Month: November 2020

No progress today. I woke up early hoping to get things done but I just wasn’t feeling it. Otherwise, I took a walk with my mother this afternoon at a park in an adjacent town. It was pretty nice.

Slow day today. I finished surveying the existing landscape and finished up the last of my significant edits. I’ve concluded that the best way forward at this point is gonna be to develop a new map of the area, with the current layout as the foundation, instead of trying to retrofit the existing one by brute-forcing it  to the actual physical layout. It’s a real pain in the ass conceptually but I think that practically speaking, I can probably get it done in about an afternoon’s time. I should probably just do it tomorrow…

Spent the afternoon revisiting older rooms and touching up wherever I feel there could be improvements made, either for pacing or consistency’s sake (ie updating vegetation models, collision masks, etc). It’s gonna take a bit – maybe half a week, if I’m being optimistic – to go through and renovate all the existing spaces, but hopefully it’ll set me up in the right mindset to finish off the remaining ones. Man, if I weren’t so exhausted all the time…

Decided against my best interests to take the day off for the holiday although – both in general, and in retrospect – I really shouldn’t have. It never quite fully dawned upon me until today just how empty my life actually is outside of work. How little structure there is actually propping me up, how insubstantial my so-called “interests” actually are. I just spent the entire day mindlessly grinding through video games I’ve discovered I no longer even really enjoy on my own… I can barely recall what I even accomplished in them, if anything at all.

Made steady progress today, more or less finished up the major work on the shoreline, which effectively concludes the hardest work environment-wise (at least for now). The next major task will be to continue developing the interior using the boundaries as guidelines: although originally I adhered pretty strictly to the grid laid out by the map I’ve since deviated from it considerably, which is gonna make further planning (as well as keeping track of both what has been completed, as well as what needs to be completed) significantly more complicated than I’d initially anticipated. I’m no longer remotely confident that I’ll be able to make my desired deadline of having the map completely finished by the end of the month, but I’m still gonna try to aim for it regardless.

Continued working on the shoreline today, made decent progress developing a more interesting contour. Almost done with it… I started looking into therapists today and I found one who I think might be able to help me. I’m gonna reach out to her more formally after the Thanksgiving holiday is over but I’m feeling optimistic about it.

Took a sleeping pill last night to try to get to sleep, ended up so tired that I slept almost the entire day. I tried to work a bit during the night once I woke but made limited progress. I’m gonna keep on trying for a bit longer before attempting to go back to sleep…

Woke up early thinking that today was the day I was gonna get things done, but it wasn’t.

Another pointless day in my life. I’ve been troubled lately by strange and incredibly vivid dreams in which I find myself dying, or being mocked for things I did and said a long time ago. When I wake each morning I feel exhausted, and filled with an intense sensation of dread and shame. Today was another one of such days, despite my efforts to turn things around. I tried to work multiple times throughout the day but I never managed to progress beyond just opening up GameMaker. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything for longer than a minute at a time and even then, I feel disconnected from it all. 

Didn’t get any work done today. I felt incredibly tired earlier and ended up sleeping through the entire afternoon. Gotta make up for it tomorrow.

Still wasn’t able to progress past the room that I was working on yesterday, although I did get some work done. I don’t really know why it went so slowly today. I’ve been suffering some pains in my right arm, around the wrist, for the past few days which have really been sapping my energy to work. It’s like this dull ache which comes and goes suddenly and unexpectedly, and leaves my fingers feeling numb. My body feels like it’s coming apart very slowly…

Continued work on the shoreline today. I settled upon a decent enough solution I think for transitioning to the horizontal bank, but I still have to figure out the specifics of how to work with the contours of the bank itself: as well as how I’m going to justify cutting off the player’s movement once Avery reaches the “end” of the playable map. I have some ideas currently but the issue is mostly just ensuring consistency with the adjacent areas. I feel like I’m picking up speed again in terms of my ability to work overall. I still need to fix my sleep schedule though.

Got some more work done on the coast, added a new index to the lake texture so that it (hopefully) more accurately reflects the direction of the light upon the waves. The next big challenge is gonna be figuring how to transition from the vertical shoreline to the horizontal one. I just have to find a suitable reference, which always sounds much easier than it actually ends up being. I hope I can get the entire shoreline done by the end of this week… but at the rate I’m working at, I honestly doubt I’ll even be able to make it even halfway. I hope I can prove myself wrong.

Slightly more productive today. I set up and launched a Discord server for my work, which so far has turned out much better than I initially thought it would. A lot of the people are pretty familiar, which is nice. I hope it continues to function well as intended moving forward. It’s nice to have a small space again where I can talk to people about things.

I also set up the system for smoking today, and split the vomiting mechanic into two separate variables: toxicity, and nausea. Nausea is accumulated by things like smoking too much and builds up incrementally, but also subsides on its own with time, and is completely cleared to 0 after vomiting. Toxicity on the other hand builds up progressively and stacks based on things like ingesting toxic substances or wounds becoming infected. Toxicity is not fully purged after vomiting and instead requires an antidote injection in order to completely neutralise and flush out the toxins from her system (which will cause Avery to develop a moderate fever, weakening her for one in-game day).

Completely fell behind again these past two days for no real reason. It’s starting to get to be a real problem… this month’s update was supposed to release today but not only did I not do that, I completely lost track of the date and forgot about it until well into this afternoon. I have to finish and publish it tomorrow, although I’m not sure what I would even put in it, as my “progress” these past two weeks especially has been, well, nonexistent…

Wasn’t able to get as much done today as I did yesterday unfortunately. I woke up in a vaguely troubled mood because of some horrible thing that happened in my dreams last night, and I found it subsequently difficult to concentrate all throughout the day. I’m not yet sure what I’m gonna post tomorrow but I hope that whatever it is, it’ll give me the necessary impetus to get back to a more normal work schedule, even if it only lasts just a day.

The most productive day I’ve had in a week, although I guess that’s not saying too much. I worked for about three hours continuously, working on laying out and building new sections of coast around the lake. I got a few new spaces done, and also managed to spend some time during the evening working on a new sketch, the first I’ve done in a while. It was a decent challenge as I wanted to work in a few more colours than I’m used to – an eight-tone major palette, with a ninth and tenth outline/highlight tone – but I think it turned out looking quite nice.

Didn’t get as much done today as I would have liked. I woke up late in the afternoon despite some efforts trying to get to bed earlier, and spent the afternoon sorting through references. I recorded a bit more rain audio as well because there was a continuous heavy downpour this afternoon, but it didn’t end up coming out as well as I’d liked unfortunately, and I don’t think I’m gonna be using it.

Slowly getting back into it. I spent most of my work time today laying out plans for the next several days, including a to-do list for various front-facing assets and stuff along with directly development-side objectives. I think this month’s update is gonna be light on new content, and focus mostly on just showcasing visual changes.

I think this might be the longest I’ve gone having consecutively skipped writing a day’s entry since I started keeping these logs. I’ve just felt acutely sad and distracted these past few days for some reason, like my sense of purpose has become completely displaced. The other day I purchased Fallout 4 with the intent of upgrading my workflow from Skyrim, which had begun only very recently, to my surprise, showing its age in terms of the kinds of landscapes and shots I could set up. Switching over was definitely a good idea, as 4 has a lot better built-in support for more modern gear and whatnot, which is more appropriate for the settings and themes I typically cover.

The big issue though is that I completely lost sight of that goal after the first day and basically got completely enthralled with setting up my mod order. I’ve just been staying up late every night obsessively sorting through files and ordering dependencies to the point where I often find myself losing track of time, as if I’ve entered some kind of stupor. There’s a kind of strange, wretched pleasure to it: the monotony and frustration, the rare moments of thin elation when the game finally is able to launch even if just for a minute. It’s been almost a week now since I’ve worked on My Work is Not Yet Done and I need to write this month’s update later this week… I have to get back to work soon and finish what I set out to do.

Yesterday, Sawyer came over for the first time in a while (originally we were supposed to meet Saturday but I woke up too late). The weather this weekend was unusually pleasant compared to the cold of the past month or so and it was nice to walk around with him again. We watched a film called Gonjiam: The Haunted Asylum, which I’d been meaning to watch for a while but couldn’t summon the courage to do so myself. It was somehow scarier than I thought was initially possible.

Spent about an hour earlier today working on a new world cell, but I was too tired to do much and I fell asleep for most of the evening. Man, I really gotta fix my sleep schedule… the funny thing is that it wasn’t even the switch from daylight saving time the other day that threw me off (at least not perceptibly, anyways), but just something completely arbitrary it seems. Sawyer’s coming over for the first time in a while tomorrow and the weather will be unusually pleasant according to the forecast, so I’m looking forward to that. I hope it’s able to set me back on schedule for next week.

Took another day off, had to resolve some personal issues. Nothing serious, just the usual. I should be back to work this weekend hopefully, just gotta continue moving forward on the environmental work.

Took the day off to attend to some personal business. Will get back to it tomorrow.

Woke up pretty early and started making good progress on the coastline around the lake… but then for whatever reason, around noon my energy rapidly began to dwindle and I found myself physically drained soon after. I still got a decent amount of work done today but hopefully this doesn’t happen again tomorrow.

Another productive day: finished up the dam more or less completely, and even came up with a pretty interesting way to rather seamlessly resolve the issue of blocking the dam off in the process. The hardest part is basically done now, and I think I’m gonna just continue to work up the coast of the lake until I reach the edge of the map, and then go backwards from there. With this hurdle out of the way, I’m optimistic that I might even be able to completely finish the map by the end of the month, which would be really good in terms of progress, and give me significantly more time to plan ahead. For now though, best to just stay in the present and get it done before losing myself too far ahead in the schedule.

Started off the month pretty well, got all the backgrounds done for the dam and even fully built a new world cell, the entrance area for the dam. It looks a bit weird I think if one were to consider the practical implications of it… but at this point I’m not really worried about that anymore. I’m also thinking about potentially moving the abseiling point from the bridge to the dam: it makes a lot more sense both visually and realistically, I’d just have to figure out the logistics of how it’s gonna end up looking and playing out. In any case I feel a significant weight has just been lifted off my back now that I’ve finally finished the hardest stretches of the cliff. It’s not as large as I’d initially wished for… but it’s good enough I think.

October’s over now, I guess… this month’s been unusually hard for some reason but at least it ended on a good note. A few of my friends from school came over to visit and watch a film. We decided to watch The Wailing. I had a good time, and it was nice seeing them. It was a much-needed boost for my mood. My BLACKPINK stickers also came in the mail today, and for some reason looking at them made me feel a bit better as well. I hope I’m able to enter November with more optimistic feelings…