GPU and PSU are dying, i'm running out of money, getting forced to get a job, Patreon thingy, Viewer updates slowing down and an emotional roller coaster that finally seems to have shattered my, what i thought was a - by now - impenetrable thick layer of scales when it comes to my psychological and emotional parts of regarding what is going on. There's so much ground to cover today... this is going to be a very lengthy post.
Let's start with the easy things. Since a good 3 months my video drivers are crashing occasionally and completely at random times due to what i suspect is the GPU finally giving up after five and a half year of pure torture. It all started with the PSU suddenly blowing up and cracking down on my GPU basically activating the self destruction sequence that is now only a matter of time until my PC will simply shut down and refuse to start up again. In short, i'll probably need a new GPU soon otherwise it won't be just a few certain games crashing my drivers but Second Life might start doing so as well.. or any 3D application at which's point it will become pretty much impossible to work on the Viewer or even just play some games.
That leads to the next issue. Getting a new GPU and obviously not the same again but a decent upgrade (i'm looking at you GTX 1060) plus a new PSU would cost me roughly 300€, not exactly money i can spend right now, even though it becomes increasingly necessary.
Which leads to the next issue. Money. Patreon obviously wasn't enough and was never meant to be. It was just meant to keep me on a basic track to keep working on something i've been working the past 6 years on. I still live at my parents house so having a home is not a problem, at least not yet, though they have increased the frequency at which they keep nagging me to get a job for the worst case scenario which is again a ticking time bomb given. You know what i mean, the sad thing everyone does at some point. Given both of them have had heart issues already and one already collapsed once it's not too far off thinking that they won't make it much longer. When that happens, the house will inevitably be handed down to me and my brother and i don't see a reason not to keep a house we have build over 20 years ago, paid off and kept in shape for so long. This also means we need to be prepared for that occasion... which is going to happen sooner or later. Which forces me to get a job soon, a part time job at the very least and as already said in previous posts in the past, this will cut into my freetime and thus into the already very small amount of time i can currently get to work on the Viewer... although currently there's not all too much to work on anyway, thankfully. I'll be making at least one more update this year though hopefully getting the newly introduced vertex crashes under control that came with the last batch of crash fixes from Linden Labs.
I'll probably make some changes to Patreon, most likely removing the goals (seriously they don't mean anything anyway) and use Patreon as a more convoluted but safer way of donating something if you so desire. Not that it makes any difference but you should know anyway. I wouldn't say Patreon was a fail, it was just not enough, as expected.
So... this leaves me with only one topic, the one i find the hardest to talk about.
My crippling depression. It's probably not a secret nor does it come at a surprise that i'm depressed, this has been the case for half my life now. It was always just a simple up and down, never going too far either way, the usual every day sadness. Bullies in pre-school, bullies in school, bullies in job, bullies everywhere, friendship drama, family and friends dying, failed relationship attempts... that kind of crap. Usually this is the kind of stuff that just makes me butt hurt and leave whatever voice channel i'm currently in and ponder for a few hours before returning, acting like nothing ever happened. A week ago however i remembered a game i wanted to play that i totally forgot about. A visual novel mind you, totally not the kind of game i'd enjoy i thought but it had dragons, so i thought why the fuck not. Not expecting much from the game i soon found myself in a compelling story that i quite enjoyed.
Now it's getting really quirky, you should turn around if you mind weird and possibly overdramatized stories.
I've been playing games on and off since i was 6. Almost everything, almost every genre, including horror and emotional games. I've seen a shitload of stuff by now but what i found here was something nothing could have prepared me for. It's an emotional roller coaster deluxe. I've played sad games before and had my fair share of crying but this game was simply too much, it showed me a whole new spectrum of emotional pain.
So what exactly happened? You'll need some background information to get an idea why this might be so touching for me and not so much (or at all) for you. I'm a furry - surprise, surprise -, not the stereotypical kind though i like to act like one sometimes for added randomness. I like most kinds of furries, i like the art aspect of it, i like quite a number of games that come with furries and of course i like the sexual part of it as well. I have an exceptionally fanatical love for dragons, which is why you see many of my avatars having at least some resemblance of a draconic beast. Hell if dragons where real i'd want them to live together with us. This has always been a dream of mine. Actual real dragons, i realize they would probably be a hazard for us but who cares, i'd rather end up as a happy snack for a dragon than die alone crying in a hospital bed. I've always spend a lot of time just resting on my bed, thinking how life would be if this was real, just imagine your partner was a dragon. Imagine your post delivery guy was a flying dragon? (They would actually be reliable then, go figure), just thinking of all the cool and awkward every day situations this would bring up makes me wet. Imagine all the stupid questions you could ask them, how they even sit on our chairs... think of all the possibilities... wouldn't your fisher job be so much more awesome if you had a talking, flying dragon with you catching fish with you? Cue "Angels with Scaly Wings" the game that turned this thinking into an actual game (something i would have always wanted to do too).
Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.
The game takes place in a modern time, akin to our own, on an alternate version of Earth with small towns and cities where dinosaurs were genetically crossed with humans and other animals from the primeval times to create sentient, intelligent, self sufficient dragons. Humanity lives in a destroyed, post apocalyptic time where resources are rare and the only hope for humanity's survival is a mysterious portal that appeared at some point. Through it, humanity managed to contact these dragons and make a deal that humanity would offer technology for the much needed energy in form of advanced generators to sustain the needed systems to save humanity. You as the player enter the alternate version of Earth as ambassador of humanity and meet the dragons to make sure that deal is coming along fine. You meet with the locals, seemingly nice dragons, many different looks, colors and species, most of them having a certain special place in society. Flyer and runner dragons are couriers, big and strong dragons are policemen and so on. Soon after your arrival you meet with another ambassador of humanity that was send a few weeks before you were, telling you about strange on goings in this place and that something bad is going to happen. Before he could tell you what happened in a secret meeting at night you're being interrupted by one of the local policemen who was suspecting him of causing problems, the situation quickly escalates with gunshots and your buddy flees, leaving you with the rest. Over the coming days and weeks you spend time with the locals, learning about their culture and their relations to humans which they only ever had myths of, just like we do of dragons. A series of murders start to happen, valuable equipment is stolen and your buddy is the prime suspect, so you help the local police force to find him. At some point you find yourself suddenly getting knocked out. On wakeup you are being introduced to a mysterious figure who tells you the story about the on goings here. The dragons are doomed to be eradicated by a giant meteoroid coming for earth, wiping out all life, including you. Your buddy who figured it out already grew impatient and acted to speed up things, causing all this drama. Now the fun part. With the appearance of the portal on both ends, there was also a laboratory that contained immensely powerful generators, this was the very same laboratory that was used thousands of years ago to create these dinosaur-dragon hybrids by the very same mysterious figure that explained you what is going to happen. The problem is, both humanity and the dragons need those generators. Your buddy found out about this and on a supposedly friendly and enjoyable fireworks night used the outside noises to sneak into the laboratory to steal a generator to save humanity. You eventually cross him and end up trying to talk him down, trying to find a solution to save both worlds from extinction. After making it clear that your buddy is nothing but an egocentric little piece of shit who doesn't care about the dragons and just wants to save humanity he doesn't hesitate killing you if he has to. Now depending on how you played the entire game, which person you dated (or not) and which dragon you brought with you on that night (or not) as well as which choices you took and how many times you already finished the game you'll see a multitude of outcomes. 5 bad main character endings, 5 good main character endings, 1 bad ending, 1 neutral ending and 1 true ending. This is where this game went into super turbo depression mode. As an avid dragon lover i obviously chose to date some cute dragon, spending a lot of time with her, reading her what felt like 5000 lines of text, listening about her backstory and why she is what she is. Her name, Anna. She's a biologist and scientist, working on a cure for cancer, her whole life consists of overtime in her job every day, being completely alone, being stressed and being in pursue for that cancer cure as she contracted cancer herself when when she tried finding a cure. Does this remind you of something? Yea. RL says hi. Honest and nice people wanting to help others always get the back end of literally everything. In one of her dates you tell her that humanity has a cure for cancer and you promise her to save her when you get the chance... back to the underground laboratory you'll get help from one of the policemen as well as the selected partner you brought with you. The mysterious figure also makes an appearance shortly after only to be shot down by your asshole buddy, next up the police dragon ends up getting shot multiple times before he could finish off that egoistic piece of shit. He turns around to shoot at you but your partner sacrifices herself by jumping in front of you, saving you and making one last attempt to kill him afterwards while he's busy with you. The end that ensues makes you listen to her last words, watching her as she basically dies in your hands. You walk out, the mysterious figure revealed as the "creator" of these dragons explaining you what you have to do. From now on you'll use the portal to travel back in time to the time you arrived, using your previous knowledge to do better in your next and all other subsequent runs eventually reaching the good ending of Anna after which she manages to save you without getting hurt but ending up again dying in your arms from cancer in an hospital, crying as she speaks her last words. You repeat this over and over, going through all the emotional ups and downs this game has to offer, choosing different paths, talking to different people, eventually meeting the other characters, learning their backstory too and permanently changing how the game plays out on subsequent runs. While your first run is almost locked into a given experience, like Anna getting murdered if you don't date her and thus preventing her from being there when the murder happens your next runs will end up saving her life and instead having another character die instead. This goes on and on until you've seen all the bad and good endings of each character and at some point eventually reaching the true ending, the actual "good" ending that saves almost everyone and brings the dragons into the world of the humans to live with them there and rebuild the world. Maybe i've just played it a few times too much but seeing all these cool and unique characters die or otherwise losing you just hit my nerve so hard. I've played some really sad games some of which still make me cry if i just hear the soundtrack... but this just blew me up completely. It's not just that this game is so incredibly fascinating due to time travel and dragons, it also makes a game out of what i always pondered about, it is almost like if someone heard my thoughts and made a game out of it, on top of that it is incredibly sad, even the good endings are basically a big fuck you in your face, they made me cry like a baby, they made me cry days after, every day now i fall asleep crying, knowing i'll be eternally unsatisfied seeing how infinitely awesome the existence of dragons would be. It makes me truly sad, it showed me something i never knew i wanted to much... and when i finally got it at least to some degree in form of a game it left me with the desire for more a desire i'll never be able to satisfy sadly, this makes me eternally sad, it made me realize that i will never be happy. I already accepted that life is pointless and existence is pain, this... this is simply too much. I'm thinking of this every day, every single minute i'm not completely distracted by something else i think about it, making me sadder every day. I honestly don't know how much longer i can take this. This will eternally hunt me... yet i want to go back again and play the game even more. Since this so many things came to mind, its flooded with thoughts, thoughts i just can't seem to get sorted out. I've been thinking of a RP SIM that basically emulates this story, exploring this still almost completely untapped area... RIP memory and emotions. Did you realize the picture above is a TL:DR of my feelings...?
But enough of this, you should really check out the game.
Angels with Scaly Wings
Now if you'd excuse me, i'll have to cry some more because i just relived the entire fucking point why i'm so fucked up right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment