A calm, pleasant Thanksgiving. I finally decided to start working on the template project today. Got basic movement and tile-based collision set up. Most of this, honestly, is just me trying to figure out new techniques. The main project has become too unwieldy to start experimenting with radically different approaches to structural design and implementation. I feel for the first time in a long time that I’m not only capable of improving my technical skills, but actively interested in doing so. There’s a certain pleasure I’ve been rediscovering as of late in sitting down and learning these things that in the past I was so loath to do now that my ability to grasp it is no longer tied directly to a graded assignment, and no one is watching. I want to start setting up the inventory system tomorrow, and see if I can figure out this business with structs.
Steady progress refactoring asset and variable naming conventions. The problem with this though is that it grants the illusion of meaningful progress — which is not, of course, to deny that meaningful progress is being made, just not visibly — when in reality there are far more pressing things to work on that would visibly and structurally advance the game, that I’m deliberately avoiding because… I don’t know.
Something that I’ve been quietly frustrated about for a very long time but which I only just now realised in full is how slow the game is to start and test. Every time the game launches it feels like it takes forever to get to the parts I’m actually working on, which has gradually but steadily sapped my desire to work on important plot-related implementations. I need to develop a better system for testing moving forward, or run the easy risk of burning myself out again on invisible back-end work, for which I have little to show at the end of the day.
During the process of refactoring, I’ve also come to realise how many systems there are in the game that are just outright redundant, if not entirely irrelevant at this stage, that are eating up time and energy in maintenance. The logistics of this project have become, if not outright unmanageable, far too bloated for my comfort, to the point where they’ve become an active distraction towards future developments.
I was seized this afternoon while sitting at my cubicle counting out the parentheses in a preposterously long Excel formula with the sudden desire to revisit a plot for Plan. I rather hastily sketched an outline for a revision and found myself contemplating for the hundredth time this year whether this year would finally be the year I committed to learning Unreal Engine. This feeling dissipated some hours later as I sat in front of the IDE repeatedly trying to click on a dropdown element that refused to stay open longer than a split second, rendering my newfound optimism rather dull. Nonetheless, it got me writing again, and I opened Gamemaker for the first time since apparently September.
I want to get back to making games again. I don’t know how I’m going to make it work logistically — the commute on this new job is a terrible time thief just on its own — but the more I think about it, the more strongly I feel that this is the right thing for me and this is the right time to feel it out again. No distractions in my life anymore, for better or worse. With everything that’s happened this year, maybe that’s not the worst thing.
The days have been calm and uneventful. I’ve been living in an unhurried, maybe undisciplined manner. The days flow by evenly and without much disruption or texture. I haven’t worked on the game in some time: nearly all of last month, I reckon. I’d like to get back to it soon, but honestly, I feel really tired these days, and too distracted to do anything meaningful. I’ve come to realise lately that when I started working on the game, part of me was convinced still that I could produce something extraordinary. That feeling has long since past though, and most of the day these days I barely feel like I’m even able to just live in an effective, let alone productive manner. I’ve gotten so used to letting things slip away from me that it’s become a real problem, that’s begun to affect other people as well. A certain kind of carelessness about things, although rarely, unfortunately, the concomitant indifference to render such casual cruelty bearable. I feel so creatively dead.