Spent half of the day in a state of extreme agitation, and the other working steadily on the inventory system. Today I managed to successfully implement item weight and volume for all currently available resources. The hardest part, without question, was figuring out how to manipulate the ds_grids to properly store calculated values. I’ve effectively ended up with the equivalent of a(n extremely basic) spreadsheet… So far, it seems to be working as intended, although I have yet to test it outside of the confines of the test room, or with multiple object containers.
Regardless, I’m just glad that I got it working at all. I’m actually pretty impressed with myself to be quite honest. At many times it just felt completely above my skill level, and yet I somehow persisted through it and even managed to end up with a solution that, while probably not elegant, is definitely flexible and legible enough to be reused later in a more modular contexts.
Tomorrow I hope to get item transferral set up and hopefully maybe even finished. I’m probably gonna have to start by revamping the way items are generated, and reducing the pack_add_item script to a simpler form that allows items to be generated using only the item names. I’m currently trying to decide whether I want to do that with a CSV or external text file, or just load it in via a massive switch statement at the beginning. I’m leaning towards the latter, but we’ll see…
I don’t think it’ll be too bad once I get going on it, especially since I feel I’ve set up a pretty decent framework today to dynamically handle weight/space calculations, but we’ll see. There are also a few fringe cases, like transferring item counts over certain quantities: right now, I’m thinking I’m just gonna lift the implementation from Fallout once again, and have it so that if the player attempts to transfer more than 10 of the same item, it’ll open up a prompt that allows them to manually select a custom quantity. I’m not sure how the input for that will work right now, but again, we’ll see…
I hope that I’m stable enough tomorrow so I can get this done, and get back to work on environments.
A productive day. Got a bunch of rooms done, and started work on the inventory system. I was able to set up the foundation for it, including basic navigation and all the general GUI elements. There are still a few things I’d like to expand upon in that direction beyond just making it look better – namely, additional information about storage capacity and weight – but overall it’s a good start, and I’m surprised I was able to get it done so quickly.
After that, I have to implement functionality – basically just transferring items, and properly calculating combined weights and storage space – but that requires me to first build in those systems, as well as potentially revamp the original inventory system pretty substantially to account for, and properly calculate total combined resource values (meaning that the previous implementation, which segregates resources by category, has to be either redone or seriously reconsidered).
All in all, it’s simultaneously a lot of work, yet not as much as I originally thought. I’ve learned that as long as I’m able to find the patience to slow down and concentrate, visualise things in the right order, I’ll be okay with these kinds of things. I hope I can finish by the middle of next week.
Took the day off today. I’ve been having particularly unpleasant dreams these past two nights for some strange reason. When I wake I no longer feel rested…
Nothing really that interesting, just continued working on new rooms. I also implemented a very basic spawner for certain trees – really, just the tall ones – whose bases previously didn’t mesh that well with the ground, that spawns in a few shrubs around the base to blend it a bit better.
Today was the first day I actually got my five rooms done! Hopefully I’m able to continue with this.
I also got a lot of additional work done, improving the procgen system used to generate the generic forest sections. I added a few new variations of dead trees and various brambles for the underbrush, and rebalanced the placement algorithm a bit. The result is a much more “natural”-looking forest I think, with a lot more diversity in terms of both distribution and types of flora: now I just gotta work a bit more on improving overall legibility for the player…
Didn’t get as much done today, unusually tired for some reason tonight. However, the area around the observatory’s road is functionally complete now, including sound masking (along with new audio for footsteps on hard surfaces, although they still need a lot of work I think). The Capitol Building was temporarily stormed today, which is probably why I had such difficulty concentrating. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to get back on track.
Resumed work on environments, starting with the area around the observatory. Although I didn’t technically get five new rooms done today, I significantly redid the terrain around it (as well as added some additional visuals such as vines to the building itself): the “road” system leading up to it is now more or less finished in terms of layout, it’s just a matter of improving legibility in a few of the rooms and adjusting the precise placement of the observatory itself on the larger map with respect to distribution and density of PoIs. Figuring out how to (mostly, for now) resolve the issue of the observatory’s previously sudden and jarring occurrence has significantly eased some of my frustrations in this area and particular, and once I finish up the road complete, I think I’ll feel much better prepared to expand eastwards, equipped with a better understanding of the scale and shape of the terrain relative to early major landmarks.
A slower day, didn’t get around to doing my rooms for the day after all. I did however finish up the sub-lighting effect that I started yesterday – most light sources, but most noticeably the torch, now have a soft darkened gradient around their edges, which fades out appropriately according to the time of day – as well as the visibility system for interactions: interaction prompts will still appear, but the text will be dimmer and potentially even illegible in the absence of nearby light sources, whether that’s the player-mounted ones, or exterior ones such as fires. I spent some time figuring out whether I wanted to just hide the visibility of the prompts, or completely disable interaction altogether. Ultimately I ended up going with the former, as the latter proved to be a bit too cumbersome to implement properly, both design-wise, and technically due to the weird masking issues on the light textures themselves.
I hope tomorrow I can get back to working on the environment.
A dim, snowy day. Spent the afternoon and evening working on fire and lighting. I finally implemented something I should have done a long time ago: fires now burn differently depending on environmental circumstances, particularly humidity, and precipitation. For example, fires lit during heavy rain are much more difficult to ignite, take longer to build up, and burn both shorter, and less brightly (meaning less available light). In contrast, fires lit during clear or cloudy weather are much easier to light and give off a lot more light, allowing Avery to perform a greater range of activities (tomorrow I’m gonna finally implement the light restriction system, another one of those things I had planned out long ago but never got around to doing for some reason). However, larger fires also increase the possibility of attracting potentially unwanted contact, which makes them riskier, and encourages the player to extinguish their fires early.
I also started implementing a sub-lighting surface that adds a bit of a gradient to the lighting at night. It’ll be toggle-able, as with all the other features; I’m not sure yet if I’m gonna have it enabled by default, or left as an option. Lastly, I implemented a visible in-world lighting object for sparks when using the lighter and ferro rod.
Pretty productive day today (although I still didn’t get my five rooms done…). I started by working on the dirtiness effects like I said I would yesterday. It ended up being a little bit trickier than I initially projected: since the game is running at true resolution, the texture, which previously worked fine on a much larger sprite in a different project, had to be manually adjusted in order to not appear blotchy/weird on Avery’s character model. Nonetheless though it turned out fine and everything works as intended now: dirt and grime naturally accumulate while outdoors but particularly during rainfall, and can be washed away in the decontamination shower. I think I’m gonna have the regular shower give a substantial mood buff, which is countered by a long wait time in between available usages (maybe a day or two, as new water gets filtered in).
While coming up with ways to make the two work together well, I also came up with the idea for a small underground area, accessible via a hatch in the ground in the outpost room, leading to an interior cell containing the water and power sources for the outpost. I’m not entirely sure yet what the point of those would necessarily serve beyond demonstrating the functional construction of the outpost, but it’s an oddly exciting idea that I’m gonna work a bit with more tomorrow.
I also started working on directional sprites for the idle animations: now, Avery will stay in whatever position she was facing when she stops walking. It’s a relatively small change, but significantly improves the feeling of the movement overall.
Lastly, I got rid of the alternate lighting system entirely after discovering some gross incompatibilities with the design of the outpost, and implemented an alternate light source instead: a miniature storm lantern, which, instead of casting a beam like the hand torch, casts a small radius around Avery. I’m thinking it’ll be powered by fuel tablets (also used for starting fires), although I’m not yet sure what its advantages over the torch are yet. I’ll think about it a bit more in the coming days and hopefully arrive at a satisfactory solution.
Started off the year on a bit of slow note. Last night I took a sleeping pill so I could try to fix my sleep schedule (I’ve been going to bed around 0600 the past week or so for some reason), but I guess it ended up just being too strong as I was overcome by an intense lethargy early in the afternoon, and ended up falling asleep until around 1900.
Nonetheless I spent the morning reacquainting myself with my previous progress, and ended up working on some minor QoL fixes and visual updates, especially around the outpost. This weekend, I’d like to implement the dirtiness system. It shouldn’t be difficult or time-consuming at all: a fairly straightforward accumulation meter, and a shader-based visual overlay that I already have pre-assembled from another project I worked on last year. I’m also resuming my five-rooms-a-day schedule tomorrow.
Well, here we are, at the end of yet another year. I decided the day before Christmas that, instead of forcibly hitting my head against the wall for the rest of the year getting nothing done, I’d just take the time off instead to try to enjoy the holiday and recuperate my attention and energy.
Truth be told, I actually think it’s worked a bit: I think I do feel a little bit better, and taking a step back has granted me a greater perspective of, and desire to improve upon my efforts, that I lacked before because I guess I was just too stuck in it. I hope tomorrow I’ll be able to return with a stronger and clearer sense of both purpose and motivation alike.
Overall, I think that, despite everything else that happened at large, this year was a good one for me: probably the best in a good while, actually. I feel like I gained a certain sense of clarity over myself and the things that I believe, the things that I desire, that I’ve been hoping to find for a very long time now, but was unable to achieve because I was constantly blinded by distractions before. For the first time, probably ever, I feel at peace most days, untroubled by the noise of the world.
As for the subject of wishes and resolutions… well, I suppose there’s a lot I could say but at the end of the day, all I really hope is that I can continue to get better. In the meantime, I’ll continue to put in the effort all the days I can, and in time, hopefully learn how to better recognise and deal with the days I can’t. And so it goes.
Peace be with you.
Barely got in any work at all today. I woke at 1700 after being unable to wake up from a strange – but not altogether unpleasant – dream. It was already dark by the time I finally got out of bed. I attempted to start working but it was doomed from the start. I’m just gonna give up on this trailer for now and return to my normal schedule. I still technically have just under a week… but with the holiday coming up and my utter lack of imagination lately, I doubt anything will come to me soon. Disappointing, but expected, I suppose…
Watched Tenet tonight with Nate and Jacob. I liked it a lot. I wasn’t able to get any work done today though. I’ve been stuck on the second half of this trailer for several days now and it’s ground down whatever little momentum I had finally started to build up to a complete halt. If I’m not able to come up with anything tomorrow I think I’m just gonna stop working on it altogether for now and get back to my regular schedule. I’m wasting too much time grinding away at this without any progress.
Didn’t end up getting much done today unfortunately. I’m pretty stuck on the second half of the trailer, specifically the visuals. What few ideas I was able to come up with turned out to be much more difficult to actually create in practice. I struggled through many different assets this afternoon, none of which can ultimately be either used, or salvaged. The utter lack of progress combined with the high amount of wasted work has left me in a considerably worse mood, which doesn’t bode well for the immediate future. I can only hope that some kind of inspiration visits me between now and tomorrow when I start working again…
Didn’t get much done in terms of in-engine work today, but I made a good amount of progress on the trailer, which makes up for it. Depending on how progress goes on producing new assets for it – which honestly is the only thing I have left, I finished putting in all of the existing ones today – I might even be able to get it done by the end of this week, which will be pretty exciting.
Got my five new rooms done today, including at least one unique one. I also cleaned up the loose item descriptions in some of the Create events. Except for the character-based ones (ie examining beds adjusts to Avery’s fatigue level), all of the observation ones have been consolidated in a single script, which will make translations – amongst other things – much easier to deal with should that become an issue in the future.
Lastly, I spent some time working on audio. I manually cleaned out all the birdsong from the daytime forest ambience, so it feels a little bit more empty now. I also added a very low-frequency drone to the ambient audio sublayer. I’m not sure if it’ll have the intended effect… but I suppose that can only really be determined by playtesting. I’ll leave it in for now, and continue to experiment with it as I go about re-inspecting and readjusting the audio where necessary.
Although I started working on a few new rooms today, I got sidetracked a bit and instead ended up working mostly on UI stuff. I fixed a number of bugs, mostly involving mouse-tracking, with the system status bar, and then decided to improve the letterbox-less experience. It’s now fully functional – meaning all UI elements will dynamically appear and disappear contextually – and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.
I also added in a small QoL feature that displays a coloured highlight behind the mouse pointer, making it much more visible. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later lest it slips my mind, I have to add in a toggle for it in the options, which will unfortunately require me to rather substantially rebuild the framework for the options menu. Well, I suppose that’s what I reap for taking the easy way out all those months back.
Tomorrow I’ll get those rooms done for good. I’ve also been thinking about revisiting some of the audio, especially the general forest ambience, and touching it up a bit. While I’m not entirely dissatisfied with the way it sounds now, I do feel like it could be more interesting in terms of the layering. I’ll keep it in my mind in the days moving forward.
Missed yesterday’s entry for no particular reason. I wrote the final update for the year. It snowed all day yesterday, a very steady accumulation. The night was lovely in its stark stillness. Too bad it’s already started to melt.
After a bit of reflection, I’ve decided to commit myself to a new schedule over the next month. Starting from tomorrow, every day I’m going to produce a minimum of five rooms until I’m finished. At minimum, it’ll still take me over a month at that rate – closer to a month and a half, I suspect – to finish the rest of the map, but it’s certainly much better than the piss-poor rate of one room a week, if I’m lucky, that I’ve been “progressing” at lately.
Started working on this month’s update, which is to say, I sat in front of my computer for several hours and wrote barely three paragraphs. This month’s got an odd number of days so technically I’m still okay on the timing as long as I get it out by tomorrow, but honestly the problem is that I just don’t know what to write about, seeing as I accomplished so little this past month. I guess I can just talk about that a bit… as well as do a review of this year’s activity, and my plans moving forward into next year.
Slowly trying to get back to work. Rearranged a few rooms, and parented the generic forest cells beneath a single master room, which will make organisation much easier moving forward. I also removed the restriction preventing the player from leaving the world cell the backpack is dropped in; its position is now saved, meaning the player can potentially lose track of the pack entirely.
I feel like each day, I’m just drifting in and out of existence, slipping through and in between the pores of my memories. An old friend – well, maybe not even a friend, just someone who talked to me for a very brief moment a long time ago – reached out to me earlier tonight, on Tinder of all places. I wish I hadn’t talked to her. My heart’s become twisted with a wretched longing for a past that I’m deliberately misremembering. That horrible, wrenching fondness for people who are no longer here, who might as well not even exist anymore. I wonder if I were to go back and sift through the detritus of my life, if I could find the exact moment, that precise point at which a hairline fracture appeared and bloomed so quickly into this bitter, rotten metastasis. It’d do no use at this point except to confirm my paranoia. When I was young people told me all the time that I could be someone someday, that they were excited to see who I would become in the future. I let them all down, and most importantly, I, who believed in all those stupid things people said, let myself down. Not only did I not become someone, I became less than no one.
I talk a lot about the importance of sincerity when it comes to creating things, but the truth is, I don’t think I even live up to that myself. Or rather, I’ve come to realise, I believe, that the sincerity I practice is sincerity not towards a good thing – that is to say, perhaps, love – but rather, far more often towards spite, and envy. I’ve found that my creative urge manifests most directly and strongly in the moments of my most profound anger and bitterness; when I feel overwhelmed by my hatred for others, and myself.
Realising that is painful, and inconvenient. But what’s even more painful and inconvenient are all the moments – like now – when I feel that anger swell up within me, but there’s no release.
Didn’t work today. I was planning on it when I woke up… but I found myself paralysed somehow and ended up just grinding pointlessly through the afternoon for several hours on nothing, so I just gave up. I don’t know why it’s suddenly so difficult for me to work these days, especially when I know exactly what needs to get done. I always tell myself that hopefully tomorrow will be better, but it rarely ever pans out that way. I think my inspiration has just completely dried up… not only in terms of my work, but just in general. I feel utterly unmoored, and absent of guidance.
A bit of a change of pace today. Decided to start working on a new trailer, got Premiere downloaded and set up both the audio – much more straightforward this time around, very light custom edits – and what I believe will be the first few seconds of the opening shot. I still have a lot of structural work to do – as of right now, I have no idea how I’m gonna fill the next two minutes or so – but I’m optimistic that it’ll come to me soon. I hope that I’ll be able to finish up and have it ready in at most two weeks’ time. That’ll put me in a good position for release. If not, well…
Spent the afternoon retouching a few areas in the lower-left region, and working on new environmental assets. Not much else to report, just the same kind of work as usual.
No work these past two days, made the most likely questionable decision of instead grinding out nearly 80 tiers of the season pass for The Division 2 after realising this weekend that there were only three days left in the season. I can’t say I feel particularly proud or accomplished… but what’s done is done, I suppose. It’s time to get back to work for good tomorrow.
Not much work today, just fixed up the area around the stream a bit.
For whatever reason I was extremely exhausted last night – even more so than usual, somehow – and ended up passing out before I could make an entry. I made decent progress though between yesterday and today, completing a few more areas and in general developing a better sense of the world layout and additional points of interest. At this point the only thing I’m focusing on is just getting the map done as quickly as possible.
I also edited the palette swapper to accommodate a full 255-colour range, which significantly improves the appearance of gradient-based elements like water and fog, and renders the separate background layer in certain rooms obsolete, meaning palette_bg.png can be discarded. It’s a small change, but it still feels like meaningful progress.
A little bit better today. No hard progress, but I finally got around to the evaluation of the map and was able to finish inventory on the remaining world spaces. I’m not gonna go too much into it right now – both because I’ve yet to fully work out a plan moving forward, and also because the conclusions were rather bleak – but it’s given me a much better idea of what needs to get done moving forward.
Here we are, final month. Every day I tell myself, “Today didn’t go so well, but tomorrow, I will…” and yet tomorrow arrives and once again, nothing gets done and the process repeats. It’s getting to the point where just the realisation alone that that’s draining my will to work is in itself directly draining my will to work further. But maybe tomorrow, I will…
Last day of the month… and yet another dead day. The sky was dark with rain from the moment I awoke. I don’t feel as if I’ve accomplished anything this month: in fact, I think it might just be the least productive I’ve been since I started working on this project. I really don’t know what’s been going on, honestly. I don’t even feel that bad, at least as far as I’m aware. Just… languid, I guess. Completely unmotivated and unenthused about anything. Every day I fail to work I fall behind my schedule further and further. At this point I honestly have no idea when I’ll finish, my mood’s just too unstable. It feels at once as if there’s not much work left to do until I’m done, and yet when I actually sit down and look at it, it feels like there’s an almost overwhelming amount of work left. And then I start thinking about the fact that it’s not just my work schedule that I’m actively wasting away each and every day, but the hours and days of my life as well…
No progress today. I woke up early hoping to get things done but I just wasn’t feeling it. Otherwise, I took a walk with my mother this afternoon at a park in an adjacent town. It was pretty nice.
Slow day today. I finished surveying the existing landscape and finished up the last of my significant edits. I’ve concluded that the best way forward at this point is gonna be to develop a new map of the area, with the current layout as the foundation, instead of trying to retrofit the existing one by brute-forcing it to the actual physical layout. It’s a real pain in the ass conceptually but I think that practically speaking, I can probably get it done in about an afternoon’s time. I should probably just do it tomorrow…
Spent the afternoon revisiting older rooms and touching up wherever I feel there could be improvements made, either for pacing or consistency’s sake (ie updating vegetation models, collision masks, etc). It’s gonna take a bit – maybe half a week, if I’m being optimistic – to go through and renovate all the existing spaces, but hopefully it’ll set me up in the right mindset to finish off the remaining ones. Man, if I weren’t so exhausted all the time…
Decided against my best interests to take the day off for the holiday although – both in general, and in retrospect – I really shouldn’t have. It never quite fully dawned upon me until today just how empty my life actually is outside of work. How little structure there is actually propping me up, how insubstantial my so-called “interests” actually are. I just spent the entire day mindlessly grinding through video games I’ve discovered I no longer even really enjoy on my own… I can barely recall what I even accomplished in them, if anything at all.
Made steady progress today, more or less finished up the major work on the shoreline, which effectively concludes the hardest work environment-wise (at least for now). The next major task will be to continue developing the interior using the boundaries as guidelines: although originally I adhered pretty strictly to the grid laid out by the map I’ve since deviated from it considerably, which is gonna make further planning (as well as keeping track of both what has been completed, as well as what needs to be completed) significantly more complicated than I’d initially anticipated. I’m no longer remotely confident that I’ll be able to make my desired deadline of having the map completely finished by the end of the month, but I’m still gonna try to aim for it regardless.
Continued working on the shoreline today, made decent progress developing a more interesting contour. Almost done with it… I started looking into therapists today and I found one who I think might be able to help me. I’m gonna reach out to her more formally after the Thanksgiving holiday is over but I’m feeling optimistic about it.
Took a sleeping pill last night to try to get to sleep, ended up so tired that I slept almost the entire day. I tried to work a bit during the night once I woke but made limited progress. I’m gonna keep on trying for a bit longer before attempting to go back to sleep…
Woke up early thinking that today was the day I was gonna get things done, but it wasn’t.
Another pointless day in my life. I’ve been troubled lately by strange and incredibly vivid dreams in which I find myself dying, or being mocked for things I did and said a long time ago. When I wake each morning I feel exhausted, and filled with an intense sensation of dread and shame. Today was another one of such days, despite my efforts to turn things around. I tried to work multiple times throughout the day but I never managed to progress beyond just opening up GameMaker. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything for longer than a minute at a time and even then, I feel disconnected from it all.
Didn’t get any work done today. I felt incredibly tired earlier and ended up sleeping through the entire afternoon. Gotta make up for it tomorrow.
Still wasn’t able to progress past the room that I was working on yesterday, although I did get some work done. I don’t really know why it went so slowly today. I’ve been suffering some pains in my right arm, around the wrist, for the past few days which have really been sapping my energy to work. It’s like this dull ache which comes and goes suddenly and unexpectedly, and leaves my fingers feeling numb. My body feels like it’s coming apart very slowly…
Continued work on the shoreline today. I settled upon a decent enough solution I think for transitioning to the horizontal bank, but I still have to figure out the specifics of how to work with the contours of the bank itself: as well as how I’m going to justify cutting off the player’s movement once Avery reaches the “end” of the playable map. I have some ideas currently but the issue is mostly just ensuring consistency with the adjacent areas. I feel like I’m picking up speed again in terms of my ability to work overall. I still need to fix my sleep schedule though.
Got some more work done on the coast, added a new index to the lake texture so that it (hopefully) more accurately reflects the direction of the light upon the waves. The next big challenge is gonna be figuring how to transition from the vertical shoreline to the horizontal one. I just have to find a suitable reference, which always sounds much easier than it actually ends up being. I hope I can get the entire shoreline done by the end of this week… but at the rate I’m working at, I honestly doubt I’ll even be able to make it even halfway. I hope I can prove myself wrong.
Slightly more productive today. I set up and launched a Discord server for my work, which so far has turned out much better than I initially thought it would. A lot of the people are pretty familiar, which is nice. I hope it continues to function well as intended moving forward. It’s nice to have a small space again where I can talk to people about things.
I also set up the system for smoking today, and split the vomiting mechanic into two separate variables: toxicity, and nausea. Nausea is accumulated by things like smoking too much and builds up incrementally, but also subsides on its own with time, and is completely cleared to 0 after vomiting. Toxicity on the other hand builds up progressively and stacks based on things like ingesting toxic substances or wounds becoming infected. Toxicity is not fully purged after vomiting and instead requires an antidote injection in order to completely neutralise and flush out the toxins from her system (which will cause Avery to develop a moderate fever, weakening her for one in-game day).
Completely fell behind again these past two days for no real reason. It’s starting to get to be a real problem… this month’s update was supposed to release today but not only did I not do that, I completely lost track of the date and forgot about it until well into this afternoon. I have to finish and publish it tomorrow, although I’m not sure what I would even put in it, as my “progress” these past two weeks especially has been, well, nonexistent…
Wasn’t able to get as much done today as I did yesterday unfortunately. I woke up in a vaguely troubled mood because of some horrible thing that happened in my dreams last night, and I found it subsequently difficult to concentrate all throughout the day. I’m not yet sure what I’m gonna post tomorrow but I hope that whatever it is, it’ll give me the necessary impetus to get back to a more normal work schedule, even if it only lasts just a day.
The most productive day I’ve had in a week, although I guess that’s not saying too much. I worked for about three hours continuously, working on laying out and building new sections of coast around the lake. I got a few new spaces done, and also managed to spend some time during the evening working on a new sketch, the first I’ve done in a while. It was a decent challenge as I wanted to work in a few more colours than I’m used to – an eight-tone major palette, with a ninth and tenth outline/highlight tone – but I think it turned out looking quite nice.
Didn’t get as much done today as I would have liked. I woke up late in the afternoon despite some efforts trying to get to bed earlier, and spent the afternoon sorting through references. I recorded a bit more rain audio as well because there was a continuous heavy downpour this afternoon, but it didn’t end up coming out as well as I’d liked unfortunately, and I don’t think I’m gonna be using it.
Slowly getting back into it. I spent most of my work time today laying out plans for the next several days, including a to-do list for various front-facing assets and stuff along with directly development-side objectives. I think this month’s update is gonna be light on new content, and focus mostly on just showcasing visual changes.
I think this might be the longest I’ve gone having consecutively skipped writing a day’s entry since I started keeping these logs. I’ve just felt acutely sad and distracted these past few days for some reason, like my sense of purpose has become completely displaced. The other day I purchased Fallout 4 with the intent of upgrading my workflow from Skyrim, which had begun only very recently, to my surprise, showing its age in terms of the kinds of landscapes and shots I could set up. Switching over was definitely a good idea, as 4 has a lot better built-in support for more modern gear and whatnot, which is more appropriate for the settings and themes I typically cover.
The big issue though is that I completely lost sight of that goal after the first day and basically got completely enthralled with setting up my mod order. I’ve just been staying up late every night obsessively sorting through files and ordering dependencies to the point where I often find myself losing track of time, as if I’ve entered some kind of stupor. There’s a kind of strange, wretched pleasure to it: the monotony and frustration, the rare moments of thin elation when the game finally is able to launch even if just for a minute. It’s been almost a week now since I’ve worked on My Work is Not Yet Done and I need to write this month’s update later this week… I have to get back to work soon and finish what I set out to do.
Yesterday, Sawyer came over for the first time in a while (originally we were supposed to meet Saturday but I woke up too late). The weather this weekend was unusually pleasant compared to the cold of the past month or so and it was nice to walk around with him again. We watched a film called Gonjiam: The Haunted Asylum, which I’d been meaning to watch for a while but couldn’t summon the courage to do so myself. It was somehow scarier than I thought was initially possible.
Spent about an hour earlier today working on a new world cell, but I was too tired to do much and I fell asleep for most of the evening. Man, I really gotta fix my sleep schedule… the funny thing is that it wasn’t even the switch from daylight saving time the other day that threw me off (at least not perceptibly, anyways), but just something completely arbitrary it seems. Sawyer’s coming over for the first time in a while tomorrow and the weather will be unusually pleasant according to the forecast, so I’m looking forward to that. I hope it’s able to set me back on schedule for next week.
Took another day off, had to resolve some personal issues. Nothing serious, just the usual. I should be back to work this weekend hopefully, just gotta continue moving forward on the environmental work.
Took the day off to attend to some personal business. Will get back to it tomorrow.
Woke up pretty early and started making good progress on the coastline around the lake… but then for whatever reason, around noon my energy rapidly began to dwindle and I found myself physically drained soon after. I still got a decent amount of work done today but hopefully this doesn’t happen again tomorrow.
Another productive day: finished up the dam more or less completely, and even came up with a pretty interesting way to rather seamlessly resolve the issue of blocking the dam off in the process. The hardest part is basically done now, and I think I’m gonna just continue to work up the coast of the lake until I reach the edge of the map, and then go backwards from there. With this hurdle out of the way, I’m optimistic that I might even be able to completely finish the map by the end of the month, which would be really good in terms of progress, and give me significantly more time to plan ahead. For now though, best to just stay in the present and get it done before losing myself too far ahead in the schedule.
Started off the month pretty well, got all the backgrounds done for the dam and even fully built a new world cell, the entrance area for the dam. It looks a bit weird I think if one were to consider the practical implications of it… but at this point I’m not really worried about that anymore. I’m also thinking about potentially moving the abseiling point from the bridge to the dam: it makes a lot more sense both visually and realistically, I’d just have to figure out the logistics of how it’s gonna end up looking and playing out. In any case I feel a significant weight has just been lifted off my back now that I’ve finally finished the hardest stretches of the cliff. It’s not as large as I’d initially wished for… but it’s good enough I think.
October’s over now, I guess… this month’s been unusually hard for some reason but at least it ended on a good note. A few of my friends from school came over to visit and watch a film. We decided to watch The Wailing. I had a good time, and it was nice seeing them. It was a much-needed boost for my mood. My BLACKPINK stickers also came in the mail today, and for some reason looking at them made me feel a bit better as well. I hope I’m able to enter November with more optimistic feelings…
Took a brief detour to work on another small project. Nothing much to say about it, really; I should’ve been working on Work but the mood just didn’t feel right for some reason, I don’t know how else to put it. Oh, well.
Managed to get a little bit of work done today, which is an improvement from these past few days. Just spent some time walking around and fixing up a few areas: minor touches mostly, small quality-of-life things. I’m slowly working my way up to the dam… hopefully I’ll be able to finish the entire cliff edge/coast by mid-November, which will really ease up the burden I think/hope.
Tried to get back to work today, but I just got stuck and accomplished nothing. I’ve been feeling pretty bent lately, my head’s all wrong all the time and I can’t focus on anything, especially work. Every time I look at my work I just get so frustrated by my inability to move forward, and that feeds into this larger sense of impotence / disappointment that’s been troubling me for a while, this unbearable realisation of just how profoundly stupid and uninteresting my work feels. How utterly lacking in inspiration or purpose…
Felt awful today for some reason. No energy or motivation to do anything, let alone work. I didn’t wake up until 1600… I just felt totally empty.
The AI’s now set up about as good as it’s probably gonna be for a while, including support for additional offensive and defensive behaviours such as throwing grenades and calling for support. I also added a few combat lines for them which help to communicate their behaviour to the player.
I think it’s time to finally get back to work on Work tomorrow, I feel sufficiently rested. I’m definitely gonna continue putting in work into the secondary project but from here on, at least until the next foreseeable break, I’ll probably be splitting my time 70/30 (hopefully).
Spent the night working on fixing up the AI and building a more flexible backend for it. It’s pretty difficult, unsurprisingly; I had to go through several different systems before settling on the current one, and even the current one is not great, just the best of the lot. I think I’m gonna dedicate the rest of tomorrow to getting all this set up proper.
A long and productive workday. Started and finished a fairly involved animation and cleaned up a bunch of the enemy AI. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s definitely getting closer. It’s late and I’m pretty tired so I don’t have much else to say at the moment, but I think I’m gonna add in grenades and explosions tomorrow, as well as draw some death animations and corpses for enemies.
Started working on enemy AI today, spent the afternoon building a bunch of archetypes and figuring out how to implement them. It’s a bit of a challenge I must admit given the more complex terrain layout compared to what I was used to working with before with Hotline Miami, whose boxy architecture was much easier to work and plan around. Considering the nature of the gameplay as well there needs to be a certain level of complexity and nuance in the interactions – specifically in how different states blend into one another – that I’m a bit unfamiliar with by lack of experience; but I’ve been reading a bit and learning about different approaches and I think by tomorrow I’ll be able to settle on one conclusively.
Another productive day. Got a bunch of vegetation done, as well as a layering system that gradually applies a texture over the player character according to a certain mechanic. I said it before a few days ago but I’ll say it again: for the first time in a real long time I feel like I’m actually enjoying myself. Every night I find myself able to work continuously without distraction for hours on end. I hope that I’m able to carry this feeling back to working on Work.
Spent the entire day working on basically a single animation. While I can’t exactly fairly conclude it was time wasted – the animation does look pretty good after all and I think will contribute a lot – I do think I have to really get better in general at re-evaluating my priorities when it comes to these kinds of things. Hopefully I’ll have something to show for all of it come Saturday…
Took another day off, although this time to work on a side project that I started today. Jacob, Nate and I have decided as of last week to work on some small independent projects for a bit and release them together. I’m pretty satisfied with the direction mine is currently going, although it’s far from my initial anticipated design. It’s pretty satisfying to work with and for the first time in quite a while I feel like I’m actually enjoying myself again making a game. We’ll see how long this feeling lasts, of course… but hopefully I’ll be able to get something done by the end of the week or so. It’s coming along quite nicely now as is.
Too tired today to get much done for some reason. Worked a little bit on brushing up some of the foliage in the areas leading to the dam, but no substantial progress. Gonna check out early tonight, hopefully start early tomorrow.
Took the day off, gonna get back to it tomorrow.
Another decently productive day, made good progress on environmental work, developing the stretch of cliffs up until just short of the dam. The actual contours are weird as hell and don’t at all really correspond with the map – the perspective on this is incredibly challenging to work with, I’ve come to realise way too late – but hopefully I can get it to a point where at least it feels internally coherent within the moment-to-moment experience. At this point, that’s really the best I can hope for, barring a massive revision of a majority of the locations and/or map up until this point… which I really don’t have the time for now, or probably ever.
Created the general template for the radial menu, allowing variations to simply reuse the parent template instead of creating new versions for each. Also spent some time editing the appearance of the menu: it now applies a dimming and blurring effect to the background, which looks really nice. Gonna work on it a bit more tomorrow and hopefully finish porting over the existing functions from the previous list menu.
Finally, a productive day of work at last. I spent the entire day completely reworking the UI backend after realising that this entire time the game has been scaling improperly in full-screen, resulting in a very slightly warped image which I only noticed after starting work on the meditation UI.
This also had the unintentional benefit of allowing me to start using high-resolution fonts, which look quite good in my opinion: I’ve officially made the full switch over to IM FELL English from Batang, and am quite satisfied with the results.
Lastly, I completely redid the action menu, moving away from a list-based design to a radial design. It’s much more intuitive to use, and easier to work with from a backend perspective as I can now freely switch out radials based on context (plus, it also just looks better). I still have to fully merge over all the existing menu-based functionality to the new system, and I also think that I’m going to swap out the text for icons, both of which I plan on taking care of tomorrow. And it’s already the 15th, meaning I’m gonna have to write a new update as well…
Not too much productivity today but I did resume working. I redid Avery’s portrait for the meditation UI – the new one looks a bit better, and will probably be easier to work with – and started finalising drafts for the implementation, which I hope to get started on tomorrow. I don’t know why this all of all things is proving to be so continuously difficult to figure out, but I think I’m getting there, however slowly…
Another day without any work done. It rained all day and my body and mind felt sluggish. I know I said this yesterday but I think tomorrow will be the day I’m able to get back on track. In a few days I’ll have to write this month’s update… I can’t remember a single thing I’ve accomplished to be honest. I’ll have to get at least one thing done within the next two days – at the very least, the meditation UI – to be able to write about anything. I don’t know why or how time wasted by so quickly… although I suppose that’s a recurring refrain in my life, these days in particular.
Didn’t work today. Felt besieged by a dim feeling of anxiety all afternoon that made it difficult to get my thoughts straight.
Very little practical progress today because I spent most of my time stuck on the actual design of the meditation system. I prototyped dynamic bubble-based system but something about it doesn’t feel quite right to me… it just doesn’t look that good in practice even if the idea behind the design is sound. I need to spend more time running some more concepts but I think by now I’m leaning towards a more static approach, which will take more time to set up but allows me to work with more potentially interesting visual layouts. This is one of the worst parts of development by far, getting stuck on visual solutions…
I also switched out Batang for a font called IM FELL English. I’m not sure if I’m gonna stick with it yet but its texture is certainly more interesting in a different way. I like the way it looks and feels, but I asked around and everyone else seems to prefer Batang as the typeface is wider and more immediately legible. Well, we’ll see.
Took most of the day off today, went to the reservation with Sawyer for a hike up to the dam, and then we got burgers and Guinness and spent some time at the station. I did end up getting a little bit of work done tonight, mixing and implementing some audio for using the tower viewer – just a few light squeaks as the view pans. I think this weekend, I’m gonna pull some overtime and get some work done on some UI: either ActiVision or the meditation system.
Finished up the viewfinder effect for the tower viewer, although I didn’t end up starting on ActiVision today. Not much to really say about it, really: it works as is and while I think the effect can still use some improvement at this point I’d rather just move onto something else and revisit it later. I should start recording a list of things I have to revisit at some point, now that I think about it…
Built the viewfinder effect. Still needs a bit of work because the visuals themselves are a bit too noisy to be legible, especially with the magnifier enabled, but it looks good regardless and I’m pleased to see how it turned out. Hopefully I can finish it completely by tomorrow so I can finally start the ActiVision app, which is what I planned on doing initially this week…
Did nothing today. I awoke late into the afternoon after having experienced several hours of intense semi-lucid dreams this morning which left me in a rather haunted mood. In my dreams, I was visited by some people who I thought I’d never see again and the sight of their faces made me sad. I spent most of the day continuously putting off my work, telling myself I’d do it in an hour, until the hour arrived and I made yet another excuse. I hope tomorrow goes better.
Mild progress today. Spent the afternoon working on some cliffside props, including a warning sign and a tower viewer. Tomorrow I’m gonna work on implementing functional viewfinders for each tower viewer, allowing Avery to look out at specific vistas. After that I’m gonna start working on the ActiVision UI proper.
Got much colder last night, which persisted into today. I spent some more time working on the story structure, and finished up the suspension bridge area today. I think next week I’m gonna take another detour and get to work on building the UI for ActiVision. It’s been a real long while since I’ve worked on stuff back at the outpost so it’ll be a nice change of pace – plus, that’s an essential part of the early game that I’ve yet to even begin to address. I hope I’m able to work well the next few weeks. I have a good feeling about it.
Forgot to record an entry yesterday for some reason; although I suppose it doesn’t really make a practical difference. I started working on the suspension bridge area late last night and finished it up for the most part this morning, although the bridge itself needs a good deal more work. The hardest parts though – the background and figuring out the transition – are done, which is what matters.
I spent most of today away from my workstation, focusing on writing instead. The weather was pretty pleasant so I was outside most of the afternoon. The final shape of the game’s narrative is beginning to crystallise I think. After today’s work I have a pretty solid idea about the structure of, at the very least, the first part of the game. Now I just need to figure out the scaling on it…
Here’s October. Found myself stuck on the observatory so I decided to take a bit of a break from it and revisit some other areas, particularly around the bridge. I struggled for a while to figure out the perspective on the bridge but I think I’ve finally reached a solution. The contours of the cliff in general have been frustrating me for a few months now at this point… looking at the map, it’s once again dawned upon me just how much work is left for me to finish. I fear that I’m gonna force myself into an inevitable crunch at the rate I’m working (or alternately, not) right now. It’s as if somehow, all my discipline has just utterly evaporated and most days I can’t seem to find even a shred of it anymore…
Somehow September’s already gone, just like that… after all the rain yesterday the weather became exceedingly pleasant today, and I went outside for the first time in a while. I just noticed that the leaves have begun to change. Something about the coming days fills me with a sense of uncertainty, although maybe I’ve always felt this way around this time of the year.
I spent a little while working on some of the scenery descriptions, but in reality the truth is I might as well have just taken the day off with how little I actually accomplished. I’ve really begun to feel the weight of expectations and deadlines pressing down upon me, and yet at the same time I also feel curiously afloat and weightless on my own. It’s a strange sensation…
Worked a bit on the UI for the observatory, and got the foundations of the XMIT/RECV framework set up. Didn’t get much done today though otherwise: there was heavy rain all day and it left me in a tired, but not altogether unpleasant mood. If this persists tomorrow I think I’m gonna take the day off from in-engine work and just focus on writing the scene descriptions: the framework is there so it’s just a matter of filling it in once those get written.
