So much for that, huh.
Contents:For a while, the idea was to re-create Acmlmboard's engine in better code. Basically, board2, but done in my coding style and less open to holes. I got the online user list done before I gave up. After a long period of time, I finally managed to get threads and forums working... after that, it all fell apart. I had no motivation to continue and the project died.
Jul still runs on 1.93+, which sees updates very rarely. After all, why update what would be obsolete if I finished what I wanted to do in the first place? Basically, I got myself into a catch-22 where neither project gets updates.
Remember LameBoard, from the previous list? LameNews was its partner. As such, Rusted Logic was sort of a partner to Jul X; they would go together. Threads would be posted on the board for news updates, and special users could post on the front page. Not a very different system from Sonic Retro's, really.
It actually got to a semi-complete state; the front page of Rusted Logic will show you that, and my homepage uses it as well. It's functional -- but it didn't accomplish what I wanted it to. Hence, it was a failure.
It took months for comments to be added, for one thing; and post editing still isn't available. Not to mention, there is currently no "pages" system, so all the posts are on one page; which can create quite the mess...
This is another case of "it works, but not how it was intended". Tina 3 actually was "finished"; it connects to IRC servers and does its thing, and has reporting functions that are easier to use than the original's. Much, in fact.
However, it is still quite incomplete; most functions are missing (no web-based features) and it has the occasional problem in tracking things. A few commands I wanted to implement are still unfinished as well. Overall, though, this is probably the project that could be considered "most successful". I mean, it works and does its job, which is more than what I could say for most things I try to do.
A while back, Hiryuu and I were considering a website for his simfiles on RL.net, since BemaniStyle is utter garbage. I decided that I could do something with MiniSM and make it a sort of non-BS BS page. He had all the features he wanted lined out, they were all fairly easily implemented, the works; if it was done in raw HTML, it probably wouldn't have taken very long at all.
I requested a package of all his simfiles so I could start work on it. That alone took a while; I had to pester him a lot for them, and about a month or so later he finally got them all uploaded, and I set to work.
It didn't take very long to realize that I could have -- and should have -- started working on the project long ago, using just some random files to get the database and page code all laid out before actually using real data. In short, I could have started work on it months prior and never had to bug him at all until it was all ready.
End result: I nagged him for months, he finally complied, and nothing happened. To this day, MiniSM X sits there as a blank page with nothing actually programmed aside from a very basic database structure. Needless to say, it's just proven how unreliable and worthless I am for getting anything done for anybody...
The fact that it also would have relied on MiniSM (the parser) didn't help, either; in order to get the proper use out of it, I likely would have had to reprogram it from the ground up. The total time I would need to invest in such a thing makes it impossible to get the energy to do such a thing.
This game seems to always get my attention at random... sometimes it'll be months before I actually do anything with it, sometimes I can work out an entire set of data. For a while, I was on the fast track to figuring out a lot of things. I had a room parser, I knew a lot of data... but after a while, I just lost interest. I gave up, basically. Surprise.
The furthest I got was fixing the final room in the underworld 2 bank, FF. I even designed my own little space with it, with a bed and dressers and all that jazz, including making space for it on the overworld (it was a house in the flower patch 1E of Marin's). Just a diversion... I lost interest shortly after that because I couldn't get any help in figuring out what determined the tileset places used, among some other things.
Oh well...
For a while, I was pretty interested in making Lua scripts for FCEUX, after being introduced to the concept. I made a pretty complex script for Valkyrie no Bouken that would display enemy HP, item value, and all sorts of things... I just never really finished it (still had many things to do). I made a SMB1 replay ghost, but never finished it. I had ideas for a SMB1 challenge script that I did very little for outside of finding a few addresses... The script I made for Mach Rider, a simple speedometer, is pretty much the only thing I can say I ever finished.
I made a few other small things, too, like a jetpack, snow, and some other things for SMB1... most of them were pretty close to being finished, I guess. I mean, hell, I made a complete game out of it, Super Bullet Dodger 3000. That one is a bit special since it uses a custom ROM, too, heh.
I had plans for an update to SBD3000, featuring actual stages (so it was more like a shooter), and a script for Faria, but I'm sure you can guess those ideas went. Or rather, how they didn't.
What can I say? It seems that no matter what I try, everything I start will end up on this page. I've disappointed quite a few people in these things, myself included. So, my apologies; even though they mean nothing, as the only way to make it up to you guys would be to just finish these things. It's one of my sincere hopes that I can finish some of these projects some day, and make them into successes. We'll see, but I haven't stopped trying to find something I can finally finish...
I guess I should at least mention Sonic Retro; I've been doing work there as a sort of coder-administrator, and what I start there is usually finished... but by the same metric, a lot of the stuff they want done there is pretty simple in the first place.
On an unrelated side-node, the Hall of Failures 2004-2007 edition had 18 failures over 4 years, about 4½ per year; 2008 had 6.
Xkeeper
2009/01/07