Month: October 2020

Took a brief detour to work on another small project. Nothing much to say about it, really; I should’ve been working on Work but the mood just didn’t feel right for some reason, I don’t know how else to put it. Oh, well.

Managed to get a little bit of work done today, which is an improvement from these past few days. Just spent some time walking around and fixing up a few areas: minor touches mostly, small quality-of-life things. I’m slowly working my way up to the dam… hopefully I’ll be able to finish the entire cliff edge/coast by mid-November, which will really ease up the burden I think/hope. 

Tried to get back to work today, but I just got stuck and accomplished nothing. I’ve been feeling pretty bent lately, my head’s all wrong all the time and I can’t focus on anything, especially work. Every time I look at my work I just get so frustrated by my inability to move forward, and that feeds into this larger sense of impotence / disappointment that’s been troubling me for a while, this unbearable realisation of just how profoundly stupid and uninteresting my work feels. How utterly lacking in inspiration or purpose… 

Felt awful today for some reason. No energy or motivation to do anything, let alone work. I didn’t wake up until 1600… I just felt totally empty.

The AI’s now set up about as good as it’s probably gonna be for a while, including support for additional offensive and defensive behaviours such as throwing grenades and calling for support. I also added a few combat lines for them which help to communicate their behaviour to the player.

I think it’s time to finally get back to work on Work tomorrow, I feel sufficiently rested. I’m definitely gonna continue putting in work into the secondary project but from here on, at least until the next foreseeable break, I’ll probably be splitting my time 70/30 (hopefully). 

Spent the night working on fixing up the AI and building a more flexible backend for it. It’s pretty difficult, unsurprisingly; I had to go through several different systems before settling on the current one, and even the current one is not great, just the best of the lot. I think I’m gonna dedicate the rest of tomorrow to getting all this set up proper.

A long and productive workday. Started and finished a fairly involved animation and cleaned up a bunch of the enemy AI. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s definitely getting closer. It’s late and I’m pretty tired so I don’t have much else to say at the moment, but I think I’m gonna add in grenades and explosions tomorrow, as well as draw some death animations and corpses for enemies.

Started working on enemy AI today, spent the afternoon building a bunch of archetypes and figuring out how to implement them. It’s a bit of a challenge I must admit given the more complex terrain layout compared to what I was used to working with before with Hotline Miami, whose boxy architecture was much easier to work and plan around. Considering the nature of the gameplay as well there needs to be a certain level of complexity and nuance in the interactions – specifically in how different states blend into one another – that I’m a bit unfamiliar with by lack of experience; but I’ve been reading a bit and learning about different approaches and I think by tomorrow I’ll be able to settle on one conclusively.

Another productive day. Got a bunch of vegetation done, as well as a layering system that gradually applies a texture over the player character according to a certain mechanic. I said it before a few days ago but I’ll say it again: for the first time in a real long time I feel like I’m actually enjoying myself. Every night I find myself able to work continuously without distraction for hours on end. I hope that I’m able to carry this feeling back to working on Work. 

Spent the entire day working on basically a single animation. While I can’t exactly fairly conclude it was time wasted – the animation does look pretty good after all and I think will contribute a lot – I do think I have to really get better in general at re-evaluating my priorities when it comes to these kinds of things. Hopefully I’ll have something to show for all of it come Saturday…

Took another day off, although this time to work on a side project that I started today. Jacob, Nate and I have decided as of last week to work on some small independent projects for a bit and release them together. I’m pretty satisfied with the direction mine is currently going, although it’s far from my initial anticipated design. It’s pretty satisfying to work with and for the first time in quite a while I feel like I’m actually enjoying myself again making a game. We’ll see how long this feeling lasts, of course… but hopefully I’ll be able to get something done by the end of the week or so. It’s coming along quite nicely now as is.

Too tired today to get much done for some reason. Worked a little bit on brushing up some of the foliage in the areas leading to the dam, but no substantial progress. Gonna check out early tonight, hopefully start early tomorrow.

Took the day off, gonna get back to it tomorrow.

Another decently productive day, made good progress on environmental work, developing the stretch of cliffs up until just short of the dam. The actual contours are weird as hell and don’t at all really correspond with the map – the perspective on this is incredibly challenging to work with, I’ve come to realise way too late – but hopefully I can get it to a point where at least it feels internally coherent within the moment-to-moment experience. At this point, that’s really the best I can hope for, barring a massive revision of a majority of the locations and/or map up until this point… which I really don’t have the time for now, or probably ever.

Created the general template for the radial menu, allowing variations to simply reuse the parent template instead of creating new versions for each. Also spent some time editing the appearance of the menu: it now applies a dimming and blurring effect to the background, which looks really nice. Gonna work on it a bit more tomorrow and hopefully finish porting over the existing functions from the previous list menu.

Finally, a productive day of work at last. I spent the entire day completely reworking the UI backend after realising that this entire time the game has been scaling improperly in full-screen, resulting in a very slightly warped image which I only noticed after starting work on the meditation UI.

This also had the unintentional benefit of allowing me to start using high-resolution fonts, which look quite good in my opinion: I’ve officially made the full switch over to IM FELL English from Batang, and am quite satisfied with the results.

Lastly, I completely redid the action menu, moving away from a list-based design to a radial design. It’s much more intuitive to use, and easier to work with from a backend perspective as I can now freely switch out radials based on context (plus, it also just looks better). I still have to fully merge over all the existing menu-based functionality to the new system, and I also think that I’m going to swap out the text for icons, both of which I plan on taking care of tomorrow. And it’s already the 15th, meaning I’m gonna have to write a new update as well…

Not too much productivity today but I did resume working. I redid Avery’s portrait for the meditation UI – the new one looks a bit better, and will probably be easier to work with – and started finalising drafts for the implementation, which I hope to get started on tomorrow. I don’t know why this all of all things is proving to be so continuously difficult to figure out, but I think I’m getting there, however slowly…

Another day without any work done. It rained all day and my body and mind felt sluggish. I know I said this yesterday but I think tomorrow will be the day I’m able to get back on track. In a few days I’ll have to write this month’s update… I can’t remember a single thing I’ve accomplished to be honest. I’ll have to get at least one thing done within the next two days –  at the very least, the meditation UI – to be able to write about anything. I don’t know why or how time wasted by so quickly… although I suppose that’s a recurring refrain in my life, these days in particular.

Didn’t work today. Felt besieged by a dim feeling of anxiety all afternoon that made it difficult to get my thoughts straight.

Very little practical progress today because I spent most of my time stuck on the actual design of the meditation system. I prototyped dynamic bubble-based system but something about it doesn’t feel quite right to me… it just doesn’t look that good in practice even if the idea behind the design is sound. I need to spend more time running some more concepts but I think by now I’m leaning towards a more static approach, which will take more time to set up but allows me to work with more potentially interesting visual layouts. This is one of the worst parts of development by far, getting stuck on visual solutions…

I also switched out Batang for a font called IM FELL English. I’m not sure if I’m gonna stick with it yet but its texture is certainly more interesting in a different way. I like the way it looks and feels, but I asked around and everyone else seems to prefer Batang as the typeface is wider and more immediately legible. Well, we’ll see.

Took most of the day off today, went to the reservation with Sawyer for a hike up to the dam, and then we got burgers and Guinness and spent some time at the station. I did end up getting a little bit of work done tonight, mixing and implementing some audio for using the tower viewer – just a few light squeaks as the view pans. I think this weekend, I’m gonna pull some overtime and get some work done on some UI: either ActiVision or the meditation system.

Finished up the viewfinder effect for the tower viewer, although I didn’t end up starting on ActiVision today. Not much to really say about it, really: it works as is and while I think the effect can still use some improvement at this point I’d rather just move onto something else and revisit it later. I should start recording a list of things I have to revisit at some point, now that I think about it…

Built the viewfinder effect. Still needs a bit of work because the visuals themselves are a bit too noisy to be legible, especially with the magnifier enabled, but it looks good regardless and I’m pleased to see how it turned out. Hopefully I can finish it completely by tomorrow so I can finally start the ActiVision app, which is what I planned on doing initially this week…

Did nothing today. I awoke late into the afternoon after having experienced several hours of intense semi-lucid dreams this morning which left me in a rather haunted mood. In my dreams, I was visited by some people who I thought I’d never see again and the sight of their faces made me sad. I spent most of the day continuously putting off my work, telling myself I’d do it in an hour, until the hour arrived and I made yet another excuse. I hope tomorrow goes better.

Mild progress today. Spent the afternoon working on some cliffside props, including a warning sign and a tower viewer. Tomorrow I’m gonna work on implementing functional viewfinders for each tower viewer, allowing Avery to look out at specific vistas. After that I’m gonna start working on the ActiVision UI proper.

Got much colder last night, which persisted into today. I spent some more time working on the story structure, and finished up the suspension bridge area today. I think next week I’m gonna take another detour and get to work on building the UI for ActiVision. It’s been a real long while since I’ve worked on stuff back at the outpost so it’ll be a nice change of pace – plus, that’s an essential part of the early game that I’ve yet to even begin to address. I hope I’m able to work well the next few weeks. I have a good feeling about it.

Forgot to record an entry yesterday for some reason; although I suppose it doesn’t really make a practical difference. I started working on the suspension bridge area late last night and finished it up for the most part this morning, although the bridge itself needs a good deal more work. The hardest parts though – the background and figuring out the transition – are done, which is what matters.

I spent most of today away from my workstation, focusing on writing instead. The weather was pretty pleasant so I was outside most of the afternoon. The final shape of the game’s narrative is beginning to crystallise I think. After today’s work I have a pretty solid idea about the structure of, at the very least, the first part of the game. Now I just need to figure out the scaling on it…

Here’s October. Found myself stuck on the observatory so I decided to take a bit of a break from it and revisit some other areas, particularly around the bridge. I struggled for a while to figure out the perspective on the bridge but I think I’ve finally reached a solution. The contours of the cliff in general have been frustrating me for a few months now at this point… looking at the map, it’s once again dawned upon me just how much work is left for me to finish. I fear that I’m gonna force myself into an inevitable crunch at the rate I’m working (or alternately, not) right now. It’s as if somehow, all my discipline has just utterly evaporated and most days I can’t seem to find even a shred of it anymore…

Somehow September’s already gone, just like that… after all the rain yesterday the weather became exceedingly pleasant today, and I went outside for the first time in a while. I just noticed that the leaves have begun to change. Something about the coming days fills me with a sense of uncertainty, although maybe I’ve always felt this way around this time of the year.

I spent a little while working on some of the scenery descriptions, but in reality the truth is I might as well have just taken the day off with how little I actually accomplished. I’ve really begun to feel the weight of expectations and deadlines pressing down upon me, and yet at the same time I also feel curiously afloat and weightless on my own. It’s a strange sensation…