Another day without much meaningful progress. I woke around 0530 hoping to get some work done but for some reason I started feeling vaguely pissed off so I just spent the entire morning playing Modern Warfare, and by the time the afternoon rolled around I just felt completely exhausted, both mentally and physically. I did manage to make a few minor edits to the areas around the creek (mostly just setting up sound masks, cleaning up foliage) but it was basically just maintenance work, nothing of substance. I did manage to wrap up the endings of the game in the outline though, which has helped give me a much better sense of the overall scope and direction of the work left… now if only I could actually summon the will to act on that knowledge.
Worked on some new environmental assets but most importantly, finished up the frog’s AI, which now includes screaming when approached at night. Not much else to report, tomorrow I’m gonna focus on building more rooms; I’m not satisfied with my current rate of progress at all.
Adjusted the ambient darkness at night while using the torch: it’s now much darker as to emulate a more realistic darkness. I also re-enabled the masking surface allowing Avery’s silhouette to appear behind vegetation, although I still have to figure out the root of an issue that doesn’t successfully clear the surface in certain particular rooms: that’ll probably be tomorrow’s work.
Lastly, I added a frog…
It was viciously hot today, just like every other day in recent memory. I’m too tired to recount in precise detail what I accomplished today but it was a moderate amount of work which I feel satisfied with. I worked on some new rooms – finally getting around to stitching together some of the more disparate segments I’ve been working on the past few weeks – and implemented a global dithered layer to represent ambient/sky light acting on the background elements (essentially, what it does is prevent the player from looking out clearly into distant background elements like vistas once it gets dark, as in reality a torch wouldn’t be able to illuminate anywhere near that far anyways). It produces a rather interesting and largely unintended effect in certain world spaces where environments that otherwise felt open start feeling much more claustrophobic at night due to the impenetrable darkness.
I’d like to say that I made the conscious decision to take the day off (which, even if I had, I really shouldn’t have) but I didn’t. What really happened was that I started off the day well enough, thinking that I’d have time later; so I just wasted a few hours doing random things. Well, I ended up wasting a whole lot more time than I initially intended, and by the time I finally came around to my senses, it was already evening. I must’ve lain down or something because I apparently fell asleep around 1700 and woke up seven hours later in a state of profound confusion and disorientation, unsure of either the hour or even the day itself. I suppose now I’ve already begun in some sense a “new day”…
My sleep cycle has been completely fucked by the heat these past few weeks, and it shows no signs of receding. I’m gonna try to salvage it today by staying up until midnight tonight. Hopefully it’ll work, because in this current state, it’s nearly impossible to maintain a stable work schedule (let alone a clear mind).
Finally, a productive day. I spent most of the time cleaning up the edges of the stream and setting up the audio masks proper. I also recorded some new audio (technically yesterday…) for water (the previous sounds suggested way too much depth – I’ll probably reuse them later though), as well as the pack rattle while walking, and the generic walking. It sounds much better now and I’m pleased with how much it improves the feeling of just walking around.
One of the more significant visual changes I’ve implemented in a while is the rendering of distant backgrounds in greyscale. I struggled for a long while to figure out if I should actually do it, given my otherwise rigid adherence to the hard two-tone palette; but the results look way too good to not implement it properly and also, there’s a pretty solid canonical justification for it as well.
Speaking of which, I started drafting out a proper step-by-step walkthrough of the game’s plot today and made decent progress. I’ve realised just now how vague the game’s beginning is, especially since I’ve made the firm decision to not build a formal tutorial in the traditional sense. I think over the next few days I’ll split the work between building new environments, and figuring out how the plot flow will work, as it’s gonna be difficult I think to strike a fine balance between intrigue and outright obfuscation.
Started working pretty early but for some reason I quickly lost steam and by noon I was completely unproductive. I barely got anything done – just edited the creek a bit, but even that’s just kinda covering up for the fact that in reality, I essentially accomplished nothing of worth. At this point I’ve basically forfeited this entire week.
Slowly getting back into the regular work schedule. Worked on a couple of new rooms today, trying to connect back some of the discrete pieces to the larger section. Tomorrow I’m gonna tackle a bunch of the more generic ones and hopefully get a good deal of the lower section of the map filled out. My target for the end of the week is still a dozen, meaning I have roughly ten more to go in the next three days…
Well, it turns out after all that yesterday was actually not in the fact the last day I’d spend working on the Ghost of Tsushima article, as I wasted a whole lot of time today and random shit and once again failed to finish it. However, I am much closer now to the end, so hopefully…
I suppose at this point it doesn’t even matter anymore, seeing as how I’ve already effectively wasted half a week on this. The only positive – and even that is largely relative to how shit the past few days have been – is that I was able to get a full eight hours of sleep this afternoon after having stayed awake for way too long.
Last day working on this article before I get back to working on the game proper. I hope I’ll be able to finish it by tomorrow. I spent a whole lot of time today reading treatises on classical aesthetics and honestly I feel like I’ve just wasted an entire day of my life away. I suppose that’s nothing new though…
Once again failed to work on anything related to the game: I slept incredibly poorly throughout the night and the temperature spiked at over 100F this afternoon, leaving my workstation too hot to work comfortably without fear of potentially damaging the internals. I instead decided to restart the essay on Ghost of Tsushima and actually somehow managed to make some good progress on it. I feel like I have a much better thesis now that I actually care about. I hope I can get it out by Wednesday or so and get back to working on the game soon…
Man, this heat is fucking awful. I haven’t slept since yesterday morning because every time I lie down to rest I find myself overwhelmed with the wretched sensation of the heat suffocating my flesh. I’m too tired to concentrate on anything so I obviously haven’t been able to work either. And if the forecast’s anything to be trusted, it’s looking like it’s gonna get worse before it gets better…
Nothing substantial to report, just continued working on more rooms. It was way too hot today.
Just worked on a bunch of miscellaneous tasks today, nothing really noteworthy of which to speak. Tomorrow I have to present the game at an event but I’m not too worried about it. I’d like to start implementing some more object descriptions moving forward. My goal by the end of next week is to have finished another dozen or so rooms, and implemented item descriptions for all of the common objects. From here on out I’m gonna have to remember to include this as I’m adding new assets.
Finally got this month’s update out this morning, then spent the rest of the day working on new environments. Although the overall rate of progress today wasn’t great it’s still an improvement from yesterday (although I suppose that doesn’t say much at all). I really need to collect myself, I’m constantly slipping behind these days…
I had initially intended to finish and release the update today but instead, for whatever godforsaken reason, I instead just wasted the entire day away doing essentially nothing. Not only did I do nothing productive or meaningful, I didn’t even do anything remotely enjoyable! There are many days in one’s life that just pass by without incident, and slip just as quickly into the fog of forgetting, with little friction or effort. That’s one thing: this, however, is not that. The sheer profligacy with which I’m burning away my remaining hours cannot just be some accident, some slip of the will. I’ve gotta get a grip of myself and get back on track…
Spent most of the day trying to write the update for this month. I say “trying” because, while I indeed sat there looking at it for several hours this afternoon, it wasn’t until just an hour ago basically that I managed to write the bulk of it. Well, that’s the nature of these things I suppose. As long as they get completed on time…
Too tired right now to do a proper full write-up but I spent today working on three new rooms, as well as a random flora generation engine which populates empty generic rooms with various flora. It makes building some of the more isotropic spaces much easier, although I still have to figure out an optimal horizontal density. I also have to figure out a way to save each chunk to the main save file once it’s been generated (or maybe I don’t… we’ll see how it feels) but otherwise it seems to be working pretty well.
Took the day off, helped Sawyer a bit with his submission to the GMTK jam and then we finished up Far Cry 5. He’s really progressed a lot just in these past two days alone and it’s clear that, whatever the results of his submission end up being, he’s gained something far more important as a direct result of this: confidence in his abilities and potential growth as a creator, which I’d say is by far the hardest thing to find especially when one is at an early stage of experience like him. I’m quite impressed by the things he was able to learn for himself and accomplish relative to where he was when he began and I’m proud of him for having committed to this and seen it through to the end.
As for myself, well… although I didn’t actually do any writing today I did spend some time this afternoon thinking through various things and testing a few concepts for the main flow of events. I think tomorrow I’m gonna try to get that stuff down proper and formalise it a bit more, see if I can hopefully finish up a final draft of the overall chronology by the end of the week. I also started thinking about what I plan on covering for this month’s update; I’ll probably work on that on Tuesday.
The storm really picked up today. It was raining for almost the entirety of the day: heavy downpours, as well. It’s gotten significantly cooler but the humidity is still horrid.
Completely finished up the ferro rod, including audio, and implemented proper selection for igniters (so far, only the butane lighter and the ferro rod are available). I think I’m gonna spend the next few days finishing up some of the other igniters, which I hope to be able to get done this week.
Some kind of tropical storm passed by today, bringing with it a whole lot of rain and wind. The temperature dropped considerably and the air was cool; but the humidity is still horrible, and in fact may have even gone up as far as I can tell. Either way though, it still feels absolutely wretched to do anything: I have a lot of trouble falling asleep, and basically doing anything at any point of the day is a constant struggle against the discomfort of seemingly universal humidity.
In any case, I spent the day cleaning up a bunch of miscellaneous QoL + backend fixes for the firestarting activity, including separating the ring and the fire base itself (allowing the fire base to be built independently from the ring eventually). I’ve changed the overall way in which the post-fire stuff is handled: once the fire is extinguished, a pile of ash is left over, which Avery can either choose to bury, effectively “clearing” the pit for either disassembly (or for whatever reason, reuse); or use as the base for another fire. All I have left to do for tomorrow is to add in the audio tracks I made for a handful of miscellaneous actions and UI prompts, and I should be done.
At some point, I plan on adding in the remaining features, which include stuff like drying clothes (which temporarily lifts Avery’s willpower), and heating up / preparing rations. Those require a whole lot more systemic work though…
Added the firestarter kit materials to the save/load system, which is pretty self-explanatory. Most of my work today involved streamlining the UI for the actual firekit itself. The most major change is that now, once Avery runs out of certain tools (or has yet to find them), they will no longer be displayed in the pouch as if they’re usable. The quantities display correctly based on Avery’s inventory screen in her tablet as well, although I’ll have to do some more specific testing tomorrow to make sure the order doesn’t get messed up if she sorts the inventory differently in her tablet. All I really have left in terms of major functionality is to implement the specific firestarter animations (most of which don’t exist yet), and to adjust the probability of the fire being successfully lit based on the materials present (which will require a slight overhaul of the current system). I should be able to get those done by Saturday.
I spent the rest of the day working on writing, and I’ve basically completely finished Avery’s backstory. Now it’s just a matter of writing the logs and completing the others…
Continued working on UI for firekit, and implemented full interaction up until the point of closing (whether due to a successful setup of elements or because of player input). I’m not gonna write much more because it’s too goddamn humid and I feel horrible but it’s basically done now. The only stuff I have left to do is to implement checks for if Avery actually has the items in her inventory, and to make the animations for each of the igniters as well.
Spent the evening recording and mixing some new audio for fire-related activities, and then implemented the basic UI interaction for the fire kit. It’s still lacking actual functionality in terms of lighting the fire itself, but the player can now open and close it with accompanying sound effects. I’m gonna spend all of tomorrow working on getting that fully finished. If I have time/feeling up for it, I might also create a folding/unfolding animation for the fire kit as well, which would really add to its presentation I think. We’ll see though.
A thunderstorm passed over the area today and now it’s very cool. It’s still rather humid though, and I’ve gotten so used to the heat that it still just feels hot for whatever wretched reason. I’ve also somehow run out of alcohol already…
Drew up a new sprite for the firestarting kit, which took up most of the day: but it looks quite good I think, and will significantly improve the experience. I also changed the way that the player places fire structures: they no longer have to dig a hole (which was already stupid to begin with for regular firepits), but can simply select the option to construct a structure (still have to build the menu allowing other options) and Avery will immediately place it down where she’s currently standing. I’m not sure if I’m gonna keep it that way or if I want to give the player a bit more manual control over where it’s placed, but that’ll be a decision I suppose to make over the next few days.
Instead of working on the firestarting interface like I planned, I instead decided to just bite the bullet and get the per-room save/load system for objects done for good. It was probably one of the most frustrating technical challenges I’ve faced heretofore and not a single moment of it is is what I would describe as anything close to “enjoyable”; but thankfully it’s finished and seems pretty stable.
Tomorrow I’m gonna start building the new framework for the firestarting stuff. Much of it uses stuff that’s already implemented so I don’t imagine it’ll be too much of a problem: I imagine I’ll just have to draw the new animations/graphics and do some slight tweaking. I also would like to redo the animation for setting up the fire a bit; it doesn’t look great right now.
Last night I also finally got around to implementing the Tumblr API for my site, and successfully set up the post fetch and archive. It took a while to figure out and was somehow simultaneously more and less frustrating of a process than I predicted… but at the end of the day I got it done and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.
Not much work today, spent a bit of time fixing up the behaviour for starting/extinguishing fires but for whatever reason I stopped working after that. I did manage to get some more work done on my site though, and hopefully by the end of the night I’ll be able to have the Tumblr API fetch working.
Stayed up all night last night working on my website for some reason. I couldn’t sleep: it was way too humid. The heat dissipated today with the arrival of multiple thunderstorms but the humidity persists, and makes it extremely difficult to focus. With the help of some soju however I was able to ignore the discomfort enough to be able to maintain productivity all throughout the day and into the night.
Most of today’s work went into touching up the effects for the flame and smoke when lighting the firepit. I want to overhaul the UI for firestarting this weekend, and hopefully implement the other features of it – burn duration, blowouts, adding fuel and accelerant, etc – by the end of the weekend. It was one of the first things I implemented – possibly the first system actually, after basic movement – and I haven’t revisited the code in a very long time, meaning a lot of it needs to be updated to the current systems. That’ll be a longer project… but maybe I should get to it soon.
Spent the day working primarily on improving the overall feel and tactility of the environments. I implemented new sound effects for walking on dirt and stone, as well as their respective sound masks in the relevant rooms.
I also implemented a new room-based save system for objects which solves the issue of persistence without having to make the rooms themselves persistent. It uses a ds_map to store a number of room-specific keys for each object that can be dynamically placed. It still needs to undergo a fair amount of rigorous testing before I can be fully confident in it, as the current implement suffers from pretty poor consistency – but so far it seems to work at least some of the time, which is better than the previous system which worked approximately none of the time.
Spent the day just working on new rooms. I also cleaned up the reference map a bit to more accurately reflect the current layout of the rooms. Today’s work was pretty straightforward fortunately and although my progress was a bit underwhelming compared to expectations, the results feel substantial enough so that I feel satisfied with it overall. Tomorrow will probably be the same thing. One day at a time…
Well, the month’s now over, and I hardly even scratched the surface of the amount of work I wanted to get done by the end of June. Looks like I’m just gonna have to work extra hours over the next few months…
Overhauled the room transition system and added four new directional elements that now subdivide the room into nine – well, technically eight – separate quadrants (cardinal + ordinal), allowing much finer control over where to spawn the player during transitions. Players should now have better tracking of the character across transitions.
