Mailbag 7 - Celebration

I am reaching the point in my life where birthdays now come with a Free Contemplation of My Own Mortality. Now that's what I call a deal!

Birthday Questions

Anyhow, I asked for some birthday questions on a forum I'm part of, and people delivered:

captainlove asks:

Do you have any bday rituals?

Other than birthday cake, not particularly. Typically I’m still in lazy end-of-winter-break mode when my birthday runs around.

SUPERSONNICK ASKS:

Already planning for your 55th one, because that would be a reason to go wild... otoh means we have to make it 20 more years to see that happening :tarothink: ...will PCs and BBSes even around anymore by then? Who knows, and best part about it is that we will find out, one year at a time!

I don’t have any plans for the big 55 yet, but I sure do hope bulletin boards will still be around.

MintyJuffowup asks:

What is the best dessert that you can bake?

Man, it’s been a good while since I’ve done some proper baking… peanut butter cookies are simple and effective. Besides that, I’ve always been a big fan of coffee cake.

This is technically cheating, but also I really like these old chocolate no-bake cookies that my mom used to make. This reddit thread seems to have a reasonably accurate recipe.

HOBO ASKS:

How’d you get into ZZT?

As with many things, my older brothers were already deep into PC nerd stuff in the mid-90s, so ZZT was just part of that mix, alongside stuff like QBasic, tracker music, nesticle, shareware dos games, and the like. Somehow most it stuck with me longer than it did with them.

When I started browsing the internet on my own accord, I lurked around the ZZT community a lot, played a bunch of really poorly made fangames, and even made maps of the official worlds, but never joined the conversation or made much of anything myself.

I dabbled with stuff occasionally during the mid/late '10s. Thanks to the confluence of the Dr. Dos’s work with the Museum of ZZT, asie’s decompilation effort, wanting to attempt to run a jam, and the pandemic, I ended up finally joining the community, making stuff, and somehow making a bit of a name for myself.

daphaknee asks:

how’d you meet your wife

saw her at a church activity, thought she was cute, and started talking to her. we hit off pretty quickly.

i remember her making some comment early on about online death threats (in concept, not as a recipient) that was enough to convince me that she was actually cool. time has only proven that my powers of deduction were 100% accurate there.

she actually beat me to the punch on asking me out for our first date by like thirty seconds (we just went and got ice cream). at the end of this date i called her a peach and, for reasons still unknown, she called me a durian.

sleepysmiles asks:

how has life as a marketable plushie been treating you

it’s great! i feel so light and soft, and my cotton-filled felt skin is impervious to methods of attack that would incapacitate lesser, fleshier beings. i can easily survive being yeeted down a flight of stairs or being smushed in a press — not that people would do that, mind you. thanks to my adorable wiles, people can’t resist calling me cute names and giving me headpats and scritches and other sorts of affection.

some worrywarts and dweebs claim that plushification is equivalent to “selling out” or that it causes you to “lose your soul” or some nonsense, but they couldn’t be more wrong. i highly recommend trying it out

HEAVYVIPER ASKS:

What’s your favourite room in Super Metroid and why?

Since you asked so nicely and since I’m a bit indecisive, you get a top 5 for this question:

• #5 Ceres: Dead Scientist Room - It’s the title screen.
• #4 Maridia: Mt. Everest - In the early aughts, expert players wanted to figure out the maximum item percentage in the game without fighting any bosses or minibosses (the "NBMB challenge" as they called it), and this room proved to be such a challenge that they called it "Mount Doom." The solution they discovered was that by carefully using super missiles to dislodge and freeze a pair of crabs, you could just barely make your way to the upper-right door without the Gravity Suit or Grapple Beam. This knowledge eventually became a staple of RBO runs and difficult randomizer seeds.
• #3 Wrecked Ship: East Supers Room - After power is restored to the ship, you can access the screen on the right and see what appears to be two metroid-based devices, presumably acting as energy reactors. This wordlessly ties into Samus's line in the intro about the energy-producing capabilities of the metroids, but subtly undercuts her optimistic tone there because this power, for all of its potential, was not able to save the people of this ship from their eventual wreck.
• #2 Norfair: Bubble Mountain - I love Metroid’s bubble caves. I love the mixture of tilesets, with the naturalistic bubbles on top with the techy piping below. I like the way the missile pack is hidden. I like the little morphball passage, and the shortcut that opens up once you get power bombs. I love how you can skip the long route around to the top with some precise walljumps. And I love the cacatac perched atop of the mountain like he’s the king of the place.

As for my #1 favorite room, I don’t think it actually requires an explanation:

daphaknee muses:

are there any sicko wealthoids who have recreated that room yet

There have been some impressive recreations of the statue, like this one on reddit, but nothing full-size from what I've seen.

Also “wealthoids” sounds like a creature they’d send me to exterminate.

Birthday Cards

In addition to the aforementioned questions, some people on Discord got on a little train making art for me. It makes me feel really bashful. :3

On Discord, I said:

for my birthday today i had a piece of cake

red velvet cake

From there, a short little art train started:

PYoshi said:

Oh, is (was?) it actually RT's birthday?? I need to make something gimme 5m

*Five Minutes Later*

PYoshi drew:

Someone hypothesized the contents of that box:

begrimed drew:

And a couple people followed by offering cake:

Tundain offered:

Happy birthday RT!

(Apologies for the horrible drawing, I'm a bad artist drawing on my phone on a moving train)

I think that's a creature from Hollow Knight. I want to say it's the Hunter, but the design doesn't appear to be an exact match. Either way, I appreciate the cake!

Exister also drew:

Was a fun draw! Happy birthday

Anything but locking in and making rooms!

No! Mareo! Don't backwards long-jump away from me while holding that cake!!

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. They were really nice. :3