No work today: day of rest, and all. I didn’t work much at all last week either although I don’t particularly mind too much, as I spent most of it in good company. That being said though, I have been considering taking a few days off either this week or the following to get some perspective… my only concern is that it’ll potentially disrupt the momentum, although I’d say this week already accomplished that to some extent yet I haven’t lost any motivation to work. Maybe as a compromise I’ll work at a reduced load? Four or five hours a day instead of the usual eight… that could probably work.
My objectives for the imminent future are to finish implementing all of the major functionalities for the multitool, including animations and sounds. Ideally I’d like to get at least one done a day, and set aside time at the end of the following day to clean up and revise the previous day’s work. It’s definitely feasible, I think, and it’ll be a good boost in morale once I’m done (on top of getting a necessary critical function finished).
I was once again too tired to make a post yesterday, but Julia came over and we went to see Ad Astra, which I found quite remarkable in some ways. In the opening scene, a man plummets down from an orbital station to earth; the entire film looked pretty spectacular but that scene in particular was moving in a way that I can’t quite describe. It did an excellent job of portraying not only the vast loneliness and beauty of space, which are well-known at this point; but the banality of human efforts to understand it as well, with very believable depictions of commercial space travel (incl. the all-too-familiar overpriced amenities of the airlines, now also covering interplanetary travel – a hot towel for $125! – and even an Applebee’s on the landing terminal of the moon) and bureaucratic alienation. I found the film’s overall mood to be at once discomfiting in a sobering manner, yet also cautiously optimistic as well, and affirming of human interests and relationships. It reminded me in a positive way of how I felt after I watched Arrival.
Anyways, between yesterday and today, I worked on implementing the rudimentary foundation for actions involving the multitool, starting with the simplest function, which is digging. Well, when I say “simplest”, that’s what I thought at the time since it would involve no interaction with the environment other than choosing a spot clear of other objects: the actual animation turned out to be remarkably complex and involved, if not the most difficult one I’ve had to do so far outright. To be honest, I’m still not satisfied with the one I ended up with – something about the motion looks wrong, like the weight and angle is off somehow – and the sound design is really shit as well but I can’t tell yet if I want to work on it more and refine it now, or move onto the other functions and get those done before coming back and refining each of them post-scriptum. We’ll see how I’m feeling tomorrow, I suppose…
Finished the sprites and audio for equipping and unequipping the multitool (which is basically the e-tool, except it has a few more functions). I also performed some general touch-ups on pre-existing sprites which had some inconsistencies I only just now noticed, mostly with the idle animations and pack drop/pickup. Tomorrow I plan on finishing up the major multitool animations: clearing spots for fires, digging holes, cutting down shrubbery, etc. I haven’t gotten much work done this week so I gotta accelerate my efforts.
Staoue and Kristina came up today. We went to the mall and then to the parking deck of the IKEA, where we watched the sun set. It reminded me of bygone years.
Met up with Sawyer and Norah in the city. We walked by the water and then had dinner at a place that served both corn dogs and Lone Star(!) and it was very nice. The weather tonight was remarkably pleasant, possibly even more so than yesterday: the more hopeful strands of autumn. I hope it stays like this for a while.
Earlier today I worked on some technical stuff, separating stuff onto different texture pages and overall optimisations. Tomorrow I’m gonna start work on animating the various e-tool actions, as well as implementing the submenu for when the e-tool is equipped. Once that’s done I’ll be able to start properly working on firestarting, which really only comes down to designing and implementing the ignition mechanic.
My birthday. Went out to the reservation with Aurora, where we looked at a waterfall (well, more of a water trickle) and the dirt for some time and talked about things. She made me a cake! It was an ice cream cake, which at some point I must’ve told her was my favourite kind but I definitely didn’t expect her to remember that, let alone that she’d actually make me one. It was a really nice and unprecedented gesture, and the cake itself was really good as well. To be honest, it moved me quite a bit.
I didn’t get any work done today at all, but it’s okay. I feel okay.
Worked on the overall visuals of the PDA, adding un/lock and navigation sound effects, and an animation for switching between scroll modes. It feels much better to use now. I’ve also touched up the interaction prompts, making the font smaller, the outline on the prompt thinner, and the overall shape of the prompt itself rectangular (it still starts as a circle, but the corners rapidly flare out into proper edges once the text appears).
Autumn has arrived. I woke this morning around 0700 overwhelmed by an intense, looming sensation of impotence and anxiety. I had another dream about Alexandra – one more in a series of several increasingly disturbing ones involving her over the past several weeks – and it left me feeling immensely uncomfortable and filled with a vague sense of disgust yet also an unfamiliar and perverse longing. I wonder why I’m suddenly thinking about her again, unprovoked. I’ve been experiencing a lot of strange and unpredictable spikes of negative thought lately, although I don’t feel particularly bad and in fact I actually feel better, or at least more motivated than I normally am. At first it was just a general sense of exhaustion, which was unusual but I figured I could just deal with it; but now I’ve begun to start experiencing these weird thoughts and dreams all the time, like something’s moving just beneath the surface that I can’t make out but I’m feeling the ripples of its movements. I hope it’s just the weather, and nothing worse. I wish I had someone to talk to about these things. Someone who could help me understand it.
Forgot to make an entry yesterday – or more accurately, I noted that I had to do it, and just completely failed to do so. I’ve been feeling really restless lately yet also incredibly bored. Any time I’m doing anything except working I feel this vague, free-floating anxiety begin to build. It feels like I’m wasting time yet also I find it kinda difficult to do other things: for example, any time I play a game or something I don’t really feel like I’m enjoying it on its so much as I’m just playing it to get inspiration for my work, which makes me feel kinda bad since I’m not able to appreciate the work on its own terms.
Well, today was my day of rest, so to speak – I’ve decided that every week I’ll work until I have something to post for #screenshotsaturday, take Sunday off, and then get back to work Monday – and I spent most of it in a state of gentle unease trying to do things other than work. The day’s now over and I feel like I’ve completely wasted it. Well, at least tomorrow I’ll have things to do.
Got a good amount of work done, including a new interface for the inventory. It’s rather late now and I’m pretty tired so I’m not gonna say much more about it, other than the fact that, while it’s a shame the older design (ie the physical pack with selectable pouches) had to be discarded, the new one is far better and more interesting, as well as informative. Tomorrow I’m gonna get to work making the animations for it – should be pretty straightforward – as well as the audio for the various buttons and functions. Those are probably gonna be a bit more difficult since I really have to capture and create some distinctive sounds but that’s not too big of a deal for now.
Spent some time with Haolun tonight. It was remarkably cold and dry. I woke up this morning at around 0900 and for the next four hours drifted uneasily between states of consciousness. It’s been harder to wake up these days, and I’ve been waking up later than usual. It’s not a mental thing: I can feel it in my body. Must be seasonal.
I managed to begin implementing a resting stage based on (ie, ripped directly from) the gameplay footage for Death Stranding. Avery can now take off her pack, sit down and rest for a bit, and engage in actions like massaging her shoulders, stretching her legs and taking a nap. Resting in general significantly slows down the rate at which energy is consumed and completely stops fatigue from building, and the various actions restore burnt stamina (alternately known as fatigue).
In general, all of this has made me reconsider the design of the stamina/fatigue system in general. Originally, the way I planned it, all actions would consume stamina and every in-game hour a set percentage of stamina used would be “burnt” (represented by fatigue accumulated), with the biggest difference in rate of depletion being tied to whether Avery was carrying her pack or not. Obviously, I imagined, the biggest drain in stamina would be walking and traversal in general. However, I’ve come to realise that in reality, that’s simply not feasible: a highly-experienced and disciplined hiker of Avery’s level would be expected to be able to pretty effortlessly cover almost 50km a day even with a considerable load under harsh weather conditions (and at night as well!), but there’s no way I can properly represent that much square mileage in-game without turning it into an absolute slog to sit (or for her, I suppose, to walk) through.
That being said, the expedition is also not a long-range exercise and the actual area of investigation is actually pretty small, around 25km^2 (still trying to work out the precise size and scaling, I’ll discuss that in greater detail once I start posting about the world map): so she wouldn’t be operating anywhere near her maximum abilities anyways when it comes to endurance. I’m not sure how I’m going to implement stamina/fatigue in a way that simultaneously represents the scale of the world accurately while also not diminishing her considerable physical clout.
Well, whatever I decide, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow…
I woke today in a state of confusion and vague dread and didn’t even bother opening GameMaker. For some reason, I’ve been suddenly thinking a lot lately about the future – or rather, the lack of one – and it’s really been wearing me out.
Just now, entering the date, I’ve come to realise that September is halfway over, yet I barely perceived its passage… I’ve begun to feel rather sad these past few days although in a barely perceptible way. I’m almost certain it has to do with my body subconsciously registering the passage of time on a moment-to-moment basis, while my mind is forced to catch up in lurches and sudden shifts. Perhaps sadness is too strong; melancholy is probably more appropriate. The leaves have yet to amber but I can feel it in the air already. The coming autumn: it reminds me of the things I lack. I remember a quote from what seems like a really long time ago: “To a hikikomori, winter is painful because everything feels cold, frozen over, and lonely. To a hikikomori, spring is also painful because everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable. Summer, of course, is especially painful…” And yet, autumn too…
Anyways, I finally got around to fixing the UI: and which, by “fixing”, of course, I mean that I just decided to completely replace with a new one. Lateral thinking at its finest, I suppose. Actions no longer show up in the letterbox, but as dynamic bubbles above Avery when she draws close to an object that can be interacted with. I feel like the current implementation looks decent from a technical perspective but also it feels very out-of-place for how smooth the animation looks, as well as the rounded corners (which I’m honestly beginning to dislike the more I look at it). In fact, I’m really beginning to not feel it so much. Well, at least I got the backend done.
The waterfall now has parallax and proper animation, but more importantly: I’ve revamped the transitioner system between rooms. Previously, the character, upon reaching one end of a room, would be spawned on a random point along the width or height of the opposite end, with a check to make sure the player doesn’t spawn inside an object. The problem with this was that sometimes, especially in visually dense areas (ie, the woods), it would be difficult to orient Avery and required the player to actively search for her for far longer than comfortable. Now, each room has a predefined series of points – top, bottom, left and right – where they’ll be spawned in exactly. This gives me a lot more control over framing and instantly solves the issue of players losing track of Avery upon a transition.
I’ve been feeling unusually tired these past few days, I’m not sure why. I wake up and feel… anaemic, I guess, I don’t really know how else to say it. I think it might just be the weather. Either way, I can persist through it, I think. Hopefully it clears soon.
Spent basically the entire day animating the waterfall in rmBridge. Finished the waterfall – it looks pretty decent – so over the rest of the week I’ll have to draw and implement the rest of the background pieces, as well as the parallax for each of them. Maybe even water vapour clouds rising from the bottom of the screen… well, we’ll see about that last one, no guarantees.
It’s pretty late and I feel rather exhausted so I’m gonna keep this entry brief. I spent some time working on completely redoing the way the UI elements are drawn. The good news is that everything – with the exception of the rain, which I’ll have to figure out at a later date – now inherits the visual palette. The bad news is that I’ve completely fucked up the interact and status text and it’s gonna be a total pain in the ass to fix them. More work for another day.
Spent a good amount of the day working once again with the pond, I barely made any progress and got frustrated so I moved instead to general environmental assets. I got some large plants drawn as well as some bushes, although I think the bushes need to some more work, and specifically need to be made larger. I’ve also adjusted the player movement speed a bit and fixed the hand torch’s angle accordingly (it now uses the proper trigonometric formula), and re-enabled the ambient light around the player. It was not a remarkably progress-heavy day but at least I got some minor stuff done.
Spent most of the morning trying to get the water reflection shader working in the context of a pond… it was stupidly frustrated and in the end I didn’t even manage to get it working even remotely properly. I’m honestly thinking about just dropping the system altogether at this point in favour of a slightly less impressive, but far more straightforward solution that I’ll actually be able to understand. Of course, that being said, I still have yet to make said solution, and I’ve yet to find another option that’s free and accepts open-source, so…
I spent the afternoon with Aurora. We went to the diner and then sat by the lake for several hours. It was pretty nice. The sky today was bleak and I felt a pervasive sense of melancholy, although not particularly negative. When I returned home I found it rather difficult to concentrate although I gave the pond a few more attempts before giving up completely. Maybe I should give it a bit more time tomorrow… although I really do feel like I have to move on at this point.
Started working on an effect for potable, lightly-moving water sources such as ponds and lakes. I was able to adapt a shader effect by GamingReverends to accommodate my needs perfectly; I still have to figure out some of the intricacies of it such as how to properly animate things such as ripples within it and how I’m gonna handle blending the water into the adjacent ground near the shores but otherwise it looks about as good as I can hope for.
I also implemented a culling system for optimising instances (and particularly grass and trees) via two scripts from lazyeye. They work by deactivating and reactivating some of the more taxing instances to reduce the instance load of things like collisions. It seems to work pretty well since the framerate has improved considerably but I’ll have to keep an eye out on it moving forward…
I kinda felt like shit today and kept on getting distracted for unclear reasons. At some point this afternoon I somehow fell into a deep sleep in which I experienced a very strange and alarmingly vivid dream in which I descended into an amorphous and constantly-shifting version of my high school filled with my old friends. None of them seemed to recognise me and we were all lost without any idea how we got there or what we were doing there. The rooms were simultaneously cavernous and claustrophobic and while I initially could recognise each individual room for what it was – a certain classroom, the backrooms of the auditorium, a stairwell we used to hang out in, the gymnasium – when I examined them closer or tried to make sense of where I was all of a sudden the rooms seemed impossibly foreign and even ancient, every dimension and corner evading not only description but observation itself. I don’t know how else to describe it. It felt like we’d been wandering for centuries.
I don’t how I got out; but it was as equally abrupt and inexplicable as the rest of what happened. For nearly an hour after waking I felt discombobulated and completely disoriented, not exactly sure if I was really awake or if I’d just ascended (descended?) to another depth of the dream. I was only asleep for an hour but it felt like far, far longer.
I recorded all of this down immediately upon waking but every time I tried to recall some specific detail I could feel the presence of this… it felt like there was something burned into the inside of my skull, that I would be able to see if only I could somehow look behind my eyes. I’m not really sure how else to describe it. Thankfully the feelings have by and large subsided, and only a trace of an unpleasant memory remains…
Didn’t accomplish much of anything today in terms of work; I sat waiting for the mailman to arrive with the new hard drive, which I’ve now installed (and works perfectly). I couldn’t work for most of the morning anyways because Windows was updating, which took far longer than it has any real right to take. Consequently my sense of routine was disrupted and I spent most of the day feeling rather restless, simultaneously wanting to work on something yet too distracted to be able to even identify something to work on, let alone concentrate on it.
This evening for some reason I was suddenly seized with an urge to write something again and in a paroxysm of compulsion I started writing the next chapter to I. Doing so has left me feeling rather drained however (which is how writing has made me feel for years now, to be honest) but it’s revived within me a curiosity that I haven’t felt in a few months – and with that, the inevitable and concomitant frustration of feeling such a strong desire to say something while feeling completely impotent in my ability to actually say it. I guess that’s just how it’s always been though. Maybe some day it’ll change. But probably not.
Implemented waves that don’t really work exactly as they should for some reason. I originally designed the system in GMS1.4 (slightly faster workflow for smaller projects, better sprite editor, you know how it is) and it works perfectly fine there, with the waves rolling in and then gradually receding upon the shore as intended. However, when I port it over to GMS2 – with the exact same code down to the spacing – it fucks up and doesn’t draw the rollback. Something’s up with the way the surface is drawn, I know that much; unfortunately I can’t figure it out beyond that. Well, in any case, it doesn’t look bad as is (although it certainly doesn’t look too great either). I might honestly just completely revamp it anyways down the line; we’ll see.
Also added footprints. Right now they’re applied in every room for testing but eventually I’ll just remove them and have them appear only when it’s either muddy after raining, or the player is walking on some unstable surface (like sand, by the water). I spent an unnecessarily long time messing around with the code for them, and I’ve realised now that not only is the timing of the footsteps off, but the speed at which the animation plays and the character walks is completely off as well, as well as the timing of the footfall audio… basically everything about the player movement is just very slightly (or maybe a bit more depending on how you look at it) fucked up but I’ve already spent way too long today messing around with it to very little avail so I’ll worry about it some other day, if at all. Well, at least the footprints fade pretty well.
+ Implemented footprints with fading steps and duration
+ New audio for footsteps on sand, and in shallow water
+ Created room (rmShore) with new wave effects
? The tree occlusion now works exactly as intended – no more clipped masks!
? The game now runs at full-screen instead of windowed
? The game can be exited by pressing ESC
Spent a few hours trying to figure out why the rain audio wasn’t fading properly only to stumble across the rather obscure realisation that asset_get_index does not in fact take string() when working with sound ids, and instead you have to use audio_get_name() instead. That alone took me far more time than I’d care to admit; then I had to deal with audio_sound_gain not working in an intuitive manner(turns out you have to first play the sound via an id of its and THEN feed the id as the index, instead of just being able to plug in the sound directly)… it was all rather frustrating and tiring process but I guess that’s just how it is.
I also implemented a new rain system which uses particles instead of individual rain drop objects. It looks and works a lot better and the overall performance has predictably improved; there are still some minor issues – for example, the rain falls beneath the roof for some as of yet inexplicable reason, and I haven’t implemented rain splashes yet – but otherwise it’s a good start in a good direction.
+ New particle-based rain system
+ New audio for all rain sounds, wind audio in rmGorge
+ Implemented basic 8-directional hand torch, along with toggle in menu
? Trees no longer are drawn twice and now look much better when moving in the wind
? Wind is much more frequent
? Lightning effect has been improved and now illuminates the entire area briefly
Sawyer came over, we went to a diner as usual and then viewed a thoroughly unpleasant and disturbing film. We then discussed the details of how I envisioned the trailer, as well as my projected timeline for work goalposts and target releases, which goes something as follows:
Next week, I’m going to start shifting focus over to implementing environmental stuff which means new rooms / world cells, as well as all the associated spritework. My goal is to have by the beginning of October enough visually diverse and interesting content to be able to begin production on the trailer. Although I don’t imagine it’ll take too long at all, since I’m targeting a winter release date for the first public trailer, I’ll be working these last two quarters at an accelerated rate with the intent of solidifying the foundational mechanical frameworks while simultaneously developing a wide variety of content for the trailer.
Four months should be more than enough, although I have to be careful given the way I work not to burn myself out or even let that become a remote risk. So long as I maintain my current pace and expectations however I believe I’ve achieved a stable momentum that’s highly productive without becoming conducive to unnecessary stress.
We also discussed a bit about my commercial projections and hopes for this title. I’m not gonna discuss them here because I think those are the kinds of things that – at least during the process of development – are best left private but I will say for certain that I’m broadly optimistic for a number of reasons which I feel are well-substantiated in reality. Here’s hoping my optimism pays off… although first, of course, I have to actually finish the work before all else.
Spent some time this morning sitting outside recording… urination sounds. It’s been unusually cold lately – I suspect it’s the hurricane – but I got the sounds I needed and they work well. I spent most of the day revamping the audio and specifically adding different varieties of footsteps based on the terrain and wetness (which is another mechanic I’ve implemented, or at least begun to implement).
For some reason I still have yet to commit, let alone push a single changelog these past few days: I don’t know why, I have more than enough changes by now to warrant it. I should push my progress now that I’m thinking about it…
+ Implemented biomechanics for urination, including bladder, stomach and colon volumes
+ New audio for urination
+ New footstep audio based on weight, terrain and environmental wetness
+ Added player status UI
? New audio for picking up / dropping the bag
It’s been pretty difficult keeping up to date with posts. Any time I sit down to write I just feel suddenly overcome by immense exhaustion. Even now I just feel totally wiped and it’s difficult for me to formulate complete thoughts. In any case…
Haolun visited last night and we talked as usual. It was nice seeing him, helped me reground myself. I woke early this morning and spent the morning playing through the Breakpoint beta. It’s seen marginal, although significant improvements from the OTT and I’m looking forward to the full thing next month. I’m running out of money though pretty quickly, and I’ve lost all sources of income… I haven’t really had any significant expenses in a few months but even still, my overall worth is so low that the few things I do spend money on somewhat regularly still manage to feel significant. Well, I can’t think too much about it now. I’ve gotta focus on work.
Speaking of which, I’ve finally managed to implement the backbone for the urination biomechanics, as well as the necessary spritework. The system itself works well and is very flexible; it’s just a matter of fine-tuning the exact values. Honestly the most difficult part wasn’t even implementing the system but figuring out how to design it in the first place; it turns out processes like urination and water intake/output and defecation are much more complicated than I imagined them to be and are contingent upon a whole host of factors that make things like universal predictions and averages very difficult to arrive at. Consequently a lot of might just be completely inconsistent with reality – I have no idea how many mL of water are filtered into urine from the colon per minute, for example – but at this point, so long as it feels real, the technicalities can be damned for all I care. I spent a few more hours than I’d care to admit this afternoon watching my character piss and tracking the change in volume of water within her bladder over a day in a spreadsheet… I think I’m past the point of caring.
Finally back home today. After an eight-hour flight… well, I felt way too drained to work on anything. I’ve been feeling some rather complex, overwhelmingly negative emotions as of late that I feel are impending my ability to work. I hope that returning home will be able to alleviate these feelings in due time – hopefully sooner rather than later. I would like to return to a normal, stable routine of living as soon as possible.
In Geneva. Stayed in the room once again the entire day. This room felt nicer than the other ones and the scenery seemed nicer than all the rest – but maybe my perception of it has just been skewed by the fact that it’s the last day of the trip. Hopefully by around noon or so tomorrow I’ll be back home.
I haven’t worked on anything too substantial the past several days, since yesterday was spent commuting and today I was too tired to really do anything. I’ve been having some trouble designing the biomechanics for urination – mostly regarding volume and rate of filtration between drinking and, well, the act of urinating, the entire process of which I’ve discovered is far more unpredictable than I’d initially imagined – and consequently I spent the entire morning reading (or attempting to read, anyways) medical papers of varying degrees of technical obscurity. I spent the rest of the day lying in bed or looking out the window.
I feel completely drained by this trip, and I’m still not entirely sure what the net effect of it has been. It’s definitely taken a toll on me in more ways than one and while I don’t necessarily regret having seen all of these places (well, nominally, anyways…) I recognise now with absolute certainty that recreational travel is not for me and that cities in particular tend to exact a devastating toll on my general state. I’ll be returning home in a more psychically precarious and fragile state than when I left, with a far greater appreciation for my isolation.
And yet, with all that being said… for some reason I still feel a little bit wistful. It feels like the time has passed too quickly, that the trip was far shorter than it actually was (even if the moment to moment waiting seemed interminable at the time). Summer is already over; even two weeks ago seems not so long ago yet it feels so much longer ago than it has any right to seem. I have a feeling though that these things have less to do with the actual trip itself and much more with my general sentimentality these days. I’m not sure though, and that too fills me with a muted sense of… something. In any case, whatever it is, there’s this real empty, almost sad kinda feeling beneath it all that I can’t seem to shake. I just hope it doesn’t persist too long.
