Author: Spencer

Finished up the animation for the external decontamination shower; just gotta add the text prompt and audio tomorrow and it’ll be complete. I’ll probably get that done tomorrow, as well as the internal hygienic shower and toilet animations. Those are probably gonna be a bit more complex as I have to create an animation for actually entering them, but I think I should be able to repurpose the one for opening/closing regular doors – we’ll see. The door layers will also probably have to be duplicated as overlay objects.

Today was not as productive as yesterday but I still managed to maintain a steady pace throughout the morning. I worked on more furniture for the outpost, implementing the toilet and shower I made yesterday, as well as rearranging the room a bit to accommodate the new facilities. I imagine that tomorrow’s work will be much of the same as well. I was distracted around noon though by the arrival of a new major content update for Breakpoint, so the rest of my day’s work proceeded at a spottier rate. I think it’s okay though so long as tomorrow I’m able to get back on schedule.

Missed my entry yesterday because I fell asleep again in the evening, but there wasn’t much of anything to report anyways. Today was considerably more productive, and I managed to maintain a steady and consistent pace of work all throughout the day. I managed to accomplish a number of tasks, the most major one being a significantly-improved UI experience for the developer console (which has also had a number of commands added/cleaned up). I spent the latter half of the day working on new sprites for furniture within the outpost, which I’ll hopefully be able to implement tomorrow.

I’ve been feeling pretty disrupted lately on a number of levels. Gonna just try to just work through it…

Another wasted day, spent nearly the entirety of it asleep. The few hours that I was awake, I just reviewed some notes and read a bit. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of history in lending legitimacy to faith on the cosmic level. Not just in the sense that ancient traditions are afforded legitimacy solely by their endurance in broader memory; but more specifically the ways in which religious principles are so often, in so many systems of faith across the world both present and past (and probably future), grounded in what are astonishingly concrete and local histories. 

You can still (and to this day, a not-insignificant number of people definitely do in the name of pilgrimage) walk the exact routes between locations described in the Bible; virtually all of the places are or at some point were real. Here’s the clearing where the angels descended to earth and had a picnic; here’s the mountain which God struck in two with lightning to deliver a point. Eden for all its mythical glory could just as well have been on the other side of the valley, visible beneath a satellite on Google Maps. So much of the Old Testament is just as much human record of history and genealogy, precise census of military might and territorial boundaries, as it is an outline for the practice of faith on a societal level; which is ultimately to say that all of this is a kinda curious thing to consider, that we still rely on these ancient pinpoints, so many of them no longer the same as they were described, fundamentally warped by territorial conflict and zoning codes and ecological erosion, can still serve as the tangible bedrock upon which our faith rests. There’s something at once oddly intimate, and also sobering about it. 

All of this is to suggest that maybe it’s not us who changed after all. For all intents and purposes, it seems as if we’ve been more or less the same from the moment we were created: hopelessly vain, ambitious, brimming with pride and righteousness and envy, fickle and uncertain and stubborn. That’s not to say that we haven’t made efforts to change our circumstances, or that those efforts have gone without consequence: overall I think it’s undeniable to acknowledge that we’ve improved our living conditions, maybe even become more aware on a mass level of each other, ourselves, our fragility and vulnerability. But on a long enough timeline, all those changes still fit within our grand narrative about ourselves, our ability to read the poetry or law or philosophy of ancestors millennia ago and still relate to them on that profound level which we call the “human condition”. It’s not that I believe we’re exactly immutable, so much as it is that our nature is fixed: our progress is incremental, our systems and fashions and attitudes may evolve over time, but no amount of revelation or intervention can change our fundamental state of being. 

It’s not us who have really changed, but God. God, who trusted us with obedience only to be surprised with our betrayal; God, who wiped out nearly all life on earth in disgust at our pettiness and vanity, only to regret it a day later and promise to never do it again; God, who relinquished command and descended to earth in the skin and shape of a man to feel what it was like to be us, knowing full well the cruelty and intolerance of the authorities of this earth. Our actions and presence upon this earth have changed the nature of God as far as our narrative as a species is concerned, drawing God very slowly over the centuries into our fold of existence, our precarious understanding of this world and one another and ourselves. 

I dunno… maybe it’s presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions the way I am – who knows, the timeline and scale God has existed on is incomprehensible to me, and who can say to know the will and nature of God anyways – but ultimately I think what I’m trying to get at is that, if we are truly God’s creation, we will last with our humanity – whatever that is, whatever that’s worth – uncompromised, regardless of what happens. It’s the rest of the world beyond us that changes in reaction to us; and it’s in their consideration which we should be ever vigilant as shepherds and custodians of this world, to at least try to act in good faith and with good intentions – or at the bare minimum, a modicum of self-awareness and sincerity. 

Or so it goes. 

Spent the morning working on writing for the game, which was a nice change of pace although to be completely honest it didn’t feel like actual work. In other news, I recently did an interview which was published today in the form of an article on Rock Paper Shotgun. I thought the author did an excellent job within the obvious constraints of the publication, but to be honest, I thought that most of the comments betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding – intentional or otherwise – of what I was saying and my intentions with the game and the interview; which, I’m not gonna lie, does not bode well for my sense of confidence in the slightest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I was given the opportunity to do the interview and I very much enjoyed the discussions I had… but I’ve also been reminded rather painfully of why I don’t feel comfortable engaging much with the general public anymore.

I woke today filled with extremely negative thoughts, which continued to plague me throughout the day and made concentrating on work exceedingly difficult. Nevertheless I did manage to get some stuff done today, the most significant being the implementation of a system which will randomly create thoughts for Avery when she’s presented with stressful situations or disruptive thoughts (ie pain, bodily needs, etc). The frequency of the thoughts, which is synced to the global tick, must be manually set and thoughts are spawned using what is essentially a random number generator.

Didn’t get too much done today. Spent an hour or so in the afternoon recording foley for the defecation audio. It was rather unpleasant, but now I can finally check it off my list of things to get done. 

Finished up the caloric system and implemented thirst/hydration, which for some reason I completely forgot about earlier. All the major physiological systems are now foundationally complete and the only things I have left to do – well, “only” makes it sound like it’s not gonna be too much work, but I by no means am underestimating the scale of this endeavour, mind you – are to integrate the systems with the actions, along with any other additional balancing/statistical tweaking down the line (I know for certain I’m probably gonna have to revisit hydration at some point). 

I also spent a few hours this afternoon recording foley audio for the vomiting animation, which is more or less complete by now. It was a rather taxing experience, to put it one way. 

I spent some time today working on the caloric system. I’ve decided to simplify it a bit after all – previously I had planned to allow Avery to overeat and accumulate stored calories in the form of body fat, but I felt that would’ve been too complicated both to implement and to understand when playing (not to mention the kinda absurd proposition of someone gaining substantial amounts of reserve fat in a matter of days), so I instead reduced the caloric bank to a fixed value which is determined at the start of the game, and which will serve as a backup supply allowing Avery to starve for a bit without incurring substantial damages. The system is all set up and basically complete as far as implementation goes, but I didn’t get around to actually testing it in-game so I’m gonna get that done tomorrow and then start working on implementing food like I’d initially planned yesterday.

Missed my entry yesterday even though for whatever godforsaken reason I stayed up the entire night doing effectively nothing of worth. In any case though, I just finished up and posted the March update article, which you can read here. I’m gonna try to pull my schedule back in order for this weekend and get back to work proper. Tomorrow I’m gonna try to finish up the caloric balance system, and then start implementing all the animations for eating. 

Spent an hour or two this afternoon writing up this month’s update for the Kickstarter, which will hopefully be posted tomorrow. I’ve been feeling really out of it though these past few days… it seems like all sorts of things have just very suddenly accumulated into a single monolithic and overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. I think after I publish the article tomorrow, I’ll try my best to take another break this weekend, a proper one this time.

I spent two or three hours this afternoon trying to work on more biomechanics stuff – finished up thirst, started working on caloric balance and intake/output – but I kept on thinking about this whole pandemic thing and I began to feel overwhelmed to the point where I was no longer able to concentrate.

Spent the entire day until basically 1900 in a state of strange and restless sleep, in which I experienced a number of intensely vivid dreams which left me feeling disoriented and confused when I finally managed to awake. Completely wasted away the day, obviously got no work done. 

Today I worked on hunger, which is basically more or less finished at this point as far as general implementation goes. It’s roughly tied to the fullness of the stomach, and begins incrementally decreasing once the stomach reaches a certain volume. Hunger here doesn’t exactly represent physical hunger (which is more accurately represented in the game by calories, which I’ll discuss later), but is a closer measure of psychological hunger: as Avery’s hunger level depletes, she’ll slowly and eventually steadily begin to lose willpower. This means that, should the player choose to, she can go a decent amount of time – about two or three in-game days, depending on other covalent conditions and/or deficiencies – without eating anything, although it certainly won’t be a comfortable experience for her. Tomorrow I’ll finish up the same process for thirst, which I started today but which I didn’t get around to really properly balancing. 

I also added in a new UI element, representing overwhelming thoughts. These, in contrast to inspection-based thoughts and interaction thoughts, are usually more urgent in both nature and tone and as such, represent thoughts that are more sudden and intrusive, such as pangs of hunger, or desires to relieve oneself. They take up the entire screen for about a second before disappearing, similar to the appearance of intertitles in film. 

I woke from the strangest and the most moving dream today. There was something unbearably nostalgic about it and when I woke I felt incredibly light and adrift, as if I’d become dislodged from reality. The feeling dissipated about an hour after awakening though.

It was a rather pleasant day outside today, unusually warm given the preceding ones, and I spent the afternoon working outside. I built the foundation for the digestion biomechanics today, which includes the movement of solids through the body (I think it’d be better to merge the urination script here as well, I’ll probably get that done tomorrow). Tomorrow I also plan on finally implementing hunger, based on stomach volume. 

Woke up still feeling agitated so I decided not to work again after all. Hopefully by tomorrow this cloud will have dissipated enough so that I’ll be able to feel comfortable getting back to a normal schedule.

Woke at 1630 feeling vaguely disgusted but otherwise fine. Unfortunately getting up so late completely threw off my entire sense of purpose for the day so I just decided to take the day off and work tomorrow instead. 

Woke up feeling sick of looking at my computer so I spent the morning instead preparing food for the rest of the day and walking around outside. It was a cool, overcast day and the air felt remarkably clean. I read a book for some time before spending the rest of the afternoon in a conference call, during which I worked on and finished the final map for the game. I’ll probably release it tomorrow for the #screenshotsaturday post… although I should go over it again to make sure there aren’t any spoilers (although I don’t imagine there should be any, as the print is effectively illegible). Tomorrow I’m going to start working on the outpost again. I’d like to get back to work on in-engine content next week. Finishing the map has made me realise just how much work I have left before me.

Spent most of today working on the map for the game. The general layout has now been finished, and the only thing that’s really left to do is plot out specific locations and adjust for topographical variation (specifically elevation, which is gonna be a real challenge to communicate). The current map is a 20×20 grid… which means that I’m potentially looking at over 400 rooms upon completion if I stick to this layout. That’s a pretty fucking wild number – even adjusting for the fact that several hundred of them will be generic forest layouts – and I should probably tone it down a bit. We’ll see though…

I started the Warlords of New York expansion for The Division 2 tonight. It’s superlatively good in nearly every sense, and I’d say it definitely represents the peak of the series’ accomplishments heretofore. Playing it has helped inspire me to work on my own stuff, which is very rare for a game these days; I’m looking forward to experiencing the rest of it over the next few weeks.

Implemented functionality for inspect mode, and reconfigured the backend for item descriptions allowing for more variations (all descriptions are now initialised in the object’s Create event, whereas previously they were all initialised in a single script that made variations very difficult to implement due to the finnicky nature of the choose event – or perhaps more accurately my inability to work through basic logical operations). No visual effects have been added yet beyond a special cursor upon hovering over certain objects that display text so I’ll have to figure something, if anything, out tomorrow. Once I get that done, system UI will basically be completely done (excluding any additional extraneous elements I may decide to add later), meaning I can finally get back to work on interactive objects within the outpost.

Worked mostly on interface stuff today: added a new font (Perfect DOS VGA 437) for the satellite overlay, improved the visual effects for opening and closing UI windows, and fully implemented the Information window, which lists all the controls for the game and refers the player to the manual (which I have yet to write). I didn’t make as much progress as I hoped but I definitely still made some regardless so I’m satisfied overall. 

It only dawned on me today – in the physical sense, that is – just how much time I spend in front of my computer (let alone in front of a screen in general). I came to this realisation this evening after looking away from my computer after working for a while only to feel my eyes burning. Nearly every day for the past month I’ve been on my computer I reckon 95% of the day, from the moment I wake to the moment I go to sleep. I have a feeling that’s definitely not good for me on any timeline, to put it lightly; I should start taking steps to remedy that, starting with developing and recommitting to a stricter work schedule. That first requires me to start getting to sleep and waking up at better times, though…

Didn’t end up working on the inspect feature today, but I did manage to finish up a few major promotional graphics that I’ve been putting off for a while. I woke up pretty late into the afternoon after working late last night but managed to work consistently for the next six hours without feeling distracted so today ended up feeling pretty productive despite the unideal start. I felt a bit calmer and more positive today as a direct result.

Not a great start to the month; just worked on a single UI panel for most of the afternoon, but couldn’t even bother to really finish it. I’ll get it done by tomorrow and then start getting to work on the observation/inspection mechanic. I don’t imagine it’ll be too difficult to implement mechanically as a lot of the foundation has already been built but I do want to investigate the possibility of some additional visual effects for it (ie unique cursor, object highlighting).

Didn’t realise it was a leap year. In any case, I took the day off for no particular reason. I feel kinda empty, to be honest: in neither a particularly positive nor negative way. I just feel devoid of sensation and continuity.

Finally finished up the bed animation, and got it implemented as an interactive. It doesn’t look great, but it’s perfectly serviceable, meaning I just have to design the actual sleep mechanic now… I’ll probably just build the rest of the interactive objects though over the next week and then get started on fleshing out each one. 

In other news, GDC has been “postponed”, which means for all intents and purposes it’s been cancelled. They probably made the right choice, for less-than-right reasons. Either way though, that leaves me with little choice on my end. On one hand I now no longer have to assemble a build by the 15th as there’s now no more event to attend. On the other hand, there’s now no more event to attend and to be completely honest, I was in some respect very much looking forward to it despite my wariness. Of all the years a fucking pandemic-level outbreak has to hit…

A very slow day. Woke up late and worked pretty inefficiently on the hunger mechanics, before starting to feel restless so I started working instead on the sleeping animation again – which is still not finished, to no one’s surprise. The month’s almost over and I’ve accomplished not even a single week’s worth of work, even being generous. I didn’t really feel distracted so much as I just felt aimless, although I’m certainly not lacking concrete aim. I just feel very unfocused in general and all the work I have to do right now seems fundamentally tedious, although it has to get done and in reality once I see the results I think I’ll actually feel quite invigorated. I’ll try to finish up and implement the bed animation by the end of tomorrow; I suppose it’s the least I can do in terms of completion. 

Woke up late again, although I managed to work consistently throughout the afternoon into the evening. Although I initially had planned on finishing up the animation for getting into bed I felt absolutely unmotivated to work on it so instead I decided to get back to work on the hunger system, which led directly to the realisation that actually, this entire time, the entire time system had at some point become undone. I spent a few hours fixing that, as well as remodeling the time scale and display to be built around minutes rather than half-hour intervals. One in-game minute now corresponds to around five seconds of real-time, which I feel is a good pace. 

I’ve also decided to add an additional unlockable item in the form of a biometric tracker, which will allow the player to view numerical biodata such as stomach capacity and caloric intake/output; it’s a useful solution to the issue of ambiguity – for example, does Avery feel thirsty because she’s just not drinking enough, or because she’s contracted a disease which dehydrates her at a much faster rate than usual? – while remaining diegetically consistent. I’ve added it to the list of things to take care of down the line but I imagine that once I get the biomechanics done for digestion I’ll be ready to start working on it sooner rather than later.

Today has just been one long series of mounting aggravations and frustrations, almost entirely due to poor decisions on my part.

First full work day in a while: spent most of it fixing up the interaction text, which I feel is now consistent and legible enough to my standards. Basically, there are two variations so far: a) situational text, which appears as text bubbles over small objects such as stones and sticks that can be picked up in the world space, and b) captioned text, which appear in the bottom margin of the letterbox and indicates either a more significant action (such as opening a door) in white with parentheses; or a thought, which appears in yellow (no parentheses). I’ll obviously keep iterating on it moving forward, as with all things, but for now it displays consistently across all available cases and looks pretty legible. Tomorrow I’m gonna start working on animations for other processes in the outpost. I should be able to get at least two full ones finished by the end of the day.

Woke up at exactly noon after accidentally connecting to an active call, and ended up playing games with my friends for nearly twelve hours straight afterwards. While I had a pretty good time overall there is no doubt in my mind about just how profoundly unacceptable it was on multiple levels. I’m gonna be making an active effort to ease up a bit moving forward, while investing a significantly greater amount of time and attention towards work. The month’s nearly over and I’ve gotten way too little done; I’ve definitely fallen behind schedule at this point, especially if I want something even remotely presentable at GDC. Gotta just clear my mind and reestablish control.