Spent some time with Haolun last night, and he stayed over. We tried out a new diner – the Majestic – which was pretty good and the waitress was nice and then we stayed up until almost dawn talking about girls like we were still in high school or something. Our voices drifted through the darkness across the length of the room and when we stopped speaking the sound of the wind whipping against the window frame cushioned the silence with a comfortable hum. It was pleasant in a way I haven’t experienced in some time.
Despite the very basic and straightforward nature of my task as described yesterday – the implementation of the lighter framework into the main gameplay – I somehow failed completely at implementing it and accomplished basically nothing today. I just paced around in a state of elevated energy listening to the new Taylor Swift album and thinking about the pacing of the trailer. It’s gotten remarkably cold lately, and it’s always colder inside my house than it is outside. I didn’t even get an entry in for Inktober, either. Tomorrow, I’ll actually get something done.
Spent some time with Aurora this afternoon, and then worked on the mechanics for the lighter. It works very well, and is basically finished: now all I have to do is integrate it into the main workflow and it should be ready. That should take very little time and effort tomorrow. After that, I can start working on other firestarting gear, or on new biomechanics for digestion. Either way, I feel like I made good progress today.
No in-engine work today, but I got the animation done for sparking and igniting the disposable lighter. I think the spark and flame effects could use a bit more touch-up – the animation on them is a bit awkward right now in terms of the pacing – but otherwise I’m feeling pretty good about them. Implementing them into the game once they’re done shouldn’t be difficult at all: I’ll need to create a new UI element for it as well as a randomiser for the probability, but other than that, the actual fire pit assembly is basically already done. I hope it goes as smoothly as I’ve just written it…
Didn’t get much done of anything at all, although last night (technically this morning, since it was like 0400) I finally implemented the rope, which ended up looking a whole lot better than I originally planned. It does use verlet integration after all, although the solution is frankly rather inelegant. Oh, well. You can’t always get things working the exact way you want them.
Tomorrow I should really get back to work proper, back to the regular schedule. I haven’t decided yet what to work on… maybe I should finally get the firestarting done. Or maybe eating / cooking…?
Continued work on the rappelling, including a new animation for planting the anchor point, and improved audio overall. I still haven’t figured out what I’m gonna do about the rope, it’s really been frustrating me. I looked into more dynamic verlet-based solutions but honestly I don’t feel great about them. Well, I guess I’ll give it a try after all…
Successfully submitted the past two weeks’ of work for #screenshotsaturday, and cleaned up the animation and sounds for rappelling a bit. The volume on the audio still needs to be mixed a bit better I think, and there’s obviously still no rope: but it turned out better than I expected and I’m honestly still a bit surprised that I was able to implement it with any success at all. I’ll probably spend some time tomorrow attempting the rope and cleaning up any residual jaggedness, but I’m looking forward to starting work on something new next week.
I’ve started another watch-through of GTO with Kristina and Staoue! They’re working through the manga as well, and hopefully once we’re done we’ll be able to get the live-actions in as well.
Spent most of the day fiddling around with carabiners and compression straps trying to mix audio for the rappelling. I’ve got the clip-in and ascender motor sounds finished, although they still sound a bit rough to me; all that’s left in terms of sounds are the clip-out and landing, which shouldn’t be too bad. I think I can get those done in an hour or two, and then it’s a matter of animating a rope and fixing up as best I can the shadows (or lack thereof…) on the descent… that should get me through tomorrow. I haven’t posted anything public in some time, so hopefully this is able to serve as a decent segue into a recovery.
Martin and I finished watching GTO today. Aside from the spinoff prequel, which we’re going to watch tomorrow hopefully, we’ve now seen every iteration of it it – 1998, 2014 and now the anime, all specials included. It’s been quite an experience, to say the least. This is the second time I’ve watched through all of it now and my life has changed significantly since last I saw it, which was during my second year of withdrawal from the world in university. I feel considerably more motivated and purposeful now. Nonetheless though not only has GTO retained its power but I think I feel even more moved now than I did the first time watching it, being able to recognise in it things I couldn’t see before. The Yoshikawa-Anko arc in particular moved us both to tears. It makes me long for the days of my youth. I feel filled with a sense of profound optimism and confidence now in myself and my friends. I hope I’m able to channel it productively into my work and interactions with others in the days to come. I hope I don’t lose sight of it too soon.
Rappelling has now been implemented although the sprite positioning is pretty off currently, and I’ve yet to implement an actual rope. I suspect that’ll take up basically all of tomorrow, I still haven’t decided how I’m gonna handle the rope: either as a complex static sprite, or as a physics object – or as a combination of both. If it’s the latter I’ll have to look into verlet integration probably which is again something I’m very much not looking forward to working with. I’ll also have to record some audio for it…
For some unfathomably stupid reason I tried testing out the rappelling method Avery uses today by doing a controlled descent from my roof. The technique involves only a rope, without a harness, and it was… painful, to say the least. It’d be much more painful for her as well since she’s got so much skin exposed where the rope would be making contact with her body. For the sake of her skin and my sanity when it comes to spriting, I’ve just elected to give her a mechanised rope ascender instead…
Skipped a post again yesterday. By the time I realised I’d missed it, it was already 3am; it would’ve been too late anyways. Well, today was more productive! I finally finished the rappelling animation, or rather, the most difficult part of it. I could feasibly implement it tonight but I don’t want to work on this anymore for right now. I can’t believe this shit has taken up almost two entire weeks of work at this point… once I’m done with it this weekend I’ll really have to start working in double-time to catch up. Hopefully it’ll be worth it, although I’m not feeling so sure about it anymore. Well, if nothing else comes of it, now I know how to rappel down a drop using only a rope in at least three different configurations.
Felt a bit worse today than the days before, although I suppose it’s been somewhat of a steady decline in mood over the entire weekend. I woke up late once again and had some difficulty getting out of bed, but ultimately I was able to begin working on the animations for rappelling as promised, although it turns out they’re even more difficult than I originally imagined. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more productive, but I’ll take what I can get for now…
I haven’t opened GameMaker since Friday night. Not that I feel unmotivated or anything: it’s just that the thought of having to work on the rappelling animations is really off-putting currently. I know I said yesterday that I’d work on them today, but… I don’t think that’s gonna be happening any time soon. Tomorrow though, I’ll have to start working again, no matter what…
I failed to make a post yesterday both because I was too tired and because I actually accomplished nothing of worth yesterday. The same can be said of today, I suppose, although today Sawyer and I went to see Joker. I’ll keep my thoughts here brief (for now) but it was quite moving and overall I felt that the film was able to capture a very specific kind of very raw emotionality that few other films have really managed to touch. It definitely not only lived up to expectations, but exceeded them in many ways. It does a great job not only revisiting the origins of an often-incomprehensible character in a very believably tragic and even sympathetic context; but completely reframing the pivotal deaths of the Wayne family as well, which heretofore has always been seen as an unbelievably tragic incident but in Joker it comes off as almost deserved, if not outright justified. It’s definitely one of the best films I’ve seen that’s come out in recent years, if not the best.
Otherwise, though, I got absolutely no work done whatsoever. I didn’t accomplish most of my goals for this week – those being completing the functions of the multitool – nor did I successfully even begin to implement abseiling, as I got too caught up in the actual environmental work. I’m thinking that, instead of taking my day of rest tomorrow, I’ll work instead since I haven’t really worked on anything these past few days.
A pretty productive day. I woke up early – or, more accurately, at the time I usually should wake up, although lately I’ve been waking up (and going to sleep) much later for some reason – to an unexpectedly cold and rainy day. I spent the morning working on implementing the final water effects as described yesterday: splashes and ripples for walking and raindrops, as well as more balanced audio. I achieved all of those although I didn’t get an opportunity (or rather, I didn’t see the need to) implement the water depth; I thought about it for a bit and it’s a lot more involved than I care to deal with at the current moment.
I have to restrict player actions at some point while they’re in the water so what I’m thinking is that maybe I’ll just create an entirely new sprite for when the player is in the water. That’ll consist of four variations (not including the pack variations): entering, wading, picking things up, and exiting. I don’t think I’ll allow the player to take the pack off while they’re in the water as that would be idiotic in reality, and the multitool is also not really functional in any meaningful sense. I think I’ll also have to implement drinking from the canteen and filling it up, but that should be very straightforward. So, all in all: six pairs of animations, to a total of twelve. I think I’ll get to that tomorrow. I also have to work on the rappelling stuff at some point too…
While working on my Inktober entry today (which was supposed to be of Twitch’s elite Maquis set) GameMaker encountered some kind of bug when I tabbed out of the window which overrode about an hour’s worth of progress. After several moments of impotent frustration I decided to just do a completely different subject instead of trying to salvage the old one. Honestly I like the final version – a portrait of Mercedes de Costa – better than what I’d initially had planned.
I’ve begun working on the cliffside scene proper now, and started by adding some tall trees, which feel more appropriate to the geography and come in two variations: a single shorter tree and a small cluster of taller, thinner ones.
I also finally got around to fixing the issues with the water effect by individually drawing each object instead of the entire application surface to the reflection, which gives me a lot more control on top of eliminating the weird positioning that previously plagued the effect. Now all that’s really left to do re: the water is to add ripples for walking, as well as rain. I also need to turn down the gain on the footstep audio for walking through water, as it’s disproportionately loud, but that should be very easy and straightforward. Lastly, I’m thinking about adding an effect that simulates the depth of water, although I’m not really sure how I’ll begin doing that, or if it’s even worth the time. I think I’ll work on all of those water FX tomorrow, and hopefully if I’m able to finish, I’ll finally get to work on the animations for rappelling, which I hope to be able to show off this Saturday.
The first day of October has come and gone without incident. Probably for the best, I reckon. I worked a bit more on the cliffside although, judging by the most common reactions to it, I think that I’ll have to finish up the actual rappelling mechanics for the concept to really become legible. I’ll start working on the animations tomorrow and, if I can get them finished, I’ll run a mockup and see how it looks. Part of me feels I should be working on more critical mechanics and systems – there are so many things that aren’t built yet – but hopefully I can wrap this up sooner rather than later. I’ll commit to this until tomorrow: if I can’t get it looking right by the end of tomorrow I’m moving on to something more concrete and important (most likely firestarting).
Speaking of which though, this month, as an extension of Inktober, as well as in the interest of preparing for the trailer, I plan on focusing more on visual-oriented stuff: new animations, new locations, etc. It’ll be good both for output and for maintaining a steady sense of tangible progress on a day-to-day basis, as I’m beginning to get real tired of seeing the same two or three rooms all the time (as I’m sure others are as well). By the end of this month I plan on getting at the very least the first ring of the world map finished in its entirety. It seems pretty daunting at the moment but I figure if I dedicate a weekend or something to producing a bunch of environmental assets, the rest of the work should fit fairly nicely into a span of four weeks so long as I’m able to maintain a steady pace and not get distracted. Speaking of distractions though, Breakpoint comes out in two days…
The month’s already over, and I barely registered its passage. I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing. It’s probably neither. Well, October’s here now, which means that Inktober’s starting up, and I decided to commit to it again this year (I did it last year as well, which feels so far away that I had to actually go back and check my Instagram account just to make sure that it was in fact last year and not 2017). I’m settling for fast, easy sketches this time around – so not at all that dissimilar to last year actually – although coming up with new things to draw each time is gonna be a pain the ass, I can already tell. Well, whatever.
I started working today on a new background for a cliffside. Originally I was planning on starting the animations for anchoring and rappelling but then I realised I needed an environmental context anyways and it’d be good to showcase so I decided to set that aside for after I’m done with this. The perspective is a bit tricky on this one and while normally I’d have been able to finish at least just the initial draft in an afternoon or so like I was expecting it ended up taking a whole lot longer and I still barely have the foreground figured out, let alone the background stuff (which needs to be rendered in parallax, but that’s a lesser concern at the moment). I’m gonna put in some real heavy hours tomorrow making up for today’s relative lack of progress.
No work today: day of rest, and all. I didn’t work much at all last week either although I don’t particularly mind too much, as I spent most of it in good company. That being said though, I have been considering taking a few days off either this week or the following to get some perspective… my only concern is that it’ll potentially disrupt the momentum, although I’d say this week already accomplished that to some extent yet I haven’t lost any motivation to work. Maybe as a compromise I’ll work at a reduced load? Four or five hours a day instead of the usual eight… that could probably work.
My objectives for the imminent future are to finish implementing all of the major functionalities for the multitool, including animations and sounds. Ideally I’d like to get at least one done a day, and set aside time at the end of the following day to clean up and revise the previous day’s work. It’s definitely feasible, I think, and it’ll be a good boost in morale once I’m done (on top of getting a necessary critical function finished).
I was once again too tired to make a post yesterday, but Julia came over and we went to see Ad Astra, which I found quite remarkable in some ways. In the opening scene, a man plummets down from an orbital station to earth; the entire film looked pretty spectacular but that scene in particular was moving in a way that I can’t quite describe. It did an excellent job of portraying not only the vast loneliness and beauty of space, which are well-known at this point; but the banality of human efforts to understand it as well, with very believable depictions of commercial space travel (incl. the all-too-familiar overpriced amenities of the airlines, now also covering interplanetary travel – a hot towel for $125! – and even an Applebee’s on the landing terminal of the moon) and bureaucratic alienation. I found the film’s overall mood to be at once discomfiting in a sobering manner, yet also cautiously optimistic as well, and affirming of human interests and relationships. It reminded me in a positive way of how I felt after I watched Arrival.
Anyways, between yesterday and today, I worked on implementing the rudimentary foundation for actions involving the multitool, starting with the simplest function, which is digging. Well, when I say “simplest”, that’s what I thought at the time since it would involve no interaction with the environment other than choosing a spot clear of other objects: the actual animation turned out to be remarkably complex and involved, if not the most difficult one I’ve had to do so far outright. To be honest, I’m still not satisfied with the one I ended up with – something about the motion looks wrong, like the weight and angle is off somehow – and the sound design is really shit as well but I can’t tell yet if I want to work on it more and refine it now, or move onto the other functions and get those done before coming back and refining each of them post-scriptum. We’ll see how I’m feeling tomorrow, I suppose…
Finished the sprites and audio for equipping and unequipping the multitool (which is basically the e-tool, except it has a few more functions). I also performed some general touch-ups on pre-existing sprites which had some inconsistencies I only just now noticed, mostly with the idle animations and pack drop/pickup. Tomorrow I plan on finishing up the major multitool animations: clearing spots for fires, digging holes, cutting down shrubbery, etc. I haven’t gotten much work done this week so I gotta accelerate my efforts.
Staoue and Kristina came up today. We went to the mall and then to the parking deck of the IKEA, where we watched the sun set. It reminded me of bygone years.
Met up with Sawyer and Norah in the city. We walked by the water and then had dinner at a place that served both corn dogs and Lone Star(!) and it was very nice. The weather tonight was remarkably pleasant, possibly even more so than yesterday: the more hopeful strands of autumn. I hope it stays like this for a while.
Earlier today I worked on some technical stuff, separating stuff onto different texture pages and overall optimisations. Tomorrow I’m gonna start work on animating the various e-tool actions, as well as implementing the submenu for when the e-tool is equipped. Once that’s done I’ll be able to start properly working on firestarting, which really only comes down to designing and implementing the ignition mechanic.
My birthday. Went out to the reservation with Aurora, where we looked at a waterfall (well, more of a water trickle) and the dirt for some time and talked about things. She made me a cake! It was an ice cream cake, which at some point I must’ve told her was my favourite kind but I definitely didn’t expect her to remember that, let alone that she’d actually make me one. It was a really nice and unprecedented gesture, and the cake itself was really good as well. To be honest, it moved me quite a bit.
I didn’t get any work done today at all, but it’s okay. I feel okay.
Worked on the overall visuals of the PDA, adding un/lock and navigation sound effects, and an animation for switching between scroll modes. It feels much better to use now. I’ve also touched up the interaction prompts, making the font smaller, the outline on the prompt thinner, and the overall shape of the prompt itself rectangular (it still starts as a circle, but the corners rapidly flare out into proper edges once the text appears).
Autumn has arrived. I woke this morning around 0700 overwhelmed by an intense, looming sensation of impotence and anxiety. I had another dream about Alexandra – one more in a series of several increasingly disturbing ones involving her over the past several weeks – and it left me feeling immensely uncomfortable and filled with a vague sense of disgust yet also an unfamiliar and perverse longing. I wonder why I’m suddenly thinking about her again, unprovoked. I’ve been experiencing a lot of strange and unpredictable spikes of negative thought lately, although I don’t feel particularly bad and in fact I actually feel better, or at least more motivated than I normally am. At first it was just a general sense of exhaustion, which was unusual but I figured I could just deal with it; but now I’ve begun to start experiencing these weird thoughts and dreams all the time, like something’s moving just beneath the surface that I can’t make out but I’m feeling the ripples of its movements. I hope it’s just the weather, and nothing worse. I wish I had someone to talk to about these things. Someone who could help me understand it.
Forgot to make an entry yesterday – or more accurately, I noted that I had to do it, and just completely failed to do so. I’ve been feeling really restless lately yet also incredibly bored. Any time I’m doing anything except working I feel this vague, free-floating anxiety begin to build. It feels like I’m wasting time yet also I find it kinda difficult to do other things: for example, any time I play a game or something I don’t really feel like I’m enjoying it on its so much as I’m just playing it to get inspiration for my work, which makes me feel kinda bad since I’m not able to appreciate the work on its own terms.
Well, today was my day of rest, so to speak – I’ve decided that every week I’ll work until I have something to post for #screenshotsaturday, take Sunday off, and then get back to work Monday – and I spent most of it in a state of gentle unease trying to do things other than work. The day’s now over and I feel like I’ve completely wasted it. Well, at least tomorrow I’ll have things to do.
Got a good amount of work done, including a new interface for the inventory. It’s rather late now and I’m pretty tired so I’m not gonna say much more about it, other than the fact that, while it’s a shame the older design (ie the physical pack with selectable pouches) had to be discarded, the new one is far better and more interesting, as well as informative. Tomorrow I’m gonna get to work making the animations for it – should be pretty straightforward – as well as the audio for the various buttons and functions. Those are probably gonna be a bit more difficult since I really have to capture and create some distinctive sounds but that’s not too big of a deal for now.
Spent some time with Haolun tonight. It was remarkably cold and dry. I woke up this morning at around 0900 and for the next four hours drifted uneasily between states of consciousness. It’s been harder to wake up these days, and I’ve been waking up later than usual. It’s not a mental thing: I can feel it in my body. Must be seasonal.
I managed to begin implementing a resting stage based on (ie, ripped directly from) the gameplay footage for Death Stranding. Avery can now take off her pack, sit down and rest for a bit, and engage in actions like massaging her shoulders, stretching her legs and taking a nap. Resting in general significantly slows down the rate at which energy is consumed and completely stops fatigue from building, and the various actions restore burnt stamina (alternately known as fatigue).
In general, all of this has made me reconsider the design of the stamina/fatigue system in general. Originally, the way I planned it, all actions would consume stamina and every in-game hour a set percentage of stamina used would be “burnt” (represented by fatigue accumulated), with the biggest difference in rate of depletion being tied to whether Avery was carrying her pack or not. Obviously, I imagined, the biggest drain in stamina would be walking and traversal in general. However, I’ve come to realise that in reality, that’s simply not feasible: a highly-experienced and disciplined hiker of Avery’s level would be expected to be able to pretty effortlessly cover almost 50km a day even with a considerable load under harsh weather conditions (and at night as well!), but there’s no way I can properly represent that much square mileage in-game without turning it into an absolute slog to sit (or for her, I suppose, to walk) through.
That being said, the expedition is also not a long-range exercise and the actual area of investigation is actually pretty small, around 25km^2 (still trying to work out the precise size and scaling, I’ll discuss that in greater detail once I start posting about the world map): so she wouldn’t be operating anywhere near her maximum abilities anyways when it comes to endurance. I’m not sure how I’m going to implement stamina/fatigue in a way that simultaneously represents the scale of the world accurately while also not diminishing her considerable physical clout.
Well, whatever I decide, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow…
I woke today in a state of confusion and vague dread and didn’t even bother opening GameMaker. For some reason, I’ve been suddenly thinking a lot lately about the future – or rather, the lack of one – and it’s really been wearing me out.
Just now, entering the date, I’ve come to realise that September is halfway over, yet I barely perceived its passage… I’ve begun to feel rather sad these past few days although in a barely perceptible way. I’m almost certain it has to do with my body subconsciously registering the passage of time on a moment-to-moment basis, while my mind is forced to catch up in lurches and sudden shifts. Perhaps sadness is too strong; melancholy is probably more appropriate. The leaves have yet to amber but I can feel it in the air already. The coming autumn: it reminds me of the things I lack. I remember a quote from what seems like a really long time ago: “To a hikikomori, winter is painful because everything feels cold, frozen over, and lonely. To a hikikomori, spring is also painful because everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable. Summer, of course, is especially painful…” And yet, autumn too…
Anyways, I finally got around to fixing the UI: and which, by “fixing”, of course, I mean that I just decided to completely replace with a new one. Lateral thinking at its finest, I suppose. Actions no longer show up in the letterbox, but as dynamic bubbles above Avery when she draws close to an object that can be interacted with. I feel like the current implementation looks decent from a technical perspective but also it feels very out-of-place for how smooth the animation looks, as well as the rounded corners (which I’m honestly beginning to dislike the more I look at it). In fact, I’m really beginning to not feel it so much. Well, at least I got the backend done.
The waterfall now has parallax and proper animation, but more importantly: I’ve revamped the transitioner system between rooms. Previously, the character, upon reaching one end of a room, would be spawned on a random point along the width or height of the opposite end, with a check to make sure the player doesn’t spawn inside an object. The problem with this was that sometimes, especially in visually dense areas (ie, the woods), it would be difficult to orient Avery and required the player to actively search for her for far longer than comfortable. Now, each room has a predefined series of points – top, bottom, left and right – where they’ll be spawned in exactly. This gives me a lot more control over framing and instantly solves the issue of players losing track of Avery upon a transition.
I’ve been feeling unusually tired these past few days, I’m not sure why. I wake up and feel… anaemic, I guess, I don’t really know how else to say it. I think it might just be the weather. Either way, I can persist through it, I think. Hopefully it clears soon.
Spent basically the entire day animating the waterfall in rmBridge. Finished the waterfall – it looks pretty decent – so over the rest of the week I’ll have to draw and implement the rest of the background pieces, as well as the parallax for each of them. Maybe even water vapour clouds rising from the bottom of the screen… well, we’ll see about that last one, no guarantees.
It’s pretty late and I feel rather exhausted so I’m gonna keep this entry brief. I spent some time working on completely redoing the way the UI elements are drawn. The good news is that everything – with the exception of the rain, which I’ll have to figure out at a later date – now inherits the visual palette. The bad news is that I’ve completely fucked up the interact and status text and it’s gonna be a total pain in the ass to fix them. More work for another day.