Keeping our spirits up

Hi all. It’s nice to see my inbox full with positive messages from all of you; our fans and patreons.

Sorry for being silent over the summer, let’s just say it has been a crazy ride, and it still is. We are temporarily installed at Blos International, but since FBI prohibited us from using any of our backup files, we are mainly discussing concepts, ideas, and sharing art-work with each other. We try to keep our spirits up. We even flew in Tuck from Red Rocket! Being a local boy working at his dad’s gas station, it surely was a thrill to see him in the big city! We are hosted by Ms. Clemens, and she seems to be the glue our team of programmers need right now. Somehow she foresaw some key milestones in the FBI investigation, and is positive we will be cleared of suspicion soon.

I certainly hope so.

Quick update on yesterday’s post

Just got a phone call. Marie Clemens, head of Blos International. What a lovely person! In this darkness, she seems to be the only one staying positive. It seems that she already knows how this will end up. Like she had already lived through this ordeal and is now looking back in the rear-view mirror. Gosh, I wish I shared her positivity.

Anyway, I agreed with her to tone down my dismissive language about the feds. It is not my intention to affect nor to comment on the FBI’s reputation or work methods, or in any way influence their investigation. Yesterday’s blog post has already been forwarded to many other sites; Twitter, Reddit, even a V-logger, so no point in taking it down now. Anyway, sorry for everything. We just need to stay strong and hope for the best for these poor individuals whose whereabouts is still unknown. All our equipment is seized, so all production and development has abruptly halted. Even though we are being investigated, no one if formally arrested as of yet. Our entire staff will reunite over at Blos International Head Offices soon, to talk about our next steps.

Phew, this is hard.

CSD Games under investigation

Hi guys, this is us again. I’m sitting at the New York Plaza Hotel writing this, just back from a classified FBI hearing regarding the disappearance of three Japanese university students. It’s not easy to write this or to actually understand what has happened, but I feel honesty is one of our main assets right now so I just want to get to it. CSD Games is under investigation for alleged involvement in the disappearance of three exchange students from Japan. I’m a little bit scared to write too much here… Not because of legalities (we got that covered), but rather my own emotional state.

I’ll try to summarize what went down the last couple of days: Two days ago, on the day of our 2nd year anniversary of our Nevada offices, our place was “visited” by the FBI. I don’t know what they were expecting to see inside our building, maybe some evil grand-master with his fully charged Tesla coil. Doors were kicked in (they weren’t locked), orders were shouted repeatedly (everybody understood the first time), and we were basically dragged out onto the street (we could have walked, and – as a peaceful protest – some of us actually did). It took a while for the feds to calm down. Maybe they realised that a couple of monitors and humming computers weren’t going to harm them – or that the nerds and geeks they had dragged out into the street were equally harmless. Even though we felt humiliated, I guess the FBI needed to assume the worst given what little information they had to go on. Whatever. Anyway, we are collaborating and assisting in any way we know how.

We still don’t know what happened with the three Japanese players of Tumbleweed, all we know is that they were paying customers, and that they were utilizing the very same equipment that Dubois has been using over at Portland State. I don’t know what to make of this. People just don’t disappear from a research facility located in a university campus. It’s so weird. Besides, Dubois has been using our sleep-cells for some time now, so we have full confidence that no error was made on our part. I wonder what could have happened.

“dream before time” – Prof. Dubois

The first scientific output from Prof. Dubois and his team of researchers is out! Needless to say, this is way above our heads, but apparently Dubois found a way for a sleep-induced player of Tumbleweed to “dream before time”?? Dubois claims that most of his results are only preliminary, but there are some exciting things we got the blogging-green light on!

So apparently, Dubois was experimenting with Tumbleweed, as he played it with nearly double the output voltage. Don’t worry guys, this was cleared with the local Ethics board on Dubois Digital Submission beforehand. All the paperwork is in order. Through some exponential mechanism (don’t ask me how!), this created a nearly 100-fold increase in the potential charge barrier inside a synaptic chain.

Ok, eh, what? Here is the English version: These are nerve cells, inside the brain, juiced to perform at 100 times the intended energy, while sleeping. This enabled a back-loop effect in which the receiving end fired BEFORE the sending end had created it’s output. Can you believe this?? Dubois mentioned that a test-subject felt nauseous at one point in his Tumbleweed session, due to feeling a foul stench from a trashcan that had been knocked over in the dream. However, the foul stench had been felt before the Tumbleweed had reached the trashcan!! So reaction of the event, was triggered before the actual event had occurred.

TIN FOIL HAT ANYONE???

Happy New Year 2017

Happy New Year everybody! Gosh, so much has happened since I last wrote here. Please excuse our absence, I’ll try to make it up for you! So, first thing first. Our team is constantly evolving AND growing! Our two main collaborators, Blos International and University of Portland State, make it possible for us to expand on our play-as-you-sleep ideas without feeling too large a pressure to push a commercial product on the market.

I know I know, this might sound disappointing to our eager fans, but I mean, let’s be frank here: None of us would feel satisfied with releasing an unfinished game, and even if we were to release Tumbleweed to the public, it is extremely hard to come across a sleep-cell with enough processor clock-speed and voltage consistency to be able to play the game safely.

Having that said, our “procedural guessing” subroutines have been heavily expanded since last time I wrote about them! We are now calling it “brain-wave extrapolation”. One current difficulty is that in order to extrapolate thoughts and emotions into a REM sleeping state, we need to properly seed the procedural algorithms first. Therefore, we are tinkering with different input forms that feed our procedural engine. Do we let the player fill out a survey in a waking state? Do we induce hypnosis before doing so? Do we let the player answer through instinctive reactions in a sleeping state? (such as knee-jerks, the saliva test, or even tooth-clenching)?

All options are on the table! Currently exploring!