Daytona 500 And Super Sprint BUMMER...

Kinda crummy news going on with my life.  I want to get this now before I start rambling about video games like a madman again...

First of all, I talked weeks, even months ago about going to the Daytona 500.  It's on the 24th--five days away.  I planned on going with my dad.  But it looks like I won't be going at all.  Here's why.

My grandfather (my father's father) is currently in a heart hospital.  A few days ago, he got hit hard by "septic shock" (bacteria poisons your blood) which came about from previous pancreatic cancer surgery which punctured his colon.  For a moment, we thought he was going to die.  Thankfully, he is making a recovery but not a really great one.  We still don't know if he's going to leave the hospital any time soon.  Because of this, my dad doesn't want to take off to Florida for a few days when his dad is in this condition.

My grandfather (aka. "Grump") is 76 and a real hardass.  But a good hardass who hunts, sips his crystal beverages, works out, runs a chain of tobacco stores (which are sadly fading away due to government regulation and dropping perception of smoking by the general public), and has great genes (which thankfully I've inherited).  He doesn't talk much but admires that I've made it so far through school so even if I never talked to him much, it would really hurt to see him go.

Besides, even if you take Grump out of the situation, I still am uncertain about going to Daytona.  The race is Feb. 24th, my birthday is on Feb. 29th (well, 28th), and work begins on March 4th.  If I go to the Daytona race, I have to leave home early and am "stranded" alone in Orlando for about a week.  But if I don't go, I can spend more time (especially my birthday) with my family.  So what's it going to be really?  Looks like stay is my only choice.

Also, the main reason I really wanted to go to Daytona was to get a picture with another cheesy Sega/Daytona USA 3 sign.  Something like "Thanks Sega for putting the Hornet in Sega All-Stars Racing.  Now where's Daytona USA 3?"  But the first pics I took were cool but didn't make as big of a splash as I had hoped.  I could try to photobomb the Daytona 500 but I have a feeling the staff wouldn't take kindly to signs and/or people standing near the fence.  I feel I got lucky that the sign wasn't confiscated in the first place.

------------

And then there's Super Sprint.

I'm telling you, I always get this post-Christmas lethargy which usually lasts two/three months.  It happened to me last year (during FIEA, sheesus) and now it's this year.  Sleep cycle gets all messed up and I don't take on any really hard tasks.  My best guess is that once the Christmas season ends, my body goes into shock that the vacation is really over, the Christmas lights are taken away, and the weather heats up again.  So I still party in order to crash face-first into depression once life actually begins again.  Either way, post-Christmas always sucks for me, work or leisure.

The lethargy got in the way of Super Sprint.  I was working on the game a few days before Christmas but then I kind of stalled.  I was working on keyboard configs which I managed to get in with a options screen and the ability to save your configs when you close and reopen the game again.  I also began to implement leaderboards into the game which save your fast times & high scores.  I also bought a Logitech controller to program in joystick functionality (I know emulators can use them).  But none of those things are really finished and I have to finish the keyboard config and a few gameplay kinks and get the game out now before everyone thinks I gave up on it.  Just gimme a week or two then I can get a 1.0 version (under a new name besides Super Sprint...to avoid copyright woes).  Then I refocus on more advanced features and stuff.

Programming is like trying to glue a bunch of tangled wires together anyway so if I'm not in the zone, it's tough, you know?  Oh snap, that's right, I have a job in two weeks so if I don't get my s*** together, my ass is going to be out on the street.

EDIT: Sorry guys, should've thrown this in here sooner. I know nobody gives a shit about Super Sprint anymore especially with The 90's Arcade Racer on the horizon. But I have to "finish" it for myself since it's my cross to bear. Also, like I said many, MANY times before, this may be the last time I ever get to work on a racing game again. Sumo may not want to hire me, Firebrand clearly didn't want me, and with the sad sorry state of how racing games are these days AND how what games a programmer likes seems to be worth zero when it comes to the company's decision to hire you, I must proceed with Super Sprint even if it's a catastrophic failure and waste of time. Enough said.

------------

That's about it.  And the Racing Game Timeline needs to be updated too.  Really, guys, I apologize if the blog has been slow.  I've been doing work but at things that are completely different from racing games.  Yeah, that's REALLY about it for now.  Really, goodbye people and fuzzy animals.