It's Bureaucracy Part 2

I've always thought that any given work is successful if it makes you feel something. It doesn't even have to produce the emotional response that it set out to inspire, like a B movie that makes you laugh instead of recoil in terror. And I think that Bureaucracy is doing that. It makes the player stressed out, which--given the subject matter--is entirely appropriate. I am completely tense and nervous as I play. There are many things to accomplish before my flight leaves, many of which I won't realize I had to do until after I've managed to get on it. I find myself dreading interacting with the characters. Fighting the parser to find the exact right combination of words that a character will accept is kind of a problem I have with any text game, though.

Which brings me to the next point. Fear. Most games have a sort of feeling that they produce in the player. It's this sort of "oh no, I'm going to die and have to do that complicated section all over again" or "if I do this, is it going to put me in an unwinnable situation?" You're hesitant to use items or even explore for fear of messing up the game somehow, even though failure is relatively easy to recover from. I'm finding that I need to relax and learn how to accomplish one goal, like getting some cash, without worrying about being able to do it before the time limit, and then once I've figured out how to achieve all the items on my pre-flight checklist work on streamlining the process.

VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND

We at Superlemons are pleased to announce the release of our first game, VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND. The challenge was to write the game in one week, which has been failed spectacularly as we are also pleased to announce the acceptance of a temp job. If all goes as planned, however, it should be coming out this Friday.

What is VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND, you ask? It is the text-based adventures of a teenage girl at a new high school, living with her father, attempting to get a date to the Winter Formal from one of several sexy, sparkly, studly vampire bachelors. It's a great time for the whole family as it is an abstinence adventure.

It's Bureaucracy Part 1

Douglas Adams is my hero, and have endeavored to follow his example in my own life. Unfortunately, I have only gotten as far as working a series of bizarre and terrible jobs. Anyhow, I've decided to experience one of his lesser-known works, the 1987 Infocom game, Bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is a nasty piece of work from a man who thinks that having the player buy a cheese sandwich at the beginning of the game and feed it to a dog with no prompting so that they won't be eaten by that dog while aboard a passing microscopic space fleet near the end of the game is a puzzle. Still, I am determined to play it without any outside help, other than the feelies that were originally packaged with the game.

A brief note on feelies for those not savvy with how text games in the late '80s rolled: games were packaged with additional materials, usually small items found in the game or pamphlets and documents in some way related to it. They added an element of immersion and were often required to solve puzzles in the game as an early sort of copy protection. It was DRM made fun!

Why am I doing this? I remember a time not so long ago when I didn't have to make progress to enjoy a game. I was content to wander the Great Underground Empire in Zork or explore Maniac Mansion for hours without really getting anything done. Losing wasn't a problem, it was a learning experience. Games aren't like that for me anymore and I find that very sad.

So, before firing up the game, I took the time to familiarize myself with the documents and forms included with the game. This is important since, as I recall, you aren't really given any direction in the game itself. Now I know that I got an awesome new job and am being flown to Paris for training/vacation, and I have to cash my $75 money order which has been mailed to the wrong address before the flight leaves. Is this interesting blogging? Who cares! The game is afoot!

2 Flat 2 Furious

Now, if you're anything like me you've had no end of trouble visualizing what fourth dimensional figures would look like. Yeah, we've all seen that little animated gif of that spinny tesseract on wikipedia. And if we can model 3D objects in 2D, surely the same can be said of higher dimensions?

But no, I just don't get 4D space. That is, until I read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the OG dimensional thought experiment written in 1884 by one Edwin A. Abbot. Now I still don't get 4D space but I understand why and more about how a fourth dimensional being would view three dimensional us. The novella takes place in Flatland, and it's about a square who spends most of the time describing flat society and how they roll. Then, he has a vision of Lineland, and receives a visit from a fantastical sphere, who introduces him to spaceland and beyond.

Really, pick this book up. You can probably even read it for free because I can't imagine a world where it's not in the public domain, and it's very neat and surprisingly readable to the modern eye.

Let's get straight to the point, though. The back cover promised "sex between consenting triangles." Now, the way things work in flatland is that all the figures are male and the women are lines, and the gay sex thing was Not Done back in those days. Needless to say, there is absolutely nothing titillating in any way about this book. Not that that's a bad thing given the subject matter, but it really bothers me when they outright lie to you about the contents on the back of a book.

Pattern Fight, Day One

A package came in the mail! It was none other than my materials for one of the entries in the Pattern Fight, Vogue 2556. Let's open 'er up.

The contents of the mailing envelope oozed forth. I was pretty happy with the colors; I had been a little nervous about ordering them based on the color shown on my laptop monitor. The green is a polyester for the under flap part. It felt about how I expected. The blue is a bamboo/cotton blend and it feels very soft. Both are knits per the pattern requirements. In retrospect, it was really really dumb to get these colors since the winner gets to go to a friend's wedding, and the bride is wearing blue with the wedding party in green. I'm reasonably certain that they're very different shades of blue and green, and the groom has assured me that nothing I wear to this thing is going to be a faux pas, but still. Is this going to be enough to disqualify this dress from the competition?

Magnus, the official cat of Superlemons, was eager to help, as always. There was a hole in the middle of the blue. I was able to place the pieces around it with no trouble. Even so, not cool, fabric.com. Not cool. I cut all the pieces and spent like half an hour putting in tailor's tacks. Now, before I had only encountered them in vintage patterns and quickly dismissed them as overly fastidious old-timey nonsense. However, they have well made up for the effort I put into placing them, and now I am born again tailor's tacker. Hallelujah!

The day ended with the dress partially assembled. It's both more and less complicated then it looks like on the envelope. However, I've reached the point where I need some snap tape to continue, which fabric.com didn't stock and I've had trouble finding locally for a reasonable price. I have a budget to consider and a whole 'nother dress to build, after all.

Pattern Fight!

So my recent trip to Pennsylvania to visit relatives further reinforced a bizarre hypothesis I had first posed in Boone, NC: thrift stores in hick towns have the best haul. Now, I don't know the distribution models, but I have to assume that the items in thrift stores are donated locally, and people in hick towns have limited access to the good stuff, and, to make a terrible generalization, have no taste. And yet there's a high frequency of Banana Republic stuff and one time a tank top from Top Shop down at Ram's Rack.

So we went to this place in a neighboring town (I guess slightly better because it had a movie theater) which had an extremely sweet haul. My limited funds and even more limited closet space prohibited me from stocking up on old bowling shirts, the most ridiculous fur coat in the world (only $10) and some sweet hats, but I did pick up two vintage patterns AND a Vogue Issey Miyake pattern for like two bucks. Awesome!

Which brings us to the bout of the century: Pattern Fight. I'm going to to construct both of these patterns on this very blog. The winner, voted on by MY FAITHFUL READERS (both of you?) gets worn to this wedding I gotta go to. Let's meet the contenders!


Team Simplicity 4944:
This copacetic little bird may be getting up there in years, but we still think it's the berries. It didn't come with the original envelope and there's no date printed on the directions. The company also had two other patterns with the same number which complicates finding information. Judging by the price (65 cents) and the cut I'm going to guess late 60s or 70s. I'm going to go for View 1, but I'll probably revisit 2 in the future if it comes out okay.

Team Vogue 2556:
This pattern is stiff competition, due to the involvement of big name Japanese designer Issey Miyake, who survived the atomic bomb to give the world the Pleats Please collection. But like so much high fashion, is this 2001 pattern too funky for its own good? I say the crazier the better, but I am concerned about the potential waist-negating effect. I'll be doing the dress A, the skirt is not a length that suits me and I can't afford to make a thing AND furnish my own top.

The fabric for 2556 has been ordered and construction will begin once it arrives and I track down some elusive snap tape. For 4944 I'll check around the house and see if any of my existing stash is up to the task. Gentlemen, the game is afoot.

Newsy Bits

Sorry it's been a while, I've been a bit lazy lately. I was going to do an exciting theremin build series of posts, but I got my hands on my state income tax refund and it wasn't quite enough. It will buy me college applications though, and that's a whole bunch of adventures waiting to happen. For those not in the know I'm wanting to go back to school for textile engineering. It's a fascinating field and I truly believe that high tech fibers are going to be the next big thing. Also, I wouldn't say no to a job in the fashion industry.

Picked up the first issue of the Doom Patrol relaunch this week. Not only is it Doom Patrol but there's a Metal Men side story in each issue as well! It started out a little slow but I'm going to pick up the next one for sure!

Now, I had a whole host of problems getting my laptop into working order. It's a Toshiba Satellite about six years old and I had stopped using it when I had a hard drive failure a few years ago. I picked up a new hard drive and a power cord to replace the one I lost, but once it was up and running it wouldn't stay on very long. So I had to get some Torx screwdrivers to open up the panel with the CPU and the heatsink (Phillips is good enough for every other panel on the thing) and cleaned it out and put in new thermal grease. In my infinite wisdom I put Ubuntu on it, which is a whole 'nother set of problems, but it's running great now. Unfortunately, no sooner did I get it into shape than the desktop developed a problem. A "won't turn on and smells like burning" problem. I don't have the parts to diagnose it but I suspect it's the power supply. Ah well, at least I have some way of getting my sweet, sweet dose of forums and hilarious videos.

On the gaming front, I resumed my third playthrough of Fatal Frame III, which deserves a post to itself, and realized just how nice it was to have someone in your bed at night after getting molested by the grim specters of sacrifice victims.