I ate’nt dead

[The Man]

So, hi. How has everyone been? It’s been a hot minute.

Over the past… uh, two years? since I last visited here, I’ve been kind of busy. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in information technology and cybersecurity.

I’ve completed quite a lot of music, including these Cadence of Hyrule remixes and, more time-consumingly, a complete Marathon arrangement album that effectively asks the question, “What if ’70s Genesis had ’80s Genesis’ production?”, or “What if Marathon had been a JRPG and gotten an arranged album?” It is worth noting that the OST for Marathon runs for 40:16. My version runs for 77:77. Sorry, that’s 78:17 in normal people numbers, which is an addition of 38:01, for those keeping score. You can also listen to it on YouTube, but…

See You Starside

…I strongly encourage use of an adblocker, since YouTube has decided to start running ads that I emphatically do not want on my channel and make absolutely no money from. I’m infuriated that they’re profiting off a project that I poured probably a hundred hours into – it was a labour of love on my part, and having YouTube unilaterally decide to monetise it without my consent feels obscene and insulting. (There isn’t a copyright claim on the video, either – this is just Google being evil.)

Game modding has taken up the bulk of my free time lately, though. Perhaps most impressively, I’ve done *deep breath* level design, music, sound, story, writing, editing, scripting, graphics, and codirection for Eternal X; we recently released preview 5 of the forthcoming 1.3 release, which added over an hour of music (mostly mine – I went from having about ten minutes of music featured in preview 4 to having the largest amount of music featured by running time in preview 5) and fixed several bugs. Eternal’s OST now runs for 6 hours and change, thanks to my insistence on every level with combat having (1) unique music (2) that ideally doesn’t repeat much in a complete playthrough on the highest difficulty setting. You can get the FLAC soundtrack here, but of course, it’s still a WIP.

Beyond that, I did sound design and scripting for Apotheosis X, a mod impressive enough that it got its own PC Gamer article.

Apotheosis X - Cracks in the Pleasuredome

I worked on hellpak, a mod that probably has limited appeal overall considering that its gameplay consists of levels like this:

hellpak E3M7 Stairway to Aaron

hellpak E2M4 Bob-B-Overcooked

hellpak E5M2 Bungie, did you get…

However, I also mastered and created the video for its soundtrack, which slaps:

hellpak - Not Recommended by Doctors OST

And I’m involved with other mods in varying stages of development, such as Tempus Irae Redux (closest to being released), Where Monsters Are in Dreams (further off), and Marathon Chronicles (years from being completed). I’ll probably update relevant threads with some of this info as well.

I hope everyone’s been doing well. I can’t promise to become as active as I once was, but it occurred to me recently that it’d been a while since I last checked in at a bunch of places, and I’ve been meaning to fix that. I’m most active by far on Discord these days. My contact info for that is listed in a few of the above links, including the See You Starside liner notes and the Eternal readme. If this place has a server, I’ll definitely join it.

It’s good to be back. I’d missed these smilies. And the people. I feel bad for basically just disappearing for a couple years – I meant to take a sabbatical until exams and then just never came back. Whoops.

[ShottleBop]

Welcome Back!

[mickthinks]

Good to know

[fragment]

Nice to see you!

[Miss Shelby]

Congratulations! Happy Valentines Day!

[Sock Puppet]

Been way too long, Mr. Man. I was starting to wonder if you wudn't ate'nt dead. Glad to hear from you, and I'm looking forward to listening to the whole damned album.

[JoeP]

PRAISE the LORD! The Man returns!

[JoeP]

That's an impressive list of excuses for not having time to visit,, I'll admit.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by JoeP

That's an impressive list of excuses for not having time to visit,, I'll admit.

I dunno, in the last two years I've managed to... ah... um. Er...

Also not be dead?

[JoeP]

Yes, I feel substantial guilt on my own part.

Thanks, The Man.

[vremya]

Good to see you!

[The Man]

Thanks, everyone.

I’ll try to check in more often – I definitely didn’t realise two whole years had passed. Time has been weird since the pandemic started; it feels like it has passed both very quickly and very slowly, somehow both at once.

And I just realised I missed two years of Thanksgrabbing. Bort forgive me.

[Stephen Maturin]

It's great to see ya, The Man! Congrats on the degree, and I look forward to checking out the vids.

Originally Posted by The Man

YouTube has decided to start running ads that I emphatically do not want on my channel and make absolutely no money from.

YouTube did that? REALLY? The hell you say!

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[Ensign Steve]

Hey, The Man! Awesome to hear from you. Congrats on your bachelor's degree. And all your other wins.

[lisarea]

HEY THERE YOU ARE.

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[beyelzu]

It’s good to see you around again. Congrats on getting a bachelors.

[Qingdai]

Hello fellow traveler, enjoy all the BA benefits, which is... um. More degrees or getting a g.d. job

[Miss Shelby]

I really do wonder sometimes when people go away for a long time. I wish more peeps would pop in and say hey y’all, I’m still alive!