DevUp 2016 + Random Thoughts

The DevUp 2016 conference is wrapping up right now, but I'm already home. I typically hit a wall in terms of my energy level shortly after lunch on Saturday every year. I've typically gone to at least one or two sessions after lunch on Saturday, but this year, I was really wiped.

Overall, it was a great conference this year, and one of the best they've ever put on, even if Trump's buddy, Putin, allegedly knocking down DNS for most of Friday was annoying.

It also wasn't aided by the fact that I spent the night before completely losing track of time and playing four fucking hours of Civilization VI, which is excellent, by the way.

Oh, and you can watch all four hours HERE.

This weekend has really given me a lot to think about, much of which I plan to elaborate on over the next several days.

It's stuff ranging from me actually starting to embrace a JavaScript framework (Angular 2) to focusing on one set of mod tools (Creation Kit) to getting over impostor syndrome in the dev world to coming up with some pretty simple ways to extract more logic out of my code-behinds and into classes to removing some automation to help me more easily maintain a budget. Lotsa good stuff.

Oh, and I'm nuts about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Wasteland 2 right now. And I'm so insanely stoked for Wasteland 3, I can barely handle it.

I've not been on here much of late. I just spread myself way too thin way too often. I'm going to remind myself that I don't need to post dissertations on here, that it's OK to just post whatever's on my mind at the moment. I keep falling back into this belief that everything I post on here needs to be Nobel-worthy, and the fact is, that's just not the case. Yeah, I've got some long-form stuff I wanna put on here, but not yet. And it's not stuff that I need to sit down and right all in one go.

I'm also easing back into streaming. And I have more modding stuff I wanna do. That does get kinda tough, since I do dev professionally, nine hours a day, and often, the last thing I wanna do is spend time learning yet another dev skillset, even if I really do wanna learn it. And I exercise frequently. And I have a family. And I have a wife with whom I love spending time. I wanna get back to writing fiction at some point.

I really need to just sit down for a few minutes and just triage. Like I said, I tend to spread myself too thin by trying to do all of it, which is highly illogical.

Whatever.

I'm gonna go continue my Mass Effect stream, and maybe even conclude it. Watch here.

I love you. Talk to ya tomorrow.

-Blaine

time moves faster

It occurred to me that summer is winding down. Wow, that was fast.

My birthday, which was last week, always signals to me that it's time to hurry up and enjoy what's left of the scalding heat and beautiful sunshine.

To that end, my wife, oldest son, and I are going to Vegas next week for the Star Trek 50th Anniversary Convention. More on that later.

I enjoyed a nice, quiet bachelor weekend with my oldest boy this past weekend, while my wife and youngest went to visit her sister and parents, since it had been a few hours since we last did that. :P

Many great trailers were beaming out of Comic-Con, but we actually mostly just gamed, ate, and went and saw the latest generic summer action film that was branded with 'Star Trek.' It was actually an enjoyable film, and I appreciated that it at least attempted to connect with the last sliver of canon that this trilogy didn't delete. Really, I appreciated that, and I wish they'd kill this splinter of the series, restore the canon, apologize, and get back to making real television/internet Star Trek.

Which they sorta are. The generic summer action film series is continuing, but a teaser was shown for Star Trek: Discovery at Comic-Con and I hope, so deeply, that they do a big reveal at the convention next week.

Take a look:

What's interesting is that some of the press materials and official language I've seen surrounding this new series hammer home two key points:

1. this has nothing to do with the current Paramount films nonsense

2. the name 'Discovery' ties into everything they're trying to do with this show

Both of these points send my heart soaring. Star Trek isn't about blowing shit up and LOLing at a science fiction film featuring an overrated Beastie Boys track. It's about bringing the best of humanity out by being part of a larger galactic community and expanding our knowledge and seeing what's out there. The spirit of adventure, coupled with empathy and the need to better oneself, is what drives this franchise, and it's why I love it so dearly. I love Star Wars and Star Trek equally, and they balance me.

Anyway, I get way too worked up about this shit. It's been too long since we've had real Star Trek, even though I understand why the franchise needed to go away for a while.

Along these lines, I was thinking the other day about how 2005 was such a dramatic year of changes for me. It's kinda shocking to look back upon, actually.

In 2005, I got married, the final new Star Trek aired, the final Star Wars film came out, my first child was born, and the Busch Stadium in which I'd basically grown up was knocked down. All in the span of like 10-11 months. It was a year of endings and beginnings.

Except it wasn't. It was a year of beginnings. Star Wars was passed into more caring hands. A new, frankly better, Busch Stadium (and though I don't allow myself to feel nostalgia, I feel nostalgic about that old park) was built. Star Trek went away for a while, and the generic summer action series that was technically branded as Star Trek probably helped revitalize interest in the franchise (actually, I think the resurgence of Star Wars had more to do with that, but that's a different argument), and now it looks like the real Star Trek is coming back, And I hope it ignores the generic summer action films that were technically branded as Star Trek.

But I digress.

Let's wrap this up.

Real quick - I randomly started playing Wasteland 2 again the other day. I don't know why I stopped. Actually, I do. I have a terrible habit of not really investing fully in games when I play them. I let my mind wander, I try to multitask, and really, all I end up doing is not getting the full experience. I played more Wasteland 2 with my attention totally dialed in, and it's a fucking great game. It's really my kinda game. Lotsa story, lotsa strategy, lotsa math, and a fucking fantastic world. You need not have played the first game. I gotta say that inXile is easily on the level of Obsidian and BioWare (which makes a lotta sense once you start looking at developer family trees.)

I'll talk more gaming soon. And I got more to say about Comic-Con.

-Blaine

RPGoodness

Something I've been mulling over lately is a recent streak, dating back to November of last year, in which my 'core franchises' have each delivered a new entry in the series. Dragon Age Inquisition, Pillars of Eternity, and Witcher 3 all released in a quick, six-month succession, and it's been kinda crazy.

Yeah, Pillars is a new franchise, but it also hearkens back to a different time, when the term 'cRPG' was still a thing, and imagination still colored in a lot of the experience.

In any case, it's been this really weird time in which I've gone from mega-huge game to mega-huge game, when I usually have some down time between monster releases. Given that I almost exclusively play RPGs, and big damn ones at that, I tend to have several months at a time in which I'm spending most of my gaming hours in the backlog, or in an MMO or two.

Instead, I played through Dragon Age (November) up to about the time Pillars hit (March), jumped right into that, then put down Pillars for a bit to play through Witcher 3 (May), which I finished over last weekend, and then I jumped back into Pillars, which it turns out, I'm almost done with anyway.

Of note, I grew up with most RPGs being in the 40-60 hour range, but each of those has been around 100 hours. Granted, I'm much more a completionist now than I was when I was younger, but still ... that's a lotta bang for my buck. And, shit, I was a day-one backer for Pillars, so that was about $20 for me (though I sunk in more later for some more goodies.)

And I expect to finish Pillars this week(end). After that, it'll be the first time since before Thanksgiving 2014 that I'm not committed to a new game. After that, the next new one will be Sword Coast Legends, from the great Dan Tudge, he of Dragon Age: Origins fame.

Oh, and The White March is hitting ... soon? And Witcher is getting a couple expansions, too. And DAI is supposed to get one more real DLC. It would be kinda neat if they all landed in a row.

Anywho, that's all for now. That's been rattling around in my brain for a bit, and I now wonder how long until something like this happens again? Mass Effect Andromeda is next year. Torment will come out some day. And I still have Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 unfinished ... and New Vegas. And shit, Fallout 4 this winter. OK. ENOUGH. I really do gotta go. I'll holler later tonight.