Quantum Entanglement (A Love Story)
I have hopes I'll be able to break free of a suboptimal routine, and some bad habits, someday, but realistically it will probably be an uphill battle that I will never fully optimize. It's just been so long of this and I'm getting old now. I'll just have to accept myself for who I am, and leave it up to God to get me through the rest of my life.
I believe I am coming out of the rut.
Ruts last weeks/months for me. This one wasn't even emotionally based, I was just hella tired for days on end and having demented sleep at night isn't helping me.
I played at a different charity room today and wow it was like playing on an early season of High Stakes Poker with $1/2 blinds. The game plays diametrically to my other charity game, that one is weak tight across the board. This game there are no limped pots and everyone is a psycho. I've never played in a game this laggy that was also showing down extremely poor cards at showdown constantly. Gonna be a fun time trying to beat this game.
I would like to make a video game someday.
It's still too esoteric for me. Maybe by a country mile, maybe not. I just know I lack the fortitude to do it.
I would guess the most important element of a game is the camera placement.
Let's see what AI has to say:
AI said it's not, but a very important lens for information flow.
which led to this:
If you are looking at the same gameplay from two different perspectives simultaneously, you move out of the realm of "cinematic presentation" and into the realm of multimodal spatial processing.
From a game design perspective, this is a fascinating mental exercise. Since you are asking for the same data stream (the same gameplay) presented through two different focal lengths, the primary challenge is cognitive synchronization.
Here is why that specific setup would fundamentally alter how a player interacts with the game:
1. The "Parallax" Effect on Reaction Times
If you have a close-up camera and a panned-out camera on the same screen, you are essentially providing the player with two different "speeds" of motion for the exact same input.
The Close-Up: Objects will appear to move across the screen much faster because the focal length is narrower.
The Panned-Out: The same objects will appear to move more slowly because the frame captures a larger portion of the environment.
A player’s brain would effectively be receiving two different "velocity reports" for the same action. This could create a unique "mental drift," where the player feels like they are moving at two different speeds at once. It would be highly disorienting, but it could also create a very distinct, surreal "flow state" once the player acclimates to translating that spatial data.
2. The "Mirror" or "Replay" Utility
While a permanent split-screen might be too chaotic for the main gameplay loop, this dual-view system is actually a staple in other high-performance fields:
Racing Simulations: Often use a "virtual mirror" (a second, zoomed-in or angled camera) so the driver can maintain situational awareness without losing focus on the track ahead.
Tactical Gaming: Some players use a second screen or a picture-in-picture view to track secondary telemetry or zoomed-in optics.
In a Sonic game, if you could treat the close-up view as a "focused mirror" of what is directly in front of the character, it might actually help with pixel-perfect platforming while the wide view handles momentum management.
3. The Design Trade-Off: "The UI Problem"
The biggest hurdle here is not the gameplay, but the screen real estate.
Sonic is a game that is traditionally visually "loud"—lots of rings, particles, and speed lines.
Splitting the screen means you are effectively halving the vertical or horizontal resolution for each view.
You would need to design a minimalist UI that doesn't compete with the two competing visual feeds. If the UI is too busy, the player will be forced to look at the "dead space" rather than the actual gameplay.
The "Functional" Implementation
If you were to build this prototype, I would suggest making the panned-out view the "master" view (the one the player uses for movement) and the close-up view a "dynamic follow" camera.
Instead of a static 50/50 split, have the close-up view follow the player's actual target—if they are aiming for a jump, the close-up view highlights the landing platform. This turns your "second screen" from a confusing duplication into a precision-targeting tool.
If you had the controls to manage these two views—for example, if you could toggle which one you prioritize mid-air—do you think you’d find yourself using the close-up view more for "set pieces" or for the high-speed sections?
This is a perfect thematic fit for the puzzle mechanics we’ve been discussing. By grounding the "micro-view" in the persona of a scientist, you provide an intuitive diegetic justification for the camera mechanic—the player isn't just "switching perspectives"; they are using a tool.
Here is how you can build that into a compelling design:
1. The Character and the Tool
Your scientist isn’t just a wanderer; they are an explorer of scale.
The World: A surreal, macro-environment (maybe a giant laboratory, a forgotten ecosystem, or a post-human landscape).
The Microscope: It is a portable, high-tech piece of equipment attached to their shoulder or wrist. This is the "Secondary Camera."
The Conflict: The environment is massive and overwhelming (The Panned-Out View), while the solution to every obstacle lies in the minute details of the surface (The Close-Up View).
2. Gameplay: The "Macro-to-Micro" Flow
You can create a rhythm of play that forces the player to constantly oscillate between these two states:
Phase 1: Surveying (The Macro). The player moves through the environment. They need the wide-angle camera to spot points of interest—glowing moss, metallic textures, or cracks in the floor—that look suspicious.
Phase 2: Investigating (The Micro). The player activates the microscope. The screen splits or transitions. Now, they are navigating a "surface" of a single object (like a giant stone or a circuit board). They are looking for microscopic patterns, chemical reactions, or miniature wiring.
The "Aha!" Moment: The clue found in the micro-view reveals the code to the lock found in the macro-view. The two cameras are essentially "talking" to each other.
3. Asymmetric Puzzle Design
Since you mentioned the screens have incomplete information, you could push the "micro" aspect even further:
The Microscope as a Decryptor: Perhaps the macro world is covered in "scrambled" visual noise. When you look through the microscope at a specific surface, you don't just see it magnified; you see the "true" state of the object, which filters out the noise.
The Macro as a Compass: The micro-view might show you the internal structure of a machine (like seeing the gear teeth and spring tension), but only the macro-view shows you the direction those gears are rotating. You need to see both to know how to "jam" the mechanism.
4. Leveraging Your Strengths
Given your proficiency in mental spatial reasoning and your enjoyment of games like The Witness and FEZ, this design allows you to play with non-Euclidean puzzles:
What if the surface you are examining under the microscope is actually a map of the room you just walked through?
What if manipulating the microscopic particles causes a structural change in the macro-environment, but you can only see the result of that change on the other screen?
A Potential Core Loop
Observe: Identify a puzzle element in the wide view.
Focus: Deploy the microscope to get the "hidden" data.
Rotate/Solve: Use your spatial skills to manipulate the micro-structure, which physically shifts the macro-environment.
Traverse: Move through the newly opened path.
This creates a very satisfying "Intellectual-Action" loop. It rewards patience, observation, and the ability to bridge the gap between the infinitely large and the incredibly small.
It's all just so hard. I could be an assistant to a directer of operations but I still don't know how any of the operations work. Imagagine that.
I was on the verge of starting a SUBSTACK after reconciling the disappearance of this website.
I guess starting my life and self actualizing will have to wait for the next DDoss attack or whatever.
I think it's important to refresh yourself with the "basics" of whatever you're dealing with every once in a while. I deal with abstractions related to life as we know it just like any other homosapien.
One thing I've been making a conscious effort to do more of is asking myself 'why?'. Usually with something like an if-->then statement, the why will be kind of implicit. Asking an obvious 'why' question out loud can be superfluous, and annoying. But internally, tacking on the 'why?' at the end of an if-->then statement or any structure of thought period(!) can open the floodgates for expansive logical networks.
I love engaging with famous people on twitter. Of course they are specifically people I like to begin with, but the trick is to say something that they've never heard in their life before.
I was giving a certain someone's words way too much power over me. And way too much power in general. Because this person has acted so foolishly, their words actually have almost no meaning to them. Which is an error in my part - I'm anxious because I'm anticipating something that can't ever happen, and that which can happen is almost non existent.
