Oafkad

I've been thinking a lot recently about how I want to handle the concept of Shopkeepers within this game. It is likely that every game you've played where you acquire goods or services from an NPC has involved this fairly standard concept. That game could be a science fiction adventure that takes place a thousand years in the future, or a fantasy game that takes place in another world entirely. No matter where you go the idea of coin carries on. It might have a fancy name but really it is always there. You could argue that what I'm about to describe is just currency with extra steps but a part of me finds that a bit reductive. It is a bit like the joke in Magic that everything is kicker. You can make the argument but I think it really misses a lot of nuance. With that weirdly preemptive defense out of the way let us get into it. Living NPCs I've built a somewhat robust state machine system for the game already. This will allow me to give each NPC a series of states, shocking I know, that they can switch between based on needs and desires. I'm not going to make any bold claims about them being truly sentient or any of this modern AI nonsense. However they will have schedules of one kind or another by the end of development. This means that they will have time to help you with things and they'll have time that they need to spend relaxing, eating, or who knows what else. This means that each NPC's time will be a finite resource for you. We don't need to balance things with a currency to keep people from getting out of control. If building up resources for an NPC takes time, and that NPC has finite time, then we can balance around that. So can I just take everything? Conceivably, and I'm sure people will figure out how to game the system. But the actual raw materials will likely be provided by you or other NPCs that are gathered on the island itself. NPCs will be providing you with refined materials based off the materials you provide them. Raw wood could be given to a woodworker to provide lumber or other goods. All they would ask in return is the time to finish the request and that you supply them with enough materials to help other people in town. The more you do this the more you'll build up a report with them and become friends. How do you gate what I can get? Simply enough, the more someone likes you the more they are willing to do for you. More complicated requests become available as you provide them with more resources and they get more excited to help you. Happy people tend to really put their full effort behind relationships and that'll be a big part of this experience. So is the currency in this regard the materials or friendship? I do think you could make this reductive argument but it is clearly a different relationship. People are doing what they are doing in the game because they love doing it. They *need* materials in order to do those things. You can't work wood that doesn't exist. And I would hope that most people don't feel that their relationships with other people are purely transactional. That buildup of trust and love is a beautiful thing. All sorts of animals do it and don't give one another a single cent. So that's that, my plans for getting things like build materials, fancier food, toys, possibly even help around the manor grounds. People and Moosecats gathering to share their passions with one another and create something better than what any individual can muster.

Hey Folks, As we finish up the first pass of Chatty Moosecatty I believe it is time for us to look forward to Moosecat Manor. With that in mind I want to take some time to cover what will be in the game. An introduction, mechanical summary, and goals. (Heaven help me, I did not proof read this) Introduction It's a breezy spring day. The feeling of warm air against your cheek reminding you of your childhood. Your parents used to bring you to Grandpa's manor every year. You remember running through the greenhouse, checking out all the flowers from around the world. Exotic plants of a million colors and even more smells. The animals buzzing from petal to petal, and even the birds that nestled within the trees. You remember getting lost in the farmland and orchards. Falling asleep to the same soft breeze you feel today. Those moments of lucid dreaming where each time your eyes softly opened you could see your father. Carrying you back to the manor to nap somewhere that the sun might kiss you a bit less. You smile, glancing down at the letter your Grandpa had written you. The letter shimmered in the sunlight, giving off an otherworldly quality. But that was no surprise, everything that Grandpa did was beyond normal. You remember every night listening to his stories of his recent adventures. Of all the wondrous things he had seen. Each tale grander than the last. If not for the trophies on his walls, or the flora around the manor, you'd likely never believe it. The manor too had always captured your imagination. In your childhood it felt like it stretched off in every direction forever. Frequently you'd set out on an adventure through its many rooms and come back with whatever interested you. Grandpa would sit you down and tell you the tale of each and every thing. He never minded what you brought back, no matter how numerous. Sometimes you'd break things but he never raised his voice. You'd both sit together and piece the things back together while he pieced together the adventure. The wind picked out of the blew drawing the letter from your hand and your attention from the street. You looked up to where the manor stood, or where it once had stood. Vast nothingness stood before you as far as you could see. You dash forward to the precipice of where the manor entrance once stood. The ground glowed with the familiar shape of the foundation reflecting in your eyes. Not a single plank of wood, not a single brick, nothing remained. You looked around to the greenhouse and saw that while it stood, it appeared to be completely empty. The glass cracked and in some places panes had completely crumbled away. Vines crept up from the earth and crawled along the metal frame of the building. Nature itself threatening to reclaim it all. The farm and orchards too were overgrown. If not for your own memories it would appear like nothing more than woods and patchy grasslands. Your heart raced in the confusion as the letter passed by your face once more. The breeze whipping it around the air. Your eyes turned to follow it until it landed upon the glowing ground before you. The letter flashed brilliant pearlescent colors, blinding you for a moment. As color returns to your vision you see the familiar outline of the main hall of the manor. The hall glows like hot steel from the forge. Time quenches the smoldering hall bringing color back to the blinding white walls. The familiar marble and wood that you had seen so many times before stood before you. The large double doors with their full height windows at either side welcome you in. Your heart races, could Grandpa be inside? You rush up the stairs and swing open the doors. Immediately before you a pair of mysterious animals stare, wide eyed, at your face. One looks a bit like a Calico cat, but with large brilliant antlers atop their head. The other jet black, so dark that light itself seems to be sucked into its form. Above its head space and time seem to bend and writhe upon one another. A voice breaks your gaze and you look up. "Welcome back, munchkin! I've certainly gotten myself in a bit of a mess this time!" Grandpa smiles, arms open for a hug. Gameplay Moosecat Manor is planned to be a hybrid of some of my favorite game archetypes into one experience. They say that you should write what you know, so I'm guessing that you should code what you like to play. The goal of Moosecat Manor is to solve the mystery of the missing manor. Along the way you are going to rebuild the manor, the greenhouse, the farm, and the orchard. Each providing you with more tools to explore ever further into the world that Grandfather once routinely explored. You will be accompanied by his two companions, lovingly nicknamed "Moose" and "Bean". A pair of magical creatures that he informs you are called "Moosecats". While many Moosecats you will meet look very similar to "normal" cats, there is no limit to how exotic or otherworldly that they can look. Controls will be a mix of Stardew Valley style walking around the Manor (and the nearby town) and some menu based experiences based around things like Adventures. You will send out Moosecats (and over time yourself) to explore the various worlds detailed in Grandpas notebook. Indeed each time you explore there is a chance you might find another page from his notebook detailing even more places to explore. These pages seem to have a magical quality to them, sometimes changing right before your eyes. The vast majority of your experiences and adventures will be nonviolent. Moosecats tend to solve their problems through harmless pranks, friendship, or by being too crafty to be harmed by any dangers. However don't be fooled, the power of some, perhaps many, of the Moosecats is potentially quite vast. Perhaps they had something to do with the manor vanishing? As you complete adventures you might find more "seeds" to regrow the manor. Each room looking fantastical. They will provide new ecosystems for your Moosecats, one room might be full of liquid hot magma, another frozen over, another somehow completely under water. Moosecats that enjoy those biomes will tend to collect in those places and be happier for it. Additionally some rooms, like the Kitchen, will provide you with access to cooking recipes, buffs, and perhaps even minigames for said items. For adventures, it may help to check out some Kairosoft games (or the recent Potionomics). Initially they are planned to be similar to sending out things on adventures in those games (as I really enjoy those games). You'll be able to watch the your Kitties progress along in their adventures and get updates on how things are going. For movement, around the world map it'll be *very* much like Stardew Valley or Curse of the Lamb. The manor is undecided but may be closer to Animal Crossing, with each room being its own zone that you can load into, with a fast travel map you can use. The Moosecats will have various unique traits, wants, and needs. Combining certain cats on certain adventures will net greater rewards. Asking certain cats to help you with the garden or orchard will help enhance those areas as well. Goal[s] The goal with this game is simple. I want to give people a nice relaxing experience. Something close to a slice of life but with fantastical almost dreamlike qualities. Some things will never be quite explained and you'll just have to wonder what is going on. The hope here is to give the player something to take their mind off whatever might be going on in their own life. To settle in with a familiar safe place to unwind and reset.

Hey Folks! Today I'd like to talk about the first workout of my week. This is the one I'll be doing for roughly 3 months and I'm pretty excited to work through it. It begins with one of my favorite exercise of all time, the Deadlift. There is something about this move that just fills me with a great deal of joy. It is sometimes a scary exercise as well, but I do my level best to be safe with it. My goals with this exercise are to see how high I can take my 3x5 without a belt. You'll notice in today's video that I did have a belt. Well, first off I'm really impressed by how quickly you noticed that. Secondly I made a bit of an mistake at the start of my workout. I warmed up and shot for my absolute highest weight ever. A 300 lb Deadlift, which I managed to do! Admittedly only once but it was an incredible moment for me. A new high. So what is next for the Deadlift? Well, we will see if we can reach 300 lbs without a belt for 3 sets of 3. Can I achieve that in the next 3 months? I'm not sure, but I'm going to try. Following this we have the barbell bench press. Another of my favorite exercises. I appreciate this one for the way it challenges my upper chest. My pectorals end up incredibly sore for days after a good bench press workout. I tend to have a very wide grip which causes me to get a massive stretch while also not hurting my shoulders. I injured myself very badly a few years ago, so most of my working out involves sneaking around those issues as best as I can. So if you see anything peculiar with my stance. Keep in mind that I'm doing what must be done for my own body. The second superset is Landmine Shoulder Press and Single Arm Kettlebell Swing. The former has me charged because I'm finally using my landmine attachment. Lever based workouts are really enjoyable for me and provide sensations that I don't generally get with my other conventional routines. Like the bench I don't really have a goal besides just slowly increasing the weight. My strategy involves raising the weight until I can't finish 3 full sets of the exercise without pauses. Each time I hit those walls I will keep with that weight until I beat it. Naturally the further into my workout I get the harder this sort of stuff becomes. For the Single Arm Kettlebell Swing we enter into one of the sillier workout options. These sort of things seem to make professional fitness YouTube folks furious, but I dig it. It gives me a chance to work on my poor coordination and have a good time. A nice break away from the brutal rigidity of most exercises. Our final set I actually didn't reach this week! That is the TRX Push Up and the TRX Overhead Triceps extension. So for these two I'm just going to need to work on my stamina so that I can accomplish them. I think the next time we make a video I'll take a breather and do them once I have some energy back in the tank. Overall though I'm really jazzed for this workout. I'm very interested to see where I go with it and what new highs I can achieve. I'm in my mid 30s and my goal is simple. Keep my body in the best shape that I can so that if I get lucky, and science figures out reversing aging, that I'll have the best possible physique to utilize it. Hopefully the lowest chance of all cause death (or however it is said). Our next video will be from my Wednesday routine. Editing these does take a little bit (even as bad as I edit them). When you add in work I'm usually just completely gassed by the end of my day. - Oaf

I wish I could say that the title was my thought. It was actually something said to me at work by our Technical Artist. The more that I've applied this world view the happier I've been with my work. With that in mind I'm going to go over the naming conventions for the current Moosecats work. These are listed in no real particular order. Handlers Our different domains have shared handlers. At the base level our handler does two things. It listens for a client and the game state. The former of these processes needs to eventually be moved one layer higher to a "ChattyMoosecattyHandlerBase". This is because we don't actually care about the client in Fitty Moosekitty or Moosecat Manor. But we do explicitly care about it in Chatty Moosecatty. Overall though the benefit of handlers is that they give shared base logic for all the related objects. For Chatty Moosecatty we use the handler for all of the message and commands. But soon we will also have one for the individual moosecats. Each Handler should be dedicated to one particular domain. Listeners These are components that listen for Events. They can listen for multiple events of the same type to do numerous different things in response to different events. They also automatically listen and cease listening when a gameobject is set active or inactive respectively. Events Our classes largely communicate through events and Data Containers. The event tells you "when" to do something and the data container tells you "what" you are working with. Generally, sometimes Events also send data like the state change event or the client event (which sends itself). State This is the name for all of our state machines. Currently the only state machine we actually use is a game state machine. But certain things like Moosecats will likely have their own state machines. Generally these are hybrids of visual and classic scripting. Data This is a collection of Datums. Data is what you'd expect. Collections of a bunch of like items. We generally want to separate Data containers by the shared stats of their constituents. If you imagine a city builder, you might have lots of different buildings, but you would have power plants as one Data collection, Healthcare as another, Transportation, and so on. Collection Purely a cosmetic concept. These are Data that are related to the player. Think inventory, Moosecats, things like that. Calling them collections allows us to more easily search for them and makes class names a little less confusing. A collection also contains Datum just like Data, as functionally it is largely the same with likely some small specific helper functions for me. Datum This is a single unit of information. Think individual cats or individual items in your inventory. Or even individual players in Chatty Moosecatty. Artifact These are scriptable objects that allow us to share data between objects without direct references. This makes adding and removing sections of our project easier. So if an idea doesn't pan out we can remove it without breaking references across the project. I Prefix This one is a bit weird. But the I Prefix tells us that something is an interface. There isn't a really hard and fast rule for these interfaces. Mostly that they are I and some kind of verb or descriptive title. Think IListener, or ILoadsFromJson.

For a while I found myself playing with the idea of knowing I was in a dream. At first it didn't seem very likely. I'd be awake and then the next moment I would be getting killed. There was no true interlude between the waking hours and the dread. Occasionally a glimmer of difference would peek into the dream. Either something out of place in such a way that I snap out of my dream state. Or the terror of the situation would be so great that I willed myself to consciousness. Immediately closing my eyes as tightly as I could until I heard the familiar silence of my bedroom. Each night I would sit there thinking about something. A number, a place, a concept, I would drill it into my mind until it was on repeat. I would hold onto this intrusive thought no matter how exhausted I got until inevitably I fell asleep. However that thought would carry with me. A tiny tendril of fabric to connect the waking self to the dreaming self. In that moment I opened my eyes within my room and looked around. I was here. I was in the nightmare where my home sat amidst the endless nothing. Outside the window lurked the monster that came for my flesh. It would wait until I peeked and our eyes met. Once I did it would leap into the room and kill me. But this time it was different. I knew that this was the plan. Instead I turned to my bedroom door and walked through it. Down a hallway that wasn't quite mine into a kitchen that was slightly off. Our living room too wasn't quite all there. Shelves where they shouldn't be, more doors than there should be. Everything askew if you focused on it too long. I opened the living room door to the outside world. The ground looked like the surface of the moon. Lifeless and barren. As far as I could see it was nothing but blackness and yet I could still see the ground. No stars in the sky, no air touching my skin, it was as if I was standing at the bottom of the void. I looked around and did not see my hunter. I knew he was nearby but not where. The stairs down from our door weren't right either. They skewed to the left down the side of the home instead of away from it. I walked down to the ground and turned to the house. All of the lights were off. None of the windows looked right. Even the roof was wrong. Atop the roof I saw it standing there. Something like a Vampire but if you focused on it there were qualities of a werewolf. Not necessarily in joints or hair, but general bulk. This creature was large and vicious. I had some decisions to make, would I try to fight it or would I flee? I had never felt in control before but I also hadn't locked eyes with it yet. I turned and I ran. My speed started slow but increased faster and faster. Before I knew it I felt like I was moving faster than anything I could imagine. I glanced back to see my home vanishing off into the darkness at record pace. It wouldn't be long before I lifted straight off the ground. I was flying and I didn't know how. I also didn't know how to control it. I felt light, so very light. Like a leaf on a windless breeze. This carried on for some time. I relaxed in the sky and felt my heart calm. It would feel like forever before my alarm clock rang and woke me up. I looked around my room. Waking up from something other than the searing pain of my own heart was a new experience. Could I take this further? Could I fight back? Just how much control would I have over the narrative of my own nightmares? Would the horrors of my dreams grow as I grow? I didn't know. But I didn't have much choice but to find out.

When you need to design a character for a story there is a simple pair of questions that'll help you out. The first questions is what does this character want? The second question is how far would they go to achieve that goal? I think you can take that same sort of logic and use it to layout design plans for a game as well. With that in mind lets talk about my plans for Moosecats in three phases. The short term, the mid term, and the long term. Some of these things should be accomplished within the next six months, some things within years, and others may never happen. The Goal I would like to create a game that marries a few concepts. The first is a sense of irreverence. Tell a story that has twists and turns but ultimately doesn't involve a lot of extremely dark narrative. Life is complicated, and sometimes life is deeply sad, I think it is nice to occasionally have outs from that. The next concept is of the importance of fitness and being active. So I would like to have some sort of integration that allows people to advance their gameplay by being physically active. This will obviously be limited by the APIs I have access too and my own capacity to learn. The final concept is of community interaction. I want to have close connections with the players of the game. Part of that will be through the Chatty Moosecatty (Twitch Cats) program. Which will be another vector for advancing the state of your cats and also add to your collection. These are the three prongs of my plans. So now we know what we want. But how do we achieve this goal? Short Term These are all of the things that I'd like to complete for each project within the next year or so. I'm going to try and list everything out so that we can strike through things as they are completed. Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game Viewers are gifted a randomized Moosecat. The cats will say what the viewer is saying. This includes emoting whatever the player emotes. Cats will respond to a series of commands. These commands can be located with the !help command. Should add things like dance, sleep etc. Players can swap between their cats, or activate a new cat while others are on adventures. Cats appear and disappear depending on viewer activity. If someone stops talking for long enough their kitty goes to sleep and poofs. Obviously is fine, will return when they chat again. Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game The goal of this project is to enhance both mental and physical fitness. Players will get a Moosecat upon loading the game. They can also utilize the cats they've collected from Chatty Moosecatty. Walking will earn your cat experience. Occasionally your cat will find treasure while out on the walk. You can send your cats on quests. They will finish them faster if you are walking. Be able to track your weight, body measurements, water intake, etc. None of this will be sent back to me. Everyone will be free to check their network traffic to confirm. Ya boy don't care about your measurements. Just happy you are getting healthy. Timer/Stopwatch functionality. Auto-Rest functionality when doing workouts. Wii Fit distance/height tracking. Find out when you've climbed higher than Mt. Everest or walked longer than the Great Wall. Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game You've received a letter from your grandfather mentioning that he's having a bit of trouble and would love it if you could come around to his Manor and help him sort it out. Users will explore 12 different islands, and their Grandfather's manor to try and uncover the mystery of...just where did his manor go? This adventure will require the help of magical creatures known as Moosecats to uncover the secrets of the missing Manor and the world in general. You will rebuild the manor through magical seeds that grow to become the rooms that had once stood there. Rooms will vary wildly, from volcanic rooms, to rainforest rooms, to a simple run of the mill kitchen! Or so it seems. You will collect pages from your Grandfathers adventure journal that tell of new places to visit and have a chance to experience the adventures you never even knew happened. Individual rooms will unlock new cat habitats. They will also unlock new game features Mid Term At this point all of my projects are at least "started" and in a state where we can move onto enhancements. Some of them might be completed in this phase or before this phase. Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game Bot accepts whispers to allow people to check stats without spamming chat. Players can send their cats out on adventures to bring back loot. This loot can later be used in Moosecat Manor. This loot may also be new eggs to add to their roster. Cats interact with one another while I'm streaming. A GUI stream screen that I can swap to to show player progress in adventures. This would also show recent achievements, stats, and other fun stuff. An "AFK" stream play area, so when I'm away people can still enjoy their cats together. Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game Weight/Plate calculator. Exercise suggestions. Yoga, Walking plans, weight training. Circuits, programs, that sorta stuff. Workout sharing. Show your friends what you did. Inspire them to get at it too. Walking also earns you points towards any active quests for your Chatty Moosecatty team. Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game Minigames Certain rooms will unlock fun minigames. A means to earn more rewards, finish adventures faster, and frankly give me a chance to experiment with miniature game ideas without abandoning this one! Adventure system. Send Moosecats (and yourself) out on adventures to uncover treasure, new areas to explore, and hints towards the mystery of the missing manor. Trust system. Moosecat horns are actually always invisible to people they don't trust. As your moosecats come to trust you more and more you'll see them. Some never seem to show...do they just wot have them? Long Term We've now hit the point where all three projects are either finished or released as early access titles. From here on out we are looking for ways to expand on the games and to provide people with an experience that evolves. At this point is probably where I'd like to look into ways to create artist collaborations and to help small time creators. Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game Bot sees conversations across all services, not simply twitch. Giveaways of some kind based on whatever metrics. Like randomly picking subscribers, or picking a random person with a certain amount of activity. Fun community stuff. Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game *Whales* The idea here is one I used before. As you lift we will tell you when you've lifted as much cumulatively as a kind of whale. Then once you reach the biggest whale we'll either move onto combining them or other even bigger things for fun. Achievements from this will show up as items in Moosecat Manor. PB tracking, potentially with an OPT IN leaderboard. Would likely need to have it linked to YT videos (unlisted is fine) or something to keep things nice and fair. Or just have people make friends groups and not worry about it. Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game Artist DLC packs. We'll pay artists to make collections of new pets and they'll get the lion's share of the revenue from the collection. Either for at least a year or forever. All depends on if I'm making enough to keep the lights on. It'll always err on the side of them getting more than me in the revenue share though. In Conclusion This will be a living document that will over time branch out into tracking posts and other content. The basic idea was to give myself some inspirational bullet points to move forward with. Suggestions are also welcome.

So here I am. I've discovered a way out of the hell. But will it be enough? This was the question that crossed my mind each night before I slipped off to sleep. The problem with this trick was understanding that I was in a dream. It wasn't quite as fluid as simply going "Oh, I'm dreaming now." Not always at least. Often I would realize I was in a dream because of an incongruity. Someone's name being wrong, a face being off, a room looking slightly askew. Once it clicked I'd realize and close goes the eyes. Wake up in a sweat but if I was quick enough I would at least not be in pain. Other times I would realize I was in a dream entirely by accident. Squeezing my eyes closed tightly in fear and then getting a glimmer of the world outside of my dreams. That was always the strangest experience. Thinking I was experiencing the last moments of my life only to realize in the penultimate frame that I wasn't actually "alive". Taking up temporary existence in a rough approximation of reality. I often felt bad about the people in my dreams that didn't survive the ordeal and anger to the real world doppelgangers of my nightmares. Naturally I would never tell them. Just somewhere inside of me would be a level of distrust or discomfort towards them. Ultimately the problem remained. I had found a way out of hell, but it was still largely reactionary. I was often responding to a stimuli or getting lucky. Sometimes this was too slow and I'd still get killed. And I still had the problem of waking up from one nightmare into another. This nesting hell could sometimes go very deep with me awaking from dozens of them before I finally reached the real world. The next course of action for me was clear. How do I enter a dream knowing it is a dream? Is this something that I could teach myself? There was only one way to find out.

It's a little weird when you go outside and meet other people. Because everyone seems so very normal. Nobody mentions the soreness that they feel. They never talk about the unease at the back of their mind. All these little nagging realities of existing are locked away from most conversation. These weaknesses are hidden and at times outright denied. I've always wondered what sort of life I'm witnessing. What experiences have made this person into who they now are? Because I know for me I've got a handful of moments in my life that were, in some ways, very critical in the shaping of who I am. When I was very little, as far back as I can remember, I didn't like bathing. You might have kids that are like that, or have been one yourself, but I wonder if your rationale was the same as mine. You see, for me, bathing came right before one of the most traumatic experiences I'd be having on any given day. It came before sleeping. Routinely, and without exception, when I nodded off to sleep I would be entering into rolling nightmares as a child. Many of them were recurring to the point that perhaps I'll go over a few in a future blog. These events burned themselves into my psyche while technically never truly having happened. I guess you could argue they did happen, I experienced them and I've been impacted by them. Inevitably in every dream I would be killed. Who killed me varied, sometimes vampires, other times animated dolls, a particularly interesting one was Bell from Beauty and the Beast. There was this toy from Burger King, a hand puppet, that had the heads on a swivel. I would dream that she would enter my house and use her long finger nails to cut the necks of a long line of children. Once the line was drawn she could then freely swivel their heads. This would go on and on until inevitably she reached me. The searing pain of the incident would carry into my waking hours when I inevitably woke up in a sweat. But that was only when I woke up at all. Sometimes I would be killed in a dream only to "wake up" and die again. To find that I was moving either from a dream into a dream within a dream, or perhaps moving sequentially through them. A great many years later the movie "inception" would come out and I would watch it with a nodding acceptance and familiarity. But we'll leave that at that. Night after night, I would die. Each morning I would wake up in a sweat feeling pain wherever I had been harmed in the dream. It wouldn't last for long, like a fading reminder. A burning or tingling that would carry with me until I was brushing my teeth. But the impact was there all the same. I feared the night, I feared my dreams. One night I was having one of the more popular nightmares. Our home was in the middle of nowhere. Infinite arid land in all directions. Thinking back on it I wonder if it was inspired by Courage the Cowardly Dog. The sky is pitch black, there are stars but they provide no light to the ground below. I'm in my room with my bed against the wall underneath my window. I hear some kind of noise, a tapping or scratching that catches my attention. I know that once I look at it that it'll shatter the window but against my better judgment I do so. A vampire bursts through the window and lands in the center of the room. I roll off the bad and underneath it hoping that it will not find me. In this moment something inside me says I could always just wake up. I realize I'm in a dream and I close my eyes. I squeeze them tighter and tighter until I feel my bed sheets on my body and then I open them. I'm lying down on my bed, in my room, the sun hasn't quite peaked up over the horizon. I've done it, I've found a way to beat these things. It is in this moment I realize I might have a chance in my dreams. Maybe I can finally stop dying.

Hey Folks! Added Sirinex Validator (Yay!) Message Count now properly tracked. IO Saving and Lookups have been vastly improved. Way less code, much smarter. Looking into the nightmare that is YouTube API. In the next video we'll see if we can iron this out. Eggs spawn at the right location now. But they are the wrong size still. New player flow shouldn't break basically ever now, if ever. So...yay? Begin overhaul of player data to make it easier to follow and interact with. Got a bit messy. Too much nesting.

Been meaning to get back to this. Life has a strange way of ebbing and flowing. Some days you wake up and feel like you could fly around the world. Others your eyes drag in the back of your skull and its a challenge to even be. I think I'm erring more towards the first than the second today. It might be because of the coffee I'm having today. It might be because work is actually moving along well. But regardless of the reason it is. Our gym is finally complete. Maybe one of these days I'll post pictures here. It has been an incredible gift to my mental health. The last year has been absolutely brutal to say the least. When you are younger there is this phenomena that most people experience. Well there are a great many, but I'm thinking of one in particular. That phenomena is the Main Character Syndrome, though there is probably a better definition. That idea that all of the world's ills are real but they don't come for you. Why don't they? Well obviously so the story can keep going, because you are the hero. I used to have this pretty strongly. Not in the internet sense where I was arrogant or anything like that. But I always assumed I knew how things would pan out for myself and everyone I know. For a while there it felt like that was definitely the case too. A lot of things played out exactly as I thought they would. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but in general I felt in control. And then since about 2016 there has been some kind of surprise every year. I would say the great many of them have been incredibly negative. Naturally when you experience something like this it becomes easy to be nihilistic, depressed, all sorts of negative coping mechanisms. I've never been one to turn to book clubs, so faith doesn't help me, but I can respect the notion. The alternative is realizing just how unbelievably cruel life is to nearly everything. But I think that that realization and acceptance is actually really important to the progress of humanity and society at large. If you think this is just the first chapter of your multi novel story, then it is easy to ignore a lot of the plight you experience and those around you experience. It's fine, after all, they might suffer now but someday they'll be in a magical isekai with the rest of their family and friends. I don't think this is really healthy, but again, I empathize. For me I have had to come to terms with time. All the good and ills therein. I wouldn't say I've accepted it, or much of what it has dealt me, but I recognize the inexorable tide therein. I'm hoping in my lifetime we see humans come to terms with this. Because I am starting to think that the pain people feel when they are dying is not merely the act of being unmade. But more the realization that they aren't, in fact, the main character. The swift cruel reminder of life and entropy. I've been erring lately more and more towards trying to enjoy myself. Luckily I really enjoy working out, so one of my hobbies is at least keeping me healthy. The best I can do for now is keep as healthy as I can and see if someday we actually do solve mortality on some level. If we don't, at least I know I tried. And worst case scenario I'll finish the journey on my own terms with a relatively healthy body. Terminal illness surprises not withstanding. I'll also be doing my best to help others have a good time. I'm going to try and really put in more time and effort into the forums, into making fun games, stories, worlds. Because ultimately I can only work on what I have control over. Beyond that I don't see much point in stressing. My body and subconscious still will, but the mental me will at least think about more interesting things.

Consolidated the messaging system into a single class with sub functions. While I like the idea I think it still needs a lot of work. I'll mull over the solution and come up with something better. I think it may be time to make save data have a static helper accessor and swap all of these scriptable objects over to classes. For future me I think the most appropriate place to put it would be the MoosecatIO class.

MoosecatIO Sequential Saving Fixed. DataContainer Updated. Message Handler Updated (Now cats talk) Moosecat Updated. Now supports chat and emotes. GameLoader hard assigned factories, not in time sometimes. (Can fix with a coroutine) Emote Data Container added. Scene Updated.

Updated Scene. Added Cat Speech Diagram. Added Speech to Moosecats. Updated Message Handler to tell cats to Speak. Made SaveData Visible again, may want to revisit this system.

Here we are. Blogs are now up and running. I'm going to be expanding access to these to more user types shortly. But for now this is just my way of having that WordPress experience within the forums. I hope once you get access to it that you end up having a good time as well. Just be sure to be kind and have a good time.

moosecatIO fixed. Dictionary now is what we see on main. Using JetBrains now. Added some new diagrams. Split out our factories, to be egg, cat, and base. We've added force adding of new players, who chat before the bot sees they've joined. Split out the spawn egg and spawn Moosecat handlers. Removed SpawnCatRequest, only have SpawnCatRequested now. Removed SpawnCommandHandler Tons of Namespace changes. Updated Scene. Removed unnecessary usings all over.

Hello and Welcome! The purpose of this guide is to walk you through the basic mechanics of Moosecats Twitch. How to join, how to play, and any other little general tidbits to get you started. How do I join? If you are watching www.twitch.tv/oafkad, currently all you need to do is just start talking! Once your first message is registered a Moosecat Egg will be spawned for you and you are part of the game. From here you'll just need to wait until the egg hatches to meet your very first furry friend! What can I do? Firstly, your Moosecat is your means of chatting in the stream. If you talk in the Twitch chat those messages will be forwarded to your cute little friend and onto the stream. Naturally abusing this would result in a ban but that's true of any chat overlay for any stream I imagine. Use your best judgment when talking in chat. If you are concerned about this there will be a command to disable chat to stream functionality. Can I opt out? Sure, this isn't actually supported yet (as we are in pre-alpha) but I will be adding in a command for putting yourself on an ignore list. Did you say Commands? I did indeed. While you won't find a comprehensive list on this intro, there will be another post that features all of the commands and how you can use them. It should hopefully also include any limitations as some of them will have limits.

Hey Folks! So you've stumbled upon this part of the internet. You may try and make an account and realize that you cannot post. There are a few things to keep in mind. We get a lot of bot accounts. Apparently the only hobby in Russia is creating fake accounts on websites to spam or spread propaganda. I'm not trying to yuck their yum but it does mean that I need to be somewhat protective of this website. You'll need two-factor authentication to join. This is non-negotiable. If that is not acceptable for you then I respect that, feel free to still join our Discord and chat there! I'm sure you are a lovely person and it would be a shame to never meet. Speaking of Discord. That's how you get full posting access. If you join Discord and chat up a bit I'll move you over to the Member group when I do a bulk move. And by bulk move I mean "I collect a bunch of names of people from Discord and upgrade them all by hand." Sounds like fun! Naturally this is a one man show currently, so it will take some time. I've got a full time job that drains my will to live sometimes, I apologize in advance if it takes a bit. So what do I get by being here? In the future I plan to do giveaways. We'll have semi-regular updates for Moosecat games. Ultimately the major thing is a place to gather with other people that have some shared interests. To enjoy one another's company without advertising or algorithms demanding the world of you. I want to provide people with a little bit of history. There was once a time that the internet was a wonderful place and I think we can carve out some places like that. This does mean that if this ever takes off I might need to put up some Patreon or something, but we will never have advertising popups. The most you would ever see is sponsored videos from my YouTube channel in a completely avoidable forum section. Otherwise I want to respect you and I hope you'll do the same for me. - Oafkad