spncryn/log

Author: Spencer

17082023

Reasonable progress today. I’ve counted eighteen unresolved items on my list, which means every day, I should seek to complete at least two. Some of these, of course, are significantly more involved than others. Regardless, I think it’s doable, especially once I get towards the end of the list. The most time-consuming stuff is easily the interface stuff. I can probably do two a day if I work steadily into the night, which I plan on doing tonight. I just finished up the spritework today for the PDA interaction with the field camera. What’s left is the implementation, of which the most laborious part will be the alignment of elements that I have to draw in by code. After that though, I’ll be completely finished for the time being with elements outside of the outpost. I’ve been thinking about adding some more observable POIs in the environment, which will be very quick work comparatively. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow on break.

16082023

Didn’t get any work done today beyond doing the write-up. I woke up late on account of staying up too late last night (also not really doing anything except procrastinating) and then immediately had to go take care of a number of necessary non-work-related tasks, which took up most of the afternoon. By the time I arrived home, I made the questionable decision to expound the rest of my energy on writing up the monthly update which, fortunately, I was actually able to finish, so at least I have something to show for the day.

This rate of progress, or lack thereof, is unacceptable. I’ve already burned away two days. Tomorrow I need to get something substantial done. I’ve created a list that breaks everything down to the molecular level. My plan now is to get everything built in place structurally, and then fill in the animations afterwards. I’ve been getting too bogged down by all this sprite-work otherwise. I’m going to sleep early tonight, and when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will begin properly.

15082023

Finally had the call with Raw Fury this morning. They’ve given me the green light to proceed on the demo, after all! Now I have to actually get it done.

In practice, this more or less necessitates me to work continuously with little rest for the next ten days until the 25th, which is the soft deadline for builds to be approved on time for the start of September. Although I understand that, as far as concepts like “best practice” and “healthy work/life balance” go, this should give some cause for concern, privately I must admit that I actually welcome it: not only because it is the first time, not just in recent memory, but possibly in years that I’ve felt genuinely interested in not just the project itself but actually working on it as well, but because the constant external pressure grants me the perfect excuse to withdraw myself from the world, and avoid unpleasant thoughts.

It catches up to me as soon as I stop. My dreams these past few days have been increasingly filled with odious, monstrous things too appalling to recount. I spend most of my forced breaks either obsessively “maintaining” this site (I strongly suspect its very inception was a decision born far less from actual judicious planning, than a product of unsettled restlessness), or ruminating over Ana and other humiliating personal failures. I feel emotionally stifled, and work feels like the only real reprieve from it within my immediate control.

At the end of the day, I guess it’s not a terrible place to be, though. I could feel like this, and also not be working. As long as things are getting done on time, maybe it’s not so bad after all. I’ve come to realise that it’s only when things are like this that I have genuine hope that I’ll be able to finish this.

14082023

Slow, tiresome day. I made a mistake staying up last night: it turns out the meeting is today, so I stayed up until sunrise for nothing. I woke up way too late as a result, and in a thoroughly discombobulated state. To add insult to injury, I have to do it again tonight, for real this time.

Work has been slow and fatiguing on account of the inherent tedium of the animation process. I have one more set of animations left — flipping the page forward and backward, and then two or three transitional frames between states — before the worst of it is finished. I should take a break tonight with the time I have remaining before the meeting, and implement the existing assets in-game before I embark upon drawing out the remaining ones.

13082023

Continued working on the animations, although with limited progress. I hope I’m able to pick up the pace soon once this stuff is done, I just realised it’s already almost the halfway point of the month.

I completely rebuilt the site tonight, and moved it entirely over to WordPress. I discovered to my great consternation that Tumblr had finally decided to force the usage of its new post format, which completely altered the internal structure of the posts themselves and in turn destroyed the interactions I’d built for it into my main site. Honestly, I’ve been looking for an excuse to do it for a while now anyways, as I was getting sick of the advertising on Tumblr, and constantly having to reset the theme to light mode.

Unfortunately, moving to WordPress means I now have to completely rebuild the functionality within the website itself. I took a brief look at WP’s API and immediately concluded that I have little interest (or time, to be honest) to figure it out right now. For the time being, I think I’m just going to hide it until I have the energy to figure out a more elegant solution. At some point, I should also look to update everything for design consistency…

12082023

Vaguely distracted throughout the day, worked inefficiently. Spent the entire day animating the opening and closing interactions with the field notebook. It’s still not done, but I am certain I can finish it by tomorrow.

I’m a bit apprehensive about how I’m going to handle page-turning, if I even want to do that at all. I could do it programmatically with a 3D surface and a shader, which would allow me to authentically preserve the contents of each page with the flipping animation since they’d be rendered directly onto the manipulated surface – but then that would compromise the quality of the animation, and I’d have to do a lot of coordinate positioning of the hand movement itself, which will be a exercise in abject tedium.

Alternately, I could animate it entirely by hand, with pre-drawn text on the pages that are affected directly by the flip. This involves a lot of sprite work, but it’ll guarantee that the hand and page turn animations are synchronised properly. The problem is that it severely limits the amount of dynamic information I can place upon each spread, as the face that will be turned has to be fixed since it’ll be pre-drawn in the page turning sprite sheet itself, instead of being rendered mathematically.

That means that, on the starting spread, only the lefthand page can be drawn via code; and for any following spreads that the player can flip to and from, only the righthand page can be drawn.

Actually, this will work well. I can have the collected IDs pinned on the lefthand side, and related notes and thoughts Avery has about them “written” on the right. This could in fact even be a hand-drawn sprite for each page…

It looks like my work is cut out for me for the next few days.

10082023

Didn’t work as much as I’d have liked today. I was overcome by a dim cloud. Most of today’s work was custodial, going through all of the flagged code instances and making the necessary adjustments. I don’t know how much any of these changes actually matter – I don’t think any of them really do – but at least now I don’t have to look at any more warnings.

I’ve decided this morning that, unrelated to the previous, I will switch my code editor entirely to a proportional font for my next project. The compulsive need to ensure typographic alignment, even when doing so is outright destructive to legibility, has severely impaired my ability (or perhaps desire) to abide by reasonable standards of consistency throughout this project. I long for the future.

09082023

Work has been going really well. Not only has the work itself been getting done, but I feel a great sense of fulfillment getting it done, even on days like this, when the actual measurable progress feels so slight. It’s the strangest thing; as if suddenly, the long fog that’s so thoroughly eclipsed the past two years of my life cleared away with such abruptness that I find myself astonished to even recall it was ever there. I’m so terribly happy that I was there to share in its witness, but I think it’s over. No one’s coming back, I’m sure of it now, and I can no longer be moved to leave. The city’s emptied out, the nights are getting cooler, the summer will soon draw to a close. Things will never be like the way they were again. I have to find my place in all this again, and I think my place is right here. I’m plummeting through my memories. I know I shouldn’t have done it but the other day I found myself on the L and by the time it’d passed by 1st I’d already stepped out into the evening, careening, against my better desires, the trees far greener than I remembered and the light warmer, and by the bitter brine waters I sat down and from deep within my lungs I heaved forth what felt like the last of the winter, all winter, pooling across the parkway. It catches up to you, I guess. I don’t think people change anymore so much as they just seem to fall apart, unravel, first at the atomic level, and then in whole systems and tectonics. No one seems to take circumstance seriously until it’s the only thing they’ve got left to talk about. I felt it again tonight for the first time in a long time, you know, the real thing, lying there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the night breeze is like right now in Austin. It wasn’t fear, or heartache, or longing, or even sadness, really. Just plain loneliness. Ah, man.

07082023

Uninteresting but necessary work today. Cleaned up the tutorial prompts and some save events to improve the onboarding experience for new players. Work has been coming easier after this weekend. Maybe the sadness is not so bad after all. It feels more familiar to me. I think I’ve been too distracted these past two years. Maybe this is finally an opportunity to return to where I belong.

06082023

Tawanda’s left New York for good. I guess that’s that, then. I know things aren’t gonna change much but things will change a lot. He never came back to New Jersey, at the end of it. A profound sadness has come over me over the last few weeks. Too tired to stay awake, possessed by an insatiable hunger. There are days and nights when I miss Ana so terribly that the ache seems to seep into my bones. I’ve fallen behind the pace of my life.

04082023

First day back to work, and first entry in over a month. I’m not really sure what to say. I’ve been real tired lately, a full-body fatigue. They’ve got me working on a demo for the October Steam Next Fest. I don’t know, there was some kind of confusion on the timing of when this build would be due. They haven’t updated me on it yet. I don’t know. I don’t really care anymore. I have two weeks left to get it done on my own terms, I don’t care what happens on their end internally: I’m submitting it, come hell or high water. I need the public release at this point. Without it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to recover enough morale to finish this thing. Hell.

20062023

No work today. Still feeling fucked up, but doing my best to work through it. I spent much of the morning in prayer. I’m not very good at it. Sometimes though it gets me from one moment to the next when nothing else really seems to be working. I spend the rest of the time sleeping, or trying to, anyways. I think I’m in trouble at work. Something about the invoices I submitted the other day. Probably about the rate of progress too. 

The bitter irony of all this is that it all hits just as I was just about feeling like I could start doing things better. I’d finally started feeling a bit better about work, like I could get things done. Started feeling better about Ana, like I could finally let go of some of the more painful, resentful things, and just talk to her, plan things with her, think about her like a normal human being. I enjoyed it. I get it now, what Ada’s talking about. I enjoyed feeling like I could be happy. Fuck. 

Life just seems to fold over me in waves these years. Just as I start to feel better, like I’ve got enough strength to get over the next berm, I just get knocked back down again, over and over, by the same goddamned problems every time.  I feel completely powerless against any of it. I’m not yet suicidal, which I guess is good. But I feel like all my progress has just been wiped, again. And I feel so thoroughly impotent at contesting any of it. Nobody trusts me anymore, it feels like. Can’t convince anyone of anything. I’ve run everybody’s patience down. Nobody believes me anymore. And man, I don’t have too many more words. And man, I don’t have too much more will. 

19602023

Feeling fucked up again. I’m trying my best to get through it but right now I can’t even get out of bed. God damn this wretched soul of mine.

17062023

Published the monthly update today. Writing it exhausted me beyond reason, and I was no longer able to work afterwards. I feel like a mild sadness has also settled into me somehow. It feels like some kind of disappointment, or disillusionment, although I don’t know why. It’s 2100 and I can’t think of any reason to stay awake any longer. I don’t think it was a bad day. It just didn’t feel like it was enough.

16062023

Another good workday. Pushed my first commit of the year, I’m pretty sure.

Set up the link point to the basement in the outpost, so the player can now move between the two in-game. There are a lot of issues with regards to the lighting system though, and the movement animations for Avery are completely broken when she’s in the basement. I don’t know how to solve it right now.

This is one of the biggest issues, I’ve come to learn, about working on things for so long. I’ve almost completely forgotten how I built so much of the early systems in the game. So much of it just seems so convoluted as to appear effectively foreign to me.

I need to focus on producing a whole bunch of assets tomorrow, as well as getting the update written. I’m going to go to sleep early and try to get it all out by the afternoon.

15062023

Felt better today. Woke up pretty late, but made good progress on the basement. It’s been fully imported into the game itself now and should be ready in terms of decorations by tomorrow. I’ve decided to postpone writing this month’s update until tomorrow, and releasing it on Saturday. I will have to create some visuals for it soon.

14062023

I was feeling quite well for the majority of the day until, with the light encouragement of a friend, I decided to make a new Hinge profile and see if anything’s changed. Nothing has; and in fact, I believe that my sense of antipathy and revulsion has only further grown in its intensity over the course of the past months. The obscenity of it all has become genuinely unbearable. I was originally planning on working for the rest of the day, but I have felt my mood palpably darken by the minute over the last two hours. I have been thinking about Larry Hall. I have become gripped by the fantasy of violently drowning myself in a shallow trickle of gutter effluvia.

13062023

The humidity passed overnight. The day was bright and cool. Didn’t get anything done today, either. I felt better though. I’ve gotta start working again. I haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do, either this week, or this month. Frankly, I haven’t accomplished anything the entirety of this year. I almost feel bad about submitting invoices these days.

06062023

The air was hazy all throughout the day, and the sun was blood orange. I wasn’t able to get anything done today. I’ve been feeling pretty listless and lazy lately. Getting started is the hardest part, and a lot of days I don’t feel like I can overcome that initial barrier for some reason. At least most days these days, I’m in a good mood…

Tomorrow I’m going to get the layout for the basement sketched out, and rewrite the sound design document for Sam.

04062023

Missed Trinity Sunday service. It’s a shame, I was looking forward to it. I didn’t get any work done today. Tomorrow morning I have to get up early to help them clear out the last of the mulch. Hopefully afterwards I’ll feel better and get some work done.

03062023

It’s cold again at nights. I spent the afternoon finishing up the procedures for the cooking system. I’m going to start working on the basement tomorrow, and hopefully get most of the layout and pathing blocked out for it. 

01062023

June’s here, and with it, the summer proper. It was uncomfortably hot in my room today, which bodes ill for the coming months. I’ve been sleeping terribly lately. I spent all afternoon gathering and coming up with recipes for foraged ingredients. I’d like to get one animated in full by tomorrow.

30052023

Was supposed to get back to real work today, but I ended up just reading and sleeping throughout most of the day instead, since Tawanda had to take the train out early in the morning. I’m heading to sleep early tonight, and tomorrow, I will begin working on the cooking system. A good way to ease out an otherwise unfruitful month, and move forward into a hopefully more productive one.

24052023

Another day of Breakpoint work. I’ve made a resolution to spend the length of next week completely rebuilding the cooking system, including all the recipes and sprites. It was cool and humid today, and the sky was dark with stormy winds, but it did not rain. I ate a pizza from Costco.

23052023

Spent the weekend almost continuously working on Breakpoint stuff. The downside obviously is that I got no real work done, but the upside is that I feel a lot better. I’d even say I’m pretty happy with things right now. I’ll get back to work after this upcoming weekend. 

20052023

Spent most of the day just reading, and sifting through BuildTables in Breakpoint. I haven’t quite gotten acquainted with any of it yet, but it’s pretty exciting work. It’s moments like these that remind me that I actually quite like working with games. I just wish I could feel the same way about my own again…

18052023

Not much practical work done these past two days, I’ve mostly just been reading Charles Taylor, and going through old documents from various points throughout the project looking for points of inspiration. I’m gonna start working on new sprites tomorrow though.

16052023

Woke up pretty late, but still feel pretty good. Started writing the Kickstarter update for the month, but got a bit stuck, and now I no longer feel like forcing myself to finish it for the sake of finishing it. It’ll definitely be published by tomorrow, though. Once I’m done with it, I’d also like to try to get something done in-game.

15052023

Been feeling better after this weekend, both in general and about work. Didn’t get anything done today due to some logistical complications, but I actually feel quite good, in a way that feels pretty straightforward, and unblemished by any conditional caveats or eventual exigencies. I can’t say whether I’m currently enjoying my life, per se; but I’ve certainly settled into an unfamiliar kind of contentment. I will not tempt it by questioning its staying power. I have had a pleasant day. For now, little else needs to exist beyond that.

13052023

Nearly two weeks have now elapsed since I resolved to “get back to work proper”, and yet I have done so little of it, and accomplished even less. I don’t feel useless so much as I just feel completely disconnected from, and disinterested in the work itself. I no longer believe I can just will my way through this anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to move forward.

11052023

Another warm, wasted day. Apparently there was a meeting scheduled this morning that I completely missed since I’d mistakenly set the date for it in my calendar for tomorrow. (Although truthfully, even this I had forgotten, and am able to recall now only because I noticed it while trying to conjure up some vaguely valid excuse for my absence.) The rest of the day passed by thinly and irregularly.

The weather was once again exceedingly pleasant.

I drifted hazily between motions in the guise of tasks. I sat outside for several hours, and watched a duck and its litany of tiny, fuzzy children wander down the stream. I did not get any work done, and I did not care. Once the sun set, I played Call of Duty for nearly six hours. 

10052023

Wasn’t able to get anything done today, either. My head feels all scrambled. The weather’s been unusually pleasant. I’ve spent most of the past few days either outside, or cleaning. An indolence amasses in my bones. I’ll try to get a bit done tomorrow. 

08052023

I’ve really been struggling to get things done, and the slowness itself has become an active irritant even further exacerbating my frustration to the point where I just get almost immediately sucked down into a spiral of self-defeating disappointment. I think I’ve become lazy. I don’t know how I’m going to escape this, as just the act of brute-forcing my way through tasks has itself become tremendously destructive in both the short and long term. I can no longer afford to take any more breaks, either. Everything just further contributes to the overwhelming feeling that I am useless.

06052023

Caught in another terrible torpor. This time, I’ve actually been working – notionally, anyways – but the rate of progress has been so slow as to be virtually negligible, at least over the past several days. A shade of bitter dissatisfaction colours all that I do and strive towards.

01052023

Finally back to work. Today was a good day, by all accounts. I’ve decided to ease back into the project by revisiting the plan for the demo, and building off of that. Much has happened, although little has changed. No matter. I just have to get through the rest of it from here on out. No use thinking about what comes after.

13012023

My leave of absence was officially approved as of yesterday. All that’s left now is to write the update for this month. I’ll finally be able to rest for a while after that.

I’m still feeling pretty good about things. The euphoria has largely passed, but I’m surprised by the realisation that I still feel remarkably clear. I actually feel very consistently optimistic and secure in my feelings about things for once. Not just one or two things either, but… everything, basically. 

Of course, some part of me – a very foundationally-located part of me, to be sure – remains deeply suspect of all of it: of the intentions of others, of the sheer apparent improbability of things to come. But lately I feel like my trust in others has been strengthened to a degree that I don’t think I’ve ever possessed before in my life. To be honest, I actually feel like I’m running out of excuses to convince myself why I should suspect anyone around me at all. 

09012023

How strange it feels to be typing out a new year. So much has happened in these few brief days, and how volatile they’ve been. I can’t say for certain yet – although I hope that in the days and weeks and months to come, I will grow only more confident in this – but I want desperately to believe that I have emerged in the midst of a newfound, unprecedented sense of clarity and, at least in this immediate moment, what feels like some kind of peace. It’s undoubtedly been bittersweet as well, but right now, I don’t feel scared, or insecure, or despairing, or alone anymore. 

I know now that there are people out there who care about me deeply, many more than I could imagine. I know now that there is someone out there who has held the fullness of my spirit in its totality, and chosen to return to me their own in kind. I don’t speak casually when I confess that I believe I have, for just a moment, brushed up against the very grace of God itself. I don’t know if the moment is over, or if it will ever happen again. I have no choice but to keep on living.

29122022

I felt really happy today, and at peace with things. I likely won’t be back again until the new year but I’m glad that I was able to wrap this year up here like this. Happy New Year. Peace, love, and grace be with you, now and forever. I’ll see you soon.

28122022

I’m too exhausted to recount everything that’s happened. I can’t promise much, but I think I’m getting better, though. I’ll try to write at least one more entry for this year before it ends. Good night.

19122022

Nothing done today either. I don’t know what’s going on. I just feel too tired to do anything most of the time, and of the few remaining handful of moments I actually feel awake, I feel too distracted to think straight. Maybe seeing the doctor tomorrow will help.

18122022

I felt a lot better today. After service, I helped to set up some Christmas decorations. I feel at peace again. I didn’t work today after all, but not because I felt bad. I wanted to preserve that sense of peace. I do have to write the monthly update though tomorrow. It’s already several days overdue.

17122022

The past few days have been a trial, to put it lightly. There were a few stretches there I thought I was gonna die. I’ve been able to mostly recover from it though. I can’t yet tell if the peace I feel right now is the genuine peace of reconciliation, or simply the lull of exhaustion. Maybe the distinction isn’t all that important. Either way, I have to get back to work soon.

14122022

I spent most of today gripped by anger and an intense desire to shoot myself in the face in such a manner that would render my corpse undisplayable. I worked slowly and unsteadily throughout the afternoon, and I plan on working through the night as well.

13122022

I felt calmer today. I woke up rather late, so that the first task of my day was to see the doctor. It was a very pleasant way to start the day, though, all other considerations notwithstanding. I felt better, and was, by nightfall, able to recover the ability to work. 

I’ve finished all of the intertitles for each day. It was a nice change of pace from working on the build itself. I spent the night going through a bunch of books and selecting passages to use for the titles and captions. I have to return to working on the build tomorrow, though. I’ve decided not to worry about the appearance of anything, and just get all the functionality in place. I think that once I’m able to get the skeleton set up, I’ll be able to feel a bit more at ease with it.

12122022

I fear that I have let the past few days overwhelm my senses too thoroughly. I must remember that a person cannot live animated by electrical fervour for long. Perhaps I was mistaken in my happiness. No, that’s not it… I wasn’t mistaken, but more likely, misguided. I think that I have, in certain ways, made a farce of my feelings.

Moreover, every day, I grow to resent my work more and more. I find myself frequently astounded by how insipid and uninspired it all feels. The only part of this project to which I’m looking forward is its end. I keep telling myself that it’s only a handful of months left, that once it’s over, I’ll finally be free. 

But even in this sense, I’m being dishonest with myself. It’s not my work I hate, or even this particular game; but the pathetic, arrogant cowardice with which I live my life. I hate the speed and easiness with which, despite having felt so flush with such certain and intimate joy, I have allowed myself to slip back into this familiar, repulsive worthlessness. I hate the listlessness that descends like a heaving miasma over my days, suffocating out any sense of responsibility or will towards something greater than the assuaging of my immediate psychic pains. And I hate most of all the jealousy that percolates within my chest and rises on occasion with the nausea in my throat. What right do I of all people have to it? 

How disgusting, the lot of it.

09122022

I’m not sure how to even begin talking about the past few days. I feel like my life has palpably changed. I feel like I have changed. I’m no longer alone. Even with all the surrounding complications and agonies, I think I’m happy. I think I’m really happy.

05122022

Another largely wasted day. I woke this morning nauseous from dreaming, far too early. I spent the rest of the morning battling the fugue of a feverish fatigue before deciding that it was not worth it to remain awake any longer. It was already dark by the time I awoke again. I had intended to submit my revised documents but I failed to even start working on them. I feel that I have fallen far from Christ. I feel so bitterly alone and empty all the time now. At least before, there was the semblance of something like sadness occupying that space. But now, it feels like I have nothing anymore, and that I am nothing.

04122022

Terribly tired today. I woke early this morning from a crushing dream about Alexandra that haunted me for the rest of the day. I’m sick of thinking about her. It’s been years already. I can’t stand this emptiness. I wasn’t able to get any work done today. After I returned from service I wandered around aimlessly for a bit and then fell asleep again when I returned home. When I awoke, it was already dark. 

03122022

The start of December has come and passed in an unseemly fit of exhaustion, spurned in equal parts by procrastination and insomnia alike. First it was the UI build, which I still haven’t finished in its entirety; and then some business about creating promotional holidays cards, which I did finish, although possibly not on time. I was awake for nearly three days straight. By the end of this weekend, I will have to have written and submitted a fully realised proposal for an apparently upcoming demo, as well as a comprehensive update to the plot document describing the revisions I’ve made over the past several months.

For once, it feels like things are picking up. To some degree, I actually welcome it. I’ve been having terrible dreams nearly every night for an entire month now, nearly all of them unified in (and equally so, by) their subject. I’ve barely gone out or seen anyone since I left the station that evening, and the thought of being anywhere near the city fills me with nauseating dread. But the past several days have been so thoroughly exhausting that I’ve found that the sheer pressure of each moment is almost nearly enough, in rhythm, to eclipse the otherwise-unignorable pangs of loneliness and embittered grief that tear and crash through me like waves every other moment. 

It’s a diabolical trade-off, to be certain; but at this point, it’s not like things were going to really get better as they were, and just as certainly, I’ve discovered now all too well, I should no longer be so trusting of the kinds of happiness which come from others. At least at the end of this period of trials, I’ll have a game to sell and, more importantly, a contract satisfied.

30112022

Wasn’t able to finish the build on time for submission, but I wrote up a document instead going over the changes I’ve made to the computer interface, which I’ve submitted for now in lieu of a proper build. I spent the day drafting out the functionality and appearance of the ACV app. I feel pretty good about the design. Tomorrow, I’ll start implementing it after I get off the check-in call.

Although I still feel pretty terrible overall and am still very much struggling, I’m glad that I was able to recover a little bit – if only just in this one area – and finish the month in, at least in this one particular regards, a better state than that in which I started it. I think that December will be particularly hard, but I am certain that, for better or worse, I will make it through the end of the year regardless. 

29112022

Finally some real work, for once. I’ve committed to a complete overhaul of the outpost computer UI. The overall appearance is a lot more unified and accessible now, and, at least in my opinion, aesthetically interesting. I’ve merged all of the system apps into a single object that loads directly from the launch screen, and I’ve dramatically decluttered the backend so it’s extremely stable now, and easy to troubleshoot in case QA picks up anything. Right now, only Log is fully implemented functionality-wise – the other two are still basically just visual mockups, as it stands – but it’s a very solid foundation and honestly, I’m just glad I was able to finally get something done.

27112022

My lack of progress – both in getting work done, and getting over myself when it comes to my feelings – has progressed from frustrating to maddening. Despite my efforts otherwise, I’ve gotten basically nothing done since Thursday. Now the weekend is over and I’m once again left with nothing to show for it. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to just get the work done on time, especially when I know what exactly needs to be get done, but today in particular felt impossible to overcome. Every hour I made some excuse for myself to start at the end of that hour, yet I barely got more than ten minutes of real work done at the end of all those hours. What a waste of a life. I hate working on this fucking game. At this rate, it feels like it’ll never end.

21112022

I don’t remember not writing an entry yesterday, but I guess I don’t remember much of anything these days. I worked for about twenty minutes this afternoon – just UI stuff – before succumbing to a dark restlessness that continued to disturb me for the rest of the day. I went for a walk. The night air felt clean and thin, and there were few sounds but the spilling of the wind through the streets and branches of trees. 

19112022

Published the monthly update this afternoon. Spent the rest of the day in a disconsolate fugue. I thought cleaning my desk might help, but instead it just left me feeling terribly deflated and unfulfilled.

18112022

I woke this morning from a dream that left me deeply sad. It was difficult to get out of bed but eventually I somehow did. I was able to get a little bit of work done, mostly just on the Kickstarter update. But after only an hour, I began to feel an immense tearing sensation deep in my chest.

I’ve begun feeling vaguely feverish these past few days whenever I think about certain things too much. My body starts to overheat, and I find myself quickly becoming overwhelmed by a dizzying confusion that rather rapidly and uncontrollably develops into full-blown nausea after several minutes.

Shortly afterwards, I started feeling suicidal again. It persisted for hours. 

16112022

Once again fallen behind tasks. Still haven’t written either the spec doc for the soundscapes, or this month’s update. It’s not that I’ve not been trying, I’ve just been too distracted lately. Everybody’s always telling me that I’m too hard on myself, but if I had the capacity to be kinder to myself, or even just being able to recognise what that might actually entail, I probably wouldn’t find myself in these situations to begin with, I think. The realisation that so little time has actually elapsed in practice just exacerbates it. I don’t mean to be dramatic when I confess that each night has been getting harder and harder to get through. At least the desire to kill oneself is still an active desire, however destructive it may be. Now, it’s as if I have no desires left at all. I can’t find it within me to want to do anything; and everything that I do just feels like a waste of time. I just feel like a waste of time. 

In any case, I should probably commit to finishing the audio write-up and the monthly update tomorrow. 

13112022

Thoroughly drained. Still no progress. I completely forgot to write the soundscape design sheet for the composer last week. I opened up a document, wrote the title, and then felt so overwhelmed with physical fatigue that I found myself hardly able to look at the screen much longer, let alone conjure any useful thoughts. I’ll have to get it done tomorrow before my meeting. 

This week I’m supposed to deliver a build with additional content in it. Seeing that both tomorrow and Tuesday will be more or less completely occupied, that leaves me approximately eight hours or so on Wednesday – and that’s if I’m lucky enough to be debilitated by psychosomatic ailment – to come up with and implement any such content in full. I don’t know why I place such burdens upon myself. I feel useless in the face of it all.

12112022

Nothing to update, other than to confirm that I’ve continued to not get any work done. I met with Tawanda across the river instead. We ate pizza, and then sat and watched the lights of the city for a while. The night was bright and streaked with thin, pale clouds that seemed to tumble endlessly across the entire sky. I’ve become sick with longing. I am certain now that, against any efforts to humiliate myself into believing otherwise, what I felt was starkly, unabashedly real. In the wake of that realisation, my former loneliness, in/to which I had so surely resigned myself prior, has become unbearable. The past has suddenly become inhospitable, yet there is no refuge in the present, either. I have little other apparent choice but to wait and suffer the death of this experience in real-time, at the level of my spirit and body alike, all the while mourning its passing, actively unable to effect any other course. The death of something that could’ve been. Maybe. An inchoate, pluperfect future. You know, I still haven’t changed the sheets. I’m afraid to do so. Of what it could mean, of what it might suggest. Instead I pass my evenings lying there on the floor, hours on end, door locked, until it goes completely dark, breathing in and out the ever-diminishing scents of that afternoon until I become nauseous from the heaving in my chest. The nascence of tears that never seem to arrive when they should. I fear the moment has passed for us, irreparably. On what grounds? I don’t know. What is faith? Holy fool. Fucking idiot. 

09112022

More marginal fixes. Someone told me once that as long as you do a single thing every day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it is, you’re making progress. I guess they’re right in a logistical sense. But in the moment, it just ends up feeling even more frustrating than doing nothing. 

I’m discovering, day by day, that the oblivion of my previous despair was, in retrospect, a far more comfortable burden to hold than that of my present grief. I will be the first to admit how annoyingly melodramatic that likely comes off; but right now, I can no longer stomach the desire to care otherwise. I can’t believe so little time has actually passed. At this rate, it’s hard to believe that I’ll be able to make it through this winter intact.

08112022

Optimised the generic forest rooms, and changed the primary typeface to Arial. I feel physically exhausted, and I can’t concentrate on anything. I worked for about an hour, maybe two at maximum, in the afternoon before I succumbed completely to a total fatigue of both my body and spirit. I can’t even properly recall what I actually accomplished, if anything at all. I feel like I’ve made such marginal improvements to the game’s performance that they could just as very well be negligible altogether. I didn’t see the doctor today. I wish I could talk to someone, but the thought of being near another person right now, with the exception of the doctor, deeply unsettles me. I don’t even know what I would or could say. All of this is so pathetic. It makes me sick.

06112022

Didn’t work at all this weekend. I probably should have, but… I don’t know. I don’t really have any excuses. I’m tired of coming up with them for myself. I just feel empty. That’s all.

04112022

Spent a bit this morning optimising some stuff, or at least pretending to do so. I set up the YYC compiler and did some cursory tests: it seems to work surprisingly well. I haven’t encountered any issues with it yet although I certainly imagine that it’s only a matter of time. I spent the afternoon playing Siege. I don’t particularly enjoy it, to be honest, but it’s the only thing that seems to really work to keep my thoughts steadily and completely occupied. That, and sleeping, I guess. I’ve been doing both of those a lot lately. Even just a few minutes on my own, I start to unravel. I can’t stand this. I hope it ends soon.

03112022

First day back to work in-engine in what feels like a month. So much has happened just within the past week alone, I don’t even know where to begin to recount any of it. A part of me feels at peace, yet another part of me feels just completely hollowed out. I feel alone again. I guess that means I have to start working again. I don’t know what else to do. I feel like if I don’t, I’ll start coming apart.

12102022

Took a day off to rest, and then spent most of today catching up on the previous day’s responsibilities, which included finishing the final cut of the trailer (for good, this time) and recording some kind of introductory video, which was a complete failure. 

I feel a little bit better about it now, it’s slightly more interesting than it was before and taking a day off to give it some space provided the necessary distance to be able to evaluate and address its shortcomings more pointedly.

Taking the rest of the week off after tomorrow’s meeting.

10102022

Finished and submitted the trailer. It’s completely forgettable and falls short of just about any measure of adequacy, but at least it’s done and I can finally rest. I still need to do a few touch-ups on it tomorrow and record an introduction video, but the worst of it is now in the past. I’m going to rest until the weekend, and then start working on the game again proper.

09102022

Burning the oil on the trailer. It’s going to be complete shit, but at this point, I no longer care. I suppose, though, in a roundabout way it is a very honest and accurate reflection of where I stand on the project. I’m sick of all of this. 

05102022

Spent last night with Haolun, until this afternoon. We had a long talk today about my difficulties with work. I feel better about it, or at least more motivated. I guess we’ll see how I feel after tomorrow morning’s meeting.

I realise I’ve completely lost touch with the essence of my work. These past few months I haven’t thought about any elements within the game itself. All I’ve been thinking about and struggling through are questions about how I think others may perceive this project: whether through the tutorial, or various mechanical systems, or the marketing, or this goddamned trailer. I haven’t thought about the characters or the ideas driving this work at all in what feels like over a year now. 

After this trailer is done, I’m completely pulling back. No more of this, all of these distractions. I’ve allowed myself to be buried by all this irrelevant noise. I need to reorient and rediscover within myself what makes this game matter at all to me, and just spend time with that alone, on my own, moving forward. Everything else is just static.

03102022

Returned last night from seeing a new friend. This morning, immediately upon sitting down at my computer again, I was overcome at once by a wave of despair so great I nearly collapsed. I didn’t work on the trailer. I didn’t work on anything at all. I must confess a rather inconvenient and terrible truth that’s dawned on me. I’ve grown to resent this project deeply. The work has become meaningless. Dull and unbearably pretentious. I despise working with my publisher. I get the sense that I am utterly marginal and deprioritised in their schemes. I’ve grown sick of all of it. The meeting last week was the final push. Any remaining hope that I might be able to recover some semblance of joy, or meaning, or even just plain curiosity from this project in its present state has been buried. I just want it to be over. Now that I’ve felt true happiness, I can no longer bear the deception, the delusion of the rest of it.

28092022

I woke up this morning to discover that my choice in music for the trailer – which is to say, in other words, the very backbone of its composition – has been deemed too legally risky. The few options I was given to remediate this were effectively all non-options or, even worse, inadvertently humiliating. In practical terms, I’ve been left with just over a week to a deadline to discard all my present work and completely redo the trailer altogether.

Well, to put it lightly, I’m demoralised. Not just about the immediate future of the trailer (which, to be honest, I was already thinking about redoing in its entirety anyways), but also about the longer future of my relationship with the publisher.  More and more lately I’ve been feeling a mounting frustration with how they’ve handled – or I suppose, are handling – this project. I’ve realised only recently just how much it’s drained me both personally and in terms of my interest in, and motivation to work on the project.

To be fair, I don’t think any of it is a fault of their specific practices, I should clarify: but I feel like I’ve been repeatedly deprioritised this entire time to the point where just about the only benefit they’ve provided me in practical effect so far has been the money (which, also to be fair, is certainly no small thing). But if money was the only thing I was looking for, I could’ve gone with virtually anybody else; and there were likely even better options in that capacity as well. I suppose disappointment is the best way to put it. Disappointment in their relative lack of involvement, yes; but more so, disappointment in myself in thinking I could somehow be an exception.

27092022

Finally back home, and more or less settled back in. I can hardly even begin to describe the events of the past week, let alone adequately. The best I can offer is that I’ve come back changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Fortunately my desire to work has been rejuvenated wholesale. I spent the night going over the existing cut and adding a few more pieces. It seems to be coming along alright, although I definitely need to shoot a lot more footage. (There’s also the question of whether I should reshoot the old footage for sake of visual consistency, but I’m not quite ready yet to consider the necessary tedium of that suggestion…)

I’m also thinking about significantly cutting down the actual song length, or even more radically, just using another song altogether. I’m sitting at almost an exact minute right now and still have an entire minute of audio left. With the speed of these cuts, that’s a massive amount of material I’ll need to shoot in composite, for which frankly I doubt I have either the time or patience. I’ll be working on this all of tomorrow, so I’ll see what I can do about halving the length, or even using a new song. 

20092022

Didn’t end up finishing all the footage for the trailer, but I feel good about the work I have left. I’m going to put some final touches on it tomorrow, including editing down the song length proper, and then submit it for this week.

After talking to the doctor, I feel much better about the upcoming trip as well. I hope that by the time I come back, I’ll have enough energy in reserve to push through it all at once the week I return.

18092022

I had the strangest night last night. Not at all in a bad way. It completely cleansed away the distaste of the preceding day. In any case, I got back late enough that I just didn’t bother going to sleep and instead worked on the trailer for a while. I’d like to get the layout done and submitted by Tuesday. I didn’t attend service today. I wanted to go but I felt like I needed some time to think about things on my own.

16092022

Feeling pretty drained. Woke up late, spent most of the day pretending to write this month’s update. I had planned on working proper tonight, but ended up having to attend to other matters. I think I’ll go to sleep early instead and immediately start working as soon as I wake up tomorrow.

15092022

Submitted the initial “draft” of the trailer yesterday. It seems to have been received well. It was immensely relieving. I feel like it’s the first time anyone’s been excited about the game in a while. I know for certain that’s not true, but unfortunately reality so rarely ever corroborates feelings, for better or worse. I’m beginning to feel better about the project again. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about this announcement.

I’m hoping to get all of the new assets done by the end of this weekend. I’ll be out for a bit Saturday night, but otherwise it should just be straight shooting from here. I didn’t work at all today after the meeting, but I feel pretty good about things.

12092022

I finally finished this cursed animation that’s occupied the entirety of the weekend. It looks pretty good, actually, so maybe it was worth it ultimately. I struggled for the rest of the day in terms of how to lay out – and then, naturally, fill out – the rest of the trailer. 

I was visited just now by a tremendous surge of inspiration, however, which has almost singularly changed the direction of it. I will continue working a bit longer throughout the night.

11092022

I’ve spent nearly two consecutive days (only a handful of hours per day, to be fair) working on a single animation and I’m not sure if it’s been worth it. I suppose I won’t know until it’s done.

10092022

Returned from visiting several old friends. I have been left deeply moved by this experience. I believe I have learned a new kind of love from this, a kind that can only be realised through a certain ellipsis of time and perspective. I have missed them all more dearly than I may have realised, and now confess.

08092022

Started working on assets for the trailer this afternoon. The bulk of it is animations: I’m trying to keep as much of the footage for the trailer contained to stuff that actually appears in the game, rather than complementary stuff I have to build specifically for this. Helps keep things focused, and saves me some work in the long run as well. If I work diligently, I may even have a content-complete first draft by the end of the weekend. We’ll see.

07092022

Another day with limited apparent progress; but I feel much clearer in regard to my vision for this trailer than I did before. I’ve decided to drop the hymn for this one: I’ve been having too much difficulty coordinating a flow of images to it with what I currently have (and am willing and able to produce, for that matter) within the limited few weeks I have left. I also have begun to feel that, at the current stage of the project, it feels like there’s a bit too much potential for it to be misinterpreted tonally, and I don’t feel like I can do it justice now. Hopefully for release though…

The new idea is pretty interesting though, and it feels very clear to me. I started working on a proper treatment late tonight. It’s unfortunate, and immensely frustrating that it came to me so late and that I won’t be able to have a proper deliverable by tomorrow’s meeting. I’m cautiously optimistic about this idea though. I suspect it may not be as immediately and broadly impactful as the last trailer, but if I can get it right… I think it’ll be good. Conceptually, it feels right.

06092022

I didn’t get as much work done today as I would have liked, but I still felt marginally more productive than I have in the past several weeks, so I suppose I should count that as some kind of progress. 

Of course, I must admit that feeling in itself has little bearing upon actual material progress, of which unfortunately I can’t report much: I’ve begun to realise that my energy is seemingly much more limited than before, and that spending time in anyone’s company is enough to thoroughly deplete the rest of the day’s reserve of attention.

I don’t think that this in itself is a bad thing by any means, and in fact, I think I feel more fulfilled now by the presence of others in the immediate than I did before. But it’s become rather difficult to establish a rhythm in which things may get done at a reasonable pace, while also holding so much space for others. I wouldn’t mind if it was just the doctor. But lately it feels like every other day I have to meet someone or the other – for reasons I often willingly and gladly volunteer myself, to be honest – and it feels nearly impossible to settle into a pace of work that allows meaningful thought without disruption. 

Thankfully winter is not too far, at least in terms of the temperament of the weather if not the seasons themselves. I hope it will provide me the refuge of an excuse that I desire. Else, I’ll be stuck making excuses for myself, and then regretting them irreconcilably.

05092022

First day back to work. A terrible humidity has set over the next week that bodes ill for the near future. Regardless, I must resume a steady schedule. I promised my producer an initial draft by this week’s meeting. I’m hoping that tomorrow I can finish most of the graphic assets for the intro sequence, and get the bare text laid out. I reckon I should probably draft a proper treatment too at some point, not just for the sake of a submission but to set it in stone.

01092022

September. It seems the period of greatest confusion may now be in the past. A sobering clarity has set in. I have fallen into a profound sadness; but I’m no longer confounded in purpose. I’ve been able to start thinking about work again. This afternoon, I finally found within myself again the ability to conjure and maintain a much clearer vision of my work than I have in months.

31082022

The end of a season. Unofficially, anyways. The weather cooled significantly today. Still nothing to show for any of it. I’ve become beset by an intense paranoia.