Life Update 11 June 2019

-The8bitbeast’s Life Update 11 June 2019-
As you may have noticed I’ve been pretty inactive with speedrunning related things as of late. Luckily, this is about to change. I thought I’d summarize what I’ve been up to for the past few months and what my speedplans are for the next few.

-IRL-
Last night, I (finally) submitted my dissertation!!! This dissertation is pretty much the reason I’ve been so inactive and it’s the last major assessment that I’ll likely ever do at uni. This was a beefy assignment at 18,000 words and it’s been taking up all of my free time for the last few months. Should it pass, I’ll have my master of teaching very soon! I also have my maths degree from before. Then I can start applying for jobs for the start of 2020.

I’m incredibly happy to just have this done. Not being able to do anything speedrunning related for 2 months was really difficult. I woke up this morning actually really excited to start my day. During work on the dissertation I was eating like shit and wasting a TON of time procrastinating. I’m looking forward to a more healthy lifestyle with a healthy balance of speedthings.

Aside from working on Uni stuff, I’ve been working 2 jobs. These both started roughly in March and I’ve been loving it. I do one job teaching/tutoring maths on the weekend. This isn’t many hours, but it’s good to keep experience going in that area. I was a bit frustrated about the commute to that job (1.5 hours each way) and the overhead of wearing an ironed shirt and tie and having to prepare lessons, but I’m enjoying each day more as I become more comfortable and in control. I’m glad/surprised that I have the opportunity and I’m having lots of fun.

The other job is in retail. Many coworkers seem to dislike it, but I love it. It’s a nice change to have more physical rather than mental work and I think of a shift as 4-8 hours of exercise that I get paid for. Furthermore, because I care a lot and try really hard I’ve been getting more rostered hours and getting called up to cover more shifts. I’m really lucky to have the job and it’s going to be sad to leave next year. Another good thing is that I’ve started seeing a new girl who I met there. It’s especially exciting as it’s my first time back in the dating game after coming out of a 7 year relationship. It’s different and new, but it’s going really well.

All of this IRL stuff is incredibly different from before March. Before March I hadn’t worked for about 4 years (aside from little jobs) since I had been focusing on uni. But I’ve been enjoying having a more balanced life and actually saving money again. It’s going to get even better now that I can basically replace uni commitments with speedrunning. Speaking of which, that’s probably why you’re reading, so here’s my speedplans..

-RTA-
Coming up in July is the Australian Speedrunning Marathon (ASM) https://horaro.org/asm2019
In this marathon I’m running lord of the sword any% and Banjo-Kazooie 100%. Both of these games are really special games from childhood and I’m really passionate about them. It’s great that they got in and I’m excited to show them off. I’m especially excited to show lord of the sword since that’s a hidden gem that pretty much no one knows about. There are a few issues to iron out for the runs and I’ll need to practice a lot but it’ll be good. As such, those will be my main RTA focuses for the next month.

Another RTA interest is a new game called Tiki Trials https://store.steampowered.com/app/1046130/Tiki_Trials/
This is an indie game and the creaters are from South Australia, just like me! I’ll probably get to meet them at ASM. It’s specifically designed to be for speedrunning, so it’s an enjoyable speedgame. I’ve played through it casually and it’s been fun so I want to get decently good at it. I just have to sort out a better computer to play it on than my laptop, but I have some ideas..
Apart from that, I’m pretty interested in BK any%. Stiv took back the WR for N64 yesterday. I could probably beat that run (the high 1:07), but he claims to be aiming for a 1:06, which I couldn’t beat with my current skill level. If he gets the 1:06 I’ll be happy because I just want to see that time come down, even if it’s not me that has the WR. But I’ll probably come back for my 1:06 some day..

One thing I’d love to focus on with BK is xbox categories. Xbox 100% can be improved with ninpalk skip and better bee routing, but my main focus would be xbox any%. I really think sub hour could be possible with xbox any% and I’d love to be the first person to do so. Unfortunately, sincethe joystick angles are so different, if I tried it before ASM I would mess up my muscle memory for the 100% run there.

Generally though, I try not to do too much RTA. I would rather push theoretical limits of games rather than the limits of my hands. But I do have fun doing RTA occasionally and I’ll be doing a lot leading up to ASM and mayyyybe trying xbox any% after that.

-TAS-
I have 2 active projects: Zillion (Master System) which I committed to for the Dega project and Sonic 2 (Master System) which I’m co-authoring with ezgames69. I was originally very excited about both of these, but I have a bad habit of losing motivation once I commit publicly to doing a TAS. But I think I’ll get back into these and have fun now that I don’t have uni guilt.
A few other games have caught my eye, like crash 2 and other master system games but I’m not gonna promise anything (because then I’ll lose motivation)

-Podcasting-
I’ve got a couple of guests lined up for new episodes of the Tool-Assisted Podcast and I hope to put out more episodes soon

-Game Dev-
I haven’t got any active projects right now and I don’t think I’m going to seek a long term big programming project. But I might do the odd game jam here and there. I got kinda demotivated because my programming language spat out .exe files that sometimes get picked up by virus scanners. Obviously I’m not making viruses, but it’s a bad look for games that I’m trying to make. Also I thought I had nailed controller support, but I found out from some people that played my games that some controllers don’t work. But apart from these issues it’s a really rewarding hobby that probably gives me the most fulfilment, but also takes the most effort.
Here’s my games: https://the8bitbeast.itch.io/


Anyway, I’m gonna go play Banjo now and not feel guilty.
Thanks for reading this, it means a lot that so many people are interested in what I do for hobbies :)