One Brick at a Time (In Which I Get Uncomfortably Personal)

I want to build an empire.

That's what I keep telling myself when things get boring, or hard or stressful. I told myself that a lot yesterday while I was at work. Yesterday was a bad day, I'll leave it at that.

It's true though; I want to build an empire.

I want to build this company into an equal to Rooster Teeth or Nerdist. A powerhouse that allows me and everyone else here to do what they love for a living instead of working for shit money at a shit job they hate. I want to be able to put actual funding into projects, help publish others' work, develop new things for us to do.

I want to look back at this in 5 years and see the beginnings of something great. I want to look back at it in 10 years and see the beginnings of something amazing.

But most of all I want to do something I love doing and be able to live off doing it. I want the same thing for my friend who're here with me. I want this silly little company, named after a throwaway robotic monster from Sagie and I's first actual joint project, to be able to fund getting NTR published when Sagie is ready. I want it to be able to fund publishing the first book of Dead. Or the first book of Amelia & Charlene for Amanda. Or fund starting a video side of the site doing sketches and shorts. Or a publishing side to help out kids who want to do the same thing with their lives.

I don't care about fame or fortune for myself, really. I just want enough to get by and not have to worry about if I have enough to eat and pay for the bus to work and still make rent for the month. But I do wish for a community. I wish for a group of people that bond over the things we make, who interact with us and each other.

I have a feeling this post will be quite long, so I'll sum it up right now so you can stop reading if you get bored or don't want to continue; I want to build something that will maybe make some people happy.

Alright, and now for story time kids. Just a warning though to some people, if there are any reading this, I'm going to be talking about suicide so stop here if that's something that'll set you off, okay?

The thing that started me on this whole train of thought was attempting for the umpteenth time to write an email to Geoff of Rooster Teeth.

I wanted to tell him how he saved my life a while back without ever knowing it or having met me at all.

I don't always do so well emotionally. Sometimes things happen in life and I take them pretty hard. A bit too hard. It was one of those times. I'll spare you the details of it all but I can say that I was at a pretty damn low point mentally and emotionally. I had decided that enough was enough and that I was finally going to go through with killing myself. It's something I'd attempted before but had either failed (yeah, I know...I even screw that up) or had been stopped/stopped myself. But that time I decided I was going to go through with it for sure.

I left my house as if I was going to work, went to the train tracks that weren't too far away and sat down on the tracks. The thing is, whenever I leave the house I have to have something playing in my ears. The sounds of the outside really just cause me an incredible amount of anxiety so I drown things out with podcasts and music. That day was a podcast day; early episodes of the RT podcast from when Geoff was still on it. I sat on the tracks, waiting for a train to come and listened to the episode (I really need to find exactly which it was) and eventually I go to a point that Geoff started laughing really hard.

Anyone who knows who Geoff is and has heard his laugh will be able to tell you it's one of the most joyful, infectious things you will ever hear. You can't help but laugh with him; and laugh I did. I laughed and laughed and laughed for probably about 10 minutes straight and without thinking about it I got up and started walking back home. I got home, went to youtube and started watching Fails of the Weak from the first episode and found more of Geoff's laugh. I called in sick for 3 days and I spent that time watching or listening to everything I could fit into that time that Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter had produced. I talked to friends, I got out of that dark place and started working on things again. That's around when I started Sky up, when I started drawing more, when I started writing more. (There's a lot of things I've done that I haven't posted, but might eventually) I started living and being okay. Not better, because untreated mental illness doesn't get magically better, but I was okay. I found a way to cope.

I still have that way of coping. I don't think I've missed a single RT or AH video in almost a year. I happily consume everything they produce and will continue to until they either shutter the company or I die.

That's why I want to build SSP into something. Why I've got so many things in my head that I want to make and do. Because if there's even one person out there who listens to us be assholes on the Progress Bar, or for some reason can't wait to hear what's going to happen next in Sky, or (when it's started) absolutely adores Dead, or any of the other things that'll be on this website (and the others I have planned) and it ends up making them rethink something, or keeps them company or get's them through a tough time, then any amount of time, effort or money I put into this is worth it. And it helps me as well. It helps keep me focused (one of the things at least) on what I want to do and how I want to go about doing it.

Nothing much left to say except that this may not seem like much now, but just wait. I'm going to make it into something.

Busy Busy

So this week has been pretty fun. Hopefully there'll be a good bit of content for you to feast on in the coming week or so. Finished editing another part of Sky, only need to record it. Meg and I started the beginnings of reworking Dead to something actually readable, and a new podcast was started by a group of friends acting like idiots for a bit. Progress Bar, as we're calling it, will be posted as soon as I get it edited. Gotta love being the sound girl for the group, heh. Other than that not much else is happening. Still working on those commissions, I haven't forgotten, don't worry. You should go check out Meg and Amanda for other cool stuff and keep a look out on Twitter for the new episodes of Sky and Progress Bar soon.

Been Playing a Lot of Games

When a game has a modding community, that game will live forever.

That seems to be something that some developers realize, and some don't. Bethesda, you know, the guys who made the Elder Scrolls and the most recent numbered Fallout game, are some of the ones who get it.

It's been over a decade since Morrowind was released, almost 7 years since Oblivion, almost 5 years since Fallout 3, 3 years since Fallout New Vegas (which was developed by Obsidian) and almost 2 years since Skyrim. (Yes people, we've survived almost two years of bad 'arrow to the knee' jokes. Be proud.) Even after all that time the modding community for all of these games is still going strong, keeping the games fresh, new and interesting.

Yes, Bethesda makes incredibly massive, albeit kinda buggy, worlds that take hundreds of hours to explore, but even then they aren't infinite. Eventually you run out of things to do. There's only so many ways you can kill Dagoth Ur or help Azura, or fight the Enclave or Caesar's Legion (or work with them if you're a dick). There's only so many times you can delve into the same 1000+ caves and slaughter enemies and animals in droves before it becomes old hat.

With Morrowind, Bethesda released official modding tools. 11 years ago Morrowind released and there are still new mods being posted to the several very large hosting/community sites and forums around the internet. (Nexusmods is the first that comes to mind.) Ranging from re-textures, new mechanics, new areas and even total conversion mods. Hell, I think I saw one that turns the game into Half Life a while ago. Thousands of people still play a game that was launched the same year as the first Xbox.

Oblivion is the same. Mods to give it Skyrim level graphics, new quest chains bigger than some of its expansions, companions, everything you could think of.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas are definitely no exception. Fallout 3 has an incredibly amount of mods that change everything from re-balancing the combat to making the game incredibly realistic, giving you cars, romance and anything else you can want.

Or the plethora of mods for games like Dragon Age, Grand Theft Auto IV, Torchlight 2, Shadowrun Returns, Left 4 Dead, or Don't Starve. Things like Nexusmods and the Steam Workshop give these games years and years of life, even after sequels of those games release and most of the community moves on.

But the thing that sparked me along this far too long post were two mods in particular for Fallout New Vegas. Project Brazil and Fallout 1. Both are total conversion mods that are incredibly detailed and bring something completely new to the game. PB actually creates an entirely new game inside the Fallout engine. The voice acting, quests, story...everything about it is utterly fantastic, especially for a mod.

(Here's a play through of the first part by a damn fine lad that goes by the name Al Chestbreach)

(Another video by Al of the early alpha of the Fallout 1 recreation mod)

Another mod that was in development for a long time and was quite worth the wait was Black Mesa.

I don't think there's been a bigger or better mod for any game. It's not really even a mod, a team of dedicated fans recreated the entirety of Half-Life, all while improving it and bringing it on par with (and even surpassing) the current HL games.

All of the models are redone, the story is tweaked, new characters are introduced, familiar characters are finally fleshed out so they stand out from the other NPCs, an entirely new sound track was made, new voice acting; everything was finally brought to the current generation but still retained the same feel of the original game. That's something that almost never happens. It was a beautifully done game and I hope that the team behind it goes on to other projects because they're incredibly talented.

Wrap it up with another Al Chestbreach playthrough of the game.

Well, that's about all for this ramble. Guess it's time to get back to working on actual things instead of pointlessly rambling about vidya games.

Oh. It's You...Hi. How've You Been?

Well hello, it's only been a couple months again. I really am the worst person on the planet about updating things lately and I'm sorry about that. A LOT has been happening, so I'll get down to it.

One, sorry Dead is...dead....and Sky has gone silent for the last few months. A LOT of things have happened lately and I've had to take care of some things.

Two weeks ago I moved from just outside of Houston, Texas all the way up north to Tacoma, Washington. I'm currently looking for work now (And running out of time) since the transfer for my job fell through (If you wanna maybe help out with that check this link out) so I have some free time to get things going again while I look for a new job.

And another big things is...well I'm coming out. Hi everyone, my name is Gabby and I'm a girl. Yeah, I wouldn't make a big deal about this normally but I'm not gonna continue posting as Gabe; I'm trans and I'll be going by Gabby from now on. If that's a problem for any of the (what 3?) readers/listeners/visitors then I guess I'll see you around. This'll be the last I mention of it on here but yeah, that's out of the way.

Now! On to art things! Just below is a little concept art for a character I've had floating in my head the last few months. I still haven't given her a name or much anything else, but I DO know how she'll be used and when she'll appear in Sky (sooner than you think) and I like her quite a bit.

The one right above is just from my little stint playing Guild Wars 2 for hours on end. Wow that game is actually really fun and really well done I had to quit cause I was going to lose my life to it...but I'll be back. Just a random head sketch of one of my characters.

And that would be a medic from Team Fortress two that I roleplay with. Yes, I am a gigantic nerd and I don't care. He's actually an adaptation of a character that will ALSO be appearing in Sky soon. But, nothing like him, really.

Anyway, that's all for now. Expect some new things soon and 2014 to be a big year for SSP. Gonna be a good time. Oh, and have a good whatever-holiday-is-your's this year and have a good new year. Be safe out there.