Some Classic Gaming: RollerCoaster Tycoon 2

The sounds of cash registers, toilet flushing, and people screaming in joyous excitement (possibly followed by the sound of a few of them throwing up).
These noises fill my ears as I play the classic and addicting theme park simulator: RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.

The first stage of my first attempt at re-learning the game.

The game had been sitting in a pile of classic computer games collecting dust for quite some time, but then I got the sudden urge to play it again and re-live my childhood favorite, hopefully playing it correctly and successfully this time instead of trying to make rides crash, people get stuck, and going bankrupt every time. (I give all credit to my wanting to play it again to Vertigo Games' own classic simulation game: ONR2 which I randomly re-downloaded while bored and subsequently made me think of RCT2)
My first park (pictured above) was the "Crazy Castle" theme park, in which my objective was to get 1500 people and have a rating of at least 600 by October, year 4. Immediately the rating proved to be no problem and I stopped worrying about it at all, as I was naturally keeping the park clean, safe, and no one seemed to want to vandalize it at all despite not having a single security guard. The problem was getting people in. I had forgotten about being able to advertise and didn't rediscover it until about year 3 into my park, and as much as I knew that Roller Coasters drew in the most people, they were incredibly expensive to make and took a lot of space, which I clearly didn't have either of.

Pictured: One month before my inevitable failure.

To make a long story short, I didn't make my objective. I was short by about 300 people and had no more room in which to construct in, even after resorting to building a go-kart track almost completely underground to save space.
 Still I couldn't help but feel accomplished, I had started getting the hang of the game and by the end of my allowed time to make the objective, I was actually reaching it pretty quickly.

Being the owner and operator of a theme park is undoubtedly a fun fantasy for anyone to live, and it's truly surprising that more developers of video games haven't tried to cash in on this with any real effort. There are plenty of simulation-styled games out there similar to this (for malls, jails, etc) but few of them do it as successfully and are as addicting as the RollerCoaster Tycoon series (though from what I hear and the demo I played, Zoo Tycoon is an exception).

Going back to play old games is just fun.
-Ryan

Two Years of College Down, Two to Go

Today I took my last exam of the year and turned in my last paper of the year. Of course I have a summer class and a full-time summer job, but this doesn't stop me from celebrating!
With only two years of college left, things are looking up for me. Yessir I'm engaged and half-way through college with a decently good idea of what I want to do with my life!

Now if only those damn neighbors upstairs would keep it down and stop spitting on my sidewalk.

Well, at least mostly everything is going perfectly.
-Ryan

Short Story vs. Novel

I have many ideas for potential stories, but I have recently run into the problem of trying to decide which ideas will be short stories and which will be more novel-length stories.
This is difficult for several reasons, first is that I've never written a novel-length story before. Second is that it's difficult to figure out which ideas are even capable of being long, and which cannot be lengthened without becoming boring or redundant. Third is that it seems some ideas aren't even worthy of being long.

Here are two real examples of simple ideas I have in the works.

1. A person finds a way to never fatigue/gains the ability to never wear out.
2. A person begins having recurring dreams of killing someone close to them, the dreams may or may not eventually begin occurring while awake. The person must figure out how to end the visions/dreams.

They are both very simple ideas that both seriously need to be "fleshed out" in order to do anything at all with either of them. The first should be pretty easy to run with, after all the possibilities of what to do with such an ability are endless; from seeing how it affects mundane day-to-day activities, to how it helps in the event of some disaster.
The second idea I can see myself running into trouble with. It certainly sounds interesting enough to make novel-length, but I don't know if it's possible (for me) to do. It's a very specific problem, and the main character with the problem may therefore not be dealing with it all the time, so what keeps the story interesting while they aren't having the visions/dreams? Clearly this idea will take a lot more thinking out in order to make longer than a short story.
Then again, there's no shame in writing short stories. Maybe I shouldn't try to do something I'm not comfortable with simply out of fear of short stories being less popular or taken less serious.

Besides, short stories make better movies.
-Ryan