Category: Entries

Worked for a short while this morning, once again touching up the areas around the stream. I think they’re more or less at their final versions now, all the audio masks and collisions as far as I’m aware have been implemented. Just gotta figure out the textures for the stonework on the bridge and mess around a bit with the collision, and it’ll be good to go. Coming up with new environments, especially around the border, is easily the hardest and most time- and energy-draining aspect of development, without a doubt. Well, it’s too late to turn back now. 

Another pretty low-energy day. It was unusually cold today – like autumn – and overcast. I woke in a sombre but not altogether unpleasant mood, apropos to the sky. Got a bit of work done cleaning up some of the sections of the stream. I think I’ll spend this next week just working on environments.

Took the day off from work proper, just worked on and published this month’s write-up. I spent the rest of the day reading and engaging in contemplation; and played some games with friends in the afternoon and evening. The anger which has been clouding my mind these past several days has subsided enough to the point where I feel I’m once again able to see, if not clearly, then at least not so dimly. Now I’m just tired…

Felt even worse today for some reason: just a constant fugue of anger and frustration, and the sensation of imminent wrath. I spent most of the day just lying in bed too exhausted to even sit upright, staring at the ceiling and coming up with a hundred different ways to get back at all those sons of bitches who told me when I was younger – that are still probably convinced to this day – that I was doomed to failure, that I was beyond their help, that I deserved no good and would have no future. Most of all though I’ve just been angry at myself, all the stupid, wretched things I did for reasons I can no longer even remember. Why is it always these moments that come back to you one by one? What about all the good I’ve done? Why can’t I ever seem to remember any of that?

When I was sixteen or seventeen, after my third suspension or so, the vice principal of my high school told my mother – who then, in a moment of supposed concern which was really just thinly-veiled spite, told me – that if I continued acting the way I was acting, my future would be bleak: the world would crush me. I dunno, maybe he didn’t say that second part. Maybe that was my father. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. I realise now that they were right. They were right because the world is not a good place, it is not a kind place; but a mean and vicious one where people like them float to the top, where people like them write the rules and set the guidelines and expectations and philosophies for how everyone else should live. Where otherwise decent people become cynical and cruel in their desperation to just survive, to bring home a few more dollars to save up for a room with a slightly better view. 

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. We are told to trust in the judgement and grace of God, to forgive the transgressions of others against us as we hope God will forgive ours against others. In that sense, violence is its own kind of cynicism, its own kind of desperate selfishness. That recognition alone is the only thing that really keeps me some days from just letting myself slip. I wish I was a better person, someone with a calmer soul, a greater sense of compassion and a greater capacity for forgiveness. But I’m just another wretched son of a bitch in a world full of wretched sons of bitches. Only God forgives. So be it.

Anyways, I just continued working on the foraging system today during the moments I was able to focus for a bit. I implemented the sprites for the plants/fungi and adjusted the statistical algorithm which determines distribution of resources and conditional probabilities for picking up various ingredients. It still needs some work with the tuning – I really managed to come up with a pretty convoluted system – but the comforting thing is that at least it seems to work. 

Another slow day. Woke up around noon for no reason – I even went to bed fairly early last night – and still felt exhausted for a while. All throughout the day this steady tide of anger and spite just ebbed beneath the surface of everything. I felt overwhelmed by the desire to really hurt someone just because they had something I don’t, to beat them down and drag them to my level. Days like these are the worst. 

Anyways, I spent nearly eight hours just working on these sprites for the foraged plants/fungi, and my inefficiency just pissed me off even more. I did another reading for someone tonight though and hearing from her that it helped her a lot and that it was able to provide her with some clarity made me feel a bit better about things, about myself. 

Every day is just a constant uphill battle against what seems like an impossibly overwhelming cynicism, and the concomitant temptations of viciousness and violence. The only things that really manage to keep it back, however little at a time, are the moments in which I realise I actually can still help someone else. That I’m not yet completely obsolete.

Spent the day working on new sprites for foraged plants/fungi, just have a few more left to go before all of them are finished, after which all that’s left is implementing them. Otherwise, my progress today was slow at best; although Julia and Vikram visited for the first time in a long while this evening, and I had a good time with them. It’s always nice to see my friends after a long while. 

Another alarmingly hot day. I felt exhausted throughout most of it and almost fell asleep a few times, although I managed to catch myself at just the right moment. Despite that, though, I managed to put in a decent amount of work regardless.

As I said yesterday, I managed to fully implement the visuals for foraging, at least for all insects currently. I haven’t yet started on the plant matter but the only thing that really needs to get done on that front are the individual sprites for each ingredient, which shouldn’t take too long.

I also started integrating a verlet physics solution to handle stuff like cloth. While it isn’t significant in any manner I do think it’ll add a bit to the presentation overall once I figure out how it works and get it set up properly. Of course, the success of it is largely contingent upon that latter condition, which, at this point, is not looking so feasible… I’ll give it a few more days though before drawing any hard conclusions.

Lastly, I’ve implemented a few general QoL fixes such as dynamic resizing of the letterbox depending on the length of the status text, and updating the position of the status text relative to the height of the letterbox rather than at at a fixed position.

It got very hot again today. I drank a bunch of Rolling Rocks real fast this afternoon and ate almost an entire full bag of Cool Ranch Doritos along with it and to be honest, I don’t feel so good right now. Hopefully it’ll pass overnight…

The foundation for foraging – at least for insects currently – has been successfully implemented. Avery can now search for ingredients anywhere, either via a keyboard shortcut or through the action menu, and different locations/times of day will produce different material yields (including nothing). The UI for it right now is a bit stark but I’m currently working on drawing up unique sprites for each of the ingredients. It’s coming along quite nicely, better than I initially expected. I’m quite pleased with the result so far, and hope to be able to finish it within the next day or two.

Insubstantial progress today. I started working on the percentages for the foraging system but realised I didn’t have any wood log objects, so I set out to draw those, but must’ve gotten distracted along the way. Tomorrow I have to finish those sprites and hopefully get the rest of the percentages in so I can start properly testing it. Man, there’s so much work left to get done…

Minor work today: improved audio for undressing, fixed collision boxes for several items. I woke up incredibly tired today for some reason, as if I hadn’t slept properly, although I’m fairly certain I did. My ability to concentrate has been pretty poor all throughout the day, and I feel physically weak. 

Spent most of the work day today on an animation for getting into generic beds. Stupidly enough, the hardest part wasn’t actually figuring out the animation itself, but trying to work through the mechanical implications of how I wanted to handle generic beds without creating for myself a ridiculous amount of work. At first I wanted to have Avery spread out her sleeping bag over the mattress first, but then I realised that I’d have to create a separate animation just for that, as well as figure out what happens if she’s not carrying her pack, etc…. it was a real logistical pain so then I tried to justify why she’d be comfortable sleeping in someone else’s bed in an effectively abandoned location. 

After wasting about an hour trying to work through that I gave up on justifications and just ended up implementing the mechanic after all. Some stuff still needs to be touched up – namely, the audio, as well as a better transition into and out of her clothing – but it should otherwise be good to go, at least as far as the visuals and implementation are concerned.

Been out of power for the past two days because of a hurricane, and have been working primarily off of a rather limited generator and battery power, meaning I’ve only really been able to work three or four hours a day at best. The power company’s predicted that most people on their service will get power back by the 11th – which is next week – so it’ll be like this for a while unfortunately; but I think I’ve started to get used to it by now.

I’ve spent most of my time these past two days finishing up the exterior of the tower, and then cleaning up a bunch of collision and caster implementations, specifically for doors and walls. While the list of things I’ve accomplished since my last attempted post are too numerous, here are the most significant ones: 

+ Created a teleporter object (backend, not in-game) allowing the player to transition between unconventional spawn points and enter into unique world cells (for example, the upper part of the tower). 

+ Added a slight dithering effect to the occlusion effect when Avery passes behind doors; added the same occlusion effect for roofs as well.
+ Added keyboard shortcuts while in the system menu for opening menus (File, Info, Options) moue input. 

+ Fixed reflections on mirror. 

+ Created spatial limiter objects (ROOM_SCALE_W/H) that allow the traversable width and height of rooms to be manually taken into account during transitions, meaning that transitions in narrower spaces are now dependent upon the relative dimensions of the available walkable space rather than the raw dimensions of the entire room (most of which would otherwise be inaccessible, and shouldn’t be taken into account).

EDIT: The power’s now returned, shortly before 2100. Although I’m glad in some sense that I can now return to work, I felt immediately as the lights came on a kind of profound melancholy, like a small vacuum opened up somewhere inside me. The truth is that not only had I started to get used to it – not just the lack of power, but more so, the concomitant slowness and the deliberate sense of contemplation it forced – but I’d actually started to welcome it I think. For the first time in a long time, these past two days felt genuinely empty in a way that I haven’t felt in a very long time: not empty as in the sense of being devoid of meaning, like most days, but empty in the sense of feeling like a kind of receptacle, open to any possibility. The way I felt when I was younger, in high school: that time was wasting but that it was okay. 

It was rather cool when I awoke and I spent the entire morning until noon sitting outside and staring at the sky. Later, I worked on building the exterior elements for the northern tower. The exterior – which basically includes the walls, the roof, and the tower itself – are complete, although I still need to create the transition point, as well as touch up the visuals a bit. I should be able to take care of that pretty easily tomorrow; then it’s time to develop the interior furniture.

A hurricane is supposedly passing over the area tomorrow. I hope it’s able to abate, however temporarily it may be, this wretched heat that returns every day by noon and clings on until late into the night. While it’s certainly not as bad as it was just a week or so ago in terms of pure temperature, something about it feels somehow just as bad. Maybe it’s just my constant sense of physical exhaustion…

Set up the foundation for the north tower. I’ve decided that certain interior spaces are gonna be treated as separate world instances, meaning that there will be a visible transition in order to enter/exit them, and they will have their own unique rooms. It’s gonna involve way too much work to figure out all the depth sorting and collisions and whatnot for every interior in the game to have a seamless transition. While the effect certainly looks good, it’s just too much of a time sink at this point for an ultimately inconsequential feature, and I don’t think anyone will even notice anyways. I’m gonna start working on the interior tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to set up a relatively stable template moving forward. 

The first day of the month’s passed without incident. I decided to take the day off after struggling to find the energy to get anything done this morning. I just feel constantly tired all the time these days. It gets especially bad around noon, at the lowest point of the day. My head gets clouded by idle thoughts and longings, all these memories of the past… I feel simultaneously exhausted yet also restless, and it becomes nearly impossible to focus on anything, let alone work. 

Last day of the month. I’ve reached that point in development where active boredom hasn’t quite set in, but there’s also little excitement left, and all forward progress at this point just comes down to discipline and focus. Seeing as it’s the last day of the month yet I still have so much left to do, it’s safe to say that I’m not gonna hit my intended goalpost at this point. I should sit down one of these days and redraft the timeline proper…

Spent the day working on visual effects mostly, focusing on the colour palettes. I ended up taking a more conservative approach to the default choices but added in support for user-submitted custom palettes that can be easily customised and swapped in/out. It offers a surprising amount of versatility for a very little amount of work, either on my end or the player’s end. I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

Another day without much meaningful progress. I woke around 0530 hoping to get some work done but for some reason I started feeling vaguely pissed off so I just spent the entire morning playing Modern Warfare, and by the time the afternoon rolled around I just felt completely exhausted, both mentally and physically. I did manage to make a few minor edits to the areas around the creek (mostly just setting up sound masks, cleaning up foliage) but it was basically just maintenance work, nothing of substance. I did manage to wrap up the endings of the game in the outline though, which has helped give me a much better sense of the overall scope and direction of the work left… now if only I could actually summon the will to act on that knowledge.

Worked on some new environmental assets but most importantly, finished up the frog’s AI, which now includes screaming when approached at night. Not much else to report, tomorrow I’m gonna focus on building more rooms; I’m not satisfied with my current rate of progress at all.

Adjusted the ambient darkness at night while using the torch: it’s now much darker as to emulate a more realistic darkness. I also re-enabled the masking surface allowing Avery’s silhouette to appear behind vegetation, although I still have to figure out the root of an issue that doesn’t successfully clear the surface in certain particular rooms: that’ll probably be tomorrow’s work.

Lastly, I added a frog…

It was viciously hot today, just like every other day in recent memory. I’m too tired to recount in precise detail what I accomplished today but it was a moderate amount of work which I feel satisfied with. I worked on some new rooms – finally getting around to stitching together some of the more disparate segments I’ve been working on the past few weeks – and implemented a global dithered layer to represent ambient/sky light acting on the background elements (essentially, what it does is prevent the player from looking out clearly into distant background elements like vistas once it gets dark, as in reality a torch wouldn’t be able to illuminate anywhere near that far anyways). It produces a rather interesting and largely unintended effect in certain world spaces where environments that otherwise felt open start feeling much more claustrophobic at night due to the impenetrable darkness.

I’d like to say that I made the conscious decision to take the day off (which, even if I had, I really shouldn’t have) but I didn’t. What really happened was that I started off the day well enough, thinking that I’d have time later; so I just wasted a few hours doing random things. Well, I ended up wasting a whole lot more time than I initially intended, and by the time I finally came around to my senses, it was already evening. I must’ve lain down or something because I apparently fell asleep around 1700 and woke up seven hours later in a state of profound confusion and disorientation, unsure of either the hour or even the day itself. I suppose now I’ve already begun in some sense a “new day”…

My sleep cycle has been completely fucked by the heat these past few weeks, and it shows no signs of receding. I’m gonna try to salvage it today by staying up until midnight tonight. Hopefully it’ll work, because in this current state, it’s nearly impossible to maintain a stable work schedule (let alone a clear mind).

Finally, a productive day. I spent most of the time cleaning up the edges of the stream and setting up the audio masks proper. I also recorded some new audio (technically yesterday…) for water (the previous sounds suggested way too much depth – I’ll probably reuse them later though), as well as the pack rattle while walking, and the generic walking. It sounds much better now and I’m pleased with how much it improves the feeling of just walking around.

One of the more significant visual changes I’ve implemented in a while is the rendering of distant backgrounds in greyscale. I struggled for a long while to figure out if I should actually do it, given my otherwise rigid adherence to the hard two-tone palette; but the results look way too good to not implement it properly and also, there’s a pretty solid canonical justification for it as well.

Speaking of which, I started drafting out a proper step-by-step walkthrough of the game’s plot today and made decent progress. I’ve realised just now how vague the game’s beginning is, especially since I’ve made the firm decision to not build a formal tutorial in the traditional sense. I think over the next few days I’ll split the work between building new environments, and figuring out how the plot flow will work, as it’s gonna be difficult I think to strike a fine balance between intrigue and outright obfuscation.

Started working pretty early but for some reason I quickly lost steam and by noon I was completely unproductive. I barely got anything done – just edited the creek a bit, but even that’s just kinda covering up for the fact that in reality, I essentially accomplished nothing of worth. At this point I’ve basically forfeited this entire week. 

Slowly getting back into the regular work schedule. Worked on a couple of new rooms today, trying to connect back some of the discrete pieces to the larger section. Tomorrow I’m gonna tackle a bunch of the more generic ones and hopefully get a good deal of the lower section of the map filled out. My target for the end of the week is still a dozen, meaning I have roughly ten more to go in the next three days…

Well, it turns out after all that yesterday was actually not in the fact the last day I’d spend working on the Ghost of Tsushima article, as I wasted a whole lot of time today and random shit and once again failed to finish it. However, I am much closer now to the end, so hopefully…

I suppose at this point it doesn’t even matter anymore, seeing as how I’ve already effectively wasted half a week on this. The only positive – and even that is largely relative to how shit the past few days have been – is that I was able to get a full eight hours of sleep this afternoon after having stayed awake for way too long.

Last day working on this article before I get back to working on the game proper. I hope I’ll be able to finish it by tomorrow. I spent a whole lot of time today reading treatises on classical aesthetics and honestly I feel like I’ve just wasted an entire day of my life away. I suppose that’s nothing new though…

Once again failed to work on anything related to the game: I slept incredibly poorly throughout the night and the temperature spiked at over 100F this afternoon, leaving my workstation too hot to work comfortably without fear of potentially damaging the internals. I instead decided to restart the essay on Ghost of Tsushima and actually somehow managed to make some good progress on it. I feel like I have a much better thesis now that I actually care about. I hope I can get it out by Wednesday or so and get back to working on the game soon…

Man, this heat is fucking awful. I haven’t slept since yesterday morning because every time I lie down to rest I find myself overwhelmed with the wretched sensation of the heat suffocating my flesh. I’m too tired to concentrate on anything so I obviously haven’t been able to work either. And if the forecast’s anything to be trusted, it’s looking like it’s gonna get worse before it gets better…

Nothing substantial to report, just continued working on more rooms. It was way too hot today.

Just worked on a bunch of miscellaneous tasks today, nothing really noteworthy of which to speak. Tomorrow I have to present the game at an event but I’m not too worried about it. I’d like to start implementing some more object descriptions moving forward. My goal by the end of next week is to have finished another dozen or so rooms, and implemented item descriptions for all of the common objects. From here on out I’m gonna have to remember to include this as I’m adding new assets.

Finally got this month’s update out this morning, then spent the rest of the day working on new environments. Although the overall rate of progress today wasn’t great it’s still an improvement from yesterday (although I suppose that doesn’t say much at all). I really need to collect myself, I’m constantly slipping behind these days…

I had initially intended to finish and release the update today but instead, for whatever godforsaken reason, I instead just wasted the entire day away doing essentially nothing. Not only did I do nothing productive or meaningful, I didn’t even do anything remotely enjoyable! There are many days in one’s life that just pass by without incident, and slip just as quickly into the fog of forgetting, with little friction or effort. That’s one thing: this, however, is not that. The sheer profligacy with which I’m burning away my remaining hours cannot just be some accident, some slip of the will. I’ve gotta get a grip of myself and get back on track…

Spent most of the day trying to write the update for this month. I say “trying” because, while I indeed sat there looking at it for several hours this afternoon, it wasn’t until just an hour ago basically that I managed to write the bulk of it. Well, that’s the nature of these things I suppose. As long as they get completed on time…

Too tired right now to do a proper full write-up but I spent today working on three new rooms, as well as a random flora generation engine which populates empty generic rooms with various flora. It makes building some of the more isotropic spaces much easier, although I still have to figure out an optimal horizontal density. I also have to figure out a way to save each chunk to the main save file once it’s been generated (or maybe I don’t… we’ll see how it feels) but otherwise it seems to be working pretty well.

Took the day off, helped Sawyer a bit with his submission to the GMTK jam and then we finished up Far Cry 5. He’s really progressed a lot just in these past two days alone and it’s clear that, whatever the results of his submission end up being, he’s gained something far more important as a direct result of this: confidence in his abilities and potential growth as a creator, which I’d say is by far the hardest thing to find especially when one is at an early stage of experience like him. I’m quite impressed by the things he was able to learn for himself and accomplish relative to where he was when he began and I’m proud of him for having committed to this and seen it through to the end.

As for myself, well… although I didn’t actually do any writing today I did spend some time this afternoon thinking through various things and testing a few concepts for the main flow of events. I think tomorrow I’m gonna try to get that stuff down proper and formalise it a bit more, see if I can hopefully finish up a final draft of the overall chronology by the end of the week. I also started thinking about what I plan on covering for this month’s update; I’ll probably work on that on Tuesday.

The storm really picked up today. It was raining for almost the entirety of the day: heavy downpours, as well. It’s gotten significantly cooler but the humidity is still horrid.

Completely finished up the ferro rod, including audio, and implemented proper selection for igniters (so far, only the butane lighter and the ferro rod are available). I think I’m gonna spend the next few days finishing up some of the other igniters, which I hope to be able to get done this week.

Some kind of tropical storm passed by today, bringing with it a whole lot of rain and wind. The temperature dropped considerably and the air was cool; but the humidity is still horrible, and in fact may have even gone up as far as I can tell. Either way though, it still feels absolutely wretched to do anything: I have a lot of trouble falling asleep, and basically doing anything at any point of the day is a constant struggle against the discomfort of seemingly universal humidity.

In any case, I spent the day cleaning up a bunch of miscellaneous QoL + backend fixes for the firestarting activity, including separating the ring and the fire base itself (allowing the fire base to be built independently from the ring eventually). I’ve changed the overall way in which the post-fire stuff is handled: once the fire is extinguished, a pile of ash is left over, which Avery can either choose to bury, effectively “clearing” the pit for either disassembly (or for whatever reason, reuse); or use as the base for another fire. All I have left to do for tomorrow is to add in the audio tracks I made for a handful of miscellaneous actions and UI prompts, and I should be done.

At some point, I plan on adding in the remaining features, which include stuff like drying clothes (which temporarily lifts Avery’s willpower), and heating up / preparing rations. Those require a whole lot more systemic work though…

Added the firestarter kit materials to the save/load system, which is pretty self-explanatory. Most of my work today involved streamlining the UI for the actual firekit itself. The most major change is that now, once Avery runs out of certain tools (or has yet to find them), they will no longer be displayed in the pouch as if they’re usable. The quantities display correctly based on Avery’s inventory screen in her tablet as well, although I’ll have to do some more specific testing tomorrow to make sure the order doesn’t get messed up if she sorts the inventory differently in her tablet. All I really have left in terms of major functionality is to implement the specific firestarter animations (most of which don’t exist yet), and to adjust the probability of the fire being successfully lit based on the materials present (which will require a slight overhaul of the current system). I should be able to get those done by Saturday.

I spent the rest of the day working on writing, and I’ve basically completely finished Avery’s backstory. Now it’s just a matter of writing the logs and completing the others…

Continued working on UI for firekit, and implemented full interaction up until the point of closing (whether due to a successful setup of elements or because of player input). I’m not gonna write much more because it’s too goddamn humid and I feel horrible but it’s basically done now. The only stuff I have left to do is to implement checks for if Avery actually has the items in her inventory, and to make the animations for each of the igniters as well.

Spent the evening recording and mixing some new audio for fire-related activities, and then implemented the basic UI interaction for the fire kit. It’s still lacking actual functionality in terms of lighting the fire itself, but the player can now open and close it with accompanying sound effects. I’m gonna spend all of tomorrow working on getting that fully finished. If I have time/feeling up for it, I might also create a folding/unfolding animation for the fire kit as well, which would really add to its presentation I think. We’ll see though.

A thunderstorm passed over the area today and now it’s very cool. It’s still rather humid though, and I’ve gotten so used to the heat that it still just feels hot for whatever wretched reason. I’ve also somehow run out of alcohol already…

Drew up a new sprite for the firestarting kit, which took up most of the day: but it looks quite good I think, and will significantly improve the experience. I also changed the way that the player places fire structures: they no longer have to dig a hole (which was already stupid to begin with for regular firepits), but can simply select the option to construct a structure (still have to build the menu allowing other options) and Avery will immediately place it down where she’s currently standing. I’m not sure if I’m gonna keep it that way or if I want to give the player a bit more manual control over where it’s placed, but that’ll be a decision I suppose to make over the next few days.

Instead of working on the firestarting interface like I planned, I instead decided to just bite the bullet and get the per-room save/load system for objects done for good. It was probably one of the most frustrating technical challenges I’ve faced heretofore and not a single moment of it is is what I would describe as anything close to “enjoyable”; but thankfully it’s finished and seems pretty stable.

Tomorrow I’m gonna start building the new framework for the firestarting stuff. Much of it uses stuff that’s already implemented so I don’t imagine it’ll be too much of a problem: I imagine I’ll just have to draw the new animations/graphics and do some slight tweaking. I also would like to redo the animation for setting up the fire a bit; it doesn’t look great right now.

Last night I also finally got around to implementing the Tumblr API for my site, and successfully set up the post fetch and archive. It took a while to figure out and was somehow simultaneously more and less frustrating of a process than I predicted… but at the end of the day I got it done and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

Not much work today, spent a bit of time fixing up the behaviour for starting/extinguishing fires but for whatever reason I stopped working after that. I did manage to get some more work done on my site though, and hopefully by the end of the night I’ll be able to have the Tumblr API fetch working.

Stayed up all night last night working on my website for some reason. I couldn’t sleep: it was way too humid. The heat dissipated today with the arrival of multiple thunderstorms but the humidity persists, and makes it extremely difficult to focus. With the help of some soju however I was able to ignore the discomfort enough to be able to maintain productivity all throughout the day and into the night.

Most of today’s work went into touching up the effects for the flame and smoke when lighting the firepit. I want to overhaul the UI for firestarting this weekend, and hopefully implement the other features of it – burn duration, blowouts, adding fuel and accelerant, etc – by the end of the weekend. It was one of the first things I implemented – possibly the first system actually, after basic movement – and I haven’t revisited the code in a very long time, meaning a lot of it needs to be updated to the current systems. That’ll be a longer project… but maybe I should get to it soon.

Spent the day working primarily on improving the overall feel and tactility of the environments. I implemented new sound effects for walking on dirt and stone, as well as their respective sound masks in the relevant rooms.

I also implemented a new room-based save system for objects which solves the issue of persistence without having to make the rooms themselves persistent. It uses a ds_map to store a number of room-specific keys for each object that can be dynamically placed. It still needs to undergo a fair amount of rigorous testing before I can be fully confident in it, as the current implement suffers from pretty poor consistency – but so far it seems to work at least some of the time, which is better than the previous system which worked approximately none of the time.

Spent the day just working on new rooms. I also cleaned up the reference map a bit to more accurately reflect the current layout of the rooms. Today’s work was pretty straightforward fortunately and although my progress was a bit underwhelming compared to expectations, the results feel substantial enough so that I feel satisfied with it overall. Tomorrow will probably be the same thing. One day at a time…

Well, the month’s now over, and I hardly even scratched the surface of the amount of work I wanted to get done by the end of June. Looks like I’m just gonna have to work extra hours over the next few months…

Overhauled the room transition system and added four new directional elements that now subdivide the room into nine – well, technically eight – separate quadrants (cardinal + ordinal), allowing much finer control over where to spawn the player during transitions. Players should now have better tracking of the character across transitions.

The weather today was exceedingly pleasant: a storm passed in an adjacent area but didn’t hit here, and so the air all throughout the day was clear and cool. Unfortunately I got absolutely no work done today; and not only that, I didn’t even try. These past few weeks I’ve just felt a constant state of exhaustion. No matter what I do I can’t shake it off. Sometimes it recedes enough that I’m able to maintain a good day or two but most days it just clouds everything.

Not too much work today, it was too humid and I slept horribly last night. I finally implemented a gradient solution for the shadows though that allows the shadow surface to be “faded out” depending on the amount of available light present. The shadows consequently will be very dim when it’s raining.

As a part of that I also created new independent weather states for overcast and foggy weather, which gives me finer control over switching between weather states. There’s still a weird bug where the rain audio will for no immediately obvious reason fade out about a minute in and then fade back in to full volume – but that’s been around since last year, so I’m probably just gonna have to figure out a better implementation some time later. For now the weather seems to work fine.

Took the day off, nothing to report.

I spent the day working on a few new rooms, and then built a “new” shadow system (really, just a recalculated version of the former one) that’s much more realistic in terms of the length and angle of the shadows relative to the actual position of the sun.

I’ve also disabled the occlusion layer for now – ever since moving all the shadows to one surface I’ve been having some problems with the occlusion layer drawing improperly over objects – and I’m thinking about just disabling it altogether.

Lastly, I cleaned up several of the trees to look more legible. It’s an ongoing concern that I’ve noticed – how harsh some of the environments are, especially in screenshots – and I’ll have to be particularly vigilant about it moving forward.

Didn’t get much work done today in way of the game itself, just a few very minor backend implementations that don’t really need to be elaborated upon. Work has been going much slower than I would have liked and I think it’s gonna be almost impossible at this point to finish the first zone by the end of the month like I’d wanted last week. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to get some more work done…

I did however spend some time revamping my Github site this afternoon, which feels a lot better now both to look at and to use. I significantly reduced the site load and resources, and cut away a lot of the unnecessary elements of it, including all the subpages. I finally feel it’s something to which I can refer others without shame now.

Much cooler today, and even better, much less humid. The pressure in my head has largely dissipated. Spent the day working on a few new rooms. In the process I also managed to implement an effect for the standard grass (which was previously static), which now waves about slightly in the wind. In the meantime I’ve also disabled shadows for buildings. I hope I’m able to get more rooms done tomorrow. I made decent progress today and was able to work all throughout the day.

Despite the godawful heat and humidity once again, I was able to work steadily this afternoon and got a decent amount of work done. I made a few new tree variants as well as several new rooms. I also got a decent amount of backend work done on various effects, including improvements to the item pickup UI, and reallocating the shadows to their own independent surface (not sure what this can be used for yet, but it’s now available in case anything comes up in the future).

Got a steady amount of work done today despite the awful heat. The biggest one involved the total reorganisation of the map, with which I’ve been struggling for the past several days: each side of the gorge is now inverted (both mirrored and flipped) relative to the other, which I believe will further exacerbate the effect of disorientation without directly impeding upon the player’s ability to navigate. The nexus I think will be the suspension bridge (which won’t be available from the start).

I also implemented a new item pickup UI for objects such as sticks and stones, which feature a “portrait” of sorts for the object as well as the option to either take or leave it. It looks a lot better now I think, although I think it could still use some improvements.

Overall I think I’ve definitely overcome a major hurdle that was preventing me from working well the past few days. I hope I’ll be able to return to a normal pace of operations tomorrow.

Another day with little meaningful work. I had a strange dream about people from my past – old friends, I guess – that filled with intense anxiety. The day was hot and humid, just like yesterday; I spent it in a state of listless fatigue. I tried my best to work on some new foreground elements (and actually got one done!) but it turned out looking kinda like shit, so I didn’t end up implementing it. I’m really gonna have to step up my rate of production: June is somehow already almost over…

Didn’t end up working today at all, it was too hot and humid when I awoke and I just had a headache all day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Worked on a new area. Did the calculation today for how many cells I’d have to finish on average per day to be able to meet my goal of finishing the first region by next week: each day I’d have to make at least seven cells. That’s pretty insane… but I think that once I get past this initial hurdle of more complex topography, the rest should be much more straightforward. (I always say that, it seems like every time I do I’m working on something that’s very much not straightforward…)

Not too much visible work today, most of it was in spritework that I’ve yet to import into the main project file. I really need to start getting some actual visible work done; it’s quite a stretch goal but I’d like to be able to get all the cells in Zone 0 done by the end of next week. If I’m able to accomplish that I’ll be able to effectively set myself relatively back on track in terms of progress.

Added two new varieties of large trees: birch, and dead trees. Tomorrow I’m gonna work on some more small vegetation, including stuff like shrubbery and low-lying dead trees. In general I’ve been interested lately in experimenting with some visual effects.

I made some adjustments to the opening area as well, including removing the border around the precipice, and separating the barren tree into its own object, with a shadow and wind physics. It makes the scene feel considerably more natural in a subtle manner.

Missed my entry last night because I was kinda spent after writing for a few hours consecutively. In any case, between yesterday and today, I just finished up the Kickstarter update for this month, and continued working on story-related planning. I think I have a very good idea now how I want to handle certain parts of it which previously left me kinda confounded and stuck for weeks. Tomorrow I’m gonna get back to work proper on the environments.

Started working on new areas earlier but quickly got distracted by fixing some weird visual bugs, nearly all of which had to deal with volatile surfaces that I failed to properly clear up. I went through my code and – at least to the best of my current ability – cleaned them up. I haven’t been able to reproduce any of the issues I was facing earlier since, so hopefully I actually managed to fix them for good…

I also implemented a pretty straightforward dynamic letterboxing effect that gradually eases in/out the margins when moving from areas where the letterboxing shouldn’t be present (ie near precipices) to areas where it should (ie within the forest), and vice versa. It looks pretty good and does a good job I feel transitioning between the spaces somewhat naturally.

Gotta do the write-up for this month’s update tomorrow…

Didn’t end up working today. I woke up well into the afternoon around 1530 following a series of rather intense dreams that left me in a dazed state. It’s alright though, as long as I make up the work tomorrow. 

The constant rain yesterday cleared up all the humidity and as a result it was actually very pleasant outside today. I spent the day working on a new environment and connecting it to the opening area. I’ve also completely mirrored and retouched the first overlook area which begins the game: it makes more sense spatially to have it in the original position rather than mirrored (as it was previously). Tomorrow I’m gonna try to figure out how to transition the areas more seamlessly into forest. The problem, as usual, is the complexity of the terrain and foliage distribution in reality versus the perspective and visual style I’ve chosen to work with… if there was ever a temptation to move to 3D, this would be the impetus.

Heavy rain all throughout the day, incredibly humid and unpleasant. Continued working on environments, and in the process I also finally got around to implementing diagonal collisions so that the player no longer gets stuck on diagonals and will instead slide along them depending on the direction being applied. It still looks rather rough, but it’s far better than getting stuck on every other stray pixel.

Ludicrously hot today, I spent most of the day with a wretched headache. In any case, not really much to say in terms of work: just worked on a new room today. I still have yet to add any collisions into the environment, but as far as appearances go, it doesn’t look too bad. The hardest part is making sure the environment feels continuous both with regards to the topography and map, and more importantly between adjacent cells. I’m still working through photographs and videos frame by frame trying to piece together some kind of cohesive vision but it’s proving much more difficult than I expected. Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen such an inherently frustrating terrain to work with from the start. Well, too late now…

Whatever work I got done today, I lost it all because GitHub – of all things – fucked up and overrode all my commits. Fucking hell.

EDIT: After about an hour of frustration and fucking around with all sorts of reflogs and reset –hards and shifting .gits around I think I’ve managed to recover the bulk of the work I lost. I’m too irritated right now to do a full rundown of what I did today but basically I just built the foundation for the grid-based map system and improved a bunch of smaller effects across the board. Not many front-facing changes.

The week didn’t start nearly as eventfully as I planned – I didn’t even turn on my work computer today – but I still managed to get some stuff done. I made a good amount of progress on the story this afternoon, and spent some time looking up footage of the region on YouTube. It’s not much – a lot of is aerial drone coverage which, while certainly impressive, isn’t nearly as useful as on-the-ground material – but it definitely does give me a better sense (however limited) of what the area looks like and more importantly the scale. I’m certain now that attempting anything even close to a 1:1 recreation is gonna be an exercise in futility and frustration, to say the least; I think instead I’m just gonna build a general sketch around a few obvious points of interest / geography and then improvise the rest from there. I’m gonna start working on environments first thing tomorrow: I’ve delayed long enough.

Spent about an hour this afternoon working on story stuff outside. The weather was exceptionally nice today: the horrid humidity that characterised the past week or so finally dissipated overnight and the temperature was comfortable, with sunshine and a strong persistent breeze all throughout the day. 

I hope by the end of this coming week to completely finish all story-related planning. As of today I think I’ve finalised the zoning for the various areas of the map: tomorrow I’ll start on zone 0 and work my way outwards along the river. The hardest part I imagine is gonna be establishing a sense of scale and verticality, which is consistent across each area; it’s been difficult to gauge as there’s not too many extant photos/videos on the internet that I’ve been able to find which demonstrate a good sense of how the area’s laid out in reality. I suppose in the worst-case scenario I’ll just have to take creative liberties with it… but seeing as I’ve gone this far already to ensure a degree of verisimilitude, I feel like it’s a bit of a copout if I just start bullshitting at this point. 

The other day I went through some scans of the area using both Google Maps and OpenStreetMap; I’ve been using the height map exported from the latter to Cities: Skylines to visualise scale and distribution thus far, but the quality of overhead data from either is predictably kinda lacklustre given the amount of tree coverage in the area, plus the failure of Street View (as there are obviously no roads). I’ve been trying to convince Haleigh to get up there at some point and take some pictures for me, but she understandably has school stuff. If it weren’t for the pandemic I would just go myself. At this point I’m strongly considering just opening up a general paid call on Twitter or something…

Completely forgot to make an entry these past two days. Well, it’s not like I accomplished anything whatsoever anyways – in truth, I didn’t even make the slightest effort to try. I started Darksiders 3 some time in the afternoon yesterday and just now completed it: just a few more collectibles until I clear the 100%. I had a good time with it, much better than I expected. 

I think I’ve taken long enough of a break now to be able to get back to work again starting Monday. Although I still kinda feel like shit, at least my head’s clear enough (or as clear as it’s gonna get for now, anyways). I’ll write up a more comprehensive plan tomorrow, but I reckon I’ll probably just start right away on environments, and see what happens from there. 

Managed to finally get in a bit of work. Spent about three hours this afternoon working on mapping: setting up grids,

regional boundaries,

figuring out how to distribute content evenly across cells, etc. I decided to do most of the work by hand this time. It was surprisingly calming although my hand now feels stiff since I haven’t written anything in so long.

Being on the computer for any extended duration of time just feels strange to me now, I can’t really describe how or why but it doesn’t feel so right. I haven’t been able to play any games either since last week so it’s not just work. I think that, whenever I’m able to finally get back to work proper, I’m just gonna stop working on the outpost for now and start building locations within the world. I’m just not in the right mindset to work on systems – and haven’t been in some time now, before this all started.

Another day without any meaningful work. I’m in a constant state of barely-subdued rage from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. Even when I go to sleep my dreams are filled with vicious and grotesque visions of extraordinary violence. I think I really have to take a break now for my own good, not just from work but from looking into the outside world in general.

Well, for better or worse, June’s finally here, meaning this year is already basically half over. I woke up this morning around 1100 and spent the next two and a half hours just lying there in a state of growing despondency and rage. I thought I was gonna take the day off again but I did end up getting a little bit of work done after all: some writing and a bit more conceptual planning for what I think will end up to be an inventory weight management system. I don’t have much more to say about that now – mostly because I just don’t have that much energy to say much right now – but I’m gonna try my best to continue working every day, however much I’m able to get done.

It’s getting harder and harder to focus on my work; every minute, without exaggeration, I feel inflamed by a spike of anger and restlessness, the desire to get up and do something, to hit someone. I wasn’t even able to write a single full sentence all of today. It’s already June by the time I’m writing this, and the progress on the outpost is not anywhere close to where it should be by now… I think I’m finally beginning to feel a sense of urgency (and the concomitant anxiety) that I’ve fallen behind. I feel like I need to take a break: an actual break, not one in which I’m just sitting around waiting for the bad feelings to pass so that I can work again. I also feel like I’m running out of time though for some reason. 

Another day without any meaningful work. Tried to get some writing done, but it wasn’t that successful, to put it one way. The state of the world outside is really starting to get to me. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to find the motivation or necessary context to justify my work. I suppose I don’t have much other choice though but to continue. I just wish it didn’t have to be this way. 

Didn’t get any meaningful work done today whatsoever. I’ve been in a slump these past few days or so, which has been considerably exacerbated by the humidity. I wasn’t able to fall asleep last night until some time around 0700 and even afterwards I suffered from yet another strange and rather disturbing dream. This time I witnessed a series of increasingly bizarre and grotesque murders without any apparent context or relation. I woke up feeling haunted by an obscene sensation.

Spent some time today redesigning how the fog overlay’s opacity works, as well as the spawn system for it. Previously, the cloud instances were spawned in incrementally on a timer, which resulted in the potential for uneven clumps to form. Now, the cloud instances will all be spawned simultaneously along evenly-spaced cells on the height of the room as soon as the fog starts, but won’t animate (that is, move into position) until the overlay opacity has reached a certain level. It results in a much smoother and more consistent transition, as well as a dense fog cover which feels more realistic in terms of its spacing and uniform distribution.

It’s been incredibly humid since yesterday and I’m having difficulty going to sleep at night. When I woke this morning, I had a rather severe headache, following a very vivid and intense dream about catastrophic events to come which left me feeling uneasy throughout the morning. My computer is also heating up to a rather concerning degree, which makes working difficult for prolonged periods of time as the keyboard becomes uncomfortable to use after a bit. If this is a harbinger of what’s to come this summer, well…

Finally finished up the recipe selection UI for the printer… unfortunately it’s also only now fully dawned on me just how much work the rest of the stuff – calculating the exact ingredient values for the recipes, especially – is gonna require. I not only will have to figure out the actual approximate recipes for every single one of the rations, I’ll also have to create variables to track how many of each ration Avery has at any given time, and then I have to save/load all of those, and then I have to implement the popups for each individual recipe in the printer UI and check against some kind of master list whether Avery has enough of each ingredient to prepare them…

To put it very lightly, it’s gonna be a real pain in the ass all the way through to the end. The sole upside to all of this is that I can very easily just blunt-force it with a whole lot of global variables. It’s definitely not gonna be either pretty or clean but I suppose that this is just the price I pay. I’m not sure yet if I’m gonna start on it tomorrow – this whole printer business is really burning me out a bit, I’m not gonna lie – but if I can dedicate two or three days of full-time work to it I think I can get it done one of these weeks. Not too many days left in the month either, maybe I should finish up the other systems first…

Spent the day working on a bunch of backend tweaks for the fog which have improved the overall experience. Some changes of note include improved depth sorting, a smoother transition for the overlay, and the addition of a Perlin noise filter to the weather particle layer (ie raindrops and leaves). I still have issues to address, the most notable being improvements to the spawn pattern for the clouds – it feels inconsistent right now, sometimes it ends up looking pretty good but other times the clouds just bunch up together in a rather disorienting and ugly manner – but it’s looking pretty good now and I can probably let it go for now after a few slight adjustments tomorrow. Tomorrow I’d like to get back to working on the printer, and hopefully get it done for good.

Got a lot of progress done today although not on the printer: I got distracted shortly after I woke by the sound of the brook in my backyard and decided instead to work on environmental stuff. Amongst the number of additions I made, the two most interesting ones in my opinion are:

+ The implementation of a subtle darkening effect at night which causes objects to appear darker the farther Avery is from them (along with the re-implementation of a very old shadow system that I disabled almost a year ago in favour of the current one, but which works well with the aforementioned effect to produce a kind of harsh lighting appropriate to torchlight). This alone took me several hours of what I now realise to be effectively pointless work sifting through forums trying to figure out how to pass a texture to a shader. After maybe the fifth hour or so I finally decided to give up and just use surfaces instead. Initially I’d avoided doing it because I feared that creating a new surface for each sprite of every piece of flora would have destroyed the performance; well, I should’ve just tested it directly from the start because my assumption turned out to be basically negligible at the end of the day.

+ The addition of fog, which previously I’d just handled via an overlay but which now also includes in-world cloud objects which have their own depth and gradually move across the screen. I’ve also tied in the overlay’s degree (ie how much it occludes the screen) to the number of cloud instances on screen at once, meaning the overlay will now dynamically adjust itself based on how dense the coverage is. It’s not perfect yet as I still want to adjust the depth a bit more to produce better consistency but it turned out looking much better than I’d initially expected.

Didn’t quite manage to finish the printer as I would have liked, but I put in a decent amount of time and effort – well, better than the past few days combined, I reckon – and got the most annoying part of it done, which was setting up the framework for the “Recipes” screen. There’s no interaction yet with the actual recipes and I’ve yet to implement any meaningful visual effects (I suppose that’ll constitute the bulk of the next two days’ worth of work), but I think the worst part of is now behind me so the rest is just a matter of moving things into the right order.

When I woke up today it was incredibly dim and humid, and I felt completely drained. I still haven’t been able to progress on the printer UI much, although I did implement a very minor change, which aligns the ingredient amount display for the composite materials to the OK/REFILL/EMPTY style used by the rest of the ingredients (will probably put a toggle in the options screen for choosing between approximate and exact amounts). Instead, I spent most of tonight working on new UI audio for the satellite view. All of the environmental audio is muted once the player enters the satellite view and is replaced by a new ambient track (not exactly “realistic”, I suppose, but I think the effect works well enough). There are also unique sounds for zooming in and out. 

Tomorrow I’m gonna finish this printer shit for good, no more delaying it.

Didn’t get anything meaningful done today. I designed the icons for the recipe categories – they’re split into meal and sundry rations (I haven’t finalised the names yet, although it’s probably gonna be either “meal/sundry” or “primary/supplementary”) – with the intention of building the full menu today… but lost all motivation to continue working for some reason almost immediately afterwards. It was incredibly humid today, which I imagine had some kind of effect upon my mood, although I can’t quite articulate how… fortunately I uploaded my #screenshotsaturday post today so tomorrow I can just focus on getting the printer UI done.

I’d initially planned on getting some more work done at some point tonight, but I no longer feel motivated to do so. I didn’t get much done today, just the save/load for the ingredients. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I can finish up the printer’s UI at the very least: I’ll spend some more time tonight figuring out how I’d like to handle the recipes (basically, if I want them all in one list alphabetically, or if I want to have separate categories for different types of rations etc) but once that’s sorted out the actual execution should be pretty straightforward. Just slightly over a week left until the end of the month, which means I’m about two weeks behind schedule now…

Finally got around to putting in some dedicated work on the printer. I implemented the full interface for the available ingredients, including the transferal prompt for the raw materials: the only thing left to do is to integrate the stored ingredients into the save/load system, which shouldn’t be too difficult as it’s basically just a stack of single variables. I’ll try to get that done tomorrow, and then start on the recipe page.

Another slow day. Once again got distracted and didn’t work on the printer, but instead decided to implement cattails (I’ve yet to add interaction for them but that shouldn’t be too difficult to implement). I also touched up the wind FX again across the board, and added a new grass pattern which is a bit denser and reacts to the wind slightly, unlike the static small grass. I’m still trying to figure out the precise tuning on it but so far it looks decent enough.

Wanted to work on the printer some more today, but I decided not to for whatever reason at the last minute and instead spent the day dealing with a variety of miscellaneous adjustments and whatnot. The most interesting one involves player-based collisions with solids; before, the player could just force Avery to slide against solid surfaces by pressing two directions (ie, up and right, or down and left), causing her animation to get locked in a weird position. I’ve now implemented a fix which aligns her properly with whatever direction she’s “sliding”: for example, if the player presses up and right against a wall to her right, instead of using the upward-diagonal sprite as before (when her sprite was tied entirely to player input and ignored her surroundings), now her sprite will change to the more proper and natural upward sprite. Her walking animation is now also properly disabled when she’s stopped by a collision, meaning she won’t continue to walk forward into a wall that she cannot pass. Lastly, I fixed a long-running issue which caused her animation to spasm when two keys in opposing directions (ie, left and right) are held down simultaneously. She now will default to her base idle animation, and won’t move.

Outside of movement, I also fixed the movement (or lack thereof, as I discovered) on the tall grass when Avery passes through it. I was wondering why it looked off for so long and I finally figured it out why tonight. I still have to figure out how I’m gonna handle the depth issues on it, but I’ll save that for another time.

Lastly, the wind movement of the trees and smaller flora have been adjusted to feel much more natural. Instead of just standing still at rest, they now sway in their “idle” position, with a wind collision triggering a particularly strong rightward sway. The intensity of the sway can be adjusted via a script and is relative to the mass of the objects (so trees don’t sway as much as various plants and such).

Took today off, nothing new to report. It’s getting colder again.

Spent about an hour or two writing up this month’s update, which is available to read here; then worked on a new environment for a bit for the #screenshotsaturday post. I decided to work on a less… ostentatious(?) environment this time: just a stretch along the lake. It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as I envisioned… I’m mainly just not that satisfied with the way the waterline blends in (or rather, doesn’t) with the contours of the shore; it feels way too linear and unnatural, it just seems to kinda immediately begin with no degree of graduation of any kind. The water effect itself also looks pretty flat, I’ve now come to realise; it works well for shallow water, like puddles and stuff, but there’s no sense of depth really, which makes it problematic to communicate. Well, in any case, I suppose I have plenty of time to work on it and improve it moving forward. 

The weather was exceedingly pleasant today and it had a positive impact on my sense of self and others. I think it’s gonna get colder again soon though…

Didn’t end up getting any work done today, although I did manage to finish the write-up for the Kickstarter tonight. I mostly just spent the day in a kind of anaemic haze, looking outside and fiddling with LUTs in Far Cry 5. It was a very warm and bright day outside, slightly humid: the highest the temperature’s been probably all year. The air outside was saturated with the scent of fresh rain and fertile soil.

Tonight I watched The Forest of Love with Haolun over call. It was deeply unpleasant, to put it lightly, and filled my soul with a bleak and dirty feeling. It was well-made, as to be expected, but I find myself questioning now if that even matters.