR simply use autohotkey and paste in the code in the first and second comment in this post.

How to use:
Spacebar and
QWERT=YUIOP
Y= / (so adding shift will press "?")
ASDFGH=H J K L ; '
ZXCVBN= B N M , . /
Tab= Backspace
Capslock= Enter

Left Windows Button and
Q [
E ]
WSAD Up/Down/Left/Right keys
RTY   Ins Home PgUp
FGH   Del End PgDw
Z -
X =
C (special, read below)
V \

Special
Pressing F3 temporarily turns the script off, because using this script while typing with two hands is going to screw you up when you press spacebar. By default, the temporary suspension lasts for 5 minutes.
Pressing Win+C will modify how long the suspension lasts, depending on how many times you press it:
Once 33 seconds
Twice 100 seconds
Thrice 15 mins
Foce(sp) 45 mins
Fivice(sp)  2 hours 15 mins
Sikceh(sp) Resets the counter to 1. Err... if you need this off for more than two hours, you should just close the program.
Pressing F3 after pressing Win+C will invoke the newly modified suspension. If you want the program to tell you how many times you've pressed Win+C, find yourself a handsome man/beautiful woman/dazzling unicorn and record them counting 1 to 5, and place each iteration into your C:\Windows\Media directory as 1.wav, 2.wav and so on. No, you can't have my arethraFranklin1.wav

If you are learning how to use this, I recommend either going to typeracer.com (a typing game against other opponents but sadly they will never know how OP your actual two hand typing skills are), or Typing of the Dead Overkill.

This script/program is released freely. I am not responsible for any damage to your computer and/or child support. No donations are sought, but if you really wanted to thank me, uhhh, if you like cartoon porn, check out my game, otherwise just pay it forward.

12/3

http://offbeatr.com/project/aching-dreams-3-the-dark-planet-2nd-campaign-9582918684

Hi, I've launched a new offbeatr campaign. If you were looking to preorder, you can vote on the project for now, and then place money down on a pledge when the project passes the voting stage, thanks.