Talked to the doctor today about the stuff that’s been bothering me these past few days. It definitely helped, at least more than anything else I’ve tried… but not enough. I feel like I’ve entered this sunken space. The worst I’ve felt in a while, even. It’s like all of a sudden I’m feeling all these feelings that I haven’t felt in a very long time and I don’t know how to deal with them or even identify them so it just feels like constant noise inside my head.
Another empty day.
Sawyer came over and we hung around and talked for a while. It was rather hot today. The sky was mercilessly bereft of clouds for most of the afternoon and the sun bore down with casual indifference. LeNae reached out late last night. I was quite surprised, although pleasantly so.
I’ve been feeling real awful lately. It’s gotten real bad this week. I feel like I was feeling a lot better not too long ago, but I can’t remember what that feels like anymore or why I felt that way…
My brother left some time this afternoon, or maybe it was late in the morning. I wasn’t able to see him off. I’ve really been spiralling these past couple of days. Just a total loss of control. I can feel myself growing more and more unhinged. From the moment I wake the rage starts eroding me. I’ve been having that dream again for some reason… I feel tired all throughout the day.
Spent the evening talking with Norah at the station. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. Over a year at this point. It was nice. We talked for a while.
Spent the morning applying mulch with my brother. We then went out for a long walk. It was real nice. It filled me with a light, pleasant feeling for a while.
I’ve been feeling pretty off though in general. A pervasive sense of melancholy. This shadow of doom, like the feeling of being trapped. By what, I have no idea. But all of a sudden I feel this weight upon me. Not around my ankle like before, dragging me down, you know… but like it’s pressing down upon me, it has been pressing down on me for a long time, but now I’ve finally started to notice it. I don’t know what to do with it. It makes me feel ashamed of who I am. What I am.
Felt a bit weird today, ended up taking the day off. Went with Haolun to the reservation, we took a long walk and came across a lake I hadn’t seen before. It was quite pleasant, and improved my mood a lot. I’m not sure if I’m gonna work tomorrow but I’m feeling I could probably use a few more days off, just to clear my head again… we’ll see though.
Had a weird session today, not that productive. It left me in a bit of an imbalanced mood for the rest of the day: not exactly bad, but not as good as I usually feel afterwards either. Well, I suppose it’s all part of the process. Some days you get lucky, other days you don’t. Back to work tomorrow.
Finished the plot outline today, with steps. Depending on how I feel after I see the doctor tomorrow, I’m ready to start working on implementation. Whenever I do end up getting to it, I’m gonna start with Estelle’s arc. Nothing more from here on out but keeping my priorities straight and getting the work done.
Finished my work for Jacob today, just gotta remember to send him the audio files tomorrow. I also need to finalise the plot outline as well – basically, just a few ending points, and separating all the steps into discrete numerical order so that I can arrange them more directly in-game – so that’s probably gonna be the bulk of my work. Hopefully I’ll be able to just get right to it come Monday.
My brother came back from school today. After writing up the update for this month, I spent the rest of the afternoon working through the project with Jacob. Ended up getting a lot more done than I’d initially anticipated.
Finally back to work. Solid progress tonight, added in the EMF reader including full animation and sprite support, complete functionality, a script for setting ambient magnetic field strength, and even differing audio for the various EMF levels. I still have to tweak the latter setting a bit to strike a better balance between the visual display (in reality, the bar is calculated logarithmically I believe instead of linearly, which is gonna be an issue for me to implement accurately), but surprisingly, it’s basically already done! Not bad. Gonna write the update tomorrow – a short one this time – and then spend the rest of the day working with Jacob to finish my work on his project.
I’ve been completely distracted these past two days, my mind’s just been totally scattered by all sorts of pointless bullshit with which I have no practical cause to concern myself. Haven’t been able to concentrate at all, which means that I haven’t been able to get anything of worth done at all either. I think I’ve maybe made two paragraphs of progress since Tuesday…
Worked a bit more on the plot draft, almost finished with it. I think I’ll be done with it tomorrow. On Friday I think I’m gonna switch over to building the EMF meter so I have something to publish with this month’s update Saturday. Then this weekend, I have to finish up work for Jacob…
I should be ready to start working on integrating all the plot points starting next week. I think that’ll really help to build back some momentum. I sure hope so.
Really inconsistent entries these past couple of days, nothing in bad in particular though. I’ve just been taking a bit of a break lately from work, trying to work on other things and gain a bit of distance and perspective from the project for now so I can return with hopefully clearer insight.
I feel like it’s actually been working a bit: both yesterday and today, I’ve been working on an extensive plot document charting each step of the first act of the game across every plot. It’s really helped clarify my work moving forward, by breaking down my priorities into what is essentially a list of precise steps and prerequisites. Shouldn’t be more than a day’s worth of work at this point before it’s finished… after which, it’s just a matter of executing them one by one until there’s nothing left.
I’ve also come up tonight with a pretty interesting way to finally address the split between the first and second acts of the game… it’s probably a bit too bold but I think it’s worth trying and even if it doesn’t end up working for effect, at least it’ll work to help me segregate my priorities and clean up my folders.
Another empty day. Spent almost all of it playing Metal Gear Survive with Martin. We ended up burning out on the weekly and just calling it. We’re gonna work together tomorrow. A good opportunity for me to finally get something done, or at least get started on getting something done. There’s too much work ahead of me now… I should plan some stuff out a bit tonight before going to bed.
Nothing new to report today. Feeling a bit worse than I did yesterday. I have to get back to work next week or I feel like something bad is gonna happen to me.
Yesterday’s post was a bit pessimistic in hindsight. I’m still technically “on break” but looking back at my output these past few days, I’ve actually gotten quite a bit done in areas that I usually neglect because of work.
Over the weekend I managed to finally get that essay written and released that I’ve been putting off for almost an entire year now; and yesterday I was able to sit down and write a new song, the first one I’ve written in almost an entire month. I think it’s honestly the best song I’ve written to date, although it’s also probably the most pathetic one in terms of subject matter (I hope she never listens to it, although I find it difficult to imagine any circumstances in which she’d somehow stumble across it by happenstance.) I quite like the essay as well, it’s certainly better and more interesting than whatever stupid shit I wrote last time. At the very least, I think it turned out about 70% the way I hoped it would, which, given the way I write, is a good enough percentage most days.
I think I’m too hard on myself when it comes to work. Well, maybe other things as well. But work especially is where I feel it the most, and most often. Some days the pressure is good and helps to motivate me to get things done. But most days – especially these days – it just wears me out and leaves me feeling even worse about everything.
Took the past couple of days off. I’ve been feeling pretty off these past few days honestly… just totally drained and distracted. I haven’t been able to work in over a week, and it’s been even longer since I’ve actually accomplished anything of worth. The sky’s been filled with rain lately, I hope it passes soon.
Stayed up real late last night for no particularly good reason, ended up sleeping until 1600. It was a truly horrendous way to start the day, if you could even call it that. I spent the evening working on the essay, although I ended up deleting a bunch of it afterwards. Today just felt like a profound waste of time.
Here comes May. Didn’t get anything done today. Felt a vague sense of anxiety all throughout the day. Spent the afternoon trying to work on a new essay, but got too distracted by floating thoughts…
Last day of the month. It was pretty peaceful. Spent the first part of the day working on some stuff with Jacob, and then around 1600, Haolun came over and we hung out a bit, went to Burger King. It was a real nice day today, clear and bright and windy.
If my work was going a bit better in general, I might even say that I’ve been feeling pretty good these past few weeks overall. I think some part of it is probably just a seasonal thing, but also I think that my ability to view the world and more importantly myself clearly has been improving over time. Being able to talk with the doctor every week has really helped. I’ve grown to like her a lot. (Maybe a bit too much, if I’m being perfectly honest…)
In general though I’ve just felt more stable and optimistic in general, or at the very least more willing to exercise good faith in terms of how I see and conduct myself within the world. I haven’t felt unreasonable anger or resentment in a while now it feels like. Just a general sense of calm, maybe even occasional joy.
It was terribly humid today, the first of the year. I woke up with a wretched headache, like a hangover. Not a great sign of the days to come…
Stepped out of engine today, spent the day planning out work for the next section of the game. I have to start working on it at some point or I’m never gonna build enough momentum to start wrapping things up. I’m taking this weekend off to work on a contract for a friend of mine, but once I return I plan on splitting my days between working on entirely new content, and revisiting old stuff (including finishing up the sensors, as well as other interfaces around the outpost). I really need to organise my priorities, start shifting towards an end…
Got a bit of work done today, finished the animation for replacing the batteries in such a way that I feel can be applied universally moving forward, which saves me a lot of work down the line. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how I want to handle the internal system functions for it – namely, navigating the menus and whatnot – and I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe it’s best if I didn’t. Looking over the actual functionality of the product upon which it’s based, there’s very little actual troubleshooting involved (the mechanism of the device is pretty singular and uninvolved) and what can be troubleshooted in reality would simply be either unfeasible or inconvenient for me to implement properly. I think I’ll just leave it to the batteries for this one, and focus on more involved solutions elsewhere.
Another dead day, hardly touched the project. I had a good session though with the doctor that left me feeling a lot better afterwards. Had I not seen her I would’ve undoubtedly felt a lot worse about my lack of progress today in terms of my work; but instead, while I do feel a bit of frustration at myself, I feel more motivated to get things done properly tomorrow. I know I always say that, but these times, I really do mean it.
Felt awful today for no particular reason, barely got any work done. I managed to make the sounds for flipping the switches on and off, and that’s about it. So much for starting the week off on a good note…
Finally got around to doing a bit of work. Recorded and mixed some audio for opening and closing the sensor panel, and the battery cover. The sounds are a bit… flat, I guess, I’m not sure how else to put it, but they’ll do for now. I’d like to get the rest of the sounds recorded by tomorrow as well as the animation for removing and replacing each battery. After that, the only thing left to do with the motion camera is implementing the reset test function, which shouldn’t take more than a day: it’s some very minor graphics work in the form of lettering, and then just a bunch of fairly straightforward code.
At the end of this week I’d like to get the camera done, and start working on the microphone. I’d also like to sit down some time this week and figure out properly how to begin taking the next concrete steps towards beginning work on the second half of the game. I’ve deliberated way too long, and much of that is because of how insubstantial my plans have been heretofore. I need to figure out something solid and just commit to it.
Took the day off again. Felt vaguely sick all throughout the day for some reason, a kind of mild nausea almost indistinguishable from anxiety, although my thoughts were still. A bit like motion sickness actually now that I’m focusing in on it… I should try to get something done tomorrow. At the very least, some audio for the batteries, maybe even the animation if I’m feeling better. Progress is too slow these days…
Took the day off. Woke up remarkably early around 0700 after a vaguely unpleasant dream and realised almost immediately that I would not be able to accomplish anything today. I honestly don’t remember what I did after that but at 1500 I met with Haolun and we drove around for a while, went to the lake, looked at the sky. It was nice seeing him again. The sky today was remarkably clear, completely devoid of clouds and expression. Just a flat, hard blue from end to end.
Implemented a functional multimeter to the battery display, and changed the way battery capacities are measured as well. Instead of just having a strict binary capacity – charged or not charged – each battery now has an individual voltage capped at 1.5V, that’s displayed on the multimeter UI. Any batteries under 0.5V should be replaced; Avery will not replace batteries with a charge higher than that. It’s a much more elegant solution than the one that I was planning previously. All I need now is to make an animation for switching out the batteries and it should be good to go.
Another day of minor work. I finally managed to finish the UI text display for the auto-ping feature, which properly adapts to different levels and responses of sweeps now: when there is no sensor present in the cell, the detector will launch three attempted sweeps before returning avoid, and when there is one present, the detector will ping first instead of immediately displaying the sensor metadata. I also added sound effects for opening and closing the detector. I feel pretty satisfied with it now and can safely say that I’m finished working on it for the time being. On to other things then…
Didn’t get much work done today, but I did finally end up getting the active ping that I mentioned in yesterday’s entry working just now. The device now begins sending out an active sweep automatically as soon as it’s brought up, and as long as a sensor is in the room, it’ll continue pinging until the device is closed, using a frequency-based sweep to measure proximity. The interface itself could be improved a bit in terms of appearance, which I hope I’ll be able to get done tomorrow (or, well, later today). I also fixed an issue today with the standing animation that for whatever reason had broken during the initial conversion to 2.3.
Had a weird session with the doctor today. It wasn’t at all bad per se, she just brought up a few subjects I wasn’t quite expecting, which caught me off-guard and resulted in me giving a few responses that I found (both at the time, and in retrospect) to be unsatisfactory. I’m not too worried about it, but it is something to consider for next time.
Felt like shit today for some reason, but I was able to get some work done tonight regardless. I started off by improving the interface for the detector a bit, changing the font and adding in an additional screen for cells with no sensors active. I then implemented the sweep that allows the player to detect sensors by sending out a ping. When the sweep encounters the sensor in that room, it beeps, and terminates the wave, allowing the player to approximate its location by the amount of time in between the initial XMIT and the RECV.
Tomorrow, I’d like to tweak the functionality a bit so that players must first send out an initial ping per cell to determine if there are any sensors in it, starting with a blank screen (or, if I can get the persistence working, the screen from the previous ping). Currently it immediately displays whether the room has any active sensors in it, which I feel is a bit too easy.
Took today and yesterday off in an attempt to recover some stamina before this work week. I hope to get the handheld detector done by the end of tomorrow, so that I can get back to working on the camera. Hopefully by Thursday I’ll be able to implement full functionality for the camera. If I can get those two things finished by the weekend, I’ll meet baseline expectations. The next step after that will be to link the camera with the outpost sensor and the global timeline, and get a functioning trigger system set up. After that… well, I’ll discuss that once I get there, best to just collect myself and get this shit done in the immediate first.
Easing back into a regular schedule. Minor adjustments today: created a new block state that allows the player to move but blocks interaction (previously blocking the latter could not be done without also blocking the former), specifically designed to work with the handheld detector. I also changed the appearance of the detector screen a bit, and drafted out the interface and functionality for it, which I hope to get implemented tomorrow.
Another late night (or, well, I suppose it’s dawn now by the time I’m writing this). I ended up effectively just taking the day off since I burned myself out a bit the previous night. I still feel like the momentum is strong though, and I think I’ll be able to get back into it again tomorrow.
First productive work day in a while, although I ended up staying up way too late because I lost track of time (it’s now 0540). Significantly expanded the motion camera UI, including a much-improved label-based navigation experience consistent with other systems, and developed a general framework for all the repairs moving forward. I’m starting work on a sensor radar device now which will help the player locate sensors in the immediate vicinity. It’ll vibrate when Avery enters a world cell with a sensor within it, and pinging it will return both its type and current status.
Saw the doctor again today. It was nice seeing her. I wasn’t feel so good when I woke up but talking to her made me feel a lot better. The weather outside was also really pleasant today. I decided to just stay outside for as long as I could. I didn’t end up working today either but I don’t feel so bad about it. I’ll have to spend some time tomorrow writing this month’s update. It should also help me orient myself back towards my tasks moving forward.
Guess what? I got nothing done today, either. I’m seeing the doctor tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track done again after I see her.
Last day on break. Felt a little better, or maybe just not so bad. Back to work tomorrow.
Took another day off. I feel… unwell, in a way can’t quite articulate. Like I’ve been suddenly robbed of all hope in, and concept of a future. It’s not even a question now of motivation, but sheer purpose. It’s like I’m drifting through an abstraction of the world, and who I was even just a week ago. My work holds almost no weight to me anymore… everything just feels completely insubstantial. I don’t necessarily even feel bad on a foundational level and truthfully, I only start feeling bad when I start becoming frustrated with the realisation that I don’t even really feel bad. I just feel utterly adrift, is what it is…
Ended up just taking the day off. I felt oddly a bit… off today. Not necessarily in a wholly negative way, but something just felt disturbed within me. I feel like I’m growing bored of living…
Started implementing the technical framework with the sensors, beginning with the motion camera. So far, I’ve implemented basic controls for removing the battery cover and batteries, and laid out the foundation for the draw stack. Before I progress much further, I should probably spend some time developing a draft for what elements go where, and more importantly, what elements I even need to begin with…
First day of in-engine work (technically) in almost a week, although technically it was still entirely spritework. I think I’ve settled upon a pretty satisfactory UI solution for navigating the sensors, that’s mechanically applicable on a universal level to all of the sensor types, while allowing a good degree of flexibility in terms of specific details and approaches. I also finished the sprites for the toolkit, and the four different kinds of batteries. I think I’ll definitely be able to have at least one fully functioning sensor by the weekend.
Decently productive day, got the spritework done for the motion sensor, the camera trap, and the EMF reader. I also finished the spritework for the toolkit, which I have to remember to add into the global inventory at some point. (Along with this, I also have to build in an extension to the inventory framework to accommodate for the new module system… that’ll probably take a day of work, I don’t imagine it’ll be too hard but the thought still fills me a sense of vague dread). Didn’t end up implementing anything in-engine though today: I still have to figure out the specific mechanics before I start designing any UI, and that’ll take some time for me to think through in general.
I woke up really late today – around 1400 – and felt awful at first, but then I started feeling a bit better. The weather’s gotten very pleasant lately. This evening, there was a strange scent in the air: something sweet and vaguely reminiscent of fresh hay, or maybe even Christmas trees. It made me a bit sad, although I don’t know why.
Spent the day researching designs for the motion sensor. I’m pretty confident that I’ve settled on one and I’ll spend tomorrow implementing it proper. I also am close to settling on a design for the trail camera, I might be able to get the spritework done for it tomorrow as well. I hope I’ll have the energy to be able to work effectively.
Felt awful today, but persisted through it and spent some time organising my immediate priorities for the next week (or two, but hopefully not that long). I think for the rest of this month, or at least the part of it I can/am willing to look ahead to anyways, I’m gonna be focusing exclusively on overhauling the game’s existing interfaces, including building new ones to accommodate a few more mechanical nuances.
Next week (tomorrow), I’m going to start with the sensor interfaces, getting one done every two days max. That includes initial design, and spritework for each of the three repair procedures. I hope to have at least four interfaces completely done in terms of design, graphics, and audio by next weekend.
Another dead day. Thought this morning that maybe I’d actually get something done today but, well, it was just another day. I’m gonna spend tomorrow laying out a list of hard priorities and tasks to accomplish. I should’ve done that a lot sooner honestly… there’s just too much that needs to get done and I don’t have the strength to even just sit down and think through it. I feel constantly distracted, but I’m not sure by what. I’ve become trapped on an obstacle of my own creation. An utter absence of either push or pull.
Just need to get through these next couple of months intact…
Accomplished nothing today. Didn’t even try honestly… I just suddenly started feeling like shit some time around yesterday and I hoped it would subside but, it didn’t. I’ve been sleeping worse and my appetite has been pretty poor as well, and every night I have these incredibly unpleasant dreams, a bunch of them about some girl I’ve never even met stupidly enough…
The doctor’s away next week on personal business, so I won’t be able to see her about it until the week after. I’ll probably make it through fine, but… I wish I could talk to her. I don’t want to capitulate to my weakness and waste away yet another week. The amount of work left to do right now seems impossibly insurmountable, even though I know logically that that’s just a matter of perspective, and logistical positioning. Even still though… it just makes me want to give up.
I want to say I got stuff done today but the truth is that even though I “worked” the entire day, I accomplished basically nothing of worth. The medical menu is now “finished” in the most nominal sense, in that I can no longer suffer thinking about it anymore. I don’t even know what I’m gonna work on next. I don’t want to think about it right now. What an awful way to start off a new month…
Spent basically the entire day procrastinating on writing item descriptions… but fortunately they’re now all finally finished. I also integrated the global inventory into the medical menu. Now all I gotta do is add in support for consuming items upon use and checking usage against the global stored quantity… shouldn’t be too difficult, just another day of boring work. Well, I suppose I’ll have to get to it…
The end of the month’s now here. It fills me with anxiety, and a sense of restless despondency at the realisation of just how little I’ve managed to accomplish with my time. Granted, this month was pretty disruptive with everything that happened with… well, you know. Hopefully things are more settled next month…
Today was not as bad as the days before. The weather was very pleasant and I felt a lot better in general, especially after I visited the doctor. I won’t be able to see her next week so I hope my mood can remain relatively stable until the week after. I think it’ll be okay though. It feels like a lot of my stressors dissipated, or at the very least, receded today.
I finally decided to re-attempt converting the project file to GMS2.3. In my last few attempts, which were over a year ago at this point, I suffered some major technical issues and in general I found the new update to be rather dramatically overrated in terms of the expanded utilities it promised.
This time however I’m compelled more by necessity: a project that I’m collaborating on as designer is targeting a Switch release, and I discovered today while watching Nate port Dogworld that the Switch runtime will not function properly with earlier versions of GMS2. So I decided to just bite the bullet again and commit this time.
It seems like they fixed a lot of the issues and incompatibilities that I’d been plagued by the last time I tried. The transition was remarkably smooth and as far as I can tell, the project seems to work completely fine without any major modifications to the code base. I still have to get used to some of the new code-based features they’ve implemented, but overall the process went astonishingly well. The entire IDE just feels a bit more stable and responsive now than before. I’ll keep the old project files on storage for a month or so until I can complete a more thorough rundown of everything, but with what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t seem like that will be necessary. Here’s hoping.
Minor progress today. Continued modifying the medical menu a bit, I moved around some of the elements in order to accommodate a new information panel which displays the item attributes, including the quantity and description. I think it looks better, and has as bit more functionality now. Barring any unforeseeable personal issues, I’m pretty confident I’ll have it completely done by tomorrow. The rest of the work on it is just busywork.
I think Gloria and I are more or less done. Not that there was anything much there to begin with, but… it’s gotten to the point where I want to talk to her but when I go to message her I find that I can come up with quite literally nothing to say. She barely responds anymore and when she does she might as well not have with how little she gives me to work with.
I think I’ve tried my best, I really do. Told her everything I meant to say and actually meant everything I said. Reached out when I thought I should, gave her space and time and most of the patience I usually reserve for my friends and myself. I dunno, maybe I’m just not a very interesting person. Maybe the distance was just too profound.
In any case, I don’t feel any kind of anger or bitterness or even frustration, nor do I hold anything against her. I don’t regret anything either. I’m just disappointed. In the way things turned out, in how quickly they turned out that way, in how easily I’m giving up, and all the stupid expectations and hopes I’d placed into this to begin with, even though I knew better from the start. Most of all though I’m just disappointed in myself. In who I am, in what I am.
God-damned coward.
Felt even worse today than I did yesterday. Went to bed real late last night for no reason at all, woke up in a mild haze with something like a headache and didn’t even try working on anything for the rest of the day. It’s days like these that really make me reconsider the possibility of a future.
I felt pretty awful today for some reason, just totally apathetic and filled with resentment. Regardless, I actually somehow managed to get a decent amount of work done today. I spent the entire morning clipping samples from a bunch of ASMR videos to make a breathing track for Avery. Originally I’d only intended the tracks to be used in the medical menu but actually they sound good enough that I might consider using them elsewhere as well… they’d certainly add a bit more texture to a bunch of the generic animations.
I also ended up actually achieving my goal earlier this week to fully finish one wound treatment. All the basics are in place and can be easily modified to serve as a template for other wounds in the future.
Spent the morning working on more log entries. I feel like I should start setting aside dedicated time for them soon, get at least two done every day… I definitely need to catch up work on that part of development, it’s been almost three months since I last took a serious look at any of it.
I spent the entire afternoon and evening hanging out with Haolun. We went up to the dam at the reservation, and then just drove around for a while and talked about a bunch of stuff. It was pretty nice.
Spent the afternoon recording and mixing a bunch of sound effects for the wound UI. There are a few that are still missing and/or need to be improved – basically all of the tools – but most of them are good enough for now and have been fully implemented in-game. I’ll have to give the remaining ones a bit more thought…
I also started implementing full functionality for the menu itself, in accordance with the description I wrote out a few days ago. It’s mostly just a lot of tedious work, although I’ve been facing some logistical difficulties trying to figure out the most efficient solution for dealing with alternative solutions animation-wise: for example, due to how involved the sprites are, I potentially may have to create up to four different copies of each wound model based on what combination of treatments they decide to apply (sutures + bandages, sutures + duct tape, glue + bandages, glue + duct tape). It’s not the end of the world but it’s definitely not my preferred method… although I’m not sure how else I’d go about doing it in a way that won’t cause massive potential frustrations later on should I decide to add more treatment methods. Lastly, I also have yet to do any of the sprites for when bandages/tape are applied…
Regardless, today was a pretty good day. I made a decent amount of progress – more than I’ve made on any single day in a while – and I felt pretty good about things in general.
Finished iconography for the medical UI. I hope I’ll be able to get the menu fully finished by the weekend… I’ve been spending way too long on this, it’s starting to really frustrate me.
Saw the doctor again today. I like talking with her. She asks the right questions, makes me feel like she really gets what I’m trying to say. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive to talk to her. I get it though. I’m gonna need to figure something out pretty soon, I don’t think my current savings will last me long at this rate…
I took the day off. Gloria was acting a little weird I think. It felt like she was being oddly reticent, and in the few moments she did get back to me, she came off as a bit passive-aggressive for some reason. I hope I’m just being paranoid. I wish she would talk to me more about how she feels. I wish she would just talk to me more in general. I dunno, maybe I’m just projecting. Whatever, it’s not my problem. Back to work tomorrow.
Added visual selection options for the wound treatment UI. So far I have two categories done in terms of iconography – cleaning/disinfecting, and tools/devices – which leaves two more: sealing, and pain management. Neither should be particularly difficult, and I hope to be able to get them done tomorrow. I’ve yet to implement functionality to any of it but I’ll work on trying to get one full wound model done by this Saturday.
Started working on a proper revamp of the wound treatment UI, focusing on the information hierarchy as well as setting up the initial visual layout. After a few hours prototyping a bunch of designs this afternoon I feel I’ve finally arrived at one that feels straightforward enough to simplify the user’s experience (as well as my own workflow) without sacrificing nuance.
The system revolves around a universal three-step treatment solution – roughly, cleaning/disinfecting, tool application (stuff like scalpels, pliers), and sealing/binding – with two additional optional steps in the form of pain management and medicinal aids (stuff like antibiotics, and booster shots). The player chooses one tool to use in each category from a list of any available treatments in that category and the efficacy of the solution will be calculated using a hidden list that attributes each tool a percentage (for example, using sutures to seal a wound is much more efficient than using duct tape or superglue). The final efficacy percentage, which is additive and takes into account each category including pain, will determine how much willpower Avery loses after the procedure is complete.
I wanted to get the wound treatment UI done today but I ended up wasting a bunch of time trying to figure out the iconography and eventually just got frustrated enough that I decided to do nothing. Otherwise the day itself wasn’t too bad at all actually. It was the first day of spring and the air was light and cool. The mood felt apropos to the weather despite my utter lack of progress, and I felt vaguely optimistic all throughout the day.
Didn’t get as much work done today as I wanted, but I did get the UI for the journal app finished. I still have yet to figure out a landing screen (or whether I even want a landing screen at all) but I don’t think it’s that important right now. Eventually I would like it to display in reverse chronological order (latest entry to earliest), which shouldn’t be too hard.
Actually managed to get a bit of work done today. Set up the foundation for the journal app in the PDA: the entries properly display with functional scrolling and navigation, although the formatting is still pretty off and I think I’d like to have an index screen that allows the player to scroll through a list of all entries. I’m pretty hopeful that I’ll be able to get it done tomorrow.
Nate launched his game today. From the initial streams and impressions, it seems that the reception is overwhelmingly positive. I hope that the sales will be able to corroborate the sentiment. I’m proud of his achievement, and seeing his success in being able to accomplish what he set out to do makes me feel a little bit more optimistic about my own chances.
Wanted to work on the PDA a bit more today, but suffered a rather extensive spike of anxiety which persisted all throughout the afternoon. Ended up getting nothing done.
Managed to finish up the update on time, got it out around noon. A minor victory. Didn’t get much else done beyond that, but hopefully that can change tomorrow. This afternoon I visited the doctor. She seemed nice, a good conversationalist. Asks the right questions, picks up on the right things. It’s a bit early to say anything for certain, but so far I like her well enough. I’m going to be seeing her again next week, the same time. In a bit of an odd way, I’m looking forward to it.
Jim died last night. It came as quite a shock to me to hear the news… He was rather sick for a while, so I suppose it wasn’t really a surprise, but even still. They buried him in a tiny coffin in the backyard. It feels in a way as if a small vacuum has opened up in a part of my heart where he used to rest. You’d think that after enough times you start getting used to the feeling but somehow, it’s different every time. The same pain, just applied elsewhere.
I spent the rest of the day trying to work on this month’s update. It’s basically done, but I’m just not feeling it at all. Maybe a sense of guilt about how little I’ve accomplished this month. It should be good to go tomorrow.
Took the day off. Sawyer came over for the first time this year I believe to record some audio for a project. We then ate some fried chicken at the station and talked for a while. The doctor also got back to me this afternoon. We’ve scheduled a consultation for Tuesday. I feel a bit better today than before. I feel like I’m very suddenly learning about a new kind of honesty.
Spent a good part of the day completely wigging out, but by around 1500 or so I gained just enough control over my mental faculties so that I was able to make some progress. I got the entire PDA app for the BCU monitor set up and functional, and started working on a new wound UI.
The BCU monitor, which displays digestion biostatistics and caloric balance, has now been consolidated and merged into its own independent application accessible at any time through the PDA. Included with it as well is the wound monitor, which, when activated, opens up into a separate window specifically dedicated to treating locational afflictions. I’m gonna have to significantly modify the appearance though moving forward I think, as it’s gonna be difficult to accommodate the number and variety of medical tools and medications available.
I spent some time tonight with Haolun, and it really helped to ease some of my earlier anxieties during the day. I hope this sense of relief persists and that I can carry it forward into my actions and decisions in the foreseeable future.
Ah, it was just as I figured. How foolish of me. How pathetic. What a mistake. What a mistake.
No progress whatsoever these past two days. Wednesday, I guess I was just distracted or something… the weather was exceedingly pleasant today and I hadn’t gotten any work done by noon anyways, so I made the conscious decision to just take the day off again and spend the rest of it sitting outside looking at the sky.
I’ve experienced over the past day and a half a series of personal developments that may or may not be good. It’s too early to tell so I won’t say much more about it in case it most likely ends up being nothing. I’ll probably give it a week before concluding anything for sure. But I must admit in the meantime that regardless of how it turns out, right now, in this moment, I feel something that’s almost like a kind of intense clarity of perspective. As if someone took a lantern and shined it directly within the recesses of my spirit, uncovering those parts of me I tried to hide away from myself because I was afraid. I wish I didn’t feel this way, especially over something so insignificant. I would rather feel nothing at all. But I have no choice. I brought this upon myself. Best to just get it over with as quickly as possible.
Spent the day making minor progress on the PDA. The biggest changes are a “completed” home screen (it still looks very bare, but it’s fully functional and could pass for being “finished” if necessary), and the introduction of a status bar, with functioning – theoretically, at least – battery and network status indicators.
I felt unreasonably wiped today. Progress has just been way too slow and uneventful… every day I make some progress but it’s just so glacial and the last thing I can afford right now is to be dragging like this.
Spent the first half of the day designing the layout and icons for the PDA. Honestly, the biggest bulk of time was just trying to figure out how to design a button-oriented layout, as opposed to the touch-based ones I’ve grown so used to. Once I settled upon a good-enough solution (which still looks way too sparse for my liking, and lacks a few necessary icons), I merged all of the various PDA sub-objects into the single parent object, which makes switching between “modes” (which is to say, the diegetic “apps”) much easier, and gets rid of the annoying visual resets that would happen with the object-based submenus.
I think I’ll be able to finish all the current apps tomorrow, and I hope to be able to redesign the home page better to my liking. The middle of the month is rapidly approaching, and I’ve yet to even start in any meaningful sense upon the work I wanted to finish this month…
Got nothing done today. The awful feelings from last night persisted into today and left me psychically debilitated. On top of that – and most likely, as a direct result of it too – I woke up around 0300 despite going to bed quite early last night, and wasn’t able to go back to sleep afterwards, leaving me physically exhausted all throughout the day.
There’s just this dark, rotting abscess in the centre of my soul, and it’s filled with this swarming mass of wretched thoughts and impulses simmering just beneath the surface of my self-control. It’s been there as long as I can remember, just growing slowly and silently… These past few years in particular, I feel like it’s just gotten worse and worse, even though the surface above appears to have healed over. It feels like every day now I get stuck on something and it just eats away at me until there’s nothing left in me but utter malice, and an absolute disregard for the lives of others. When it hits, it feels like I’m being drowned in the heat of my own blood, boiling within me.
It gets especially bad when I have to go back out into the world. The sight of pretty strangers makes me sick, and the only way I can get through the rising sickness within me is by focusing on this image in my head of what they would look like separated into pieces, rendered into meat. But that recognition of my own nature too twists me into a different state, of immense disgust and self-hatred, which only makes it worse. I start thinking about the person I used to be, who I could’ve been if only, and then I remember that as long as I can remember, it’s always been like this, I’ve always been like this.
My friends don’t get it. I can’t talk to them about what I really feel, because what they will tell me will only confirm the things I already know, and that’ll just make me feel even worse. I don’t have anyone to talk to about this kind of thing anymore.
No one really gets it, because when you try to tell them about it, they just look at you with that same tired mix of disgust and shameful pity that they ever knew you, and they tell you, always, to “get help”. That’s probably the worst part about it. Everyone’s always too busy dealing with their own stupid shit and no one’s got time or energy left to care. Everyone’s always too busy telling you to get help, but no one’s ever able to really help anyone, especially themselves.
Man, I hope the game sells well enough that I can start seeing a doctor or something…
Took the day off, spent the afternoon playing one of the top-down Tomb Raider games with Martin, and then hung out with Julia and Vikram in the evening. I was having quite a good day actually, up until right at the end. I don’t really want to discuss what happened – nothing at all remarkable or noteworthy on its own right, just a minor slip – but it sent me spiralling into a dark, wretched hole of anger and resentment for the rest of the night.
Most of the worst thoughts have receded by now, but it’s left me with a sick feeling deep inside my chest. I always think about just finally reaching out to a therapist in moments but like this, but that too always sends me careening even further into the recesses of my malevolence. I wish I didn’t have to live with these moments; or even if they were just less frequent. It’s this kind of shit which always hits my productivity the hardest, and leaves me psychically debilitated for hours, even entire days on end.
I’d originally intended to spend the day adding a few new pages to the PDA, but I was struggling to get started until I stumbled upon a very cool extension that allows one to quickly and seamlessly embed a fully-functional Chromium browser into GameMaker projects. It was very straightforward to set up and get working with the in-game computer, and because it draws the browser render to a GM surface, it was also easy to apply my dithering shader over it, rendering it more in line with the game’s visuals overall. I’m really surprised at just how high-quality this asset was for something I just came across completely accidentally, and it’s immediately expanded the range of potential activities (as well as implementations for older ones) I can feature for the in-game computer.
I think moving forward I’ll spend some time building a couple of locally-stored HTML pages to form a small repository of documents – some linked, others which must be accessed by finding addresses out in the wild – which will provide some further worldbuilding not directly related to the main plot. Because it’s Chromium, it may even natively support PDF displays, which would be really useful as I could then load the reference and instruction manuals directly in-game without forcing the player to switch to a different window on their machine.
At some point I’d like to explore the possibility of creating a special visual effect when accessing non-local files (basically, anything addresses on the real internet) to suggest extensive data corruption. I also have to implement a feature to prevent the player from “connecting” (in other words, just being able to access) to the browser when the in-game network is down. It should be pretty straightforward: I think I can build it into the splash screen that I have to make for it anyways, and simply have it destroy the instance and display a special error message if outside of the range of hours in which the network is active.
Lastly, while I was getting ready to go to bed at the end of the night, an idea for Estelle’s section came to with sudden and startling clarity. I was almost immediately certain that it was the best implementation of the idea yet, in terms of both thematic fit, and efficiency of design. I’m looking forward to getting started on working on it now.
All in all, pretty unexpected progress on multiple fronts today, although certainly encouraging.
Woke up late again… decided to take a break from working on in-engine stuff and shifted focus to writing. I spent the evening working on the log entries, and have started rewriting them sequentially. Don’t have much more to say about that. I baked some banana bread last night and it turned out quite well, much better than I was actually expecting. Next time though I’m gonna put some raisins in it I think.
Stayed up until noon for no good reason, fell asleep until 1700. I spent a few hours going over notes from playtesters and fixing a variety of bugs, but truthfully accomplished little of worth. I have a feeling that maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself to transition too quickly, and that I probably need a bit more time and space to reflect upon my progress so far and figure out what exactly I need to do moving forward instead of feeling so pressured to get it done immediately. I hope I’ll be able to figure that out by the time the weekend comes around…
Spent the day “researching” options for designing this next section, which means that in reality I basically did nothing all day except sit at my desk watching random gameplay videos and frankly learning very little of worth. Hopefully I’ll be able to get properly started tomorrow on something…
Uploaded a build to get some feedback on the map overall, spent the afternoon working through it with my playtesters and watching them navigate the environment. I’m pretty satisfied with the overall response, and it’s helped me develop a decent amount of insight into areas that need to be both fixed in a technical sense, and also improved design-wise.
I spent the evening planning out my work for the next week or two, focusing on the first sequence. I have a pretty solid idea now of how it’ll work, although I still need a bit of time to figure out the precise logistics in terms of appearance (and especially that age-old question of how to handle verticality).
Last day of the month, last major day of work on the map. I finished plotting and setting out the trail system today. It doesn’t really look as good as I wished – although to be honest, I don’t really know what exactly it was I actually imagined it would look like to begin with – but hopefully it’s functional enough to help players develop a sense of direction over the course of this section, especially at the beginning. I’m beginning to realise now that there’s also probably a lack of landmarks (and particularly notable interiors…) which hopefully I’ll be able to address when I revisit this in a month or two… but tomorrow (or later today, I guess) a new section of work starts! I’m looking forward to it. I hope by the end of this month I’ll be able to fully finish both sequences, but we’ll see…
Recorded a short showcase for the new environments, and then took the rest of the day off. I feel ready to get back to work tomorrow.
I finished up the last few rooms in the forest today, which means that, in terms of the exterior world space, the forest is now completely finished! I still have two days left in the month to go over and renovate existing spaces. I think my first priority tomorrow will be to improve the trail system, so that the world feels a bit more immediately cohesive to navigate.
I’m very close to finishing the map now: just one more day of work to finish off a handful of miscellaneous transition cells, and laying down trails, and that’s basically it! Of course, there are still a number of free-standing tasks remaining – further beautification of existing areas, interior cells, placement of events and containers – but for now, once this month is over, I think I’m gonna take a week or two off to focus on building the foundation for the next stage of this project. Probably the most interested I’ve felt in it in a while…
Just continued working on environments today. I improved the forest generation algorithm to dynamically adapt the types of flora to the position of the cell within the map grid. I think I might be able to finish the map tomorrow… although I do want to put in a few more structures overall, which will take some time to build. I think tomorrow I’m gonna try to finish at least another fifteen rooms, and get the camper trailers built and implemented into the world (the interiors can wait a bit, although I should make a note to myself to not forget about them entirely). I wasn’t able to find time to work on the PDA home screen today, but I have a pretty good idea of what it’ll look like, and the functionality itself shouldn’t be difficult at all to implement. I should be able to get the PDA completely done by the end of this weekend if all goes well…
Spent the day rebuilding the backend of the PDA system away from the strictly inventory-based framework it was built upon earlier, towards a more flexible free-form approach. The PDA can now be accessed at nearly any time anywhere, regardless of whether Avery has her pack or not; and its intended functionalities have been significantly expanded beyond just serving as a glorified inventory management system. Today, I more or less completely finished building the map application, of which I’m quite satisfied. I’d like to get a home/landing page built tomorrow and finish up at least fifteen rooms. Only four days left in the month to get everything done…
Set up the backend today for working with dynamic world progression, along with the requisite daily rooms. I have just under 50 left before I’m completely done with the map…
Essentially, how the world event system works is that each room is assigned a “tier” based on the global world tier (dictated by the player’s progress through the story). Certain rooms have alternate versions that can be dynamically swapped out with the default ones depending on the world tier and player progress (which can be advanced either through completing certain objectives, or naturally with enough time). Today I built in the system that allows for that process of detection and room switching to function dynamically, without any (hopefully) hard-coded solutions. I also built in the world tier to the save/load system, which is something that for whatever reason I never got around to before.
All that’s left now to do in this regards is figure out how to semi-randomly generate event locations. I’m thinking that maybe there’ll be a function that runs at game launch, which chooses one location from a list of possible spawn points for each defined event and then clears the other rooms from the list. I’m not exactly sure how this is gonna work to be honest…
Another possible alternative may be accomplished with the “room_assign” or “room_duplicate”; the base room would have a special name (ie rmHouse), and then be either duplicated or assigned into one of several potential special cells. In this scenario, the special cells will always default to generic layouts, which prevents them from being messed with if not assigned properly. I think this is actually the best option, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see…
Got basically no actual work done today, but I did still end up making the bare minimum on the room count, for what it’s worth. I also spent some time this evening (or whatever 4am counts as) gathering resources for the camper trailers, which I hope to get processed and implemented in the game tomorrow. I’m hoping that by the end of the week I can get interiors done for all of them as well… either that, or finish off the exterior of the map completely. Less than a week left in the month now…
Didn’t manage to get any work done today, I stayed up way too late last night and ended up slipping into a series of waking dreams which kept me in bed until 1630 this afternoon. I dreamt I was at a water park in Mexico with a few old friends (or, well, they weren’t really my friends at all in reality, just people I happened to know back then). The entire thing had a strange sheen to it, the colour and tone of that somewhat-decayed vintage filter you see in old homemade videos shot on the family 8mm. I felt at once exhilaratingly free, yet also hopelessly trapped.
Got a new interior done, the audio could be a bit better but for now I’m not gonna worry about it too much as I feel like it’s gonna be too much of an uphill battle trying to get some form of reverb working without resorting to some stupid bullshit like with the interior audio track for rain. In the mean time I continued building out the environment to the bottom-right, which is almost finished.
I also fixed some minor issues which slipped my attention earlier, mostly dealing with the way collision messages were detected (or in this case, not). All special collision areas should now properly display their appropriate collision messages. I may have potentially messed something up in one very specific room in terms of z-depth sorting but that should be easier to fix through brute-force than to try to build the entire system around accommodating for that one irregularity.