for as long as consoles could produce sound, video games were accompanied by music. as a fledgling game developer, that means i need to know how to make my own. that was what i thought well back when i was a kid making games in Scratch.

i had a game called Rocket Jump 2 (very creative), a platformer with the eponymous mechanic as the focus. looking back on it, it was rather impressive! i figured out that, to circumvent Scratch's lack of a movable camera, i could implement "camera scrolling" by simply moving the entire world rather than the player. it had multiple levels, achievements, full visual and audio effects, tech like wall-jumping and rocket syncs, and so on. i've deleted my Scratch account by now, though; i wish i hadn't done that, i would have loved to play something my younger self made.

anyway... this game needed music. i was using the soundtrack from Baba is You as placeholder, but they happened to fit the game perfectly. i searched up what tool the developer (Hempuli) used to make the soundtrack- it was OpenMPT, a music tracker tool. there was a lot you needed to do manually, like importing samples and setting up envelopes for them. you'd place notes by essentially coding the time and channel of each one with little visual feedback available. all this to say, it wasn't the best choice for a beginner composer like me. usually you'd start with beepbox or bosca ceoil...? i was one stubborn bugger though and i kept at it. it did help that i used to play piano (because my parents forced me to learn LOL). eventually, i made a few songs! they sucked, i'm not sugarcoating it, but this is only the start of my journey.

i had been playing a lot of this game called Mindustry. it's a tower defense & factory & RTS hybrid game (if that interests you, it's free on itch.io). i heard the developer, Anuke, used a free software called LMMS to make the soundtrack. he'd posted the project files for it, so i started tinkering with them to learn how to use LMMS. if it wasn't for those, i wouldn't have learnt nearly as quickly; that's the value of sharing your work, y'all.

around the same time, i started using MuseScore, a music notation software, to make sheet music for songs i liked. i did this so i could play them on piano without having to pay for the subscription (LOL). in school, i had weekly performances for music class, and i'd play these transcriptions i made. most students played classical or pop music, i was quite the outlier! anyway, i had these transcriptions, and i was learning to use LMMS, so i had the idea to make arrangements for them. primarily, i wanted to arrange the Bug Fables soundtrack, inspired by DM Dokuro's Cave Story Arranged. someone suggested i posted them on YouTube, which i did; though, since i didn't know any better programs, i used Microsoft Clipchamp which totally crushed the quality. despite that, these gained some traction, enough to pique the interest of another musician in the community. we became friends and worked along each other. they happened to get me into Rain World, a game that's now one of my greatest inspirations. we've drifted apart now, alas.

moving on, i kept experimenting, starting to make my own songs. i saw that people made fan-made threat themes for Rain World; that is, tracks that play dynamically with on how much danger you're in. i thought it'd be fun to make one of my own for The Wall, a region in the game. unexpectedly, it blew up, reaching over 100K views as of writing this post. tryn, a developer of the Extra Threat Themes mod, reached out to me to add my theme to it, a real surprise at the time. i'm truly grateful!

fast forward to now, i've made and released a few original tracks. they haven't gained nearly the attention of that threat theme, but i'm proud of them nonetheless. i'm eager to how my music will develop. maybe one day it'll play in my own games?

ADDENDUM: so i remembered when you delete a Scratch project, it doesn't remove any remixes (basically, edits anyone can make of your project) of it. i found a remix with fairly minimal edits (here) and took some screenshots:

i didn't give myself enough credit; this really was impressive. i made lens flare by adding a bloom sprite to the sun that hid itself when it touched the background layer. i made motion blur by duplicating the background and offsetting it based on your velocity. maybe i have more potential than i realise...

whoops it's been 3 months. anyway, i recently discovered that i'm plural. so what does that mean?

plurality is the existence of multiple self-aware entities in the brain^[1]. a system is the group that resides within a brain, and headmates are the individuals within that group. there are other terms people use; i've simply listed the ones i prefer here. plurality may or may not be a new concept to you, but i'd already known several systems online. before that, i first discovered it from a VRChat interview with one. i thought it was really cool (if only every human had that attitude) and latched onto the idea since.

initially i dismissed the thought of being plural myself, but as time went on, i began debating it more and more. i'd often be in my own world just conversing with myself. i felt a profound level of disconnect with my body, like i was merely observing the world through someone else's eyes. eventually, i found out about two things that made it click: a.) it's extremely common for systems to doubt themselves, even those who have been out for several years, and b.) every system differs; not every one is composed of entirely distinct beings.

my last hurdle was feeling like i had to identify each of my selves. every system i'd known of had a complete list of their headmates, but nothing i tried seemed to get anywhere. even now, i'm not sure how other systems go about identifying them (if you're reading this and know more, do let me know!) learning about that last point really helped me; i stopped trying to force us to be more different.

learning i was plural has answered many questions i had about myself, and brought up just as many. if you know me personally, it's unlikely it will change anything; we have the same experiences and memories, and none have any preferred pronouns. regardless, i'm glad to have discovered this about me.

this is Generic Topdown Shooter. it's my first published game, but i've actually been a game dev for quite some time. let's see how i got here.

way back in primary school, a friend and i discovered Scratch, a website that you could make games with just by snapping code blocks together. we churned out dozens of poorly made, but genuine, projects. game dev became our passion. our ambitions were unbound.

secondary school came around. we decided we were too grown-up for Scratch, and picked up Unity. some things were familiar, but otherwise we were starting from scratch (heh). so, we got to learning. my friend found out about game jams: competitions where you must make a game based on a theme in a certain time-frame. the perfect way to learn- the limited time forces you to keep your games small. we found an upcoming jam and joined together!

no, i didn't. why should i bother with silly little game jams? my ideas were way too great for them. so i kept chipping away at my dream game. my friend, meanwhile, joined jam after jam. he improved, little by little.

the years passed. i continued with my project. i stagnated. he found a small team to work with. i burnt out. he became better than me in every way. i gave up quietly.

then, high school was over. i began seeing a psychologist. we talked about setting goals, and i thought: i've tried game dev before. why not give it another go? so there was my goal: "i will finish a game by the end of August." this time, i was okay with failing. i'd just set an easier goal.

but i didn't fail. it's not an impressive game. it's a generic topdown shooter. but it's mine.

(and i didn't need AI to make it lol!!)

welcome to my first blog post. i've been thinking, i'm a thing with a lot of thoughts; but social media is public and algorithmic and all that. then i thought, why not put a blog on your website? and here we are. well, this is not really a blog, just a page that i add text to manually. good enough for me!