Hiatus

Ironically, my brainrot has kept me from working on Brainrot: The Game. I tried to do a little coding and I got my familiar symptom of sparklers going off in side my head.

I am suspending work on Brainrot: TG until I’ve finished my rewrite of Hel’s Bet. I think about the game often and I am taking voice notes, but the shape of the game is still a mystery to me. I enjoy that feeling of limitless possibilities before details are pinned down.

I may use this blog to comment about Brainrot: The Neurological Illness. Not sure about that.

One of the effects of BR is that any verbal activity tires me – writing, talking, programming. These days I am reserving my daily word count for Hel’s Bet.

Voice notes

I constantly take voice  notes. Even when I take a bubble bath my trusty voice recorder is beside the tub.

Recently most of the notes have been about Hel’s Bet. Some are about Brainrot. For years I’ve collected notes for Brainrot: The Book and now I will use some of them in my game and this blog.

Some voice notes I made in the depths of pain:

My body hangs off me like a scab.
licking a rusty razor blade. Bitter pain.
sizzling on a skillet, I just want to scrape myself off, scritch.
Mouth stuffed with barbed wire
rats gnawing at the base of my psyche
The great beast paws idly at my entrails

Attempts at humor:

It would be nice if pain didn’t hurt so much.

Some are from the depths of loquacious confusion:

When you’re staring down at the constituents of consciousness lying in a pool in your hand all you are left with are shoddy metaphors and words that don’t adhere to the situation at hand.

Some diary snippets:

One day I decided I should be angry, I called my friend Dan Sheehan, and said, Dan this is fucked, I am so pissed off at this brainrot shit, Dan said, well, you have a right to be.

Appreciations of my remote cabin and woods:

silence is medicine; silence is seeping into my bones

Attempts to nail down insights:

Brainrot has left me intelligent but not smart.  I am trying to learn how to be smart at a slower speed; wise I am still working on.
I have become my own science project.

I found one note tonight that I don’t remember making. It’s from years ago:

Do online Brainrot game with various dimensions, control, confusion, clarity, medication level, and trying to stay in the sweet spot

I like that goal: Trying to stay in the Sweet Spot. Going to use that in the game.

Reading the transcriptions of the voice notes can be tough, but every now and then I smile:

It is still fun to be Doug Sharp

The Goals of Brainrot

This month I will create a design doc for the game. I am going to keep it loose because I will be doing a lot of exploratory designing.

There are two sets of goals for the game: the ingame goals and the design goals.

Ingame Goals:

• Maximize Productivity and Joy
• Minimize Pain and Seizures

Design Goals:

• Better understand my disability
• Express the experience to players
• Create a general platform for others with disabilities to create their own games
• Improve the Dramaton platform for use in future games

While my first priorities are rewriting Hel’s Bet and finding a programmer for ChipWits, I am making lots of voice notes for Brainrot: The Game.

First Screenshot

I got the first code running for my “game” about my epilepsy. I think I’ve got a megahit on my hands! ;^}

I’ve begun to get applicants for programmer to take over ChipWits.

Here’s the first screenshot of Brainrot: The Game:

Brainrot First Screenshot. Clicky for bigness.

Take that, Spore!

Right now the game is running 2 simple Dramaton Scripts:

creation.dram:

—–

newactor droog droog.swf droog

newplace padyard pad_yard_in_fall.jpg

runscript padyard.dram
—

and padyard.dram

—

goplace padyard
enter droog  700 400 1
scale droog .666

loop 4
moveto droog 200 450 0 1
wait droog
moveto droog 650 470 0 2
wait droog
endloop

—

Droog (me) enters and moves back and forth 4 times.

I had hoped to have this running online in a web page but the program had permission problems with the scripts once I uploaded it. Easily fixed when I track down the correct secret code words in the doc.

Today is a ChipWits day so I am going to work on installing the intro comic.

Why this blog?

I am going to create a game about my epilepsy/pain that is exploratory and expressive. I have a dim vision of what I want the game to be. I will use this blog to brainstorm as I move forward.

I will also use this blog to think out loud about my brain’s big glitch.

I am basing Brainrot: The Game on my Dramaton Interactive Narrative System.  The ups and downs of the various aspects of my health and life makes Dramaton a good choice for this game, which I’ll discuss in a future post here.

I will continue my “normal” Walden 3.0 blog to satisfy the public with the lurid details of my life.

Jan 1, 2009 is an auspicious kickoff date for the blog and game. Because of my disability I just decided that I can no longer be the main programmer and producer for ChipWits. I am starting to recruit replacements.

It’s hard to let go. I love to program. But programming triggers my symptoms and twice (in 1988 and 1997) I became disabled for years after intense programming projects. I can’t risk that again so I have to back off on my programming.

I can work on Brainrot: The Game because it will have no customers. I take my players seriously and when I couldn’t do a good job supporting ChipWits I knew I had to step aside.

I will use the development of BRG (Brainrot: The Game) as a way of understanding my illness better. I constantly try to be as productive and happy as possible within the constraints of my limitations. By analyzing those constraints I will build an interactive system to help me better understand how to live.

BRG will also let me express to others what I live with. I will explore graphic effects to convey the pain I live with. Not fun stuff but I hope it’s cathartic.

I will try to keep my code general so other people with atypical brains can use simple Dramaton scripts to build their own games to better understand and express their challenge.

While I work on BRG I will be improving my Dramaton code. I am starting with a Dramaton interpreter written in ActionScript 3.0 for the GODinabox project.

For my first task I am taking picture of myself. I’ve set up a green screen in the kitchen and tonight I will pose and click.

The picture at the top of this blog is from one of the many times I got hooked up to an EEG machine to measure my seizures. Lots of tiny wires glued to my scalp.

When they remove the electrodes some EEG techs give you little packets of mayonaise to get the flakes of glue out of your hair. Mayonaise feels strangely good rubbed into itchy scalp that has been unshampooed for days.