Spent the past couple of days in a general malaise. Didn’t do any sit-down work, mostly just spent a bunch of time thinking about the revisions and problems I went over last week’s meeting, and tried to figure out better solutions. Back to work tomorrow – a month already over, too.
My soul has entered a demented state, I can feel it. Sightless yet untroubled.
Finished up the plot document today, although there’s a number of things I’m definitely not satisfied with and to which I will return soon to probably completely redo. That being said, it’s far easier to build off of something that already exists, so just having this foundation in place will make it a lot less taxing to make the necessary edits down the line. I have a meeting tomorrow to determine initial goals and progress. I’m looking forward to it. I feel pretty motivated right now, just very physically tired. I’ll try to have something to post this weekend.
Been having a terrible time lately.
Beginning to realise that I definitely lost a bit of momentum there with the submission. Not that building for the submission process in itself was the issue, of course; but that having stopped myself, I feel like I more or less drove directly into a wall against which I would not crumple rather than break through. Gotta re-establish it soon. I’ll have the plot document finished by the beginning of the week.
Took a break yesterday, ended up mostly taking a break too, just to get myself back in functioning order. It seems like my body doesn’t heal so quickly anymore. I spoke with some people from the publisher this morning. Set up a schedule for meetings moving forward, a rough outline. This weekend, once I’m back in order, I’ll get to work on finishing up the plot outline so we have something from which to work. I reckon the next several months are gonna be punishing, to put it lightly. But if this is what it costs to get things done, then so be it: it’s far better than just sitting around doing nothing. It’ll get done, come hell or high water.
Got the submission finished and submitted by just after noon. All of the work today was spent on writing item descriptions and blocking UI elements. I actually ended up restoring the original list-based item menu over the radial menu for this one: I’m just not really satisfied with the appearance of the latter currently. I’d like to experiment with switching over to an icon-based format at some point in the near future. I also ended up replacing all the occurrences of IM Fell English with Fixedsys: much more compact, and fits the non-aliased nature of the rest of the visuals better. Lastly, I removed the Chromium browser: as interesting as it is, it’s completely unusable outside of Windows, and right now, causes a major memory leak as well which I can’t be bothered to figure out.
I kinda feel like shit, to be honest, but only physically: otherwise, I actually feel pretty satisfied with my work for once. I have very little faith in the build itself but at least I got it done and in – and now I most certainly have a much better idea of exactly where I’m at with development, and what I need to target for an actual demo release.
I think I’m going to take tomorrow off, at least partially. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet but at the very least, I need to reorient myself physically.
Final day of double-time before submission. Working solely on disabling shit, and writing descriptive text. I’m gonna be burning the oil real late tonight, I can already feel it. Whatever, I actually kinda welcome it. It keeps the days from feeling too long.
Had a pretty terrible session today. I think I’ve rather foolishly overestimated how much I can trust the doctor with certain subjects. No matter: I just have to be a bit more careful in the future. It’s not like it’s her fault, anyways, or any particular indictment of her abilities or character. This one’s squarely on me, and my own inability to manage my expectations. It’s a shame though. I had a lot of faith in her, for whatever reason. What a disappointment.
I’ve been wearing myself pretty thin these past few days on this work schedule, but by tomorrow it’ll be over (or at least I’ll no longer be able to claim it as an excuse). To be honest, I think there’s a very low chance I’ll even pass selection at all. But it’s still something to work towards, regardless.
Spent almost the entire day going over UI stuff. Both the computer and PDA interfaces have seen some general QoL improvements which include a fully revamped built-in “error reporting”, a new (still pretty shitty-looking) dynamic nine-slice solution for popup windows, and macro-based string fetching, which aims to consolidate text-heavy elements into a single area so that I don’t tempt myself with suicide somewhere down the line if localisation ever comes into question.
I’ve kinda resigned myself to the fate that this submission is gonna fall completely short of my overall ambitions with the title – although at this point, I think it’s time to really start asking myself why it’s taken me two years to get to a point where I still can’t even produce a single releasable version of my work that I feel CAN effectively articulate my intentions – but nonetheless, tomorrow, I’m gonna spend as much of the day as I can tolerate adding in item descriptions and brief narrative elements wherever I can, if only just to maintain the illusion that all of this is currently building towards something and that I have a plan.
A bunch of miscellaneous work, mostly focused around the backend for the Log application. I uploaded the first twenty or so entries and added support for reading them from a CSV file, which makes importing them (and eventually handling translations) far easier. There’s a bunch of things I’d like to work on and perhaps completely redo in terms of the in-game computer’s UI: it just doesn’t look good at all right now, and is barely any more functional. There’s a lot more to be written about here but it’s pretty late and I’m pretty tired.
I also removed the cross from Avery’s shirt in the outpost. It ended up contributing too much visual noise when trying to draw animations for using the watch indoors, and felt a bit too on-the-nose, anyways.
Continued working on improving the bivouac animations. I added a new variant of the tarp which is camouflaged, and blends in well with the environment. I’m not sure yet which tarp I’m going to set as the default one, but it should be pretty straightforward to allow the player to choose between the solid-tone, and the camouflaged variants.
I still have two sets of animations to go for the bivouac: putting the backpack into the tent (and taking it back out), and the entire disassembly process, which is going to involve some concerted effort. I’m most likely going to work on the former tomorrow, hopefully get it done by mid-day: and then, Monday and Tuesday are going to be dedicated exclusively to developing towards the publisher target I mentioned yesterday. Lots of work ahead, but it’s nice: for the first time in a while I feel like I’m actually doing something useful with my time.
Late post, but technically the work day only just now ended, so I suppose this still qualifies. Spent the entire day working on almost completely redoing all the animations for deploying the bivouac. It looks far better now: the perspective has been adjusted appropriately, and the tarp now actually resembles a tarp instead of an ambiguously rectangular tube. Just realised that tomorrow (or technically, today) is the fifteen, which means that the first update of the year is already due…
Another major shift in priorities as well for the forthcoming days once this update is finished and published. The publisher’s set up a new objective with a deadline for the middle of the next week, which is gonna have to take precedence over everything else until I’m able to get that done. A bit uncertain about the ultimate prospects of it but I suppose it’s worth a try if they think it’s worth a try.
Decided to shift focus today to diversify. Started working on touching up the animations and interaction flow for deploying the bivouac. I was able to successfully improve the animation for retrieving the tarp from the pack, but had to go into the city to attend to something, so was unable to get any other work done. However I nonetheless feel like I’ll be able to make decent progress tomorrow.
I would like to have the bivouac be directly deployable from the action menu as long as the pack is equipped. With this initial animation out of the way, the most daunting part of that is now complete. Now it’s just a matter of setting the necessary restrictions, and continuing to work on the animations and audio.
Finished up the foley today, but not much else. I got too distracted throughout the day, and on top of that, my attempt at resetting my sleep schedule completely backfired and I ended up going back to sleep until late in the afternoon once again. I still have two more days to produce new content so there’s still time, but I really should be making better use of my time. Supposedly the people at the publishing company will free up next week to talk; I hope that’ll be able to secure me a better sense of direction and motivation. Until then my objectives remain the same.
No work accomplished, or even attempted today. Woke up just before session and by the time I returned it was getting dark and I felt too tired to do anything. Going to sleep now. Hopefully it’s able to reset my sleep schedule so that I can work more during the day.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to get the foley done for the partition curtain, and Avery entering bed. I also would like to improve the animation for her getting into bed. In the afternoon I would like to finish the sprites for the transceiver interface and implement basic functionality for it, including receiving the signal based on the hour of the day (synchronised to the global surges).
Less productive today, felt terribly tired all throughout. I spent the afternoon adding dirt and wear decals to the interior of the outpost. I’m satisfied with the overall appearance of it now. Tomorrow I’m gonna start working on building out appliances and adding interactivity, including hover-over prompts.
Took the day off today. Woke up late into the afternoon, overcome by a strange exhaustion. Reorganised my desk a bit. Tomorrow I’d like to finish up the furniture/furnishings in the outpost and begin working on adding individual functions. I also need to improve the sleep animation, it looks terribly stiff right now. Lastly, I need to assemble and/or record foley for both the sheet partition into the bedroom, and Avery undressing and getting into bed, which will be contingent upon what I’m able to accomplish in terms of the animation. I might also investigate the feasibility of adding a shadow mask over the bedroom, independent of the rest of the interior as well.
Spent the day adding a significant amount of clutter to the interior of the outpost, with the intent of making it feel a bit more lived-in., and visually interesting. I want to spend the next few days continuing to add to it, and expand/introduce various functions to everything. Given how much time the player will likely spend in it, I’d like it to be able to remain as interesting as long as possible. I plan on starting work on the bunker some time in the middle of next week most likely as well.
Stayed up too late last night, felt completely wiped today and wasn’t able to get anything done. Going to sleep early tonight, gonna try to wake up early tomorrow and make up for the lost work.
Spent the day going through the project fixing a bunch of glaring issues that I apparently had introduced some months ago but never noticed. It was taxing, but certainly necessary – and funnily, it’s restored my motivation to get things done too, which is really what I’ve been needing. I’m going to spend the next couple of days decorating the outpost interior, adding more detail to the environment. I hope to have something to post this Saturday. Next week, if they haven’t reached out already, I’ll contact the publisher and see what’s going on.
The doctor got COVID some time in the past week, so I didn’t see her today. I’ve been trying to get back to work these past several days, although “trying” is really the imperative word here: not much success to be found, all things considered. Well, the only thing I can do is continue trying, I guess. The publisher sent over the money, but haven’t said anything yet. I know it’s likely not a matter to be concerned about but it doesn’t bode well for my motivation.
New year, new start, I guess. Strange feeling, for it to start on a Saturday. I guess in two days I’m officially back to work, on a new schedule. I should spend some time tomorrow and figure out what I’m actually going to be doing. Need to talk to the publisher some time soon, too: figure out expectations, timelines. All of this is coming up on me remarkably, uncomfortably quickly. I should’ve planned it out a bit more…
