This is announcement of another web application tool that I have launched. It was an accomplishment in terms of the complexity of the logic and graphic design.
It’s a first person shooter type of faux three D environment.
It's basically the experience in a sort of video game sense, fighting the level boss.
That experience which is abstracted from permaculture video game I call Operation Tactical Permaculture.
It's auxiliary to that in the sense that I spent a long time building out a working proof of concept of a permaculture video game.
I decided that there's an interesting dynamic between taking some of the elements within the game or things that the game could eventually integrate with…
All of the educational tools that I'm building, all the educational apps that I'm building, they can be worked into that video game experience, ultimately, to where, let's say you do these tasks and they’re educational tasks, and you complete them. And you get graded, and you get a score or whatever.
Then that translates into into currency within the game that you can use to build out your project site.
I'm building these sort of one offs that stand alone, and then based on user feedback and based on user interest, the rate of development and integration that's gonna occur will be determined.
So what I created just now, what I finished just now, had always been intended to be integrated within that game experience.
I have a video game designing artist, kind of guru, who's been successful in the video game industry, as a game art developer, artist, and he's done great works of art for me over the years.
Never in almost 20 years of us being such good friends, was I ever really in a position to write any game code.
He actually gave me some very amazing art to work with in my game, which I have used and I will continue to use.
But we had a long conversation recently about just the industry and the culture and the nuance of just the craft and the art form.
He's amazing. I'm torn between taking it seriously and not taking it seriously.
And he actually said, if you take it seriously, you should take this advice, and you should do these things.
You could spend so much time and effort making something that you think people are gonna like.
But if you don't get feedback from users all along the way, you may be in your own world.
So if you wanna be in your own world, that's cool.
Or if you wanna be responsive to feedback, then be responsive to feedback and have that sort of hybrid result.
And so for me, I'm building these things out, and then I'm gonna be steered by and taken in the direction of people who say, you're undervaluing this. This needs more time. This needs needs more energy.
So I'm launching these sort of minimum viable product proof of concept apps and basically all of them are quite applicable to the real world.
And then some of them are a little more video game world land kind of stuff.
So this one, I actually feel like the way things are going with modern warfare, the experience of combat simulation.
It's been since the first computers, there's been war games and combat simulators with basic three D, and that's only improved.
If you watch that movie, Toys, it was a prediction that we were gonna get war-like video games, that we're gonna steal a generation, pretty much every generation from that point forward.
I think that was a dark prophetic vision in that film.
I reference it a lot. I don't want to personally be seduced into the fetishism of violence and militarism but it's interesting, because the game module, that's what I wanna call it. I wanna call it a game module that plugs into my main video game, but then exists outside of it, alongside of it as a standalone experience that people can play with.
It's not the most, um, useful of all the apps that I've built. However, if people wanna play a video game, they wanna have some fun, they wanna get that video game experience.
So I don't wanna make it all academic and all sort of intellectual.
It's gotta have some lower, some reptilian brain action. So this is the payoff to play this very rewarding reptilian brain combat simulator, little game module.
It's called Enemy Drone Patrol. When I started this, I did not know how timely an app it would be to release it at this moment in the geopolitics of the world, but it actually is quite apt.
I think that in order to defend your body, your family, your house, your block, your neighborhood, your community, your city, your county, whatever you're in, there's gonna be more and more, not less and less, for the foreseeable future, more and more integration of technology with defense at all scales.
So to me, this isn't all total fantasy video arcade land, kind of retro nostalgia. It's also very on point for anyone. You could make all kinds of arguments for, remember having to defend gaming with the hand, eye coordination and visual acuity and problem solving everything.
I think a lot of times they're viable for that. It's just a balance of real life. For me, it's always been about real life training, and then making as much applicability of real life training in video game environments and trying to use them to build character or to have purpose or to be adventurous.
So in enemy drone patrol, you're developing some skills and some nervous system muscle memory for target acquisition on a screen.
There are parameters around that, which I'll get into now. So basically what it is, thanks to the, the treasure trove of public domain images.
There's a public domain repository, website of online of images that has everything you can think of.
I can't afford to pay my friend, who would be the best to actually custom design all the graphics.
But I've been able to at least get what they call place holders going with the public domain art.
There's an apocalyptic, very sort of surreal, not not totally photo realistic landscape series.
So I was able to create this very large game sort of field background environment that spans all the way up into the stars and goes deep into the Earth, and then has a main sort of action field that is a post apocalyptic war zone, city scape.
There's a whole bunch of these, I scored this whole collection of them and they’re just what I dream about. I've always sort of perceived the future as being what I know exists in a lot of places in the world as we speak, it's, again, very timely.
So you get this compelling, I don't wanna call it beautiful unless you wanna get very dystopic and and sort of deep ecologist about it but you know there is a beauty to the cycles of creation and destruction. But I certainly do not enjoy there being a toxic wasteland, but it is a reality.
So that's the background. It takes a while to load, depending on your connection speed, it's like a PC game.
You use the arrow keys to fly or to maneuver upwards, downwards, left and right.
Then if you hold the control key while you press either the up or down arrow, that gives you the ability to advance and retreat.
So my video game designer friend, he said, right there, you've got three dimensions.
It's kind of faux the way it works. But nonetheless, it was about the programming of it.
He said to me, also, sounds like what you're doing with all these game modules, you're building a number of engines that you can build on later.
And I said, that's exactly right.
I just wanna know that I can do this sort of format. I guess they call it a scrolling game, there's all kinds of technical terminology with with what.
I want to have the ability to program in those dimensions or at that scale, or however we wanna put it.
So this was one of those check boxes for me, to get the sort of physics of the first person shooter built out, and then, I'll be the humanitarian, so far in my video game, you kill zombies and drones.
So that's the limit. So far. I don't know if I would go beyond that.
I don't wanna dehumanize zombies, but let's say that they're intrinsically all threatening because they have contagious diseases.
Maybe there needs to be more friendly zombie movies where they make friends and they realize that they've been demonized.
But for now, you get to kill zombies, you get to kill drones.
The zombie killing feature of the mothership video game is not that impressive.
This is not the most impressive thing that's ever been built, but it is more impressive than that.
But of course, everything can be worked on in developing the future.
So you got this background, and then you have the ability to maneuver and move and have the experience of moving in space.
Then what you're fighting is this, this drone, which has the ability to fade in and out, sort of like teleportation.
But just to make it extra difficult, make it a little more dynamic of a target.
So it kind of moves around and fades in and out of the screen.
Sometimes it'll end up outside of your moment by moment field of vision, your viewpoint on the screen. So you have this visual aid, this crude version of something similar to a radar screen, but it just gives you four arrows pointing northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, and it blinks where the drone has moved to.
And you need to move using combinations of the arrow keys.
You need to pay attention. If it disappears off the screen, you gotta look at the arrows flashing on the lower left of the screen to know where to maneuver to get to it.
You're using the space bar then to fire at it.
If you're acquiring the target, then you engage it, and you get the feedback on the screen of a flame.
The drone’s power percentage decreases accordingly to your target fire and then at certain percentages it starts to degrade.
You start to knock it kind of crazy at first and then you start melting it and eventually it turns upside down and falls.
That kind of stuff was pretty fun.
I just know now I have the technical ability to make it a million times more advanced but it doesn't need to be at this point because all that matters to me is that I know how to do this.
If anything that I'm doing at some point gets a foothold of any kind it can be upgraded.
Otherwise, you’re gonna do the best work you could possibly do and spend forever on it to find out no one really cared. That could be very disappointing and demoralizing. And I have a mantra that I live by now, which is that I don't wanna expend energy and effort in vain.
I've done that too much in my life with just so many dreams and ambitions.
And at this point, if I expend energy and effort, it's got to have value for me, intrinsically in and of itself, not as some deferred gratification type of thing.
I can't do that anymore. I need to enjoy what life I have left, and I don't want to project that fantasy in the future.
So I had fun getting this to this minimum sort of experience as a module.
I actually had gotten pretty far with it and then I got stuck because some of the code was really entangled.
I got to the point where the glitch that was happening was so incessant that it was not fun anymore to sit there and try to troubleshoot it a million times.
Then I would get it to the point where I have to play the game a million times, or I have to play the sort of level a million times to get to the point where it starts glitching out.
There's ways to kind of cheat that. Today I was doing it where, okay, I need to make sure that the ending screen looks right. Okay, well, I'll just make it so one shot kills the drone instead of a hundred shots or whatever.
That gave me the ability to do the testing in a quicker manner.
But there's nothing profound about this. It's in no way competitive with what anybody a third of my age could do, in a weekend or a day.
But for me, it was an accomplishment, as a 1980s generation, just totally avid gamer, kid, from to home consoles to the arcade, it was my life.
I would listen to metal music and New Age music interchangeably, while playing Zelda on Super Nintendo after school.
Then I would go and I would play in the woods, and I would be athletic, and I would do martial arts and whatnot.
It's all about enjoying every aspect of life, and whether it's flying a kite or playing a video game somewhere between, I'm not trying to give life coach advice, but take care of yourself. Take care of people. Take care of the earth.
Don't let any activity just get out of proportion to the detriment of other activities, certainly ones that are important for health and well being overall.
I know there's been horror stories of people being found dead in their gamer chair because they couldn't get away from it.
I'm not surprised some of these modern games...back in my day, it was a different type of game. Now, it's just epileptic seizure fodder. I say that with all due respect, but honestly, I wouldn't say that I experience anything near that, but I look at the number of things going on at once…
I don't play modern games, I'm not doing what I'm doing to compete with anybody other than myself and what happens is that me writing this game, these game modules, it wasn't in expectation that it was gonna change the world as far as other people using it.
For me, it was like, I need to learn a lot of technical minutia about these programming languages.
What better way for me to get engaged in that process than to have it be over the arc of these video game environments and programming experiences?
Because everything I learned there, I can then apply to the more realistic projects.
That's why I'm enjoying this blend of building a real world tool that works in the game and applies within the game, but also stands alone as just an app that you would use to live a better life, live a more prepared life, or more tactical life, or whatever.
This process has value for me and the more I think about it, the more I feel that everything that exists in my little domain within the Internet, another, no pun intended, in my little subworld within the Internet, whatever I put on my website at this stage of my life...
I'm not doing a big marketing push.
The best you could do is be my friend and donate some tea money to me with my membership site and maybe ask me to help you with some tools that you might want built.
But it was the freedom that I have that's precious that I certainly haven't had for most of my life, and hopefully I'll have as long as I can.
I have the freedom to, to not have a grinding monetization agenda.
A space of freedom from a lifetime of a grinding monetization agenda. I feel like whatever I produce it has a higher to me personally. It is a higher and more pure quality of art when there's a detachment from commercialization and finances and I'm not saying I'm not gonna integrate any kind of monetization.
I'm just saying that at this point, and it'll probably stay this way, that'll be a side effect, or a byproduct, or afterthought, or a last resort, whatever you wanna call it.
For now, I'm doing what I enjoy. It's my own world. It's my own project. It's my own material.
If it makes money cool, if it doesn't make money, I'm okay with that.
If I'm gonna wake up every day and decide, do I feel like creating anything I wanna share with the world?
Yes or no? If the answer is no, then I just work on my land and I sleep and I eat and I do my own fitness and my own spirituality. That's the day. And if there's a day where I say, you know what?
I can only do so much. To feel connected I have to feel useful, have to have a mission so at this point...I've had many different expression types throughout my life, at this point it's become something like what do I wanna do that's been missing in my life?
I wanna be more proficient with web development technology, and I'm gonna build apps, and I'm gonna do these game modules.
If it's on my website, it means I enjoyed creating it. And at this point, everything is free. So I made it a buffet of free fun and entertaining, and educational tools and games and lectures as far as the show goes. I'm just documenting my journey and and having the time in my life.
So I hope you are having the time of your life, and I hope you are able to say that about every chapter of your life.
And let there only be very few and far between moments where you would not feel that way about your life.
I've done a lot of different things, and I've tried to feel like whatever I'm doing, sometimes it could only be at night and on the weekends, but at this point, it's my whole life, not just nights, not just weekends. I'm free to be having the time of my life, and there's no one to blame, and there's no excuses.
So what comes out of that freedom and that I share with the world, it's on my site, and you get to be the free recipient of all of that freedom that I have to share.
So I hope it's worthwhile to you. If not, it's only there because I had fun doing it.
It does bring me a lot of validation and sort of empowerment and sense of meaning, purpose when I know other folks are out there benefiting from the work I'm doing.
So feel free to connect and make any requests. And I hope you will be looking forward to the next, the next launch.