What If...?

Alternate realities just fascinate me. Just think, an infinite amount of Earths, where things could be radically different, or changed so subtly that nobody could tell the difference. It could be the difference between someone getting hiccups or not. Or it could be... What if Osama Bin Ladin had died when he was five years old?

What does this have to do with me? Well...

What If Amy Had Been Born Physically Female?

Sometimes I wonder what I would be like today if I was born into the correct physical form to match my gender identity. What would I have been like growing up? Would I have been popular in high school? Would I be as much of a girly girl as I am now? What would I be doing with my life? Would I be working? And if so, would it still be in the computer field? Would I have still gotten into comics? Would I be straight or lesbian?

It's easy to just say, "Of course I would still be gay!" "Of course I would still love makeup, cute clothes and computers!" But what made me this way in the first place? Let's break it down...

My shyness was most likely caused by being stuck in a boy's world during my early years. I didn't know how to act, what to do... what not to do. So perhaps I would not have been shy in this other world. Maybe I still would've been. It's hard for me to picture myself as ever being outgoing, but who knows...?

Popular in high school? That would depend partly on the shyness factor. (See above.) It's nice to picture myself as being prom queen or something, but who knows...?

I hope I would be working, and I probably would be. Without the trans factor to prevent some employers from considering me, finding work would be easier. I like to think that I would've gotten into computers no matter what, but perhaps I grabbed onto this hobby (as it was back in the early 80's) in an effort to find something that was deemed "okay" for me to have an interest in. Maybe I would've gotten interested in hairstyling instead. It baffles me to think of myself as a person who struggles when dealing with computers, but who knows...?

Comic books, ditto. My parents didn't mind me liking comics. The boundary was clearly defined. I wasn't allowed to have Wonder Woman or Bat-Girl action figures. (Maybe the styleable hair did it?) I could have any male action figure I wanted, but females were not allowed. So hey, maybe I would've gotten into Barbies instead, particularly because then my parents would think it unsuitable for me to read comic books. But who knows...?

And finally, straight or gay? Well damn it is so hard for me to imagine liking men. I don't find a single thing about them that's attractive. But if I was expected to like them, then maybe I would be conditioned into finding them attractive? This one is the toughest for me to imagine. Sorry, I think I would've loved women no matter what. But... let's say it... who knows...?

Don't get me wrong, I don't often agonize over how great things could've been for me if my sex and gender matched. It's just fun to think of the possibilities, and to try to imagine how radically different - or how much the same - I would've been.

You know what really blows my mind? If I would've been born with a male brain to match my male-born body! I think I would have been so different, that... well... you couldn't even say it was me anymore.

I actually love myself just the way I am.

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I Made an Interactive Fiction game!

Yes, it's true! Though it is a preview of a game, there's quite a lot of playtime to be had. I actually entered this game in a competition in 2009 (called The Spring Thing), and won third place (though there were only four games competing, d'oh!). I programmed this game using a relatively new interactive fiction making system called TAB.

This has been what's taking up a lot of my time lately. I recently re-released this game with a bunch of enhancements and bug fixes.

Some of you may not know what Interactive Fiction is. Well, the old-fashioned name for a game like this would be a text adventure. The most famous Interactive Fiction games released are the classics released by Infocom, such as Zork, Planetfall, and A Mind Forever Voyaging.

Here's an excerpt from the manual I made for my game:

Interactive fiction can be considered a game, as well as a story. The best ones are like a well-written book, only you get to interact with the plot and influence the path that the main character takes. An interactive fiction game will describe something, like a location or some kind of activity going on, and then it will wait for the player to type in some kind of action, in the form of a command. Think of the locations in the game as scenes, the items as props, and the characters as, well...the characters.

Like many works of interactive fiction, this is a turn-based game. This means that the game will wait indefinitely for you to tell it what to do. If you're in the middle of being attacked by some monster, and you have to stop playing to use the bathroom or something, you will still be alive and at the same point in the game as when you left. There is no need to "pause" the game when you have to stop for a little while.

However, keep in mind that whenever you enter a recognized command into the game, things will always change. For one, the game keeps track of how many turns you have made so far. Secondly, characters may come and go as they please, making their own moves during the turn. Some will probably continue to attack you if they're already doing so, and some may perform other miscellaneous actions of their own, which may or may not have anything to do with you.

Most IF games have the following actions that can be taken: Getting items, dropping items, taking an inventory of items that you have, looking at things, saving and restoring game files, fighting or talking to characters in the game, reading signs, notes, books, etc., moving from place to place (usually by entering a compass direction, such as north, south, east or west), and opening or unlocking doors.

This is a screenshot from my game. Click to enlarge!

Interactive Fiction games usually have no graphics or sound, just text. The difference between my game and others like it, is the fact that it has sounds and music.

Some of you may have played games such as the one I made. Some not. I think the more geeky of you will appreciate it. Just a fair warning: This game is pretty gory and nasty with some of the descriptions, and you'll die often, so save the game whenever it seems like a good time to do so.
 
The game is for Windows (98 and beyond), but you can play it on the Mac, with Parallels Desktop (if you have an Intel-based processor), and you can play it on Linux, with Wine.
 
This is a video narrated by my friend, Omar, illustrating how the game runs on a Mac using Parallels Desktop. Once you get it running, it's identical to running it in Windows:  



Creating this game has been an amazing outlet for me. The creative aspect of my brain enjoys plotting the game. What do I want to happen? What do I want this character to say? Where is the game going? The puzzle-solving aspect of my mind enjoys figuring out how to make my plots and plans a reality.

If you feel like trying out this game, go to my other blog (yes, I have another blog!) here: http://amethystgames.wordpress.com/

You can jump right to the page with the download links here: http://amethystgames.wordpress.com/92/

If you try it out, let me know how you liked it (or disliked it)!

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Mongrels, Money, and `Musement

I was attacked by a dog last night... while it was on a leash!

I had to go to K-Mart to run an errand, so I decided to walk. By the time I was heading back, it was already dark. I was almost home, and walking on a narrow sidewalk with tall weeds on each side of me. Why they're still thriving in December is beyond me. I saw a man walking a dog, heading in my direction. No biggie, and pretty common around here. As I was about to pass the dog, it was straining on it's leash. Pretty common there too, as they usually want to sniff or lick you. It wasn't growling. All of a sudden, I felt something hit my hand (gloved, by the way) and pull on the K-Mart bag I was holding. All I could think is that it wanted the bag, and then I had passed the dog. It ran back after me, straining on the leash again, and it bit me on the leg! I was wearing capris, so if it had bit any lower, I would've really been bleeding. As it was, it bit me pretty hard through the denim, and there's a small mark there. It still hurts a bit if I sit indian-style, which I often do while messing around on the computer.

I did yell, "Owww" at the time, and that's when the dog started barking and growling like I had one of it's pups. The man said, "Sorry." He also chuckled. Yeah, real funny. He continued walking back where I had come from. I didn't know what to do, since I didn't want to get any closer to that dog. If it hadn't been on a leash (or if it had gotten free with all it's struggling), I might be a statistic right now. Nikki told me later that I should've called the police, but I don't think it was worth it. I'm no good at remembering and describing facial features, etc., and the bite mark is rather tiny. I made sure to rub the site real good with hydrogen peroxide. The whole incident just shocked the hell out of me.

I want to get some pepper spray. And from now on, I don't care if it's a bichon frise... I'm crossing the road if I see any dog without a muzzle!

In other news, I've been rather lax on the blog posts lately. I've been feeling mildly depressed and anxious. Nikki and I are due in court in two weeks, for late payments on the rent. I think we'll be able to pay it off before the court date, but just today, both of our cellphones were turned off. I wish I could help pay this stuff. It's not fair for it all to be on Nikki. Nobody wants to hire a transsexual over here, it seems. I couldn't blame them. With tens of thousands of unemployed cisgendered folk in Michigan, why would someone want to hire anyone so far from the norm? New York just seemed to be so much more LGBT-friendly.

I've been playing the first Parasite Eve game lately, on a PlayStation (PS1) emulator called ePSXe. Tres fun, and it helps me get my mind off the money problems, and the stress that stems from the money problems, and the arguments that stem from the stress. Ugh... where was I? Oh yes, Parasite Eve. It's a pretty awesome RPG game, with real-time fight scenarios and dazzling cinematics. It's about the mitochondria in people's cells uniting and mutating those people into monsters and such, in an attempt to take over the world. I'm currently on day five, for anyone familiar with it. I've tried to get a PS2 emulator running, but I think you need a quad-core machine, or a high end graphics card. We have a dual-core cpu, and I have no idea what kind of graphics card that came with this thing. Isn't that sad?

I just finished re-reading "Different Seasons" by Stephen King. I first read those stories in the eighties, when it was released in paperback. "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" is my favorite story there, and it made an awesome movie too. There's a classic line from the movie, where Tim Robbins asks Morgan Freeman, "Why do they call you 'Red,' anyway?" Freeman goes, "Hmmm. Must be because I'm Irish." Well, in the novella, that question didn't need to be asked, since Red was in fact Irish with red hair, and not black, as played by Morgan Freeman. Too funny. Freeman did such an excellent job though. I just couldn't read the story and not see him as the character of Red! "The Body" is an excellent story also, which some of you may know was made into a movie called "Stand By Me." After re-reading that one, I watched the movie again with Nikki and the kids. It's not a bad movie for kids that age to see, if you ignore the constant cursing and the fact that 12-year-olds smoke once or twice. The latter made me a bit leery, but Sarah did say, "Ewww" when she saw them light up. Good girl!

Now I'm re-reading "The Bachman Books," also by Stephen King. He had secretly written quite a few books under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, but somebody was onto him when he came out with "Thinner," since it had sold so many copies. Anyway, I just finished "Rage," in which a teenage boy kills two teachers and holds his class hostage... sort of. This was way before the Columbine murders, by the way! I'm about to read "The Long Walk," which I remember loving. Somehow, King can take a story about people just walking and talking to each other, and make it interesting. I'm eager to rediscover just how he pulled that one off without making it the most boring story ever told.

When the real world gets too intense, I find other bits of reality to hide in. Books, video games, and I've even been interested in watching a few movies I've missed. The first two I can pull off without spending any money though. I have plenty of unread books lying around, and I can get the games for free off the `net.  ;)

Other than that, nothing much else is new. I can post some more blasts from the pasts and mini-biographies (and I will), but I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately. I've been keeping up with everyone's blogs though. I like seeing what all you cool peeps have been up to.  :)

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