It's nice to hear from all of you!
JonLeung, I've also thought of this place as a kind of second family over the last two decades. Months ago, when my thoughts were at their darkest, I was worried that nobody here would ever hear about it if I was gone. Now that I'm feeling much better, this isn't really a concern anymore but I should probably leave a note in my safe about it. If anything happened to any of you guys, I would hope to hear about it also.
You mentioning your physical health reminds me that I really need to take better care of mine now that my mind is doing better. My eating habits have been pretty bad over the last few years and my addiction to soft drinks certainly isn't helping. I've started cooking real, healthier meals lately which is good but kicking the soft drinks habit is going to be hell.
Electromax, I'm glad that working from home turned out alright for you. Most of the people I know found it really isolating. As for myself, I was part of the only team at my job which was required to be on-site (since we provided and repaired the laptops the regular workers used to work from home) so I had more social contacts that most people during most of the pandemic.
By the way, I just took a look at your DeviantArt and wow, you are a mapping *beast* and I'm definitely going to spend an hour of two browsing your gallery! I'm envious of your technical skills, as they apparently enable you to map so many more (complicated) games than people like me who have reached the limits of their abilities. Or at least, I'm not ready to invest the time and energy required to approach your level, or the interest really. I still make maps when the mood strikes, but I'm also splitting my time with another recent hobby. Working on my own personal fonts have guided me to the amazing world of conlangs and although I'm a complete amateur, I'm having fun coming up with ways to "encrypt" text graphically!
DarkWolf, I hope you're taking care of yourself and that your work situation improves. Also, your mention of
Black Stone reminded me that I still grateful for your Texture Skewing utility. It helped fuel my interest in mapping isometric games.
Revned, it's good to hear from you too. We haven't talked in ages!
Don't feel too bad about having trouble socializing. I'm only just starting to socialize on my own after nearly three decades so you can't be worse than me
. I think my gaming evolution has reached a similar point to yours, in that I find games for the platforms of my youth (NES, Game Boy, Genesis, SNES) increasingly harder to enjoy as time passes. Nostalgia doesn't seem to work as much as it once did, though I'll still occasionally play an old favourite. Lately, I've been playing Switch exclusives as well as some smaller indie PC games and having a lot of fun.
Like you, I've also given up on my more ambitious mapping projects or at least, I'm not holding hope that I'll ever finish them. I'm usually working on more personal maps for obscure games that few people know about or trying to put my own spin on famous games (which is hard to do when you're assembling screenshots), but I'm still having fun, which is the goal for me after all. I hope the passion comes back to you sometimes soon!
Grizzly, it's too bad that your mapping tool fell through and I think I sort of understand the feeling of working so hard for so long on something but ending up making it worse in the long run. Hopefully, you still find enjoyment in your other coding projects because it sounds like you're not lacking in terms of ideas, which is good. As for playing for play's sake, I think that's very healthy! I'll usually oscillate between "playing for fun" and "playing to map" a few times a year with each phase lasting several months. To me, it's almost like a mental "detox".
Your mention of finding it exhausting to talk to other people reminds me a lot of myself before I starting my medication (not suggesting your situation is like me though). I don't know about you, but what I found difficult to deal with was this constant anxiety about saying the wrong thing and being judged for it. Constantly second-guessing myself during *every* single social interaction was incredibly exhausting and such an ingrained reflex that I only felt the fatigue while not even noticing most or all of the toxic thoughts. I don't know how much of an obstacle this is for you but I hope you find some way to relax and enjoy yourself without worrying about all that pandemic stuff.
StarFighters76, I have to admit that for the longest time, I hadn't realized (or had simply forgotten) that you were the author of the vast majority of the original maps on GameFAQs! Given that you never use in-game graphics for your work, you're probably the mapper in the best possible position to try and make money with them, though you should still be careful from a legal standpoint.
A number of months back, someone named Phillip Summers started a
Kickstarter to create hand-drawn game guides for older NES games that would not feature any official graphics or artwork. The project looked really cool and the art style meshed really well with those from game manuals of the time. Unfortunately, he was contacted by an unnamed lawyer and had to cancel the campaign. The guides are thankfully still available though and for free (check out the latest updates on the Kickstarter page for the links) but it sucks that the creator can't make money for his hard and impressive work (although you can pay what-you-want for a kind of making-of art book for the series). But hey, if you ever manage to make it work financially, make sure to tell us so that we can celebrate!
As for the various mentions of a Discord, I used to be pretty much against the concept. I grew up with message boards and I was never into linear chat rooms where things go too fast and discussions are hard to follow. However, my position has softened somewhat lately as I've been following a Discord server,
Marioverse, that was the successor to the Reddit board
Project Marioverse which is centered around mapping out the Super Mario universe. If a VGMaps Discord was ever created, I can't promise I would be a big participant but I would certainly try to be more active than I've been here.
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