Well, Pie and I had a chance to beat Tomb Raider this week, and we both came out of the experience satisfied. I can see why so many people like it as there is a lot to love. Though I still stand by my desire to see more of a return to form wherein Lara actually delves mysterious settings that including more puzzle and exploration elements with far less shooting gallery moments. I can say that I am rather interested to see what Rise of the Tomb Raider will offer, but considering its satanic pact with Microsoft, who knows when that will be. And here I thought I had some sort of advantage by coming to the party late other than flat drinks and kitchen scraps.

I've been getting some time in with Game Maker, but it feels like I'll have to devote an eternity or two before I have any sort of competence with getting my "games" to act the way I expect them to. It seems like I tend to run into the most odd problems (even on tutorials!) and I can't seem to work out where in the code I should be looking to weed out bugs. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the day where I have enough of a familiarity with the language and tools at my disposal that my troubleshooting Spidey sense leads me down the route to solutions.

Anyways, I'm taking it super slowly; trying my best to retain GML syntax and understanding their possible applications. I've been trying not to work on overly complicated game functions despite wanting to get cool results quickly. I mean, sure, I can copy code someone else has made, but I want to understand what the code means and ultimately, be able to write my own. I've also been doing some tangential learning, spending lots of time reading fascinating dev articles and forum posts. My hope is that with enough exposure and reading my Spidey sense will develop faster. Or maybe I should just go look to be bitten by a spider from the matrix instead. Yeah...that's probably the optimal approach.