02052020

A whole number of various implementations today, some more major than others. This morning I decided that, instead of posting about the UI again for #screenshotsaturday, I’d create a new environment. It took me only about half an hour (although if you count the time I spent recording a suitable reference for the waterfall to begin with – I ended up using one from Odyssey – I suppose it took just over an hour) but the results were surprisingly decent. Admittedly the area in question is very mechanically simple, with few actual objects of interaction: but it looks very good and took very little time to build and see immediate results. 

I spent the afternoon continuing to build upon the framework for Log, focusing this time on expanding the UI’s visual components. The overall UX is basically complete as of today: the player can type and submit new entries, read all previously saved ones (with ones that have yet to be uploaded denoted with a direct message), and back up entries to the server, saving the game (this latter part has yet to be implemented because it involves building a comprehensive save system, which I’ll handle in probably a week or so). The upload dialog now successfully and dynamically accounts for cases in which there is one available entry for upload, multiple entries available for upload, no new entries available for upload, and an unsuccessful connection to the host server. 

I also performed some general housekeeping stuff in regards to cleaning up other code along the way. The most imminent issue involved some kind of extreme slowdown when accessing the stored logs, that was due to a poorly-written string exploder code that I use to calculate the word count for each entry. I just replaced it with one from GMLscripts and it now seems to work completely fine without issue.

It was a very nice day outside today. It was warm and the air smelled clean yet full of scents that filled me with nostalgia. Days like these make me sad in a way: they remind me of my childhood, of high school. Of my friends back then and the things we used to do together, the endless numbered days we wasted away thinking that the future wouldn’t matter and that anyways, we could, we would last much longer. It’d be reckless of me now, knowing what I do, to say that things were any simpler back then, but we were all certainly much more stupid, and in a way that ignorance freed us I think: from the burden of responsibility, of accountability for our lives and our desires. We cared for nothing but love and to be loved, and love and lust together seethed within us. I’m not gonna pretend that things were categorically better then, or that conversely, things are worse now. But I secretly hope I’ll be able to feel that again some day: a warm spring evening, and the blissful fragility and tenderness of my friends.