Greetings once again fellow human beings. Hack Mars progresses as I speak. Amazing things are working themselves loose and soon we shall see some interesting stuff surface. If yesterday's rant about how HM is going to innovate a new genre of gaming was not enough, here's some ideas for you.

As I draw closer to my destination, I see hundreds of small things coming up. How should a player lay down on a bed? How do I implement animated doors? How do I smooth a path so that it stays within boundaries? How should businesses look on Mars? How do I color shirts and pants differently?

But that doesn't spell disaster for Hack Mars, it spells a very complex solution coming together. The problem is when I dare not ask the questions. The problem is when I have an engine that does nothing. I have an engine that does some incredible stuff. I have models and every part is coming together. I didn't need to hire an artist or a coder. Hack Mars is coming together in my spare time.

Today's lesson is about doing a dozen different things. I change my path often enough that I don't get bored. While that doesn't accomplish much, it can get things done. Since I have several jobs, it helps that I am willing to pursue each of them in due time. A Jack of all Trades is a King of none, but a person doesn't need skill, effort, or talent to win this game. That is something I learned. Today I worked on models in Milkshape3D. They look quite good. It doesn't matter that the 2d skin and the 3d model both look poor. Just having them together is far more than the sum of their parts. Then I got bored and decided to work on porting Hack Mars to Windows. Since Hack Mars is native to Linux (written completely under Linux using Linux tools), porting to Windows is the task instead of porting to Linux. But since I took care to use portable tools, it should be easy. In fact, it took a few hours and it all compiled except the very last step. Gnome's libxml2 kept giving me errors. I expect something like that, so I'm not too shocked. I have to find another binary distribution of libxml2 or compile it myself. It's important to write portable code these days. Considering I only run Linux, portable code is almost a must. When I write something in Python, I think: "Perfect, anyone can run this portable code." When I write a bash script, I think: Windows users can't use this, but that's their loss. They could use MSys to run it, but that's a little over the heads of most windows users. Bash scripts are very useful for batch processing of programs. Python could do it, but... I went into Linux and played around with the software MIDI keyboard (vkeybd). So then I worked on some theory. Python interaction, doors, pathing. Why yes, I am a physicist. Then I drew the picture at the top of the page. I edited it in The GIMP 2.0 and now I'm writing this lesson. There's nothing wrong with getting a lot of stuff done. In fact, I'm doing so well, at 12:52, I'm going to drink an energy drink so I can go a few more hours. I'm listening to Molly Mush's New Happy Hardcore Mix and I'm happy.

the wish that I wish for
the love that I'm over
the touch that I crumble

live everyday
always feeling the same way
I don't want to stand still
I don't want to stand still

silence surround me, 
am I standing still?
commotion consumes me,
but have I lost my will?

live everyday
always feeling the same way
I don't want to stand still
I don't want to stand still