Going-Ons of Tadukoo

 I previously talked about the Tadukoo Bible Project . I mentioned that "any truth is God's truth". While that's true, it has to be understood how you find truth. How you find truth is a philosophical topic that is part of the study of epistemology. While it's a very interesting topic to talk about with all the various philosophers and their ideas, I'm not going to go into detail about all that here, but I'll present a bit of my experience in college philosophy. Early on in the class, we talked about different kinds of relativism (ideas that certain contradictory truths could both be true). I wrote them down, noting how crazy they seemed and figured we'd discuss why they're false. We didn't. I can't recall talking about any philosopher who accepted the obvious fact that absolute truth exists and that relativism is a joke. Let me clarify (since there are many varied definitions of relativism), that I am saying that to say two things are true...

 The idea with being creative in the Tadukoo Bible Project  can be misinterpreted (just like anything can be). For example, someone could think a way to be creative would be to present an idea that goes against what I believe and then refuting it and presenting my belief. While this is creative (and could be used honestly in the project), it can easily be done in a harmful way. If I would present an idea as true for 15 minutes in a 30 minute video without any notes in those 15 minutes (or the title or description) that I don't believe the idea, but then in the 2nd half of the video refute the idea and present my idea as true, it wouldn't be good. Some people would quit watching in those 15 minutes with the idea that I believe whatever I was presenting, which would be giving them the wrong idea. A better way to do it would be to include somewhere at the beginning (or in the title or description) that I'm simply presenting the idea and will refute it later (and I could includ...

 The Tadukoo Bible Program is a program I'm working on that will replace the Tadukoo Bible Bukkit plugin. It took months to make the Bukkit plugin because I was hand-copying verses from biblegateway.com and then formatting them into yml format. Now with the program, I can download them all (and have them formatted into Properties automatically) in 17 minutes. I also wrote a secondary plugin to take those yml files and format them into other yml files to fit into Minecraft books. Originally, it took about 2 minutes per chapter, meaning 39 hours of running the plugin. Now the program takes 2 minutes to do this. The program is being designed so that it can be reused for Bukkit, Spigot, Spout, Forge, Sponge, as a stand-alone program, and much more rather than just Bukkit or one of the others. Currently, it only runs as a program, but I'll soon be making it work with Bukkit (and Spigot). The others will come in time, and hopefully I'll be able to re-use it for so much more in th...

I recently talked about my new goal being the Tadukoo Bible Project , and that things should either be reconciled to the new goal or stopped. This post is about how I can reconcile things to the new goal. Regarding TAG (the game I've worked on programming and have posted about multiple times), to reconcile it, I'd simply have to give it a good moral message (or multiple). Any other games I would make would also need a good moral message or to be specifically about God. The API and Engine I've been designing don't really need reconciled, because they are tools to use to make other programs. Minecraft with Tadukoo would change in some way that I'd talk about God or His knowledge and wisdom in the videos as the main subject. Minecraft: Order of the Stone: A Retelling of the Cave Game would change so that I not only talk about the history of Minecraft, but events from those days in a Christian worldview and potentially my life in those days. Any other YouTube series wou...

 Recently, I went looking for sources for my apologetics research. I ended up finding an e-book called Apologetics Challenge. The first challenge is to write a mission statement, so I did. I wrote that I want "to creatively hand the world God's knowledge and wisdom". That is my goal in life now, and the basis of the Tadukoo Bible Project. I've realized that the other things I've done or am doing should either be reconciled to this goal or ceased, and I'll write another post describing what will be reconciled and how in the future. This post is to explain the idea of the Tadukoo Bible Project and the things that are already included in it. First I want to explain the goal better. God’s knowledge and wisdom is primarily the Bible, but by extension any truth is God’s truth, so any truth can be included. I separate knowledge and wisdom, because knowledge means simply knowing something is true; wisdom means knowing how to apply that truth. I say creatively to combi...

 I've noticed that recently I've been posting a lot of "here's my updated plans" posts. So I want to do something different this time. I want to look at the history of this blog. It's weird to say that, because it seems like not too long ago I started it, but it has been eight months already. Apparently according to my first post , I actually had made this blog at some point years ago, but never really used it. I had to switch the blog ownership to my current email address so I didn't have to switch to my old one all the time to make posts here. That first post was on December 29th, and I listed the topics I'd discuss as programming, philosophy, theology, and YouTube. Looking at the history so far, it appears programming and YouTube got a lot of posts, but not so much (or really at all) philosophy and theology. Later that same evening, I made a post about how I got into making TAG , including a short explanation of the working storyline. Looking at it ...

 The purpose of this post is basically to say what my current status is for a bunch of plans I have and where I plan to go with those plans. This is not to be a detailed list of all the plans, just a summary of the plans. Likely posts will be made in the future detailing specific plans more. TAG With TAG, I have done the Tengdev v.0.0.7.0 update, which was to add the remaining Prologue areas that were planned for the game and setup the passages to go between them. That was completed on time on July 31st. Since then, I have simply been updating the game to newer API and Engine versions. The Player Select Menu is still planned for the end of this month, and the More Sounds/Halloween update, Certain Animations/Thanksgiving/Anniversary update, and Debug Improvements/Christmas update are still planned for their respective dates. The "Hacking" Basics update is now planned for January 31, 2017. I have plans for 14 more updates from February 28 to July 10, 2017, which I will discuss ...

 This post is to talk about my current plans for games. I'll start by going over the plan for TAG and any changes to it, then into the other games, and a little bit about the current API and Engine plans. TAG The goal with TAG for the end of June was to finish the API, Engine, and Game separation, which was Pre-Alpha v.0.0.6.0 of the game. I did separate them, but the meaning of that changed. The original idea was that the API and Engine would be completed (for now at least), which did not happen. There are about 20 changes to the API and 3 changes to the Engine that I'd like to make in order to complete them (when I say complete, I mean get them to a point I'm comfortable with for now, there will of course be more changes in the future). I will consider the API and Engine to be in Beta when I get them to that point. Since v.0.0.6.0, I've been pretty much only working on the API and Engine, and all updates to TAG were simply to update to the newer API and Engine version...

 Just as a note before we get started, I always have to type and delete "so" at the beginning of every blog. "So" is my go-to word to start a sentence after thinking about it for a bit. If you see the word "so", I probably thought about that part of the post for a while. Anyway, last post  I talked about the resolutions I made at the start of the year and the updates to them. There's just one thing I forgot. I forgot about the separation of API, Engine, and Game leading to the possibility to create more games and programs easily and that I wanted to make new games and programs in order to improve the API and Engine. That's why in the original resolution ,  I had the section to create two games using the API and Engine. In the current one, I simply said I'd like to make games, but I'm not sure when. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I've been inspired by Minevolution  (a minecraft cookie clicker-type map), the Upgrade Compl...

 I posted here  before my New Year's Resolutions (well, some of them), and I'm here now to say: I haven't done them. At least not most of them. I haven't touched TAG since February, I haven't worked on other games or any Bukkit plugins at all, I didn't work on upcoming series for YouTube, there is no season 2 of either Minecraft with Tadukoo or Minecraft: Order of the Stone: A Retelling of the Cave Game, and I didn't make a compilation video for Minecraft with Tadukoo either. What I did do, though, is finish out season 1 of both of those series. And that's it. This post is to update the resolutions. So I'll be stating for each thing where I would be if I had stayed with the original resolution, and then an updated version (which can go into the next year if it needs to). I've also realized that the resolutions I make should be updated more frequently. Because of this, I'll be keeping up-to-date resolutions on either my wiki or somewhere else....

I'm gonna get straight to the point here. Last month or so, I believed that God was telling me to stop going to college for a year. By this, I mean instead of going back in the fall, I wait another year and go back the following fall. But now, I'm not so sure. The problem lies with whether God really told me that or not. If He really did, then I should do it. If not, I still could, but probably shouldn't (unless I figure out on my own that it would be better in some way). I was really confident back then that God was telling me that, but I didn't really think to myself, "Is this God talking?" or anything like that. Now figuring out whether it was God or not isn't really doubting God, because you don't know whether it's really God or not. If you know for sure it's God and question it, that's doubting God. So another question is what I'd be doing in that year. I would be working on my idea of CUR, where I'd be making YouTube videos fo...

 As you can see, I've been making about one post a month. I didn't really plan that, it just sort of happened. I remember back in December and January, I thought I'd be making two posts a day every day. Of course that hasn't happened, due to college and work taking a lot of time out of me. There's a lot I could talk about on here, but I never get around to it. For me, my last day of college this semester is Thursday. So now that I'll have more time, I'd like to make a post at least every other week, but preferably every week (or more frequently). I'm afraid that making one more than once a week would lead to me thinking I have nothing more to say (regardless of how false that is). So expect a post later today (possibly in the next hour), and then one two weeks from today.

 It all started back in December 2012. Sometime that month, I was sitting down on the couch, reading my Bible. I read a verse and thought "that would be good for a video". The problem with thinking that is I had no intentions to make any videos, so there's no reason I'd ever think that. Immediately after I thought that, I had a vision of making a video for YouTube where I was talking about God. I didn't think much of it then, but I kept having similar thoughts involving making videos, including visions and hearing voices. On February 12, 2013, I was listening to "Unrestrained" by Jeremy Camp, and it inspired me to try to be "completely unrestrained" for God, giving up my fears to focus on God and the Bible (or something like that). Sometime around then, I was recruited by the director of the dinner theater at church to make a video used to promote the dinner theater. The video was to the song "If You Died Tonight" by Big Daddy Weave (...

 At the beginning of the day on March 11th, I was subscribed to 69 YouTube channels. That's not some sort of sick joke, that's the actual amount, and I didn't plan it. Now I'm only subscribed to 14. I got rid of 55 subscriptions! So what happened? I realized how much of my life was being wasted by watching YouTube videos. Admittedly, it's not entirely bad to watch a video now and then, but I was watching them for the vast majority of my free time. As a Christian especially, that's bad. From a secular viewpoint, you're simply wasting your life. But from a Christian viewpoint, you're spending so much time on pointless videos when you could spend at least part of that time with God. Back in July (wow, it's been really long), I decided to do a 1 year limited YouTube fast. It was limited because there were certain reasons I could watch videos. Specifically, there were 10 exceptions. They were: Video is required by college, work, etc. (of course) Video is ...

 So I was thinking about how people use Google Translate to get weird mis-translations of things. I've done it several times before. But then I remembered that the thesaurus has some weird synonyms for words, so I wondered what would happen if I went there and "translated" stuff? I took the description of this blog, "Ramblings about my programming, beliefs, videos, and more." and I got "Obiter dictums touching on my penciling in, postulations, telegenics, as a consequence over and above." Essentially what you do is look at the list of synonyms and pick the silliest one. At first, I was thinking I would take that description and improve it with the synonyms that came up, but the temptation came to do this instead. I think I originally used a thesaurus to get "Going-Ons of Tadukoo" as the name of the blog, but I'm not sure whether that actually happened or not. Perhaps I could also use antonyms for more funnies in the future. I have no idea...

 When I first started the blog, I was doing two posts a day. I thought that I would end up doing two posts a day everyday. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. The reason I was able to do two blogs a day in the beginning was because there was a lot of information I wanted to share at that point. I should've spaced it out to at least one post a day, so that there wouldn't have been such a gap until now. Anyway, I'd sort of like to make one post a day, but I know that won't happen. So right now I'd like to make one post a week at minimum, preferably two or three per week. We'll see what happens.

 I made the base engine that I planned on doing when I last talked about developing the game. I'm currently working on Pre-Alpha v.0.0.5.22R152 DEV of the game, and I've been thinking about the future of it. The goal of v.0.0.5.22 is to get the game back to working again by making the Controls part of the Engine (/Game within the new Engine?). So far the only thing I need to do yet is to get the Player to display again and get the movement of him down in the Controls. After that, I'm going to remove the old engine stuff (Framework and such), and make sure all of it ended up in the new Engine in some way (no feature loss). From there, I'm going to separate the model and controller stuff in the API, then the Engine (if any), then the Game. After that, I'm going to improve a few classes to be better in the API. Then, I'll make it so that ultimately, everything drawn to the screen is an extension of DrawableObject and that basically all of the API extends from that ...

 As I mentioned in the New Year's Post , I plan to work on bringing Proving Creation to my YouTube channel this year. Proving Creation is a series that I had planned since February 2015. I had originally thought about it beforehand, but February 2015 was when I started forming the basic progression of the series. The plan eventually became: Prove that a god/gods must exist. (Defeat Atheism and Agnosticism) Prove that there is only one God. (Defeat polytheistic religions) Prove that God is personal. (Defeat monotheistic religions that have a non-personal god) Prove that the God of the Bible is the true God. (Defeat monotheistic religions that have a personal god, excluding Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism) Prove that Islam is wrong (Prove their god is different from the Christian God) Prove that certain denominations have God wrong. Show other evidence that confirms the Bible. I also had a way I planned to create/prepare the content for the series, but that may be for ano...

 As I normally do at the new year, I try to make plans for where I'd like to get this year with stuff I'm working on. In this post, I'll be showing my plans for the year for programming and YouTube. Please note that all plans may be changed throughout the year (not in this post), and this only reflects the current plan as of 1/1/16. Plans that have dates closer to the end of the year will probably receive the most change of all. Programming TAG For TAG, I'd like to finish the API, Engine, and Game separation by the end of March. By the end of April, I want to get to v.0.0.7.0, which would put all the Areas from the Prologue into the game. This doesn't mean the Prologue will be complete, just that you can go to all the rooms in there (at least main storyline rooms). By the end of June, I'd like to get to v.0.0.8.0, which would see a Player Select Menu when starting a new game (so you can choose other player sprites if available and choose Markiplier mode once aga...

 My current plan with my game (and beyond) is to get the API, Engine, and Game separation finished. That would get it to v.0.0.6.0. Also, then I would have an API and Engine upon which I can build various games. My plan at that point is to make one simpler game (like maybe some Pacman-type game or something). Then I can use that simpler game as something to show people if they ever ask what I've made. Also I can finally say I made my own game from scratch (because the API, Engine, and Game itself would be my own making). Ultimately with the API and Engine, I'd like to have them set-up so that I could make any program using them. So I could make a text editor if I wanted to, or a decoder for some code system I make up. I'd also like to eventually make a program that you can use to create programs from the engine and API. Like it gives you access to the API in order to use it correctly when developing your program, but the engine code is obfuscated at the time. Then when you ...