What if my dreams were to be an astronaut, a doctor, a teacher, or a famous singer? Should I go for them? I guess there is still that slim chance that i could fulfill them. But what if I want to be the President of the United States? I lack one critical thing. Being born american or even having an american citizenship. Who knows, perhaps the laws will lighten up for me to be one. But if I’m 100% illegible to be the President, does that mean I give up on my dream to be it even though I’d be doomed to failure? To nail it down to impossible, what if I want to be … another nationality by birth, be born a dog or live in 400 B.C. ? Where do you draw the line between a dream that should be given up, and one that you let live or nurture?

It’s been several weeks now and I think I’m opening up to the idea of changing my dreams if not letting them die. At first, the thought of it was making me bitter. If I were to compare this process to the Kübler-Ross model then I definitely didn’t notice the Denial part. I know there was a time of anger and even a little bit of depression. There could have been the bargaining stage, but I don’t remember it. I think I’m in the acceptance stage.

The dreams may change to something a little more tangible as something that I alone can do. Such as writing a book. By a non-author, good or bad, it’s at least tangible.

Perhaps the frustration and invisible resistance that I have received so far is loose evidence that my current path is not intended for me. Like trying to continue to go through the closed opportunity door. I could still go through it but not without much hardship, frustration, and pain when in the end, it would fulfill me more to try another door for a totally different dream that was evidently my true fate. I’m not in this for happiness, I’m in it for Joy ^[1]. Resisting my fate will cause frustration, even if I don’t know what the path is. I won’t truly experience joy unless I’m walking in Him and following the path He’s leading me in.

Some may say I’m giving up. I’m coming to realize that should I fulfill my dream, or not, that when I die, I can’t take them with me. I’m sure Mozart cares little about his masterpieces now that he’s been dead for a few centuries now.

Let the dreams take care of themselves, I shall focus on more important things.

1. A Church on the Rock Podcast by Dave Overholt. Message entitled Unfinished Masterpiece: JOY.

So I’ve mentioned what I’ve worked on before. I had made the choice that I need to determine what dream / project will die now. Made mostly out of being bummed out after a horrible start with my android app. Before I made the app free, I only had about eleven purchases. Pretty poor for, well, any app. It has more now, but that’s because it’s free. Since then I’ve released the source code in case anyone wants to learn off of the code.

I’ve realized that I’m no business person and it’s not likely going to come to me one day. I’d have to go and take a full course on entrepreneurship and even then, there is no guarantee that I’d learn how to handle starting up a business (or running one). That realization was probably the second part of my discouragement, which lead to me thinking… “should I just give up on my dreams?” Google searches on that exact phrase will give you plenty of posts on NO! responses. One even suggested that giving up on them even could lead to depression if your dreams are big enough. Don’t ask me for the reference because I cannot find it anymore. And Google searches for it give me results without the words I searched for… Thanks Google. Sigh.

It’s odd. It seems at times, I warm up to the idea that I should let some dreams die so I can focus on others… then several days later I think, well, maybe I shouldn’t give them up. I could put them on the back burner for later. Two are fairly large and I’ve invested a lot of time doing what I enjoy the most… the lore creation. Well it might be second to actually seeing the lore being used in a game / book. I’m creative. Probably more creative than I am analytic.

To get into the projects I have in mind and my level of attachment to them are as follows:

A class based multiplayer mod. It’s closely linked to Aliens vs. Predator clone than what some people might have assumed as being a Team Fortress 2 clone. The only attachment I have to it, is that I’ve enjoyed AvP 2, _Not the recent version created lately_. Natural selection seems like the closest there is, but I haven’t played that. I liked the different classes offered by AvP and would usually pick the settings such that it restricted the weapons. Being that the game is ancient now, I’ve longed for a replacement that including races that cloaked, races that were melee and climbed walls, and your stock race with guns. So if someone were to make a game that felt like the old AvP with a new look, I could probably drop this idea quickly. It might be better to just wait for a true AvP clone to arise than make this myself.

Aenteroph Chronicles. I don’t remember how this started. But for quite some time, I spent a lot of my waking hours dreaming up the world and how things worked. I’d have to say that I’d also be deeply saddened should this ever go. I keep thinking that this was simply supposed to be a simple one off story that was going to give me the experience I needed to make more involved games later on. It also might have been my attempt at thinking up another fantasy MMO that was based on the rules that I wanted to see in the game, as I’ve already thought up the sci-fi mmo for the Legacies lore. After many nights thinking up things to put into this fantasy world, I ended up with about 10-15 stories that I could make out of this.

Last but not least is the Legacies science fiction universe. This is by far my oldest creations and I would probably be devastated the most by the loss of this one should I let it disappear. It’s over 15 years old and very few people have seen it. I’ve likely held on to it as I wanted it to be the masterpiece of my creations. That it’s solid in it’s story and lore. A deep and rich experience. It’s come a long way and I remember a lot of what I put into it and what was cut. Being sci-fi, it was inspired by many of the sci-fi stories out there: Star Wars, Space Above and Beyond, Star Trek, etc. At one point I had to stop looking at other movies and stories as I had noticed that my creations were a little too familiar. I didn’t have wookies, I had large… hairy… sasquatch—-like…. There was no force, or light sabers… they just used swords… that may or may not have glowed. Desert people that looked like Kardasians. Ugly faced war lovers…. _sigh_. Then it all got an overhaul… then again and again. I’m glad to say that now it is very close to what I envision it. That it looks different and no longer a spinoff of something already existing. There is no force. Melee weapons are for primatives. Lines often blur between good and evil.

So the question now is, what do I do with them? Put them on the side and not think about them for a while? Let them die? Ignore everything and continue full force in them?

Part of the question, reaches back to the android app I made. If I do get around to making it, will people even like it? Enough that warrants me making more (financially or not).

Or do i make it, but for myself first? Even if nobody else likes it. Would I like it then?

At the very least, I might sideline these and try just writing them myself.

I don’t know how many websites I’ve created before. Plenty of unique and plenty of ugly by today’s standards websites. I was never strongly determined to go into flash, so I tried one thing there and then settled on server side scripting, html and JavaScript… then later on with CSS. I list websites as it’s pretty much the first thing I did. Lots and lots of pointless websites. All just for myself that served no purpose other than to try and make a cool design. Am I sad to see these go? Not one bit.

Themis. My first first major server side script. I put a fair bit of time into this, but it didn’t really have a hold on me. Just something I spent a lot of time on. It helped me get a good understanding of what kind of security works and what doesn’t. Then better solutions came around and I let it turn to dust. No one used it. No one knew of it. I don’t think even I used it. Always in a alpha or beta state with nothing else that used it. It was back in the day when I wanted to do everything myself instead of using libraries. Although I’m sure that libraries were hard to come by at the time.

Hermes. My second script. This one had much more gumption. Now that I think of it… I do think Themis was used for this. Hermes was my webmail client. Also during the time that I did everything myself. In this case… I did have other things before. I tried hotmail, thunderbird and eventually a site call blue…. blue something-or-other. Spam was bad and this solution seemed to get rid of most of it. It used a unique (to me) method to ask anyone who emailed me to whitelist themselves by clicking a link on every reply. This way you could cause yourself to go to the inbox so long as you had a valid email, instead of landing in the spam folder. The service itself’s uptime is what caused me to then make this script. It mirrored much of the functionality and was quite lite-weight. After 2-3 years, I eventually retired it as it got too troublesome to maintain for just myself. Then finally, at Google Mail… I’m happy. Am I sad to see this one go? Perhaps, but like Old Yeller, it was just time…

iKonquest. My third major script. This time, I wanted to see a multiplayer version of a game i had great fun with on the KDE version of linux…. Galactic Conquest. or Konquest. It had more to do with strategy than it did luck which is why I liked it… Simple to learn, hard to master. I set out to create the game and eventually I did. It had a small following, but bugs eventually killed it. My attention soon helped the demise of this game and eventually it was gone. Sad to leave, a little.

Facebook Game. A victim of feature creeping. I failed to realize how large the game could get and ultimately abandoned it. Sad to leave? A little yes.

Maelori. A java game that I worked on with a team, reason for ending, unspoken, and it’s end was unfortunate.

Android App: Scoundrel’s Cross. This app, I even invested in. Took me about a two months to get in a workable state, and another few months to finalize the content. It was the first true app completed to the level it was intended to be released in. A part 1 of 4 series. Unfortunately, I’m no businessman or marketer and that ultimately killed any future for this app as a good portion of it was riding on the artwork. Without artwork, it would look unfinished and the poor sales killed any ambition to move forward. In the end, I released the source code for the app and made what i did release, free. (I refunded all who purchased as part of the original promise was that they were going to get the full game as it was released. The right thing to do was to refund all who purchased to date… which wasn’t that many.). Sad to leave? Very. My first app, in a universe I’ve spend years developing. A big slap in the face and one that made me question if I should continue doing this. More on that in the next post.
Note: The website for this app was quickly made and ironically wasn’t intended to be viewed initially in a mobile device. With the death of the app, there’s very little ambition to make it so.

That’s the apps I’ve created to date. There’s probably others but none that I can remember… so they didn’t hold a part of me when they died.

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
“The kingdom of God is within man”
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

. . .

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Circumstances fall differently on others, and I should not be quick to envy them. My life is about me, and how I deal with it. Yours is about you. There are too many unknowns and differences of opinions for me to compare myself to you. If I seem like a walking contradiction or hypocrite, it is likely because I’m having trouble articulating what I actually mean. Or perhaps I don’t really know what I want myself. Opinions and desires, if not strongly rooted in something can switch on a dime. And this area of my life is definitely shallow rooted. At least that’s what it appears to me to be like.

This “category” on my site will tell the true tale of how I go about my life in regards to development, programming code that is. I took it in college and got a job coding. It’s what I do best. Lately, I’ve second guessed my work, or triple guessed it. I’ve doubted my dreams and even contemplated giving them up. One particular post I’ve read suggested that doing so would open the door for depression. I guess it depends on the level of dedication or how strongly you are attached to your dream(s). In my case it is strong.

In the past day or so, after much contemplating on giving up my dreams, I decided to start this Discouraged Developer Journal. Either it will tell the tale of a discouraged developer who never gave up on his dream and ultimately accomplished them, or pose as a warning to those who can spot the signs they need to avoid the doomed path I follow.

* To anyone who reads this, be prepared for a rambling, scatter brained journal entries as I work out my thoughts. There maybe large gaps between posts, or so frequent as to (witty one-liner).

I easily passed on Killing Floor when it first came out. Little did I know it would be a game I play with friends so often as of this post. It is true, so few games now-a-days offer a coop mode in games. That’s what this game is. It is initially easily comparable to Left 4 Dead, but after playing for a bit, you quickly get a sense that it is very far from it. It’s grittier, less forgiving, and darker.

Each game by default has up to 6 slots for players to occupy. It’s round based instead of guiding you through a tunnel. This lets players decide how they want to survive. Often I’ll find that some areas are really good for defending, as opposed to others. Those who like to hunker down and weld doors shut so that they can funnel the mobs, can do so. They can even use it to their advantage where the weld a gate shut so gunfire can still pass through. You can’t always hunker down completely as the trader changes location each round so if you get stuck defending one location, you might not have enough time to make it to the trader.

The trader gives you access to bigger and badder weapons, should you be able to afford them. If not, then gain cash by killing mobs and surviving. If all else fails, ask for money and someone might be able to lend a few bucks. Giving cash to other players is critical to the game in harder difficulties as deaths are likely. The game is pretty unforgiving in that your weapons and armor are gone after death, unless someone was able to pick it up for you. You also lose some cash too. Being able to get right back to where you were last round with the help of friendly donations is key, otherwise you’ll once again be the weak link in the group.

The game also scales depending on how many players are in the game, along with the global difficulty setting. This can work against the group if people quit or are afk after a round starts, or someone doesn’t know how to play.

Overall, the game is fairly polished despite a few quirks such as:

• Very rare, but I’ve been stuck in third person view a few times. No way of getting out of it except for hoping it resets on the next round (usually after a death)… otherwise it’s quit the game and start it back up.
• Headless mobs still have a sense of where you are. Would have been nice if they just wandered around aimlessly or continued in the same direction before bleeding out.
• There’s a few maps where the mobs get stuck, and sometimes can only be heard and not seen (making it difficult to kill them).

I had high hopes for this game. Even when I purchased the game a while ago, I found it entertaining. I am much less critical of games than others can be. At the time, I wasn’t playing much multiplayer, or at least I was playing multiplayer in different games. For this game, I kept it for the singleplayer experience.

The graphics for it’s time were “unreal.” It did live up to it’s name. It was definitely a step up from the previous game which was UT2004. But something was lacking.

I couldn’t set the bot skill to a level that I liked. Either they were worse than cannon fodder, or made me feel like it. There was no grades of middle ground, let alone one middle ground. I’m also no longer the hardcore gamer I used to be. Trying to beat the game on it’s hardest level is not what I go for anymore. Again, not that I was good enough to in the first place, far from it. As time goes on, I look for a release instead of topping a chart.

The bots lack of scalability would have been overlook-able but coupled with it being next to impossible to run a small networked game with friends made my distaste for this game grow strong. I have followed nearly every guide I could find for opening ports, DMZ, etc but I could still not get the campaign mode playable with friends. Looking up solutions online found only others following guides that also didn’t seem to work. Looks like Campaign mode is LAN only for me. Even running a VPN didn’t work. Such a shame.

Likely, the biggest reason for all of this is Epic has decided to abandon the PC due to piracy. A sad end to the Epic Games’ games, Valve has it right, but they are such a small company, who’s going to buy from them? It is this last point that has me mostly conflicted. Piracy is definitely out of control so their business choice is understandable. But being a PC gamer myself, I only know that it would mean I’d miss out on a lot more because of it. It’s still a shame they left UT3 to rot before they fixed the issues. Unless that’s their way of giving all PC gamers the finger, even if it is directed only to the pirates.

Not all is poo poo with this game. The Unreal Development Kit is a nice gem for wannabe developers. Even their pricing model is very competitive to lower quality gaming engines out there. At an initial $99, you get the engine and can keep the first $5000 you make royalty free. After that, it’s 25% for the rest. While there’s no cap, It definitely beats some of the others that have higher initial costs. The quality is also superior to the free ones that I found at the time. If you wanted a game that looked good, you had to either make it a mod and give it away, or bank on it making enough money to cover your costs… or be a big enough company to start with and not even worry about the first two. Hopefully, the UDK doesn’t have you inherit the previously stated troublesome network code.

And from what I have seen up until this post (2011), there are a heck of a lot of games running on modded versions of the Unreal 3 engine. So we do have something to thank Epic for, even if UT3 itself isn’t that great. The move to making the UDK very affordable for even the smallest of developers, gives me the indication that they might be telling the PC world they are done with it, but they are willing to make the tools for others who are not. I’d even consider it myself, should I gather the resources.

Also is a picture of what we discovered when we had to redo the seal around the window.

I’m one of the lucky ones whose wife make him lunch .  Sometimes it’s ham, other times it’s leftovers. This time she was making egg salad. She needed to prepare some eggs so she set a bunch within a pot to boil. When she returned to check on them, … well the pictures should explain it: