This Run Revolves Around The Cycle Of Rising Water. The Level Was Designed With This In Mind, But Staying

This run revolves around the cycle of rising water. The level was designed with this in mind, but staying high and dry requires some well-timed jumps!

Raisin Rainforest | PNG-B9X-6KF

A pretty rainforest course with a strong aesthetic, but tons of blocks overhead and some tough enemy placement. Carefully weave around the Pokeys, dodge Piranha fire, and watch the floodwaters – the Goombas can swim!

Thruspace has a fabulous aesthetic, so I decided to record it for posterity. In the process, I did my best ever run of Endless Mode!

I love this kind of abstract aesthetic in puzzle games... Thruspace is particularly inspriational to me because of its progression – the further you go, the more it opens up, and you get to see more of the sky outside 🌅

Recently, I found one of my missing sketchbooks from 2011 – including a drawing of the last level of the game that I had completely forgotten about:

To think this game has been inspiring me so strongly for nearly a decade now!

(Also can you believe there's no rips of the OST anywhere??)

I’m finally getting more comfortable with the idea of finishing college at some point.... if I don’t also have to work. I would have to completely switch out one for the other, which is not possible currently, but at least I can dream about it now!

I had about a year left, but it would probably end up being two, simply because the CS curriculum has to update as fast as the industry does; I was mostly doing C++ in college, which is less of a thing now. I’d have to catch up with Python or Javascript or whatever the kids do these days.

Besides, a second year means I could fit some electives in – art, higher math, music, psychology, improv??? Frankly, that's the most exciting part! These are all things that I enjoy enough to want more formal training with, or never had any in the first place.

Despite knowing it would take extra time, I really would like to finish my degree! That’s a huge step up from this time last year. I’m finally starting to get past the amount of stress that just thinking about it would put on me.

The burnout? Not so much, still dealing with that.

But if I had to work on top of college, for two years, then I would either have to do part time and focus only on the classes I need to finish – skipping electives entirely – or I would explode into a bunch of tiny stress sprinkles. More importantly, it would probably be both.

And so, despite my stance changing from last year, the answer is roughly the same: “It’s not in the cards right now.”

now that i'm counting out everything that happened this year… what the literal shucks was 2020??? even for there being a pandemic and having to stay indoors, this is still the most high-velocity year i can remember since college – but, unlike college, not all of it was bad.

granted, the first half of the year was pretty bad – my grandmother passed away, working from home was a rocky transition, even nearly got kicked out (that's a story for another time). yet somehow i made a ton of levels, poured my heart into Rivers, and built Cartridge Tilt.

meanwhile the second half was like restful discovery: forging an important new friendship-turned-relationship, coming out as genderfluid AND pan, improving my living situation with a new desk and other nice things…

and i've barely even scratched the surface of this year!

i may not have accomplished everything i wanted to – and honestly, who did? – but i'm happy about the fact that i not only survived 2020, but did so with grace. despite everything, i have new skills, new resources, new friends, and a new understanding of myself.

i don't keep new years resolutions well, so i have just one for 2021: finish more stuff than in 2020. not "make" more stuff, finish more stuff.

my creative energy definitely suffered this year, but now that i'm finding my footing, i hope i'll get to do some neat things soon 💖

Redraw of my current Twitter avatar – my Animal Crossing OC, Rivers! I should properly introduce her here sometime.

This time Sky’s made a monster: introducing Cartridge Tilt, a random level generator for Mari0 that builds glitchy, corrupted looking mappacks!

Read more and try out some pre-generated maps: https://forum.stabyourself.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5396

It may look like an incomprehensible mess, but this uses a structure-based generator under the hood to give order to the chaos – generating familiar elements like pipes, hills, and bridges, but in completely random orders and positions. Recognize anything in these screenshots?

Seriously, this is over 1500 lines of Lua! You can check out the whole thing on Github, and even run the script yourself with several options: https://github.com/skysometric/cartridge-tilt