Clearing out the closet.

I need to start writing passwords down or something. I left this blog in a fit of depression, and then forgot about it briefly during my recovery.

I literally STUMBLED across the fact that this thing existed about a week ago, and was shocked into remembering my naivety in starting the damned thing.

Then I had to walk the shame filled path of trying to recover the password.

I can't be the only one who does this: give a fake dipshit answer like 'your mother' to the question of 'where did you go to school' because you never forget passwords.

And honestly, I rarely forget passwords. I forget them on sites I don't go to for six months at a time or just to get into once to download something.

Somehow, some way, my arrogance in assuming I won't forget a password is inevitably rewarded by not only forgetting the password, but struggling for hours with my deliberately impossible to answer security questions.

Setting aside my rambling self flagellation, the past.... Year and a half? WOW. That's bad even by my standards....

In any case, the last year and a half have been really good for me from a creative standpoint. I've learned a lot about game design, had a lot of (hopefully) innovative ideas to play with, and met a few people I very much enjoy bouncing ideas off of.

But most of all, I learned a very important lesson from my most recent 'claim to fame' AC-Quest.

I'm not entirely sure I have any idea what I'm doing.

Let me explain: when I wanted to learn something, I would go and learn EXACTLY what I wanted to learn, and then moved on. Which isn't a bad way of doing things, I have a wide and balanced education that keeps me decently informed on most topics. I just lack a certain expertise when it comes to the finer points of things.

So I could say, help lay boards and pound nails, but I'm not really a carpenter.

What I didn't understand until I was already balls deep into working on Armored(The underlying game that powers AC-Quest) was that I desperately needed to learn carpentry.

Let's take this metaphor all the way to a full explanation.

I made AC-Quest as a bit of filler for fellow fans of an entirely unrelated quest. So I cleared a nice spot of ground and pitched a tent. When I realized I'd be staying a while, I set up a nice firepit, scouted the area for streams and such, and made myself comfortable.

At some point, a friend pointed out that I had a REALLY nice location for, say, a house. I agreed, so I took my limited knowledge and started building one. When supports started to fail, I put up another thing to reinforce it. When things started to lean I hammed it roughly back to where it should be and took preventative measures. Along the way, I learned a lot by virtue of the terror of having my house fall on me while I slept.

Eventually, it was comfortable and functional. I was happy.

Then it all burnt the FUCK down.

I won't rehash how painful it was for me to suffer catastrophic data loss over every aspect of my everything.

Now that I've had a chance to recover from the shock, I've actually come to see it as something of a blessing. I can take everything I learned to first time around and make the house BETTER from the ground up. Looking over my old notes (what little remain) everything was very slap-dash and fix on fail. It was frantic, exciting, and a lot of fun.

It was also objectively terrible game design as a philosophy.

Let me explain: Armored is my first real 'from the ground up' system. Most of the others were thought exercises that I built poorly just to see how certain factors actually affected game design. I have a lot of homebrew experience from modding other systems, but I also had an intimate knowledge of what was good/bad about the system I was modding for what I wanted.

So now I have an intense desire to do it right, because I feel like the world and story I crafted it for deserve better. Because my friends and fans deserve better. Because I've basically declared war on it, my shit luck, and everything between me and publishing a good game.

I said it before, but I'm going to finish this game or it finishes me.

I guess it would be obvious from the above post, but this blog is being reformed to share my ideas on game design(not shit like reviews or criticisms. I don't want my cynicism to ruin things for me here) with a HEAVY focus on Armored, but with occasional rambles about ideas ranging from homebrew to full-concepts to wouldn't it be cool? designs.

Also, new name. It's almost tradition at this point for me to have a new handle when I come back to this thing. I've been fucking it up for a solid four years now.