I’ve been feeling a terrible emptiness. Aggravated all throughout the day, angry. Dwelling on dark thoughts. I couldn’t sleep at all last night so I stayed up and forced myself to attend the 8am service. I was the only one in the pews. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I was feeling pretty good the past few days. I don’t know what’s changed. Lost focus, is what it is. Life is good for me when it is small, contained. I lost sight of the immediate comforts and pleasures, started looking outwards again. Inadequate. Can’t do anything right.
Didn’t really work today, mostly just organised things in my room (really, just my desk). After some initial difficulties and a hundred wasted sheets of unnecessarily high-quality paper (I did not purchase this, but instead found a pallet of several thousand sheets of it conveniently sitting in my garage which some now-derelict office had offloaded for pennies into my father’s hands several months ago), I managed to get the printer working perfectly, and printed out a bunch of campaigns, which I’ve prepped for binding. I need to purchase some more binding glue, and locate my awl, which is probably sitting somewhere in the bottom of a box in my closet entangled in excess webbing. The prints came out really nice though, and the paper, while very heavy, feels quite good in texture and will make for excellent material should I attempt fancier prints down the line.
Every day I try to play Work for at least five minutes. I mostly just walk around and look at the environment. It helps to maintain my attention on the project and stimulate my imagination, even if I’m not directly working on it. I have made little progress with Plan in the past few days though, I need to return to it soon…
Not a particularly productive day. Think the streak has ended. A calm, gloomy day, heavy winds, dreadfully overcast. I spent the bulk of it just continuing to rename assets and variables in Work. Although I know it’s important for both my future productivity and my current morale, at times I can’t help but feel like I’m just working for the sake of maintaining the appearance of working. I’d to start making an actual game soon instead of just setting up frameworks. I think once I finish writing this, I’ll try to get some more work done…
In other news, the printer finally arrived, and I was able to set it up with ease. Still haven’t tested it — still haven’t found anything to print — but I did spend a bulk of the afternoon editing a bunch of campaigns I’d written for Delta Green into printable format, which was a tedious but calming process, mostly just formatting text blocks and find-replacing errant text and inconsistencies.
Gotta clean my room soon…
Start of Lent. Took the day off, although not intentionally apropos to the season. Just sat around and played The Division half-heartedly for most of the day. Heavy rain started in the afternoon. I felt an acute sense of loss today.
Sorting and organisation continues. I started a document specifically for outlining in detail a new naming convention, and spent the rest of the day refining and implementing the new changes. I’ve developed a pretty good system for editing files and scripts across entire projects using a combination of RegEx and Bulk Renamer Utility, so once I finalise the scheme itself, I should be able to fairly quickly and efficiently apply it retroactively to Work as well, which I think will dramatically improve the legibility and consistency of the game’s mismatched asset and variable names, which to date stand as much as a testament to my own discipline (or lack thereof) and progress as a developer as they do to its lengthy development heretofore.
I also used Copilot today — accidentally at first, I must admit — and was surprised at how quickly and accurately it displayed actionable results. Granted, my queries were not particularly sophisticated, but considering the last time I attempted to interact with some kind of AI was back in middle school with some barely-functional experimental chatbot, it was really surprising. I can’t really immediately imagine at the moment some pressing need to figure out a way to integrate it into my workflow, but my positive experience with it today has inspired some optimism in me to consider it as a viable option again in the future should the opportunity arise.
I drank a Celsius for this first time this afternoon. “Fruit Burst”. While not entirely objectionable in taste, it left me feeling vaguely uneasy for some time physically, cresting the verge of an electric agitation that seemed to course through various parts of my body rattling the molecules about. It was a bit much; I probably drank it too quickly, having grown accustomed to drinking Red Bulls with the ease of a Rolling Rock. I’m not opposed to giving it another try though, at a later date.
Another productive day. Didn’t sleep much last night, but didn’t feel it much today either. Spent most of the day working on a new draft for the combat screen with updated visuals for the player and enemy entities. I’m fairly satisfied with it. It feels suitably cramped and dynamic at the same time.
In the evening, I decided to revisit the audio. I was rather shocked to discover just how wasteful and undisciplined my previous choices were with regard to the lengths and sizes of the audio files. I imported all of the audio files from Work into the foundation project (I’ve decided to just refer to it as Base from now on, in accordance with my other naming choices), stripped out the files that were too specific to Work, and then renamed all of them to fit a more consistent organisational schema.
When renaming the files, I discovered the aforementioned issue with the file sizes. After doing some research, I decided to just convert all of the audio into OGG format. I cut down the most egregious offenders with regard to track length (one track was 30min of repetitive rain sounds…) and compacted the rest. I haven’t tested it in-game yet, but all of the tracks seem to play properly in-game… I hope there won’t be any issues. I was able to cut the total size of the project by around 200mb, or around a 60% overall reduction, to just under 150mb. About half of the remaining bulk is graphic assets, which I think could use some cleaning as well. Could get the file size down even more by reducing the bitrate of the largest tracks, but at that point I think it just spills over into neurosis…
Felt better today overall, or at least not bad. I wager that having a good bulk of the work involve reading through documentation and trying to learn new techniques helped significantly to break up the accrescence of the sadness. For now, as long as I am able to focus on what’s right in front of me, the abscess is a little bit easier to ignore.
Took a pill in the morning after I awoke and worked calmly and continuously until now. It’s the most productive I’ve felt in years, without exaggeration. I feel like I could continue going for much longer. Dark before I knew it. I spent the entire day cleaning up, formatting, and documenting a bunch of code from Work, and setting up a project containing common resources and code that I’ll be able to use as a foundation for stuff moving forward. It’s good. Being able to just work in Gamemaker again for extended periods of time has helped my motivation a lot, and I feel like I’ve made a breakthrough, even if it’s just temporary. Should see if the doctor can prescribe me some.
I’ve been feeling pretty sad though in general. It’s getting worse, I think. I missed service again this morning. Just didn’t wake up in time, although really, that’s just an excuse. It’s been over a month now. Sad is not the right word. Lent looms close. I feel an intense sense of absence all the time. Phantom shivers. Deep within my bones and in the flickers between synapses. The inescapable feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. That some part of me has vanished so quickly and suddenly the rest of my body hasn’t caught up yet. I’ve read accounts of shootings. You’re falling before you even realise something has ripped right through you. The body understands what the mind can’t, won’t. I’ve tripped and can’t get back up. Don’t want to get back up. It’s a new feeling, I think. From a place beyond myself. Apart from me.
No progress today. Felt useless and uninspired. Spent the entire day watching Godot tutorials only to just give up before I gave myself the chance to try any of it. I feel like I’ve completely lost the ability to learn anything new. No willpower, maybe. Ordered a printer this evening. Ripped and converted a bunch of assets from Condemned. Pointless. Can’t seem to get anything done, just circling the fishbowl in one long drainward spiral.
Last night out here. I wasn’t feeling much before but now, as I sit here thinking about home, I’m a bit scared to go back. To be alone with all of it. It feels like it’s been too long, yet it’s barely been two weeks. I can already feel the sadness starting to return…
I’ve had a very pleasant time here. The odd thing is, the more we drove around, the more I began to miss the city in a strange way. I’ve been feeling really small in the world lately, and I’ve been having a very hard time maintaining focus and motivation of any kind. I’d been feeling this way for a long time now, but it’s gotten unmanageable as of late… I don’t feel settled in my life anymore. I feel really restless and trapped within myself. I spent all day trying to learn stuff in Unity but just came away physically exhausted with nothing to show of it at the end of the day.
I’ve been tired all day. Fell asleep early last night, woke up real late today. Struggling a lot with motivation… I feel really stuck in the design. I downloaded Godot today to see if it might spur any kind of action in me; but the truth is, looking at the interface and realising I would need to learn an entirely new workflow, I just gave up instead, almost immediately. I’m psyching myself out too much thinking about logistics and planning. I’ve just gotta settle on something and try it out. I remember, very vaguely, that when I first started making games, I didn’t know anything about how involved it would be technically, but it didn’t matter: I just started messing around because it was interesting and sometimes being able to get something working as intended was a cool feeling, but mostly just because it was interesting. I don’t feel like the actual process of making games is interesting anymore. I think I’ve become too focused in the past few years on end products and what having an end product would mean for myself, both existentially and practically. It’s necessary to think about that stuff, to be sure, but I think I do it too much, in a way that’s become counterproductive…
I’d like to check out Unity tomorrow. I think it’ll be slightly easier to stomach as far as the transition goes, given that I have a decent amount of familiarity with it historically. I also want to start setting up the initial Gamemaker project itself too.
Worked on animations today. I decided to just animate something from some footage I captured from Condemned (which I finally managed to get working). I doubt it’s gonna make it to the final product, but for now, it’s given me some motivation to actually work on implementation, instead of letting myself get so bogged down in the planning. I think if I work steadily and diligently tomorrow, I will most likely be able to get the full animation done. I felt calmer and more focused today, despite not sleeping well last night on the account of a particularly noisome creature who pestered me throughout the night and later, a rather sad dream.
I went to the zoo today and saw many interesting animals. It was very nice. I got a lot of good photos and videos. I’m struggling a bit with the game. I can’t figure out the interface, specifically for the combat sequences, and it’s really disrupting my ability to visualise the rest of the game. I keep on flip-flopping uselessly between thinking I should scale back the visuals completely and relying almost entirely on text or committing to full animation packages for each individual character, which would be terribly involved in terms of actually making those animations. I spent a good part of today genuinely wondering if I should learn how to sculpt and animate 3D models specifically for this use case: which in turn led me to wonder why I shouldn’t just switch entirely to a 3D format after all. It’s stuff like this that’s got me so disoriented when it comes to settling down on decisions. I routinely feel my ambitions outpacing my actual skillset these days. I don’t know if I should just scale them back, or try to rise to their occasion…
It’s been a week. Being in Texas has helped to dissipate the worst of the feelings when they hit. There are moments though when it just tears through me like nothing else. All at once. It’s been difficult to concentrate on work, but I’ve been trying my best. Made a very small amount of progress today on the layout, mapped out fonts and font sizes. I was lucky enough to find some random repository containing TTFs of all the most important body fonts. The only thing that needs to be handled through sprites, it seems, is the title header: the horizontal spacing needs to be condensed. I want to get it done by the end of the weekend, at least the structure, if not the visuals.
Got a decent amount of work done today: first time in a week or two that I’ve felt I’ve palpably made some progress for a change. Made significant progress on the UI today, finally have a framework in place to build upon. I also got some writing done too, and made a firm decision on stats-based gameplay. I’ve decided to implement stats into the game after all, most prominently in The Stranger’s plot. I think it’ll add some more mechanical intrigue down the line, and help maintain the RPG-influenced approach for myself as well in designing encounters.
Did some more research for the UI, and started drafting sketches. I feel pretty good about the newspaper-oriented design: it’s thematically impactful, visually compelling, and fairly novel as far as I’m aware. I think I’ve also settled on the usage of non-pixellated fonts for now. The ones I’ve sourced currently are Stilson for sub-headlines, Cheltenham for headlines, and either Lato or Georgia for body fonts. There’s no need to maintain a veneer of diegetic verisimilitude this time unlike with Work, so I feel a bit freer in the design. Ironically though it’s made it a bit more difficult to settle on one that I will both like now, and in the future…
Service cancelled this morning on account of a major snowstorm. A slow day. I started modding Skyrim again after stepping away for three weeks. I find that it helps to stimulate my attention when I’m feeling sluggish, and it gets me into the right mood to start working on technical stuff, which most of the time I really struggle to focus on.
Still, I wasn’t able to do any in-engine work today. I did manage to get some writing done though. I want to start writing an actual plot this week. I hope to be able to get the first draft done by the end of the week. I’ve been reading sourcebooks to help inspire some structure. I’m currently working my way through God’s Teeth. I might prototype this in text-based format first just to see if it feels interesting enough to play without the visuals.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t get anything done today as I had planned. I did manage to write a bit, but nothing in-engine. The problem is that I get too distracted in conceptual work, and absorbed in the “why” of everything. I can’t seem to design a single mechanic or think of an image without immediately trying to resolve the question of why it’s present in game, and what its implications are relative to the greater fiction. I spent four hours this afternoon researching prisons in the greater Cincinnati area and trying to plan out viable routes for prisoner transport before realising that this was a largely pointless and wasteful endeavour: the player will neither notice nor care about these kinds of details and they occupy a space in my mind that goes beyond pointless although innocuous frivolity to active, harmful distraction bordering, I suspect, on inadvertent procrastination.
I just need to not think so much about this kind of thing, both right now, and in general. I don’t really have the luxury of wasting entire afternoons trying to devise logistically viable portrayals of prison assassinations based on accounts of guard schedules and local prison cultures and architecture much longer; and even if I did, it would be a colossal waste of time. If every single thing in the development of this game went like this then it would be no different in level of struggle from Work, which is precisely why I wanted to take a break from that project to begin with, and try to pursue something less cognitively taxing.
Lacking sufficient will of my own, what I really need is someone to regularly and actively counteract me on these kinds of things and encourage me instead to just focus on more imminent, tangible things. I wander too easily on my own…
Was away for a couple of days to see some friends. It was a nice change of pace from the usual, and made me feel better. I’m going to attempt to set up a proper work schedule starting tomorrow. I’ve set a public deadline for myself for the demo release in January’s update, targeting sometime in March. That’s a bit close for comfort, but I need the pressure or else I don’t think I’m gonna start at all. I’ve been working on the document a bit more, but I don’t think I’m working on the right things: it’s too high level right now, and while that stuff is exciting for me to think about, it doesn’t really lead to any concrete things. I just need to start actually building stuff in-engine. I’ve been too stuck on conceptual work for too long.
Spent the day working on a new scene mockup. I’ve decided to use colour after all to highlight the player character. Each character will have a distinct colour associated with them, in order to both render them visually distinct from one another given the tiny player model sprite and the otherwise-monochromatic palette, and to help them stand out more immediately in the environment, which was a significant point of criticism for Work (although it functioned a lot differently there, and was intentional in that effect). Those colours will, for now, be the only colours present.
I’m not sure if I want to dedicate tomorrow to writing the January update for Work, or instead spend the day making another scene instead for Plan, so I can have at least three images to show in the Work update. The next mockup will be for UI-related stuff. I have a pretty exciting idea for the character selection screen already, inspired by the radio broadcast loading screens from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game. I don’t think that’ll be the one I work on though tomorrow.
I’ve found some inspiration in two unlikely sources: Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas, and Plastiboo’s Vermis, both of which I picked up around the same time last year but didn’t get around to actually looking at until just this afternoon. I finished Vermis in one sitting and found some of the presentation very interesting (although the majority of the narrative content was pretty run-of-the-mill dark fantasy stuff, not to a fault, but just not particularly inspiring). Nazi Literature — which is an unfortunate abbreviation — is also quite interesting so far, and structurally/tonally, I find it very inspiring so far. Thematically there are some shared threads with Plan, in the focus on the lives of deranged and morally dubious individuals who believe themselves to be uniquely ambitious or gifted in their visions, but whose efforts largely just end up being swept away into the collective dustpan of artistic mediocrity. Reading it makes me want to give 2666 another try.
I’ve been pretty productive the past few days, although also a bit scattered in my priorities. I finally got around to actually starting work on the visual drafts. I want to pick up the pace next week on producing more mockups, at least one a day: and crucially, I need to write and release this month’s update, which is long overdue.
I had originally planned on getting the prologue out by the end of February. I think if I work really diligently, in a focused manner, it’ll be possible, at the cost of some of my other interests. I don’t know why I’m phrasing that as if it’s a revelation of any kind. I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety lately.
Made no progress whatsoever on visuals today despite my best reservations. I got distracted during the day once again. It’s beginning to really mess with my morale. I don’t know why I’m having so much difficulty just starting it, but the more I delay it, the more it starts to bear down on me.
I spent the evening planning out the combat. Right now, it’s really technical (although a lot of it is hidden behind the scenes and, what will hopefully be by release, engaging writing). I really like the implications of it, but I’m not sure how well it’ll pan out to actual implementation. The bottleneck here I think will most certainly be in designing the enemy encounters to accommodate the various tactical considerations and available avenues of action. I’ll keep it on paper for now, and maybe even crunch some numbers soon. (The idea of being able to finally work out some formulae quite excites me.)
There is still, of course, the unaddressed issue of the monthly update. I absolutely do not want to skip this one — both because I had already failed to publish my (admittedly shitty) draft last month, and more importantly, because I feel it is in bad spirit and auguring an ill omen to miss the first update of the new year (which is not so new anymore, I know, but still). I’m leaning way too much on having those finished visuals for it, when in reality, I doubt anyone cares. How even could they, after all, since the project itself has not even been formally announced?
I’m trapping myself here, I know. I need to get over my own baseless anxieties. But I just feel like I have so little to show for myself these days. So little to justify my continued persistence in these manners, at least externally. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll come to me tomorrow. I doubt it, but maybe.
Didn’t really get any work done today, which leaves me in a tight spot for tomorrow if I am to still meet my goal of having new visuals done by the end of the weekend. I keep on getting distracted: today, I managed to make some breakthroughs in Breakpoint, and even managed to publish a new mod. However, it came at the cost of having dedicated the entirety of my afternoon to sorting through reams of obscure hex tables, meaning I had no time or attention whatsoever to dedicate to my actual work. I am too tired and too distracted all the time…
Felt a bit more motivated today. Woke up early, before light. Spent until noon working on some edits for a friend. I spent the rest of the day working variously on some Breakpoint ports, and gathering resources to begin working on Plan. I had a call with Sam this afternoon which was very productive in helping me reorient my priorities. I’m going to force myself to draw something tomorrow for the game. I’ve been stuck in a cycle of useless procrastination for weeks now, I just need to get something done at this point. Once the initial momentum is established the rest will come more easily, I know it for sure.
I’ve been having a pretty difficult time working the past few days. Not like I was spending any at all working before, but at least the past week, I’ve been “trying”… I’ve been suffering from some kind of extreme lethargy that makes it difficult even just to sit up straight at times. I originally had planned on spending all day working on visual mockups for this month’s update, but I got distracted by pre-planning and started to slip into a spiral of unproductive malaise.
I feel like all I’m missing these days is the initial impetus. The work is right there, laid out clearly in front of me. I’ve done all the preparatory work to satisfaction, I know what needs to be done — I just can’t seem to actuate it. The truth is, I feel really weak these days, not just mentally, but physically as well. I haven’t really been going outside or eating much. I spend most of my days sitting in front of my computer or lying in my bed, with barely any movement in between. The thing is, I actually do feel pretty creatively motivated. I’ve just lost all my strength and can’t seem to get back up. My indolence has hardened into a habit, I fear. I need to break out of this somehow…
I’ve spent the past couple of days with my room in complete disarray. What initially started out as a routine cleaning has turned into a much more involved and elaborate reorganisation of years’ worth of assorted cables, papers, conduits, and debris. I’ve been making progress slowly, in incremental bursts. I spent most of today and yesterday figuring out how to fix my monitor’s display, which for some reason just inexplicably stopped registering the input signal from one of my computers. It’s frustrated me to no end, especially with no identifiable point of failure. I originally though it was an issue with the DVI to HDMI cable that I’d been using, so I purchased a converter, which did not fix the issue either; and finally I tried a VGA input, which also did not seem to do anything.
If finally got it working again today though, with the strangest solution: the original flat panel only properly displays at native resolution (1280×1024) when another monitor is connected via HDMI to the second output. I don’t even know what to do with that second monitor to be honest: it’s a small, cheap Specter I purchased many years ago at the start of college for my PS4, whose primary lasting value is sentimental more than practical. I’ve been trying to convert it into a vertical orientation but I’m missing screws and washers for the VESA mount and a sufficiently-sized hex key to loosen the tension in the monitor arm… slight inconveniences and impedances at every step.
I have a good feeling though about when I’m done sorting all this stuff out. Sitting at my desk this evening when I finally managed to get the screen working again, I felt a surge of motivation wash over me. Somehow, I’m optimistic that it will last a bit past today.
I’ve been feeling really lethargic lately, and terribly uninspired. I don’t know what’s come over me, I thought I was doing pretty well for a bit… I’ve just been working on Skyrim stuff in the meantime as I hope for my constitution and strength to recover. I’m going to try to clean my workspace tomorrow, I think it’ll help.
The year began auspiciously, and in good spirits. I feel quite happy and optimistic going into it, and I hope very deeply that I can do better this year. I have a strange feeling that it will be possible. I’ve been in a slump for a while, but I think I can turn it around. I want to turn it around. I want to get better this year.
This week has been pretty okay. In retrospect though, for however much a few days’ worth is worth, I feel a bit sad, and I don’t really understand why. I guess it feels like Christmas — and maybe in an unfair extrapolation, the entire year — has passed by with little effect. Although factually, I know that’s not true: in fact, a lot of pretty big, supposedly life-changing things happened this year. Why don’t I feel any of it then? I’m scared that this is what growing older is like. It feels unbearable. If the rest of it is just like this…
I’ve been trying to find some refuge in small passing things. I enjoy looking out at the snow gathered in my yard, and editing clouds and landscapes in Skyrim. I enjoy going on walks with my mother and working with my father and playing games with my friends and volunteering at the church. Some days I even still enjoy reading, although not as much these days as I did before. I think I’m growing boring, if I haven’t already. I’m not scared of being boring, or being bored. I welcome it, I really do. But at the same time I find something about it deeply saddening. Some days I lie there and think about it too long and I feel like crying, although I’m never actually able.
Wrapped up the last service for the day just now. It was really pleasant. I was feeling a little bit sad last night but it’s mostly dissipated now. I’m very tired, I stayed up way too late trying to figure out some hex editing stuff in Breakpoint. I didn’t wake up today until mid-afternoon. But I feel better.
This morning, I was really surprised to see it snowing outside. It’s the first time it’s snowed on Christmas in what must be years at this point. It feels auspicious to me.
I was out the past couple of days, and didn’t really have the opportunity to write an update, so here I am now. I’ve had a lifelong habit of getting over-sentimental around this time of year, but curiously, this year, I haven’t been feeling it much at all. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad sign necessarily, just a sign that I think maybe things are different this year, maybe not for better per se, but definitely not for worse.
The next couple of days are gonna be really busy with the culmination of the various Christmas services… I’m looking forward to it, but am under no illusion that I’ll likely have much energy afterwards. I hope the start of the new year will be calm and peaceful. I don’t have much energy these days…