Wednesday 22 June 2016

Tunnel Runner on Wade-Memoir

I lost June to what doctors think was viral meningitis. It wasn't easy to diagnose, but I had two overnight stays in hospital and have been spending the rest of the time at home. I also developed double vision. The vision is expected to self-correct over time and it does seem to be improving a little each day. Today I tested my computing abilities (with a patch over one eye) by writing this and updating one of my websites, Wade-Memoir, with a parser/shoot-em-up (?!) bit of game, Tunnel Runner, from when I was ten. You can go to the Tunnel Runner post by clicking this sentence.


Why I thought of Tunnel Runner today: While my vision was really messed up, I couldn't read and I couldn't watch anything, so I listened to a lot of podcasts. One of them, No Quarter (about classic coin-ops) mentioned that the hosts were supporting the crowdfunding for some turn-based shoot-em-up. This sent my mind back – way back – to Tunnel Runner. It was meant to be a sideways shooter like Star Blazer or Scramble. How it came out is that you use a parser to enter commands to move your ship. Today I wrote this game up in my blog Wade-Memoir, making it my first post there in half a year.

I was having motivation troubles writing the last example for my WIP Inform CYOA extension before I got sick, probably because I've already written a good number of examples that interest me more. This last one needs to be the most fundamental, in a way, and is intended to be the first one for a user.

Soon I hope to be reconstituted enough that I should be able to recommence using my will to force myself to do certain things. Or a day may come when the sun is especially bright (it's winter here) and a particular shaft will hit me in a particular way and inspire me to do it without me having to kick myself.

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