Thursday at the Calgary Entertainment Expo 2017

This is a good week. I have really needed a good week for awhile. Kevin O'Leary dropped out of the Conservative leadership race, I figured out some annoying RPG maker script stuff, Outlast 2 came out, I got a free parking spot really close to work today (vs a 5 minute walk), my good friend had her baby and oh, yes IT'S COMIC CON TODAY. And tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.

I'm writing this before the con, and obviously I will add pictures and experience updates later. Today is my preview and shopping day. I actually have a bit of money to spend at the con this year saved from the sale of my broken car. I'm hoping to find some good items Kathleen and I can use to raise money for Extra Life this year. I also have a mission to find various people I know are going that I tend to miss for whatever reason in other years.

Oh my god, I just realized I wore the EXACT same clothes on Thursday last year. Same necklace and everything.

Last Year

This Year

Oops. 

Anyway...I finished up work around 4:30 and headed over to the Stampede grounds, which are fairly close to where I work. I at least knew where to go this year to get my wrist band, so that process was relatively quick and painless. Below is the general crowd (lol) walking to get their tickets. 

I ended up intercepting Justin by accident on the way, and in turn I happened to be walking behind another few people he knew, so he was essentially assaulted by a bunch of people while he was desperately trying to run and grab something. I told him I'd meet up with him later...and never did BECAUSE HE WAS ON BREAK. GOD.

Anyway, Justin is a friend from dodgeball and one of the key members of the Friday Night Gamers. He's one of the volunteers this year teaching people how to play various board games. I'll get back to that area later.

I escaped the Big Four and made my way back to the main exhibition hall, eager to get started with some shopping. I stopped by a tree to clear some streetpasses out of my 3DS and watch a Stormtrooper watch a bunch of Vikings scream and hit each other with sticks. This is...probably the least busy I've ever seen the Viking area the last few years I've attended.

Inside was tables and tables full of FRESH UNSULLIED MERCHANDISE. And now that I've said "fully stocked" in the weirdest way possible, please see the above obligatory comparison crowd shot. Thursday is absolutely wonderful for just exploring the con, talking to the booth owners and artists, and just generally being able to breathe. Navigating the floor is still an infuriating exercise in patience as you need to be borderline dancing to get around distracted people who don't know how to herd, but it's nice to not feel like cattle while you're there.

I essentially wandered up and down every aisle, taking subtle pictures of everything I could as I wasn't too sure whether vendors would get mad at me for snapping shots of their merch. I tried to take a secret shot of an image of Trump dressed up as a fairy, but the pictured turned out blurry.

I'm fairly certain that the LEGO display simply does not exist on Thursday preview night, because for the third or fourth year in a row (I'd have to go back in the blog to see) I could not for the life of me find them. I did, however, find a booth with hundreds of minifigures for sale ($5 each). I soon discovered that there were many many booths for minifigures.

And those Popfigures...

Like ALL the Popfigures this year. Last year there were at least 5-10 places you could get them. I want to say that a good 1/3 of the booths in the main exhibition hall and the adjoining one had at least a small selection to choose from. To be fair, some booths had secondary locations, but the sheer number of these things are ridiculous. Naturally I bought a couple (cause Shauna was looking for one and I found a masked Corvo). I saw what I assumed was a rare one in one of the booths which was selling for $299. I don't remember what it was. 

Also:

Big Bird will be supplying my nightmares this evening.

It was good to see some classics were back, like the finger tentacles.

And the uncomfortable number of bodypillows.

And the Tower of T-shirts with its ominous hanging bathrobes (which I can see they learned the merits of putting it in the MIDDLE of the floor vs the side near the washroom).

And the corset place, which I'm fairly sure has drastically increased their stock from previous years. 

The place that sold the giant cutouts of people, however, did not have any new Trumps...or really all that many cut outs. It had been replaced by a massive wall of Popfigures. 

Discovered some new things...and new oddities, including what appeared to be a secret tea party of some sort.

Something for Kevin. He knows what.

A series of...

...ominously...

...stacked...

SHEEP.

And...just...this...

Then I came across something I didn't quite know what to do with. I was staring at it for about 5 minutes, screaming internally and trying to determine whether paying $6.99 was worth finding out what it was.

They're...they're...Fire Emblem trading cards. 

FIRE EMBLEM TRADING CARDS. I did not know these existed. I have no idea what they are. I don't know what you do with them. But here they are. I think I weirded the dude out a little cause I was just standing there, staring at them until some kid came up to actually buy some of the cards.

Oh yeah, and then there was this. Pretty sure I saw these another year, but...well...you'll see it. Or them rather.

After browsing the hall and losing track of time a little, I checked out the connecting hall to see what was happening over there. Normally the LEGO display is here, but, every year it makes me think I'm insane when I don't find it the first day, then it's just THERE the next day I go.

I have no idea what any of this is. I am the best investigator.

Another picture for comparison, likely on Saturday. This is the autograph area. Only two of the booths had lines while I was there.

I pet some puppies at one end of the hall, then I pet a snake at the other end of the hall. 

Then I found a close cousin of the bodypillow...the LOG PILLOW (they're stacked on the top and all have anime patterns similar to the bodypillows).

huehuehue

Spotted a msi station with a Vive set up. Snapped a picture for the HTC crew. I was tempted to try, but there was a pretty big lineup for it.

On my way out to the Big Four and Artist's Alley, I found LEGO Batman atop a booth that apparently isn't coming back next year. Figured I'd snap a shot for posterity. 

Meanwhile at the tabletop games area, Justin was off on a break, so I stood, alone, looking at the Pips games. So lonely. So heartless. 

Just kidding Mr. A. I'll come say hi on Saturday or Sunday.

I was wondering why I took this until I looked at the top of the booth. Say hello again to tonight's nightmares. 

I breezed through a lot of Artist's Alley since I was running out of time for the evening and I was on a quest to find the tea place. I randomly encountered Kyle, who for some reason I ALWAYS meet in the exact same place by chance. I rushed around, couldn't find it, asked for help, got directed to the booth and then I was side-tracked by Wednesday.

Aka. Danielle who also works at the Starbucks near my work. She has a line of soaps and bathbombs, I was tempted to get some soap, but I had a mission to get to the tea place...which was two booths away at that point.

After I purchased my samples, I rushed out the building and across the many many parking lots to my car where I drove to the hospital. There I met my friend and she made the mistake of letting me hold her baby. Bad mistake Stacey. The aura is too powerful. Your son's a nerd now. 

So yeah, I'm glad to see that there's just so much at the con now to browse and that tons of local artists have a chance to sell their work in addition to the big vendors. Honestly, it started out with the smaller, local artists, so I'm glad to see that they have their own dedicated space in addition to the main exhibition halls. I wish I had more time to wander today, but there was so much and I got stopped at a lot of booths. Thursday is just great if you want to chat with a lot of the artists and media guest. They haven't been through Saturday yet, so they still have items to sell as well as the will to live.

I won't be covering Friday this year since there's nothing/no one I really want to see at the con and Shauna picked up Outlast 2 this week. We'll be starting that tomorrow.

Return to "Normalcy"

I actually have been starting to get a lot more done as I fall into a schedule and change up a few things. In addition, the Pupper is much easier to manage, and I found out that streaming RPG maker through Steam to the laptop downstairs works perfectly. Fun fact: Steam will also stream desktop audio, so I had Vent running on the machine I was streaming from which meant I could hear HKS and Wibod talking in the background. I couldn't actually message or talk to them unless someone else sent me a message through hangouts, which prompted my desktop to appear. So yeah, Steam can stream your desktop too...sort of.

I've made a lot of major strides in figuring out RPG maker, which have included customizing preset scripts for what I want. I've been provided scripts that Mesk and HKS found, and have been switching them up a bit to change window sizes and add features. I fixed a major text-based issue for one of the interface screens just by adjusting appropriate numbers, but I still need to figure out how to make the party system work the way I want it to.

I've been working a lot on asset building and I discovered something rather distressing last night: I cannot, for the LIFE of me, make a god damned coffee cup. Everything I attempt looks like someone vomited pixels. I can make a complex copier machine, a stapler, top hats, animals...but I can't get the stupid coffee cups to work the way I want. I was SO CLOSE the one time, but they ended up being way too small (another issue I've had is making things with the right proportions). I honestly think the demonic furniture will be easier to create than a stupid coffee cup...

Anyway, all I have left to do in the Office is script a few more events, finish one of the Intern quests, decide if I want quest XP in addition to battle XP and make my custom assets and tiles. Most of what's there are placeholders. In the boss advance area I need to add dialogue in the Executive Bathroom, finish the Admin, configure a pre-battle and then make my boss battle/events. If I can get this tutorial/demo area complete, I think I'll have a lot of the tools and knowledge to complete the rest of the areas with relative ease. The problems will arise with a) keeping dialogue and gameplay interesting, b) Producing all the assets required for what's in my head, and c) doing some custom scripting.

I mentioned in my previous post that this will be a private project. Over the past year Shauna has been encouraging me to get a Patreon, so if that ever happens and IF this game looks like more than a pipe dream, I may advertise to the general public. Of course that would mean I would need to exchange a lot of assets like music for custom content (which...I have no idea how that would work) or look into licensing. Some assets I've already purchased through Steam, so I'm safe in that regard. I just need to remember which is which. So far, the extent of my plans are private audience and an Extra Life donation incentive.

SPEAKING OF WHICH.

Kathleen is really ramping up the campaign this year and we're looking into getting a lot of cool prizes for the event. I have comic con next weekend, so I'll be looking for fun stuff to give away during Extra Life this year (still in November we're just...really eager).

You can donate here: https://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=249862&referrer=bfAphFbPfSched

Anyway, I have dev videos if you want to see me suffer on my public drive. Otherwise, I MAY release screenshots to the interested, but I don't want to incite any false hope.

Suicidal Pedestrians and Interesting Names

There was a man walking against traffic, on the Calf's Robe bridge this morning, on Deerfoot. ON THE BRIDGE AGAINST TRAFFIC. I kept seeing all these people ahead of me slamming on the brakes out of surprise, and I get there and there's a dude carrying a trash bag, walking in the shoulder on the god damned bridge where you drive 100km/hr and is the most dangerous section of the most dangerous road in our city. That was about as good as the people riding bicycles on that road last year.

Then I get into work where my coworker was waiting to hear about the birth of her nephew. She got the news a few minutes ago and they named him "Ansible." Okay then. I fail to see how a baby translates to "faster than light messaging," but maybe it's a magic baby. Either way, we've been trying to figure out what his nick-names would be. Maybe he'll just go by his middle name...


While I wait for the world to inevitably come to an explosive end, I've been working a lot on writing and the RPG. I got an extended session in to work on the RPG last Saturday and I got A LOT done. I'm actually almost done the functional bits of the "Tutorial area" (the Office). And I know that sounds like tutorial as in showing you how to play, but really I mean tutorial in that I'm learning how to work with RPG maker and making things as silly as possible. Functionally, it's playable. There's a few elements that lead to dead ends or incomplete segments though, which is next on the list. I've also started to map out the next two level sections.

One thing I've learned is that all the dialogue and text I have pre-written ends up changing when I translate it to the screen.

If I could work regularly at the rate I worked last Saturday, I could be done a lot of this by the end of the year. That said, motivation, life circumstances and difficulty barriers will likely crop up. I want to see if I can have something playable for Extra Life this year so I can offer it as an incentive for Kathleen raising money. This game is intended to be for a small audience (mostly private), as there are a lot of assets like music that I wouldn't be allowed to use. That said, if I could create most of the assets myself, which is difficult, but I have the ability to do, AND could come up with a solution to the music, I could make this available to more people. I never intend to sell or market it though.

As for the writing...I've actually got a lot done there in that department. I've cranked out a lot of pages over the past two months, spending a lot of time downstairs on the couch keeping an eye on my puppy.

The downside to this productivity is video production has been reduced to a couple hours a week. In the past two weeks I've done little more than edit a little bit of Dishonored 2. I still have a massive repository of videos in the form of Pillars of Eternity, but even that will run out eventually and I will need to finish the game. The good news is a lot of the footage is there to work with, so now that I've set up my remote desktop, I can realistically work on this.

Lastly, in the past week we had the second session of Mesk's D&D campaign, in which I participated as an NPC character from the previous session. It again, went for a good 8+ hours, but I was able to stay to its conclusion (well mostly, I think Mesk did something extra with one of the characters afterwards). I also managed to voice (very terribly) all the lines as I played. I often neglected to voice my own lines though, mostly because I was focused on what I was typing. I think it went really well.

The session was as interesting and entertaining as the last, with more focus on plot advancement and character interaction than anything else. There were only a few opportunities for battle, some of which were talked their way out of...or escalated to the point where one of the characters tried to solo a boss (and then got interrupted when I sent a gundam in there cause I'd been waiting for that freaking robot to skewer someone all game). Speaking of robots, there was definitely some softcore robot love going on in this past session.

As for my first "real" roleplay (in that Nick and Shauna aren't around to forgive my terrible interactions with other characters and that it was not verbal), I think I did okay. I already know I wasn't GREAT and there was an incident where I had to move locations and it happened to be at the worst possible time (as my character was required for information), but I was WAYYYYY out of my comfort zone. This isn't something I've ever really done before, and a lot of these roleplaying or tabletop games have been forcing me to learn and try to get better at this.

It's definitely a rediscovery/retraining. It's something I think I had when I was kid when an old friend of mine and I would make up our own games and fantasy worlds. Then he left without notice and my new "crew" swiftly crushed those fantasies as they weren't too interested in those sorts of things. They also weren't afraid of voicing those opinions to my face. Since then I've been hardcoded to think things like roleplaying, writing and world building need to be kept a secret, and any failure to do so results in ridicule and embarrassment. So in my head I'm like, "yeah, this is cool and engaging" but you go deeper and all I hear is "you're making a fool of yourself." It's also an issue of "if you aren't good at it, or taken the time to get good at it privately, then don't even bother," which is a whole other clusterfuck that's built up over the span of a decade and only started to get broken down and rebuilt about 5 years ago. I care a lot less now about what people think, but it's the reason I get scared away from some things still. An example is when "you know *insert famous person here* has already done it right?" ended up translating to "someone better than you did it already so why bother trying?" in my head and I completely abandoned multiple hours of work on a project and never returned.

At least I'm learning a lot about myself. I guess that's why I have a lot of respect for these other players and the ease in which they jump into their roles. I enjoy watching them interact with the world and develop their characters/story. I know the campaign has been a lot of work for Mesk to run, but it's paid off in my opinion. Apparently there's a lot of people interested in joining, so I'll likely take on the role of various NPCs, which will probably be good training for me. Either way, I'm in for the other sessions, whether I'm watching/commentating or playing.

When I find out what Mesk wants to do with the D&D videos and what he wants to share of it, I'll likely post links to them in the blog.



PS - To my old friend, I doubt you're reading this, or ever will, but if you are, know I still have that house you built for my favourite toy. It's on display in my sitting area. I lost all the monster cards and that stick figure book though and that kills me a little.

There Was a Revolution and Now My Coffee is Cold

Part of my job is that I'm an online moderator. I work with communities that have some amazing people and amazing fans...until they all start fighting with each other. Happens once or twice a year in bursts, but it stresses me out to no end.

And it's always explosive and complicated.

In other news, more D&D with Mesk on Thursday. I'll be playing one of the NPCs. This should be interesting...

One-Shot Marathon

I started this blog on Monday, got busy, went to dinner and passed out on my couch so I never finished it. It's Tuesday now, but pretend that this was all written yesterday mmk?


Had my first taste of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition last night as I watched a campaign run by Mesk. It was drastically different than the other experiences with Dungeons and Dragons I've had in the past. I was introduced to the game on version 3.5 and I've played with two groups of people on 4th edition. In both cases, I've played with/know the people in person (in addition to playing with one group occasionally online when we can't get together). This was an incredible learning experience for me because I had a chance to really pay attention to text-based interaction and roleplay. I've seen some of Mesk's videos, but I must admit I wasn't so concerned with the mechanics until this.

I notice that the players have a lot more time to think about their actions, roleplaying and conversation vs when it's voiced, which is a lot more awkward when you have long pauses to figure out whether a) it's really what you want to say/do and b) whether it's actually in character. Writing it lets a person say exactly what they want in a relatively orderly sequence and have time to think through it. This is a level of interaction and roleplaying I was not prepared to experience because I REALLY suck at roleplaying at the best of times (that said I've never really done...text based roleplay before so...). Seeing these players do it with such ease was a little intimidating, but impressive. I can tell there's a lot of anime influences in these people's lives though with how many references were made. I got like...1/3 of them (and the only reason I got the DBZ ones is cause Shauna introduced me to DBZ Abridged).

I recorded the game and ended up voice acting a lot of the spoken lines (very poorly). Was more for practice and fun than anything else since I haven't been doing much LP work lately. I made it through about three of the eight hours before my voice completely gave out and I had to resort to just commenting occasionally, or when I was really tired late-game, simply giggling. Some of the rolls were really hilarious. One of the things the players tried I'm like, there is no way this isn't going to end in tears. It actually didn't, but man that whole end boss sequence escalated quickly.

One thing I didn't expect was the length of the one-shot. I expected it to be 3-4 hours tops. It went for 8 hours and I ended up delivering a 10GB recording to Mesk. I actually didn't know how it fully ended (there was a lot of character building stuff going down) so I peaced out at 3:30am to be unconscious for three hours (work in the morning).

Personally I think the campaign went really well. There's a lot of weird things in 5e I'm not used to, but Nick made the comment that it was really plug-and-play vs 4e, so I can see why that edition appeals to custom campaigns. I saw a couple players min/maxing their characters, though when two of them were actually hit, they were almost one-shotted, so I can see that a lot of it went into maximizing damage. The test seemed to give Mesk a lot of experience and information, so that was good to see. I'd definitely watch again or even join in the future, but I don't know how my experience would play into the group dynamic. My campaigns have made me very cynical in terms of events and characters - see Boats of Doom and Undead Campaigns when I finally get the videos done for them. Basically the former had us enslaved at the beginning and we got all our items constantly stolen and the latter has been never-ending harassment from the undead and assassin HANDS.


So after my nap I attempted to vote in the morning. I packed up a puppy and drove over to a church nearby to vote (by-elections cause Harper took his ball and went home). I walked in and made it pretty far before I realized that it was the advanced polling station and actually had to go to a school to vote. A school that's like...a block away from where I live. I debated going back and realized that it was the start of school (was about 745 and the school starts at 759), so I decided it wasn't worth dealing with the kids and the buses and cars and parents and general chaos that I typically avoid the area for. The people I knew would win, won anyway so meh (my area is full of of new families and old white conservative people...the latter being the majority that votes). Then I facerolled a few spreadsheets at work, ate a lot of Brazilian food (BUT NO BBQ PINEAPPLE!!1!!!1!) and made it through watching two cat videos before I was suddenly unconscious on the couch.


I think the short-term solution to needing to supervise a puppy a lot on the main level would be to set up a remote desktop on the laptop for my main computer and just work on things downstairs. I would get so much more done for RPG making, sprite creation, video editing and going through some old files/videos. This will likely be implemented Thursday or Friday though as tonight I work and will definitely be passing out immediately when I get home and Wednesday I'm TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. Don't know why I capitalized that to be honest, but now I have BTO stuck in my head.