Sore throat has intensified to a cough. Feel exhausted all throughout the day, drifted in and out of an unsteady state of consciousness multiple times. I get a few minutes of work in here and there but altogether it’s too sporadic to provide meaningful. Twelve more questions left… if I could just get three done a day, I could be done by the weekend. Maybe if I push myself a little bit…
Some kind of sickness, not yet sure if it’s COVID. Focusing on recuperation the next couple of days.
Thunderstorms all day. Overcome by fatigue again. Days like these are, barring unforeseeable disaster, the hardest to get through: just enough energy to remind yourself that you should be getting things done; but too little to be able to sustain that work in any suitable manner that won’t burn you out further. Maybe I should talk to the producer about it next week.
New animated loading cursor, updated GM to 2022.5.08.
Trying to ease my way back into things. I won’t lie, it’s rather difficult to find myself motivated when confronted by something as abstract as an interface puzzle. Nonetheless I’ve started the work by just forcing myself to sit in front of the program and look through it, get things done where I can. I’ve made some cursory adjustments to the collision alignment for the cursor and the CPBE buttons, but nothing too substantial. Regardless, progress is progress. I have to keep believing that for myself, no matter how frustrating it always comes off.
I’ve really been slacking on work this week. The realisation that it’s almost June has startled me into clarity. I don’t know why I’m struggling so much to get back into it. I’ve once again fallen behind schedule. I need to get it together, get back on track.
Finally back from the city. It feels like I’ve been gone for weeks. The last few days have taken a considerable toll on my body and mind (and checking account, and copy of Thiselton’s Theology, and… etc) alike. It would be an understatement to say how nice it feels to finally be back where I belong.
Unfortunately the temperature this weekend has reached unseasonably heights, to put it lightly. Yesterday was the worst of it, and of course it also happened to be the day I spent several hours walking many miles in a pair of borrowed boots that didn’t quite fit, carrying an obscene amount of weight in equipment for which I had no need.
Just one more day of this wretched heat, though and it should be back to more reasonable temperatures come Monday. Hopefully the same can be said about the humidity as well…
The weather’s been exceedingly pleasant since Monday night. I’ve been trying to just take things easy, not think too much about work. It’s more difficult than I think anyone really ever expects. The creeping sensation that I’m actively wasting away my time.
Gonna be out the next two days, which means that, come the weekend, I’m probably gonna be completely wiped. I’ve mostly just been reading otherwise. Catching up on things, you know, that kind of thing. I’ve spent way too much money this month, and I haven’t even spent the worst share of it yet…
Sporadic thunderstorms throughout the day. By evening, the humidity had cleared almost completely. Nothing but cool, almost cold air now. My head feels a lot clearer, like a fever has just broken.
I’ve decided to take the week off, although I’m allowing myself time here and there to work on sporadic tasks as they come to mind. Nothing serious though. I’m just going to take some time to slow down, let things percolate for a bit. That includes the article.
I did end up writing and releasing the monthly update today, which I think helped improve morale a bit, even if the write-up itself was kinda lacklustre. It’s also forced into sudden clarity the fact that it’s almost June. That’s a pretty terrible realisation. I keep on telling myself this, but I really do have to pick up the pace.
Turns out I didn’t do much better at all today. I didn’t even try to work. I think I’m reaching a certain level of fatigue that, if I continue to push it, I’ll end up doing more harm than good. I’ll be out Thursday and Friday, so those will be mandatory break days. I’m wondering if I should just take the rest of the week off as well, once I publish the update tomorrow.
Speaking of which, I’m not sure why the article is proving so difficult to write all of a sudden. The ideas are all there, even the words, too: and yet, for some reason, I just can’t fit them together in a way that seems to work. It doesn’t make any sense.
Another day of no work. I ended up not attending the reading after all: it turns out I needed a ticket, obviously I didn’t have one, and by the time we all realised that, they were already sold out and no more exceptions could be made. An unfortunate series of events, to be certain: but in a way I’m also a bit glad I didn’t have to make the commute all the way there and back, it would’ve taken a pretty heavy toll physically.
I spent the rest of the day sorting the new equipment that arrived. I really should’ve been working on the article, which needs to get done by Monday, or even on the update which I should probably work on tomorrow; but it’s too late to regret anything, now that the day is already gone. I shall endeavour to do better tomorrow.
Although the general temperature has remained pleasant, unfortunately a terrible pall of humidity has set in which does not seem to be clearing anytime soon. It’s already taken a considerable physical toll. I’ve felt fatigued all day, and it was difficult to wake up this morning, like my head was filled with leaden weight overnight. Didn’t get any work done. Gotta finish the article…
I probably won’t be working much tomorrow either. Some friends are reading tomorrow in the city. We’ll see how much time I’ll have.
Today’s meeting went well. A marketing specialist has joined the team. Lots of interesting ideas have emerged. I have a good feeling about the next several months. As long as I’m able to do my part and get the game itself to the point where I need it to be, I think this might just work out into something truly fascinating.
The weather was exceptionally pleasant today, and all morning, I felt a sense of intense regret that I was just sitting there at my computer trying to maintain a feigned indifference. By mid-noon the feeling became intense enough that I decided that, rather than risk it crystallising into sadness, I would take the rest of the day off and just go outside. I walked about twenty miles today with all my gear. Only now has it dawned on me just how out of shape I am. I’ve spent the bulk of the past three years just sitting at my desk, looking at my monitor. I’ve decided not to mourn the lost time. I shall endeavour to simply live better.
Had a good session, but I’m gonna call it early today. I realised after waking up this morning that the past several days have taken a heavy toll on me. It’s not just that I struggle to stay awake at times, but that at all times, I feel vaguely disoriented and slightly out-of-touch, like the various streams of information that need to be running parallel for things to get done have become just slightly desynced.
Instead of trying to push through the rest of the night at such poor efficiency, it’s most likely best if I just rest now, wake up earlier tomorrow, and get things done right.
First two CPBE questions done.
Not much to say, I’ve just been continuing my work on the CPBE. It’s going a lot slower than I anticipated, although realistically that’s far more due to my total inability to focus for any period longer than five minutes at a time (and that’s if I’m lucky) than any real difficulty in terms of the work itself. I finished the grading scheme for the cognitive assessment section, although it won’t be implemented until the questions themselves are all in. I still need to build the timer feature too, although that should be pretty straightforward work. Just gotta keep at it…
Hopefully session this week doesn’t fuck up the pacing of things again. If it does, well, my ability to make any kind of progress whatsoever for the next few days is gone.
Implemented loading screen and timer for CPBE, a few structural changes to scripts.
A long day of work, with only a handful of forward-facing changes to show for it. In terms of the few that did end up getting done: the CPBE now has a loading screen to load into the test itself, as well as the starting prompt of the test. The rest of the work was backend stuff: a huge chunk was writing the actual questions, and figuring out the best way to structure them so that they’d serve a dual purpose of actually tutorialising. The other part was figuring out the best way to handle the questions (and more specifically, the answers) with the current input and save/load functionality of the game. I ended up going with a CSV to load in the questions (and creating a template for loading in multiple CPBEs, based on the current in-game day) as well as the response times for each question. I’ve yet to build the questions themselves – that’s work for tomorrow – but hopefully it shouldn’t be too much of a struggle…
I also went and condensed a whole bunch of free-floating, miscellaneous scripts into unified scripts with many individual functions. I’m not sure yet the effect of it, which is to say whether this was even worth it at all, or if there’ll be any unintended side effects; but the overall folder structure is a bit “neater”, at least notionally. I actually somewhat preferred having all the functions listed as separate script assets, as it made browsing them (especially when sorted alphabetically) a lot easier, but we’ll see. If anything, it’ll be a learning lesson for how to go about the question of asset organisation in future projects.
Took the past two days off. The way I’ve been working is very apparently unsustainable. While it helps getting things done in the short-term, working in these kinds of shifts always invariably takes a hit upon my ability to work for days, sometimes even entire weeks afterwards. It’s not just my motivation, either: I think I’ve begun to feel it in my body, too. Certainly, it’s a sign that I need to start exercising my body more again (or rather, at this point, I need to resume exercising at all). But perhaps it’s a greater omen too that I’m no longer able to live with such little caution, counting on my body to heal itself overnight the way it did when I was younger.
Burned the midnight oil a little too long there. Took the day off.
Finished the CPBE landing page, renamed satellite audio tracks.
There’s still the “Prior History” section left to do, but that’s entirely extraneous and I’m just gonna leave it for another day. I’ve been awake for a while now. I still feel pretty bad but not as bad as I did yesterday, I think. Against my better reservations, I purchased a bunch of alcohol for the first time in almost a month yesterday (or perhaps it was today, which is now tomorrow’s yesterday – whatever). After my meeting I think I’m just going to go to sleep.
Created the landing page for the CPBE.
I felt deeply unwell after today’s session. Well, I still feel deeply unwell, that is. My state of newfound peace these past few weeks turned out to be short-lived, after all. I don’t know what it was specifically that caused me to feel such a way but it’s as if I’ve been struck. A sense of profound shame. Maybe even humiliation. A dull, persistent heaviness has settled deep within my chest. It clouds my senses and makes tasks as simple as eating and concentrating difficult. All of a sudden the weight of my body in space feels acutely unwieldy. It’s been this way all night. What I want to do more than anything is to simply go to sleep and wake up in several days once this has passed.
Nonetheless, I’ve somehow endured long enough to produce the landing page of the CPBE. I don’t have much to say about it right now, other than the fact that some time later today I will wake up and continue working on it. Nothing much to do except just get things done at this point.
Finished writing the CPBE.
I ended up spending a bit more time away from work over the weekend than I’d initially anticipated. By no means do I regret it, but it has put me at a bit of a deficit in terms of schedule. I was supposed to have the CPBE completely written and implemented by the middle of today so that I could submit it, but that counted on me having worked continuously through Saturday and Sunday which obviously did not happen.
Well, I’ve made up the work of writing it today, but it still leaves the issue of getting it in the game. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that done between tomorrow and Wednesday, although I’m not terribly optimistic about how much time/energy I’ll have after session tomorrow. I’m going to go to sleep early tonight and try to wake up as early as possible, get the bulk of the most tedious work done before I head out. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly.
Exit w/o save, restore to default value, and password display options fully implemented.
And with that, the start-up sequence is finally finished! It’s rather late (or early – I need to stop burning my hours so frequently) so I’ll keep my entry very brief. Now, I just have to build the CPBE – or at least the skeleton of it – and clean up the day-one stuff, all before Monday…
Finally finished the config menu.
Added a bunch of new settings, along with doing a complete overhaul of the naming scheme for saved settings. It’s a lot neater now, both to access and read. The config menu loads, displays, and saves seamlessly.
I still have to implement a few minor features – exiting without saving, restoring to default values, displaying a general help screen (not sure if I’m actually going to include this), and getting the password display working – but I’m rather pleased with how it turned out and taking the time to clean up all the old save/load/config stuff was much-needed moving forward. I’ll definitely be done with the boot sequence in its entirety by the end of tomorrow (or, I suppose today, seeing it’s already almost daybreak…).
I’ll be seeing a friend for most of this weekend, but I should have just enough time left to clean up some additional stuff in the outpost itself before I submit the build on Monday.
Created the system config menu today. The visuals are complete, as well as the menu listings. I still need to implement the actual functionality – mapping each option to an actual in-game value, having the toggles and sliders dynamically adjust based on the values, saving and loading them, etc – but I made good progress today.
Working on the new functionality has made me reconsider potentially redoing how I was handling saving/loading my config files before. Previously I’d saved to a single INI, but consolidating most of that to this new system, which uses a ds_grid, seems like a better choice instead of splitting the data into two separate files. I’m gonna work with it a bit more tomorrow and see if I’m able to arrive at anything.
Didn’t get much done today on account of waking up late, and then attending session. I wouldn’t (and to be perfectly honest, don’t) feel too bad about it, except the deadline is approaching rather rapidly. Really gotta burn the oil tomorrow, I guess.
Maybe I should start taking Tuesdays off, instead of the weekend.
Recorded and mixed audio for the boot sequence. I also cleaned up a bunch of functions, improving the overall flow and stability of the sequence. It’s feature-complete now in terms of being able to log in and access the game, although I still need to figure out what options to add to the config menu (which hasn’t been implemented yet, but which I’ve built already in a standalone project file). I’ll get that done tomorrow. That leaves two days to build the entire CPBE. It’s gonna be a hell of a stretch, but I’m gonna get it done. I’m counting on it.
Spent the day outside testing the Geofon. I was able to get a number of interesting recordings which I’m going to start building into the soundscape relatively soon. The weather was exceedingly pleasant today. The light and warmth of the sun filled me with sadness.
I’ve been slowly making progress on the CPBE. Maybe “progress” is too optimistic. It seems I’ve dramatically overestimated the expediency with which I could get these prompts out. Now, as I’ve come to rather quickly realise, it’s not only a matter of not being able to produce prompts efficaciously; I’ve begun to significantly question my previous design as a whole. It feels gimmicky to me, and cheap. A pretence towards style, without any substance to ground it. I need to rethink my strategy – and quickly. Or else I should just get rid of it altogether for the time being.
Got diverted from building the CPBE by the temptation of redoing the options/config menu. The hardest part is coming up with things to implement. I successfully built in OpenDyslexia Mono as a swappable font, and sketched out a feature that allows the controller mapping to be flipped for left-handed users (ie the face buttons mirror to the directional buttons, and vice-versa). I’m going to finalise the list by the end of tomorrow’s meeting, and have the interface itself implemented within the system menu by the end of the day.
I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do about the CPBE. The major roadblock standing in my way is that I’m not sure what I actually want it to look like this time around. I suppose I have to figure that out soon. I should dedicate this weekend to getting that finalised for now. The end of the month is approaching. I’d like to have the tutorial completely done by then.
Another slow day in terms of progress, although it went by rather quickly otherwise. I saw the doctor again today. It feels like I haven’t seen her in much longer than it’s actually been. I must confess, it made me happy to see her.
Anyways, I implemented the final parts of the boot sequence, which include a very brief animation for transitioning between screens, the shutdown sequence, and a sequence during the login procedure that shuts the game down and wipes all user data after multiple consecutive failed attempts. There is one last thing I need to do, which is deciding if I want to conceal the password, and how I would go about doing that; but it’s entirely a stylistic thing at this point and the functionality is already there.
Tomorrow I’m moving on to building the core of the CPBE.
The weekend wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped it would be, but I’ve made progress regardless. The boot sequence is functionally complete; although I still have to create one more load sequence after the login, and make a decision on whether the password will be concealed on entry (as it actually is in its real-world equivalent), or if I should make a concession to players unfamiliar with the customs of a terminal and just have it display as asterisks.
I think working on the CPBE is really gonna grind my sense of momentum down, so I’m going to build the framework for it first along with a bunch of fill-in prompts, and then revisit it later. It would do me well to remember that the whole point of all this, at least at this point, is to address the prior lack of a tutorial. As long as this section is able to accomplish the baseline minimum of teaching players how to interact with the game, then I can come back later and revisit it for improvement.
The hardest part at this point is really just maintaining the necessary perspective to stop dragging on details, and start actually laying real foundations for what’s to come. There’ll be time later to make it all prettier; but I can’t improve something that does not yet exist.