Super Mario Maker

I picked this up partly for something to stream, and partly to try my hand at making levels. It’s surprisingly decent for the most part, but at the same time I feel it’s lacking in areas. Mostly in the themes and enemies departments. A recent update added much needed checkpoints in addition to tiered powerups, so I’m hoping more updates come to address other concerns.

If you’re like to try some levels of mine, I have them listed at Super Mario Maker Bookmark. I’ll probably start mentioning levels here (or via Twitter, which shows up here anyways) as well. I dunno how good a stage maker I am, but I did get featured in one of Nintendo Life’s Super Mario Maker Superstar Showcases (click here to see the video my level’s in, it’s the one called “The Ghost Code”). So I guess that’s something.

Peace.

Not dead I swearses

So, right, been like a year. Where’s the time gone? Mostly, it’s been filled with the vidya and in dealing with medical issues (because we can’t be feeling better, obv). Turns out there is what appears to be early onset arthritis (and/or rheumatoid arthritis) cropping up in my left foot. Another theory at the moment is it may be early signs of psoriatic arthritis, as I’ve had psoriasis since I was born. Fun.

Back to the game side of things, those recent horror games that the kids be loving, the Five Nights at Freddy’s series was neat. I only played (and streamed, see the heron related link on the right) each of the three games once though. I find them interesting in the ideas department, but not so much in the execution one.

On the stream side of things, I’ve switched from using Twitch to using Hitbox. This is because Twitch killed off support for having archives longer than like a week or two. As some of my viewers prefer to watch my stuff after the fact, I dropped Twitch. Hitbox seemed to be the only one with archives that didn’t also have delay out the ass, so I’ve switched. You can get to it via the sidebar’s As The Heron Flies link as alluded to in the previous paragraph. In any case, I think that’s all the relevant stuff. Oh right, had a birthday. I’m 26 now. Feels rad I guess.

Peace.

I do Music sometimes, too.

So, it’s been ages since I did anything, and I’ve been meaning to this for awhile now.
Y’see, I make music from to time. It’s not anything special really, mostly just remixes now and again for shits. I’ve uploaded a number of ones I’m not terribly unhappy with, for anyone to give a listen to. The navbar’s been updated to reflect this, as have the Projects page with a new section called Sy’s Tunage.

So I guess go give a listen or something. It’ll give you something to do while I deal with Life.

Peace.

The Fuck: A Possible Relapse?

Something’s not right in the healing process of my left toe. Planning to ask the Doc about it when I get checked out in December. I’m admittedly pretty salty about this being necessary. I’m thinking maybe it’s due to my body trying to heal so many things at once (I had extensive dental work done recently) but I dunno. Guess I’ll find out.

Peace.

Recovery Status Update

I’m recovering nice and steadily. I can walk again, and I’ve got that down pat. I still can’t wear socks yet (still airing out) but it doesn’t hurt much unless I’m on my feet a lot. I was well enough to get other important stuff done. Namely, a lot of dental work. So now I’m recovering from that as well. Huzzah. So I guess I’m indisposed for a bit longer. Whoops. In any case, just wanted to get the update out.

Peace.

Super Metroid is the Fastest Metroid

Title says it all. One of the common complaints I’ve heard about Super Metroid (especially in comparison to Zero Mission and/or Fusion) is that the game is too slow. The word clunky also gets thrown around, but I never take that as a valid complaint against anything because it’s vague as fuck. This complaint always bothered me, as I always considered the later games to be slower.

Well, I eventually took the time to actually check that shit. I recorded how long it takes Samus to get from one end of a one map square wide room to the other in all 3 games at varying speeds (Walk, Run, Speedboost, Shinespark, and lastly Ballspark for shits). This is what I found out:
Super’s walking speed is marginally slower than Zero Mission’s, which is in-turn, slower than Fusion’s by a fair amount.
Every speed from Running and up, Super is faster. By a sizable margin.
Zero Mission & Fusion have a Walk speed. The problem is that they basically have Autorun turned on. Also, the speed increase is small instead of how large it is in Super.
Zero Mission’s Ballspark is humourously enough, the fasted speed you can go in said game.
At every speed, Fusion is faster than Zero Mission. This makes Zero Mission the slowest of the 3 games.

If you’re curious, I recorded some of my testing footage, and then also made some videos where I spliced clips together. Though this was more to test my video editing software than anything else. It can be downloaded here.

That’s all. Just wanted to get that out there. Super’s the fastest Metroid. Peace.

Recovery Phase SET~

Surgery was had. I’m in recovery. Shit still hurts, I dunno. It’s distracting. Will most likely dive right into working on the game when I’m all gravy again. I’ve got a general picture for how I want to move forward on the game, so that’ll probably make things go faster when I get started. We’ll see.

Oh, I guess I’ll take this moment to plug another project of mine. Apparently, I make for a source of entertainment when I stream video games. I don’t understand it meself, but eh. So that’s a thing now. It’s called As the Heron Flies, and it’s at my Twitch account here. I mainly stream older games from PS1/N64 and down, though I do stream more newer stuff from time to time. I also do fangames or romhacks, and I take requests as well. Guess that’s it.

Peace.

So I don’t have cancer. That’s neat.

Never mentioned it here since I try to keep personal shit to a minimum, but I’ve had some medical problems for the past year or so. The main thing being strange lesions (or, “cuts”) and granulation tissue (or, “proud flesh”) forming on, under, and around both of my big toenails. They go deep, down to the nerve clusters behind the cuticle, and fuck do they hurt. They generally sting all the time, and whenever I’m on my feet is like walking on hot electrifying coals. Walking itself is also weird since I have to try and alleviate any sort of pressure to those areas (the majority of your balance comes from the big toe and the joints connected to it).

I went through a bunch of crap on trying to figure what the problem was and how to get rid of it. Nothing was working, so it looked like surgery would be involved but first they had to do a biopsy. From what we had known beforehand, everything was pointing to cancer. Results come back in, and we find out that shit’s benign, yo. That means not cancer. Which is, y’know, nice.

So now I’m undergoing treatment this month, followed by a reassessment (and possible surgery planning to cut out what’s left) in June. Huzzah.

Oh right. I guess I should mention that progress on the game sorta stalled. Whoops.

Peace.