Valkenheim Post

On difficulty and modes.

I’ve known Hiroshi for a long time now, and I have heard more venom spat about game difficulty (over various modes of communication) than I ever thought anyone had the capacity for. It’s such a dead topic to me now that whenever I hear or read about it, I feel like I’m watching a horse get beaten to death and beyond.

That being said, I feel like I should offer up my own take on the matter in a more organized form that I can point back to and say “I’ve already said all I had to say about this.”

So, here goes. Buckle up.

Also I just changed backgrounds again because the last one I made for myself got really ugly after looking at it for like 2 minutes. More darkness! More green and purple!

…Doesn’t it look like the image there is actually a transparent section of the post? Trippy!

The subject matter of this IRC conversation is something I'd like to blog about, so instead of re-saying what I said, I'll just post it here.

<MenTaLguY> we need more game devs like ZUN and Pixel
<Silver_Skree> in what respect? Those people are extremely gifted, to be able to produce ALL the stuff for their games by themselves.
<Silver_Skree> programming the whole damn thing is one matter, but there's also drawing all the art, plus composing all the music, plus writing the plot (where applicable), plus then actually having adequate design sense
<MenTaLguY> in all those respects, Skree
<Silver_Skree> so basically, "we need more prodigies" :P
<MenTaLguY> I don't know, maybe
<MenTaLguY> I'm not sure it's a matter of prodigy, exactly
<MenTaLguY> both of us can do all of those things, to varying degrees, but better than average across the board
<MenTaLguY> and I doubt we're *that* unusual
<MenTaLguY> (a bit unusual, sure, but...)
<Silver_Skree> no, I can't compose. At all.
<Silver_Skree> I completely lack any sort of gift for it
<MenTaLguY> hm, I thought you were doing tracking at one point
<Silver_Skree> I was, and that's how I found out I didn't have it in me :p
<Silver_Skree> what little I made I hated right away, and so I just dropped it
<Silver_Skree> as for drawing, I might could do that, but I'd need some real shaping up
<Silver_Skree> I think design sense and programming are where it's at, for me
<Silver_Skree> Also back to drawing, I enjoy abstract stuff much more than concrete subject matter, so you probably won't see me drawing anything like places or people
<Silver_Skree> psychadelic battlefield backgrounds and maybe some sparkly magic effects are more along the lines of what I'd actually enjoy and be driven to do
 * MenTaLguY nods
<MenTaLguY> you can make games more or less entirely out of that at least
<Silver_Skree> true, but music is such a big part of what I feel makes a good game, I don't feel like I could make a game I'd be satisfied with on my own
<Silver_Skree> so recently, with that in mind, my attitude towards "I want to make games" has changed from "I CAN DO IT ALL BY MYSELF HAHA" to "I'm going to need some help, is there a team I could work in?"
<Silver_Skree> but yeah, if you have ALL those skills, I would consider that being a prodigy.
<Silver_Skree> it's not just being able to do all that, either... it's the determination, persistence, and time management to apply all that skill and actually make something of it all
<Silver_Skree> ZUN is absolutely stunning in that respect
<Silver_Skree> it helps that his favorite genre is a relatively simple one, plus he brings in teams like Twilight Frontier to make the fighting games, but still
<Silver_Skree> the amout of music he pumps out is nuts, but he's actually gone on record to say that his real goal starting Touhou was to compose music, and decided to make a game so more people would listen to it. Which is genius, because SUCCESS
 * MenTaLguY nods
<Silver_Skree> So basically my point is that I think people like ZUN (and others; I'm just not as familiar with other devs' legacies) are on a level that most people can't reach on their own like they did
<Silver_Skree> stories like Notch's are much better to aspire to, I think
<Silver_Skree> the creation of prodigies is out of our hands, but what we CAN do is create success stories like Mojang's
 [Minutes pass...]
<Silver_Skree> so, in other news
<Silver_Skree> AGDQ 2013 is on.
<Silver_Skree> http://marathon.speeddemosarchive.com/

Understanding vs. Learning

I was thinking about this last night when I was in one of my more philosophical moods. I just enjoy thought experiments like this, I guess. Anyway, the question:

Can learning be equated to a change in understanding? It seems obvious that whenever you learn something, your understanding of things changes, but is the inverse also true? If your understanding of something changes, does that count as learning?

The first question that popped up in my head when I was thinking about this is whether or not ‘learning’ false information still counts as real learning. After thinking about it some, I’m going to go ahead and say it does; the truthfulness of a thing has no bearing on your ability to modify your understanding with it. If, later on, you realize that what you learned is false and modify your understanding again, that’s a separate and equally valid learning experience.

So, with that in mind, I’d say that any change in your understanding of something quantifies a learning experience.

Thoughts, anyone?

I found the Pick Noise tool in GIMP. Also Hiroshi gets a new background.

Pretty, isn’t it? Swirls make everything better!

Actually, I’m the one that made the background that Hiroshi is using for his blog right now. It’s simple, but I thought it was pretty. I’m thinking about a redesign for him, though.

I just made the current background for this blog, too. How do you like it? It’s a little busy, but I like it better that way. It was just a few minutes in GIMP, too; what a great program, eh?

I didn’t like the way I had been using my Tumblr up to now, and decided there was information on it that I’d rather not publish. So I set all my past posts to private and am giving my blog a little reboot. Here we go again.