Finally got some work done again. Imported over the VFX stuff from But For Now, We Are Young – chromatic profiles and the night filter – and got room transitions working properly. Also, I made some general improvements to the appearance of the campfire, including dynamic smoke (it blows in the wind!) and animations for the flame being ignited and extinguished. The latter two are far from realistic, and I’m thinking about adding a considerable amount of detail to the process overall – small minigame type things for the starters, choosing accelerants and tinder, dedicated UI animations, etc – and I think I’m gonna end up committing to it. I’m satisfied with my progress today. Tomorrow I’ll start working on the minigame for the ferro rod. Maybe I’ll even get to the magnifying glass as well…
Back at this. I said I’d take a break over the weekend, so I did. Did it work as I hoped it would? Maybe. I spent some time after I woke reviewing what I was doing before and going over my notes. I feel like I’m ready to get back to work now. After that I spent some time with Taylor and we talked about the stuff we usually do. It was nice seeing her again. Maybe we’ll be able to meet again later this week. I didn’t get any concrete progress done today but I feel that tomorrow will see my patience come to fruition. I hope so, at least.
I was unable to work today as well, although I feel a bit better overall. I think I’m gonna take a break and do something else instead of just sitting here all day trying to unsuccessfully force myself to get something done. I’ll draft up a new plan on Sunday and work towards that throughout the week. I think I’ll be able to accomplish it this time, so long as nothing unexpected hits me again.
The motivation I felt yesterday – and which has in some form or another persisted to today – unfortunately panned out into nothing. I found my thoughts lingering on something unpleasant and was too distracted all throughout the day to accomplish anything meaningful. At least I opened GameMaker though; it may not seem like much of anything to anyone else but it’s a step towards getting back into it and that, while it may not be enough, is still something.
And something’s better than nothing, right?
Severe thunderstorms all day. I still haven’t found it within me to work on anything but I feel like I’m on the verge of another breakthrough in motivation. I’m beginning to think it was a mistake to restrict myself to working exclusively on We Are Young for the entirety of this month; it certainly helped reinvigorate my interest in the project and led to some work getting done but over time I feel like it’s just begun to stultify my progress to a degree by de-incentivising me from thinking about other kinds of work. After all, the whole point of me starting My Work Is Not Yet Done was to work on something a little more mechanical and systemic in approach to design when I got burned out on writing. I’ll just have to remind myself periodically to check in with both projects so neither falls behind too much.
The state of living fills me with profound revulsion.
For the entirety of the past week or so I’ve done pretty much nothing except sit at my desk playing video games. It’s been exceedingly hot and humid so I rarely go outside anymore. I haven’t done my exercises since the beginning of this month. At this point I’ll have to reset again.
I just realised looking at the date that the month is almost over. This realisation has left me feeling profoundly ill at ease – as it always does. I can feel my life cycling through repetitions. Even my awareness of this is a kind of repetition: I’m sure that if I were to go through my notebooks and look at my entries, I would find dozens of iterations of this exact pattern of thought repeated verbatim over the years. Sometimes even in the span of days.
It’s harder to remember things now, because it’s harder to keep track of time. I’ve become untethered from a fixed and linear understanding of time. Things have begun to repeat themselves; I’ve begun to repeat myself. Sometimes I’m aware of it; but most of the time, I don’t think I am.
Last night I met up with a friend and got locked out of my house so I sat on the front porch for the rest of the night until dawn chainsmoking. I’ve been feeling like shit lately. An overwhelming sense of slowness and decay. I can’t seem to work anymore. The thoughts come too slowly to make sense of: I find myself getting lost in the spaces between them. I’m always too tired to do anything yet too restless to stay still. I’ve been finding myself dwelling upon thoughts of extraordinary violence lately. Maybe it’s just the heat. The wretched humidity.
I haven’t done any work whatsoever this entire week.
The IGDA meeting was completely unproductive. We arrived over an hour late – mostly due to circumstances beyond our control – and spent the next two or so hours sitting there basically just staring at the sky and the cranes in the distance. Not to say that that in itself was bad – in fact, it was very calming and pleasant, and the evening was very nice – but I basically accomplished nothing the event itself was actually intended to provide.
Of course, that was all my fault: it’s not that I don’t know how to network, but rather, because of my social ineptitude, I find myself completely unable to meet new people at all, let alone network. I find it extraordinarily difficult to approach people and only react when I’m approached. In short, it’s the exact kind of thing you’re not supposed to do or be in this world.
Well, next month I won’t be able to attend it because I’ll be in Europe. Maybe by September I’ll finally find it within me to actually reach out and do something.
But probably not.
Didn’t get any work done today, but Sawyer came over and we watched some films. Tomorrow, we’re attending an IGDA event in Brooklyn – the same one we attended last month – and I find it astonishing that a month has already passed and I’ve barely registered it. The night has cooled significantly.
Drafted initial visuals for CH09. Looks like a bit of persistence paid off after all. I’m wondering if maybe I should commit to producing the visuals for each chapter every week? That would certainly help maintain a steady sense of momentum… of course, that’s entirely contingent upon me having actually having come up with the idea for the visuals in the first place, which, especially as I produce more and more of these, is not so certain…
Well, I suppose it’s worth a try anyways.
I was able to recover a bit from my malaise today: I got some work done on the graphic assets for CH09, and so long as I can maintain this pace of progress I believe I’m in a position where I’ll be able to release something tomorrow. We’ll see if this persists, though.
(I doubt it.)
I’ve been troubled by dark thoughts again lately. I’m not quite sure what the impetus is for their return: maybe I’ve been spending too much time alone. Maybe it’s because all my income has once again dried up and I can feel my worth receding rapidly by the day. I don’t know. But every morning, I wake up with hatred and disgust in my heart. I can feel my thoughts growing more erratic, and on more than one occasion I have felt seized by bouts of paranoia regarding the presence of observers where realistically I understand there shouldn’t be any. My dreams have become haunted once again by strange and malevolent notions.
Thankfully, I’m an incredibly lazy and unmotivated human being and therefore I’m pretty confident these things won’t unravel into any larger plots or actions. The one undeniably positive side effect of all this is that I feel much more in tune with my work now.
And yet another day passes with no meaningful progress whatsoever. I didn’t even try today: I woke up in a wretched mood just around noon and stared out at the sky for a bit. Then I turned on my PS4 and that was pretty much it. It began to rain some time later – a real downpour – and it hasn’t stopped since. The temperature has fallen considerably but it’s become very humid. I just feel tired.
I have however come up with an idea for another chapter’s implementation. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get the visuals done by the end of Saturday but hopefully now that I have a good idea about what I’d like it to look like the actual work will come more easily. I’m gonna try to get to bed earlier tonight so that I can work longer tomorrow.
No work today either. I don’t think I even opened GameMaker at all today, now that I think about it.
Today was yet another unproductive day. I cleaned and reassembled my keyboard but other than that I accomplished virtually nothing of worth. I’ve listened to “Goodbye Horses” eighty-seven times in the past two days.
Finally ported over to Studio 2! It was only a matter of time, I suppose. After having spent an entire month working in Studio 2, I’ve gotten too used to its (generally superior) workflow compared to 1.4. Everything was imported smoothly, much to my surprise, and the bulk of the remaining work was just a matter of fixing up 2’s fucking illegible default compatibility conversions with my personal naming conventions. As for the old GMX, well, 1.4’s image editor is still far superior to Studio 2’s, so I’ll continue using 1.4 for creating and editing graphics. I’ve completely purged it of everything else though. I doubt that after this, I’ll ever return to Studio for anything beyond editing graphics again.
I didn’t get anything else in terms of content done today, but this conversion has helped me recover a bit of much-needed momentum and has boosted my morale a bit. Hopefully I’ll be able to get more done this week now that I’m feeling a little better.
Ended up not working on much of anything today. I woke up late into the afternoon feeling completely hungover due to the humidity. I sat down, stared at the screen for several moments, completely disoriented; and then turned on my PS4 and completely ignored my responsibilities for the rest of the day.
I’ve only just recently begun to take note of just how much time I spend not just in front of a screen, but sitting in front of a screen in basically the exact same position for nearly 90% of my waking hours (and probably more, to be completely honest). At first when I think about it it seems okay and justified given the amount of work I have, but then it really begins to dawn on me just how abnormal and unacceptable – not to mention unhealthy – that likely is: and then I begin to think about how many years I’ve been living like this, day in and day out, rarely moving, rarely getting out to see the sun and breathe in fresh air…
Like I said, pretty unacceptable, to say the least.
Didn’t bother making a post last night: it was too hot and humid, and I was far too listless to do much of anything. Today I managed to finally finish working on the general visuals of 03: it turned out looking a bit better than I expected in some ways, although I still have to figure out what to do about the issues with the scale of the view. I also need to work on some more animations for the characters, as well as the actual interfaces for it (which I don’t imagine will be too difficult, to be honest). I’ll probably work on the animations tomorrow, and start the interfaces on Monday.
Independence Day. I mostly just worked on graphics for 03, nothing particularly noteworthy of mentioning. A lot of the work for this project progresses pretty slowly: not necessarily because it’s more difficult in a technical sense (although I suppose this could be considered a different kind of difficulty) but because so much of this game is conceptual. Coming up with all the different scenarios and their implementations is, for all intents and purposes, a seemingly arbitrary process dependent almost entirely on how I’m feeling that day. Although I think my mood has become more consistent in general – possibly as a result of my prolonged (although relative) isolation – it’s still very difficult for me to consistently maintain a stable enough state to work on a project involving this much emotional investment. Well, I suppose I have no other choice but to work on it. Hopefully in persisting through it I’ll be able to improve my resolve overall.
Didn’t get much done in way of in-engine stuff but I got a respectable amount of progress done on writing and outlining so I feel satisfied with my work today. I noticed today just how out of my element I’ve been feeling lately for some reason. Maybe it’s a direct consequence of the heat or something, but I’ve been in what I can only really describe as a palpable state of simultaneous disorientation and restlessness this past week (maybe a little bit longer, time passes too quickly and insubstantially for me to notice these days). I find it difficult to fall asleep and I find it even more difficult to get up. I don’t think I’m depressed but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve been living alone, I’ve been far too removed for far too long from the broader state of normal society that I’m no longer really sure if I can see myself clearly.
Missed the post for the first day of the month yesterday, but fortunately (well, in a limited sense I suppose) I accomplished virtually nothing either yesterday or, for that matter, today either. I attempted to switch back to working on But For Now, We Are Young but I haven’t been able to do anything except sit here staring at a blank screen feeling increasingly frustrated and impotent.
To be honest, the idea of writing now makes me angry. I hate thinking about it, let alone actually doing it, and I don’t care about it anymore. Maybe it’s because my prior attempts have failed so spectacularly. Somehow the quality of my work has only depreciated across all these years. I feel like this project is gonna end up as yet another failure. I’ve completely lost my will to work on it. I guess that’s ironic. Maybe it’s because I’m a failure, too.
Added room transition effect. It’s the only major change, but there are a bunch of minor changes as well including new collision masks and other stuff I’ve now conveniently forgotten. My idea with the transitions is that moving beyond the borders of the room where applicable spawns the player in first) a random map (from the nine pre-assembled ones) and second) at the opposite side of the new room (so for example, if the player exceeds the top bounds of the previous room, she’s spawned somewhere on the bottom of the next one) at a random x-value.
– New and improved tree sprites.
– Moved the draw event for GRASS to its own Draw Begin instead of in DEPTH_SORTER’s Draw. Also changed draw depth for grass: it now will always draw below everything else.
– Added sun and sunlight effect in rmGorge
June is now officially over, and with it, I’m gonna attempt to shift my main focus back to But For Now, We Are Young. I’m very satisfied with my work this month and I hope July brings equivalent success.
