New Year, New Me(ss of ideas)

Global GT Lights cars racing in Silverstone by butter_lord and Kad'O

It's already halfway past January and things have been positive so far for me, at least for normal things I do. Past 15 days were filled with me following this year's Dakar Rally while being in awe with how the cinematography are put along with the commentator's plethora of dad jokes, puns, remarks witty enough to wipe floors with Lorelai Gilmore, and sneaks that unfortunately doesn't include Taylor Swift references (but thankfully I got that one covered myself). Other things include finishing Combat Mecha Xabungle which I consider it as an "unserious mecha anime with more comedy bias despite having its fair share of serious moments", and an office trip to Jogjakarta of which I haven't visited the place for a long time, but last and not least is rebooting my content creation project after reflecting on my actions in terms of creations, although I have to say I still have a slow start with not that much post interactions along the way.

Even then, my homework is stacked as the time goes, but my discovery of a new method in creation and a more active community actually help alleviating the burden and actually make the final work satisfying. I do have this target where I need to make sure that I can make good creations and cash in some new audiences on social media on the way to keep the top down racing genre alive and interesting, especially with more games on the sub-genre making their returns such as GeneRally 2. That said, this was something that led to the first ever major announcement for the new project: the 2023 Dakar Rally T1 class cars, three of them, with 10 major drivers represented so far.

But Dakar Rally vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg. It actually started with something that doesn't have to do with top down racers, or racing in general, let alone racing games: Taylor Swift's new album, Midnights.

The Resurrection of GeneRally 2

A screenshot of GeneRally 2 (Image: GeneRally 2's Steam Page)

The year was 2013, GeneRally 2 was announced following the release of the new version of GeneRally. The Kickstarter campaign for the sequel has kicked off and with that, a new hope for a renewed classic that has been around since the early 2000s. The failure of the campaign, however, started a domino effect to the game's downfall, made worse with the silence of the project leader himself James Burgess (although slow but sure there were progression blogs that were written), taking its toll to the community. This doesn't mean the game is dead; GR2 was still being worked on in closed doors while GRPL Discord Server carried on activities in the original game.

Essential Listening: Ridge Racer Infinity

Author's note: I'm not too knowledgeable with music genre so apologies if I described wrong genre for some of the songs featured in this post.

Official artwork for RoBKTA's Ridge Racer Infinity (Image: Firaga Records)

The Nonsense is Back, Evolved as Ever!

Racing. Track featured is Trial Mountain v5.3 by nomscar.

Well, I had to say that I wasn't as active in blogging as before, not knowing what I had to write. That, however, has changed and the motivation returns to me after a series of events in the past few weeks. I had doubts that people would still read blogs now that people are more interested towards video blogs, but even then some things are better done as a blog post rather than a video blog, especially when I think about the fact that I haven't had the sufficient resources for it.

RENDY'S BLOG, I have returned.

And so I shall begin this from zero once more...

I'm pretty sure you readers are wondering why I haven't posted since awhile. If I were to continue to where I was, it'd be another set of KOF ALL STAR posts, especially dealing with a lot of events (which I didn't get to write as time went sadly). Unfortunately, I wasn't at a capacity where I could blog once more and still focused on real life, but most particular my focus was to find the job, something I didn't get until last year where I actually landed one. 2020 was a tough road to traverse especially dealing with the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic which has affected a lot of lives, mine included, and things kinda topped off with the loss of my father who had to succumb to his sickness days before his passing.

However, even despite of that sad story weeks later, I became more determined than ever in searching for jobs, and eventually I hit one; a friend of mine recommended me to a Jakarta-based brand consultation office as a freelance graphic designer and after an interview, the HRD accepted me to be employed as so, ending what I can dub as a year-long and a half drought of job search. To be frank, I had a hard time in traversing the steep learning curves of my job description, but over time I developed more in designing contents despite adversities. Sadly it only lasted until the end of February, but it was a pleasant experience, plus definitely something to expect when working on the creative design field; copywriting, drafting, designing, plus pending revisions before leaving with a final design.

However, things don't stop there as I was called to be a staff in a regency office nearby by my late father's friend. As much as I insisted that the graphic design job was a main one, I took this office offer anyway which meant that in addition of office works I gotta have time for designs, and depending on the copywriting of a particular post, designs can be worked as quick as less than an hour or probably less than a day due to the complexity plus illustrations. Back to the office work though, this has been turns and tides for my first year, and the second year should be as exciting.

As such, what became a continuation of the dark saga has turned into a brave new, positivity-ridden arc, a new chapter in which I've finally obtained some of the privileges I wanted in the past, like an internet subscription for starters. Gone were the days when I had to trust my phone's tethering connection and limited data at home which, granted, was also the same case for my brothers. This also allowed me to buy a cooling fan, RAM upgrades, and a new PC monitor, plus finally fix one of my laptop's broken monitors. While both of these 2012-2013 spec lappies still stand up to this date, I do have plans on buying the new one in order to keep up with more modern specs. Outside of this, I also get to discover a lot more of new games, of which there'll be a topic of its own later on, and get to discover more communities as time went by.

But even with those, there are things I still can't beat even with the new spirit, particularly my Creator's Block. Even with Wi-Fi already in place, I still couldn't able to come up with an interesting topic and perform some research on things within the topic, even can't think about either "will this thing generate a lot of views?" or "will this hold well amidst the era where video essays or vlogs are even more powerful tools than convenient blogging?" This doesn't just affect this blog, it also affects my other blog Fandom Warrior which has been on an infinite hiatus since 2019, and even worse with the  aforementioned circumstances going forward which led me drift away from covering fandom competitions and later TV fandoms, even I don't feel like current TV shows do have this particular fandom energy that would be established years back.

This isn't limited to just blogging and the fandom stuff though, even this also affected all my WIPs. You see, the WIPs you've seen years back still haven't see their light of day in terms of release, and the worst part is that my mind wasn't on the game(s) I actually love due to the life circumstances. I did try my best at a new car last year, got their physics done, graphics partially done with shadings, and that's it. However, I haven't been able to get my hands on further revisions, but someday I'll get those in line. The problem with my cars is that I often go extra on small details, even though it'd be scaled down in-game anyway. It's due to my influence on other cars from another top-down games which made their presence known with their shadings and details, although some are actually taken from 3D models with appropriate lighting.

Despite all of those things, fast forward to this year in which my current life gives me a small advantage to fight the Creator's Block outright. In fact, this is finally where I want to take action; I am not the type of person who wants to have "New Year's Resolutions," especially if you refer to my past blog posts from years back, but I'd like to make an exception for this year because all I want is to fight Creator's Block and become who I was years ago while fusing it with my present self. I just want to get things done and free some of my perpetual WIPs into their rightful state: their release. Additionally, I want to tick off my perpetual to-do list of all sorts, of which some has been done this year, but it's 5% overall, and I expect myself to go ham with it sooner or later.

Hopefully I can keep this blog alive and well once more, like in the past, and that I am able to find some content ideas to make this page fresh. While waiting for my next post, please do not forget to hydrate yourself, it's the most important thing.

~[R]