I do wish I could convince myself to write here more. Here are some things that have been going on lately!

In the bad news department, my tablet's keyboard attachment has degraded to a state where it sporadically loses connection. I then get to play with adjusting it until it starts working again which sometimes works for awhile and other times works for like 8 seconds. It took me two minutes to start typing this post.

Some time ago a local friend mentioned having one to get rid of, and I'm hoping he still has it. We were supposed to head over there this week, but his husband got sick so we're delaying until next week. If he doesn't have it, I need to decide if I want to buy another cheap tablet off ebay or just a replacement keyboard. The tablet itself is starting to lose battery capacity which has caused issues since I like to write my ZZT game articles on it.

RAMP, the big Doom community mapping project started on the first. To pass the time while waiting to be able to begin, I finally played through Final Doom's Plutonia Experiment which I've never actually beaten. When I was younger I'd save mid-map all the time and Plutonia has a lot of design where if you saved with 15% health, you ain't making it through the next fight. Last time I played I got like 12 maps in without mid level saves but progress was slow and the game was frustrating. I wanted to do another post like the last one about playing through Sinergy, and even have a folder with a subset of my many screenshots.

Lots of people make their RAMP maps in advance or early, and when I finished Plutonia with a few days before June I decided to start mine. I'm extremely happy with it! It's done at this point, but for like a week consumed far too much of my time. Still need to submit it and still need to have Geight play it as well. Posted a few (now slightly dated) screens on Mastodon https://chitter.xyz/@sugar/116693297071137737

I find myself preferring to make vanilla style maps, and have usually just been using Boom format but I believe RAMP is only UDMF. I just never see the need for most of it for what I want to do, save for some nicer (though still surprisingly annoying) options for setting up monster teleports, and being able to use scripting to activate multiple effects through a single action.

Our Steam Deck has started acting up in a rather weird way. It keeps disabling the TV we use as an external display for it, and then begins playing audio through the deck's speakers. It doesn't activate the deck's screen. It happens every 15? 20? minutes (it's consistent I just don't remember). Every option I can find related to sleeping, power management, "presentation mode", is correct. It's extremely annoying and I really gotta figure it out sooner rather than later. It's not an issue for gaming as it seems like a power management thing where it's after X time with no input. It stinks!

Started playing Mina the Hollower. I purposely didn't get it at launch for two reasons, one knowing I'd be busy withhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh RAMP (those h's are my tablet keyboard fucking up and repeating the input until I wiggle it into a good position) and the upcoming Final Fantasy Four Job Fiesta event which I kind of want to try streaming this year? The second reason was that after playing the demo, I realized it wasn't what I hoped it was going to be. I was expecting Link's Awakening with a Castlevania aesthetic, but the demo made it seem like it was linear levels like a castlevania game, but from a Link's Awakening perspective. I'm currently unsure what it actually is! I did all the demo stuff, and was exploring outside the town more so I think it's got a world map?

IDK a pal bought it for me and Geight so I have it now.

I participated in the latest ZZT community 2.4 Hours Jam and made a game with the enhanced Weave ZZT variant WiL made. I used it for the first time last year for an Oktrollberfest Jam entry, but have been messing around with it more, enough to feel confident enough to try to use it during a tightly timed contest. I made "Hail To The (Space) Bus Driver" - https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/hailbus/ and was pleased with what I accomplished in 144 minutes. The other night I was playing around with it more and kind of want to make a properly polished game as the jam release is lacking, but I feel like a good game is in there.

And the one that I've really wanted to write about for me, is processing my thoughts on Team Fortress 2's role in my life. I play a lot, typically at the expense of playing other games (this is "fine"), but sometimes at the expense of more important things. Matches take long enough that sticking around for just one more can easily be another 30 minutes and then I'll say "well I'm not gonna do anything else" and play another map or two until something forces me to stop like needing to make dinner or start streaming.

Over the past year or two whenever I'd recognize I've been playing it too often, I'd commit to taking a break for several days, sometimes going for 2 weeks as that's long enough for Steam to not list a game as recently played. At one point I got so fed up that I took an entire month break. ...That was the month where I started to really learn how to map for Doom. Ha ha funny joke, I stop playing the video game and learn a new skill. But I knew there was some logic to it. It was clear to me that I needed to limit my playtime to a healthy amount or else not play at all.

For awhile I did okay. Not playing daily, being better about stopping rather than let dinner be started late, but the old habits slowly returned.

In March, I once again was playing too much and took two weeks off. And then played like 16 hours in the next 3 days when allowed myself to play again and was not happy with it. I took a harsher stance this time. No more TF2 until I had a system to keep it in check. I uninstalled it to make it require extra effort to play.

My last TF2 session was on April 6th. It's now been two months, the longest I've been away from the game since getting it. It went the way it usually did. The first few days I very much wanted to play TF2 and had to make a concerted effort to not break my break. Then I began to adjust and find other ways to fill the time, not exclusively with gaming!

Over the past two months I've beaten Castle of Illusion for the first time. Played multiple Doom wads start to finish. Read The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Have returned to Street Fighter 6 (a game where fatigue after like 90 minutes or so keeps me from doing marathon sessions like TF2). Did more Doom mapping before this latest map for RAMP.

That first month? Also typical. Easy to avoid the game with it uninstalled, and once other activities clicked the urge to play was greatly diminished. TF2 has been a time filler for me. If I don't know what to do between now and a later time, I could fast travel my own existence by playing pyro. I still wanted to return to the game, and hopefully be healthier about it.

The second month though? Now I feel like I can do things again that I haven't in years. I can play all kinds of games, make all kinds of art, and learn all sorts of skills. I even picked up a stylus for this tablet telling myself I should learn to draw. (The best day to learn to draw was Christmas 2005 when I got gifted a tablet. The second best day to learn to draw was December 26th 2005. The nth best day to learn to draw is now.) Admittedly, I still haven't!

But now, like after deciding to quit Twitter, enough time has passed that I'm wondering what I've been doing. I don't know what my future TF2 plans are. I want to finish RAMP and the FF5 Fiesta. I'm locked in to at least July. It's just so much more of a sell to get me to go back now. The only trouble is, uh I have played that game for 12,000 hours. It is the most impactful game of my life (unless you are lumping all ZZT games together as "ZZT"). It is perhaps the thing I am the best at? I excel at it and enjoy it on a level unlike anything else. Actually giving up TF2 to me would be like calling it quits after 18 years of playing piano. But I can't figure out what a healthy relationship with the game would be for me, and with each week I can more easily tell how unhealthy my prior relationship was and how much I do not want to go back to that.

These days, I'm finding little moments when I feel like I could slip in to the game for a brief amount of time. Lord knows if I'll just fall back into my old habits yet again though. Maybe I should truly look at it the way I did after my first month break where if I can't play a healthy number of hours, then I truly need to play 0 hours.