05112019

Yet another day of slow progress. Implemented, amongst other things, the animation for setting up the tent, so now the player is able to unpack the tent tarp from the pack (the unpacking animation still needs to be fixed because the backpack is open when the player goes to retrieve it, but closed when the tarp is detached), carry it to a location, unroll it, plant the stakes, and set up the interior framework. Tomorrow I’ll work on an animation for entering the tent. 

I have great difficulty getting anything done during the daytime, and it’s only really these last few hours at the end of the night, between midnight and 0300, that I find myself really able to focus on what needs to be done and, more importantly, actually get it done. My mind wanders far too much during the daytime, over the slightest divergences and distractions: even now, though, every other word I type, I find myself standing up and pacing around for a few moments before being able to move onto the next sentence. This has always been a problem throughout my life but some days it gets more severe than others and I feel like lately it’s been getting worse, despite the fact that overall I feel a clearer sense of purpose than the last several years combined. I don’t know what it is or how to fix it, or if there even is anything I can actually do about it. Like always though, I suppose the only thing I really can feasibly do is just continue working on schedule and hope it goes away on its own.

I saw this interesting quote today on Twitter from Brian Eno (excerpted from a 1995 book of essays called A Year With Swollen Appendices), which I’ve since clipped for posterity:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit – all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”