「夢界第二弾」のカテゴリを含む記事

Hello, Popfan here!

For those of you who have been following me on Bluesky (or even keep up with this blog without following me on social media, as unlikely as your existence may be), you may have been seeing me talk about a “website relaunch” from time to time, especially more recently so over the past two months. Well, needless to say, by the time you’re reading this, you’re looking at the fruits of my hard labor already!

It’s been a long year-and-a-half-plus, too. I’d originally gotten started on it way back in October 2023, primarily wanting to rewrite all the code to make it more maintainable, but also improve the frontend in various ways. Naively optimistic as I was, I thought I’d get the whole thing done in a couple months, but even aside from the fact that I no longer have all the time in the world nor the best mental health, rebuilding a project of this caliber from complete scratch in a way that adheres to my newfound professional standards is... a pretty damn involved process, actually.

For a refresher on what that’s been like, see the posts under the “Website” category. Picking up from the tail end of 2024, I’d spent a few days in January doing a bit of necessary busywork in order to lay the groundwork for being able to re-implement the blog at all: Since it has a completely different URL structure wherein a given page template corresponds to many different URLs, I needed to modularize the code for checking URL integrity and getting the correct page templates.

Once that was done, I did... a whole lot of nothing for several months. I don’t entirely remember what happened, but getting sick with the flu for the entire second half of February didn’t help, nor did the anxiety attacks I’d started suffering from as a consequence of that. My job performance was likewise suffering as a result of the pressure I’d put on myself, and, all in all, it took about two months to work through all that and get myself back on track.

So late April was when I decided to resume working on the website. By that point, everything was done except for the blog, and while I could find a lot of code (PHP and CSS alike) that I wanted to refactor, I told myself I’d just save it for after everything is done and live, and just treat the blog as independently from the rest of the site as I could. I eased myself into it by doing a microscopic amount of work each day — we’re talking as little as a single CSS rule per day. After all, better to get a tiny amount done every day than no amount for weeks or months on end.

Come early May, though, and things began to snowball hard. Watching things come together little by little did wonders for my motivation, resulting in me spending the weekends just locking in and pushing dozens of commits — sometimes even that many in just a single day! I was riding a wave of euphoria the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Certainly not since the year has started, at least. My momentum was back in full swing, I was making mad progress on one of my passion projects, the finish line was starting to become visible on the horizon... life was good, and that motivation and ability to perform also carried over to my job, further bolstering my confidence and self-esteem.

Of course, as is the case with strong emotions in general, good or bad, they may feel like they’re going to last forever at the time, but they do come to an end eventually. It was quite sobering when I started feeling myself going from “absolutely fantastic” to just “pretty good”, but fortunately I didn’t let that stop me. And why should I have? Things were still going extremely well, and tangible progress was being made on all fronts. After months of downtime and feeling like complete dogshit, I wasn’t about to just let all of that go again, especially with how lengthy a process it is for me to build up momentum in the first place.

In any case, last Tuesday was the day I’d finally completely reconstructed the blog. The days that followed were dedicated to miscellaneous cleanup work in order to prepare for the eventual rollout that upcoming weekend. Of course, like I said, all of that is done and ready by the time you’re reading this, so let’s quickly go through the changes and additions that are relevant to you as a visitor.

Appearance: The overall identity is still the same, but text and spacing have been made a little bit larger overall, and colors were adjusted slightly to better conform to WCAG contrast requirements. It’s still not perfect, particularly with the background gradient for the headings, but I’m already in the concept phase for how to make it work better while keeping the visual changes as minimal as possible.

Accessibility: Special care was taken to ensure that every page of the website is fully operable with a keyboard, and users of screen readers should theoretically also be catered to. Again, it’s not 100% perfect yet (non-blog pages in particular might still be missing some vital components), but it can’t be any worse than the previous version, at least.

Music page: Embeds for Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube have been removed because they’re a privacy nightmare. Instead, albums now show a static track list, their price, and a link to their Bandcamp page. The other playlists have instead been replaced with a custom audio player built entirely from scratch. I actually wanted to make one of those during the last overhaul back in 2021, but had ultimately decided against it because my skills with Javascript just weren’t up to snuff at the time. They are now, though, and while the code is still kind of a mess, I hope it all works.

Games: The games overview itself is now a list view because a grid view simply didn’t make that much sense with a library this small. Means I can show a bit more info, too; long-time fans may see similarities to the pre-2021 design. The pages for each individual game now have overhauled galleries, courtesy of an external Javascript library I fell in love with at my job, and embedded videos now have to be clicked before the YouTube iframe gets loaded in.

Blog: Mostly still the same as before, although I still have plans for the future, primarily revolving around adding pagination and a search bar. Those will become increasingly important the more posts I end up writing, since otherwise we’ll end up with massive pages. Other than that, I’d also like future blog posts to have more types of content than just plain text. Subheadings and images, for example.

There are new pages planned, too, of course. For instance, a page dedicated to links, or one for guidelines... though I’m also still thinking of writing up a sort of documentary on Endless Blue, given the significance of that game idea to what was once known as Team Gaijin Alex. I’m not the type to just forget about my roots, after all.

So... now that the website has been relaunched, what comes next?

Well, first things first, a much-needed break. Which I know means losing all my momentum and having to start slowly building it back up all over again, but as you may remember, I actually got sick very shortly after finishing and releasing the update to my Sokoban clone last year. I’d like to avoid a repeat of that if I can help it, especially with how hard I ended up tunnel-visioning on this project towards the end.

After my break, though? My idea was that I’d work on my album next, followed by starting development of Mukai 2 in earnest. However, I took a lot longer with the website than I was expecting, and part of me would like to have Mukai 2 done in time for the 10th anniversary if that is at all possible (it’s extremely unlikely, if we’re gonna be realistic, but a guy can dream). I’m still not entirely sure how I’m gonna go about it, but I was thinking of doing both simultaneously, actually.

I know, I know, stretching myself too thin is a bad thing, but hear me out:

Work on the album would require getting my feet wet with writing music again, something I haven’t done in over a year (seriously, I haven’t written a single thing for all of 2024, nor 2025 up to this point). Game development, on the other hand, spans several disciplines. For instance, I’ve actually been making a lot of progress on the game’s script, only missing a few endings by this point. I’ll also need new assets: graphics, music, sound effects.

So what I could do is prioritize writing music for the album, but also make sprites and other graphics for the game on the side, such as if/when I’m starting to feel a creative block coming on or I’m otherwise too frustrated to make any headway with composing. That way, I’m still making the best out of my time, and by the time the album’s up for sale on Bandcamp, I might have already amassed enough sprites and other assets that I can start actually putting it all together without needing to rely on placeholder graphics that fail to give me a good feel of how the final product would end up looking.

Whether that’ll actually work out for me remains to be seen, but after how long the game has effectively been dead in the water, I just want to give myself any head start I can get, and the only reason the album is still a priority is because a) it’s the smaller project of the two, and b) it’ll be a good opportunity to experiment with the direction I’ve been wanting to take my style into.

But that would be it from me for now. Once again, thank you guys so much for your patience and support. You’re probably not getting that much out of the new website, but I hope you understand that it was something I simply had to get out of the way for my own sake in order to make it possible for me to even continue maintaining it properly.

Here’s hoping that I’ll be able to deliver more of what I’m good at soon.

Another year coming to an end... Hopefully 2024 has been treating you guys well enough. In my case, it was definitely quite eventful, even if you might not be able to tell from my activity. So let me walk you through the things that have (or haven’t) happened, and what my plans for 2025 are.

Things actually started off pretty strong, what with me releasing the update to my Sokoban clone in early February! If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d wholeheartedly recommend that you do so, if only for all the secrets and easter eggs I’ve crammed into it.

Unfortunately, I must have given it 110% for a little too long, since, shortly after releasing the aforementioned update, I started getting sick a lot. At the worst of it, I ended up out of commission for a couple days at a time every other week, usually on or around the weekends. It was quite the problem for my job, too, since I was missing for so many days. I tried a few different things, like changing my diet or exercise regimen, or even taking antihistamines, but what ultimately helped me get back on track again ended up being daily multivitamin supplements, of all things.

Even to this day, though, my health is kind of a tightrope walk. Granted, it seems to be getting more manageable, but I still need to be careful not to overwork myself, which is easier said than done because I can tunnel-vision so hard that I completely lose sight of my physical and mental needs.

Sickness aside, work on the website relaunch began in earnest in late March this year... and is still ongoing, despite my initial prediction that it’d only take me a few months to complete. Turns out it’s so much more complex than I could’ve ever anticipated, and while there’s little that’s left to do before I can get started on reconstructing the blog, I expect that the blog is going to be a major undertaking unto itself. It’ll probably take me at least another few months.

Also doesn’t help that I’ve had a lot of overall downtime (such as from June to early September, and there was hardly any progress made from mid-October to late December, either), without which a go-live within 2024 might just have been in the cards, but oh well. I have recently (as in, roughly a week ago) started to challenge myself to get at least a little bit of progress done each day, though, even if it’s just two minutes. Hopefully that’ll help get things back on track again... and it does look promising so far, so fingers crossed!

A major highlight of the year was — as acknowledged in the previous blog post — the fact that the 500 million bounty for chain of lucidity was claimed at last, and that, in turn, seems to have snowballed into the genesis of a small but devoted Mukai fandom, which I couldn’t be happier about. Shoutouts to Sins, Errhed, ALePH_D, and PressEtoAscend for being effectively the ambassadors of that one game I made six years ago that’s still waiting for its sequel. Once again, thank you so much for your support, as well as your saintlike patience with the glacial pace of my creative output!

Said small fandom also made me realize another aspect of my brand: my coverage of retro games that have strong emotional significance to me. It was brought to my attention that I have a very personal, passionate, informative, and I suppose humorous way of presenting these games, as exhibited by my gaming blog, my Full Playthroughs series on YouTube (for which I’ve managed to make four new videos this year!), or even the occasional streams for longer-form games, in which I could interact with my watchers directly — or, as was more often the case, have them interact with each other while I was deep in concentration with whatever game I was playing at the time.

What I’m trying to say is that this is something I hope to be able to continue doing, going forward, not least of all because I’ve been told it’s comfort material (and, I mean... even I like rewatching these videos from time to time). Time will tell how I’ll be able to get them slotted into my schedule, but I likely won’t be able to put them out on a regular basis anytime soon.

Other than that, though... well, I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t composed a single track this entire year. I’m hoping that’ll change next year, since I’ve still got an album to finish — it and the website relaunch are the only things still in the way of me starting development on the second Mukai game... which I feel like I really owe to you guys at this point. Unfortunately, perfection can’t be rushed, and neither can “good enough”, especially when you’re suffering from crippling perfectionism the way I am.

That also means that my plans for 2025 haven’t really changed from my plans for this year: Get the website done, then the album, then start development on the game, sprinkling in playthrough videos here and there to maintain at least some semblance of output. My biggest problem is still my lack of efficiency, and this year in particular I’ve felt especially limited by my mental reserves; managing all of this alongside a full-time job still isn’t easy, but this is gonna be my life for at least the next 30-40 years, so I might as well figure out how to make it work for me without constantly burning out in the process.

And with that said, I wish you guys a happy new year. See you back on the road in 2025!

Hey, remember when I said last December that “you’ll be hearing from me no later than late January”? Well, guess I was about half a year off on that prediction, then. But in my defense, this year so far has been kicking my ass, and the summer heat that’s been robbing me of the energy to do much of anything is only the tip of the iceberg.

In any case, let’s go through things one at a time, since, despite that, a lot has happened this year so far.

First things first, I’m making the (very late) announcement that, as of 4 April 2024, the 500-million-point bounty on chain of lucidity was finally claimed! Congratulations to Sins, who is now the lucky owner of one of the only 25 physical copies of COL in existence! It was quite interesting, seeing various people over the years express intent in – and even put some effort towards – achieving this kind of milestone, and all I can say to that is: Thank you all for still enjoying my game, even almost six full years after its release. I see all of you, and your enthusiasm and fascination mean the world to me.

You may also recall me talking about my Sokoban clone. Well, in a rare case of me being able to (more or less) meet a deadline I set for myself, I did actually get the update done and published right at the start of February. Check out the game page here in order to download it, and do please take the time to read the new HTML manual in order to get an overview of all the things that were added.

If you remember the order of priority I’d listed for my other projects, you’ll know that productivity streams were going to be the next thing I’d set up. Except... that never really happened in the end. I’m not entirely sure why, either, but I guess I just ended up not feeling the need for them, particularly since work on the Sokoban clone had already given me my momentum back at the time. Of course, that’s not to say they’re completely off the table, but at the moment, getting them factored into my schedule isn’t quite the no-brainer it used to be. If I feel the need, I’ll start doing them. If not, then not.

Which brings us to the next item down the list, and the proverbial elephant in the room: the website relaunch. It’s... actually kind of the main reason behind why this update is coming in so late (although the aforementioned ass-kicking by life still played a significant role, don’t you worry): See, at this point, with all the professional experience I’ve gained from my job, the website in its current state is such a spaghettified mess that I didn’t actually want to touch it any more. The idea was that I’d leave it as-is until the new website is ready, then write a comprehensive blog post about everything that transpired. But then a few months turned into the better part of half a year, and it was still nowhere near done, which kind of forced my hand.

So let’s talk about how that’s going. I’ve basically been reconstructing the entire framework from the ground up, switching from procedural to object-oriented code in order to make things as streamlined and modular for me as possible, thereby improving maintainability. That’s a lot of jargon to say that I’m starting from scratch with new experience to make it easier for me to add to and tweak the website once it’s live.

Once the basic framework was done, I reconstructed each page, one at a time. Done so far are the Index, History, About and Games pages, with the Music page being the one I’m currently working on. Since Soundcloud and YouTube embeds are a nightmare for consent management, I’ve decided to replace them all with a custom audio player. Actually, I’d been wanting to create one of those for several years now, but felt like my skillset was too lacking at the time. Well, now I’m a professional web developer (in training)... and it’s still really hard and time-consuming, but at least it’s doable. It’s just that it’s still what I’m stuck on, not helped by the fact that I haven’t been able to find the time to make much progress in the past several weeks, which I’ll get into in a bit.

The original idea was that the relaunch would be live by the end of May. Then I changed it to having the audio player done by then. And now? Honestly, it’d be lucky if the whole thing got done within the year at all. For how much time and headache it’s supposed to be saving me in the long run, it sure is being a pain in the ass to write all the code for right now. But at least the frontend will go through some much-needed improvements, too. Mostly minor visual adjustments, but also some much-needed tweaks for accessibility. Probably not a huge deal for most of you, but certainly important for my standards.

Just bear with me a little while longer... or however damn long it’s gonna take still.

Aside from that, I have indeed been able to find time recently to do a little bit for the second Mukai game. Mostly just some small-scale planning and writing, though. I can’t fully commit myself to it yet, since I want to keep my priorities in check, but it at least helps keep me mentally stimulated enough to prevent burning out on doing nothing but website work (both as my job and as my hobby) for months on end.

So much to my projects, at least. This is the point where I tell you all about what else I’ve been up to all this time, starting with... me getting sick. A lot. Ever since I released that update to my Sokoban clone, I would wake up with a cold at least once every couple of weeks – or, in the worst case, every other week. I was taking days off from work left and right because of it, and while my performance didn’t suffer, I was still feeling pretty damn ashamed of myself. I tried changes to my workout routine as well as my workload, but none of it helped. It wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I decided to try taking daily vitamin supplements that my health started improving again. Needless to say, though, that really threw me out of whack, and I’m still trying to find my groove again to this day. Of course, the physical and mental stress that the summer heat is exerting on my body isn’t helping much, either, so it might not be until at least September or October that I’ll be truly able to fire on all cylinders again.

On the bright side, though, I got me some nice things to put into my room, such as a second lava lamp and a small CD rack. The lava lamp has orange wax to complement the blue one I’ve had for years, but it also happens to provide a much brighter, more vibrant light, and I can keep it running for much longer before needing to turn it off to let it cool down again; in fact, I can leave it running nearly 8-10 consecutive hours, more than twice as long as my blue one!

As for the CD rack, I’ve just always wanted to have one, since I do have a few CDs to put on display – music albums, physical copies of Touhou games, and, of course, my own personal physical copy of COL – and, up until it arrived, they had to be kept in a cardboard box in my wardrobe. Now they’re within arm’s reach, and I can use the top of the CD rack as a surface to put items on, such as...

...potted plants! I’ve opted to go for artificial flowers, since those obviously don’t require any maintenance, and live flowers have never survived for very long in my care, but whether they’re real or not, that extra pop of color in my room sounds like just the thing I need. They haven’t arrived yet, but they should over the next couple days.

Other than that, I’ve actually purchased a new set of dumbbells with variable weights: Each dumbbell can go up to 20kg (in 5kg increments), and they can also be combined into a barbell, which not only expands the variety of exercises I can do at home, but also means I’ve got a lot more room upwards now before heavier weights become necessary. Unfortunately, again, I’ve been severely erratic with my workouts due to first my recurring colds and now the unbearable weather. Did I already mention I hate summer? I did? Well, now I did again.

What I have been able to stay consistent with, though, is the touch typing practice I started doing a few weeks back. I found this old DOS program on a Windows 95 laptop my dad let me have a long time ago, and this year I started practicing with it earnestly for the first time (as opposed to just doing it for a while until the novelty wears off). Now I’m by no means a slow typist, but I figured that, hey, maybe if I master this typing style, I’ll be able to break through my wpm ceiling more consistently. Guess we’ll see how it goes, though ironically, I’m writing this blog post with the typing style I’ve been using all my life.

And that’s... pretty much all I can think of. Not much else to say, and there probably won’t be much else to report until at least a couple months from now. I wanted these to be a monthly thing, but that’s kind of hard when you lack the energy to get enough things done that are worth talking about.

Oh well, hopefully by the next update log, I’ll have finally relaunched the website.

2023 is slowly drawing to a close, and with it the 10th year of Retrograde Road’s existence. A lot has happened in that time — far more than I could feasibly remember off the top of my head. Hell, I’m already struggling to list all the noteworthy things that happened this year.

Relatively speaking, though, not a whole lot actually happened in terms of finished projects. I wasn’t even able to finish my new album before the end of the year, like I was hoping I would. What did happen a lot of, however, was personal growth: Somehow, this was the year where my mental health improved rapidly, and it’s all thanks to the realization that I need to take the initiative in dealing with the things I’m unhappy about. It wouldn’t be appropriate going into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that, had I not given myself that push, I’d still be unemployed and miserable.

Of course, there’s still a lot to work on — my confidence for writing music is still in shambles, and I’ve yet to find the time to hone my drawing skills — but all things considered, I’m a lot more optimistic now than I was around this time last year. I can do all of this, even if it takes time.

So let’s talk about my goals for 2024 instead!

First things first, I definitely still want to get my Sokoban clone done and ready again before all else. I genuinely didn’t think it’d take this long, but it kind of turned into more than just a porting and refactoring project. At this point I’m straight-up adding new content to the game, new features. Christmas festivities may have held me up a bit, but I’m determined to get it all done early next year, preferably within January or February.

After that, it’s time to start doing productivity streams — and with them comes work on other projects, starting with the refactoring/relaunch of this very website. I might even be in a bit of a race against time there, since the blog’s calendar widget bugging out makes me feel like it’s inexplicably falling apart at the seams. (I’ve disabled the widget for the time being, in case you’re wondering.)

Then, once that is done, it’s back to working on my album, full steam ahead. Maybe, with any luck, I can manage a 2024 release, after all, but I don’t want to make any guarantees because never once have I been able to actually stick to a deadline I set for myself.

And then, finally... work on the second Mukai game, after so many years of nothing. It’ll be a true test of everything I’ve learned, and I’m already looking forward to sharing its development with you all. If all goes well, I might get to start working on it in late 2024 or early 2025, but again, nothing to set your watches by.

It’s not much this time around, but that’s all for now. I wish you guys a happy new year, and you’ll be hearing from me no later than late January.

正直、Wordpressから離れて自分のブログを作る気がなかったら、これを書いたのは早かったでしょう。でもこんなに時間を経たせたせいで一月から色々でいいものが起こりました。

去年の年末、僕の行動が起こらせた非常に壊滅的なことがあってしまって、早く気づいたらよかった何かに気づきました。それは、自分自身や自分の人生の不幸は、脳からのメッセージ。何が不満かしっかりと考えて、哀れや学習性無力感に浸らずに、ちゃんとした対策を講じなさい、と。

それを理解して事を成さしめるこつを摑んでから、人生が非常に改善されてきた気がして、絶対出来ないと思ったことさえも出来るようにになったのです。現代、精神衛生は2018年（ひょっとしたら2002年まで）以降で最高だと感じます。やはり、何でも出来る感覚は精神に大助かりですね。

新たな精神的力を手に入れた僕は何が出来ましたかと？　まずは、生産力の助けと邪魔を探るために日記を書いて、ついにいい作戦を練りました。3～5点の項目のある毎日のタスクリストに加えて、重点リストみたいなやつもあることにしました。その二つ目は、中長期や長期のタスクを記したり、「締切あり」「締切なし」のカテゴリに分けたり、ゴールや、問題や、次に何をしようかなどをメモしたりします。タスクを完成させてから、リスト底にある「完成」という部分へ動かして、完成させた日付を付けます。完成したタスクの数がだんだん増えるのを見ていい感じになるんですよ。

その重点主義で、人生さえも大一歩進めました！　もう一度エントリーシートを出し始めて、二年近く無職だった僕がようやく職業訓練にありつけました！　ウェブプログラミング代行機関で三年間働きますが、訓練の後で社員になる可能性は低くなく、訓練生でも賃金もかなりだと思います。仕事の開始は来月、7月3日です。上手くいきますように！

でも他の創作活動についても少し話しましょうか。例えば、アルバムの進捗率は三割弱です。すでに完成した曲が嫌いじゃないですが、現在よりももっと進捗していたいと思っています。バーンアウトも失敗恐怖症もいつでも足手まといになってしまって、来月の週40時間労働も加えたら、今年以内の公開は出来なくなるみたいと思っています。作曲のワークフローがもっと首尾一貫したら話は別なんですが。人生の問題を解けたことがかなりありますから、きっとこれも解けると思います。

また、一月にジェスチャードローイングすることで絵描きを再開しようとする話も覚えていらっしゃるでしょうか。あれから、身体の一部分ずつ、人体解剖学をだんだん学んで腕を磨いてきていると思います。まだ上手さから遠いですが、幸運なことに、モチベーションを維持する方法を知っていて細部まで非常に鋭い目を持ついい指導者に巡り合えました。今年も新イラスト出来るかどうか見てみましょう。

皆様の中に、僕はもう一度外国語を勉強したくなったことに気づいたお方もいらっしゃいるでしょう。例えば去年の九月にスペイン語の勉強を始めて、もちろんまだまだですが、会話が出来る程度まで届けたと思います。ロマンス諸語の何ヶ国語を勉強したいことにもなりました。現在フランス語とポルトガル語を勉強しています。とはいえ、スペイン語の腕はもっと磨きたいし、日本語もここ数年停滞している感じがあるのでその壁も突破したいですね。そしてそれから？　さあな。スウェーデン語やフィンランド語の勉強を再開したり、真新しい言語を勉強し始めたりするかな。とにかくポリグロットの夢は続いています。

それ以外の企画なら・・・夢界Project第二弾の開発は、まだ中断みたいです。画力は足りなく、作曲はアルバムしか暇がなく、材料がなければ開発の意味はないんですね。でも、遠い将来にいつかやってみたいことがあるんですよ。

子供の頃、RPGツクールをよく使っていました。RPGツクールVXの30日間の使用期間以内にクソゲーを完成させたし、それと中途半端で中止した何十のゲーム以外に、真面目に企画した一つのゲームがありました。もちろん、それも完成させなかったですが、時が流れてもストーリーが忘れられなく、いつか復活でリメイクしたいところです。それにGame MakerでRPGの製作を挑んでみたいという思いもあったんです。

さて、これで今年の前半の出来事は以上でしょう。更新の記録を隔週に書いたかったときがあったと覚えていますね・・・二週間以内に出来ることは記事にきっと足りないと思っても、定期的にそんな風の記事を書くことが悪くないでしょう。隔週じゃなくて、毎月の月末に向けてしましょうか？

それでは、ご応援もご支援もどうもありがとうございます。次に音沙汰までにあまりにも時間が掛からなかったらいい。お気を付けて、水を飲んで、今季の温度のためにアイスクリームでも買っておきましょう！