Worked on some new furniture. Implemented a locking mechanism for the outpost which allows the main door to be locked from the inside, as well as a “corkboard” containing the map and a bunch of objective-related documents (which I’ll work on tomorrow). I hope the latter will be able to give the player a vague sense of direction in terms of what to potentially investigate over the general arc of the game.
Worked on a bit of interior decoration for the outpost today. I felt oddly tired throughout the day, and my thoughts felt a bit languorous. I should start heading to bed a bit earlier, I reckon…
+ Added a bunch of miscellaneous background clutter and objects to the outpost, with particular focus on the washdown room (for now)
? Fixed the receptacle behaviour for the outpost storage bin: now opens and closes properly
? Fixed up the pack’s interaction text to display more consistently using the new interaction UI
Not much work today. I fixed the behaviour of the receptacle for the outpost’s storage bin, and beyond that, spent most of my working hours this afternoon editing a release for the full transcript of the interviews I did for the recent Rock Paper Shotgun article. It’s now available for access on Medium or Google Docs.
I can’t believe March is already over… this month has felt simultaneously very short yet also almost impossibly long, to the point where even the beginning of the month feels like it was years ago. Time has truly become fluid in a way that I haven’t felt in a real long time, maybe since university. Even then though, I had a daily schedule to look forward to (or not), a weekly schedule of classes to ignore, a semester to parse the passing of the seasons. Now, though, not only has time collapsed, but the whole idea of schedule, too: it seems like the idea of the world is collapsing in real-time, the effects dramatically accelerated beyond the usually glacial rate behind which all decay can be normalised and concealed.
In a way it’s kinda liberating actually: I haven’t felt this utterly free of any expectations in a long time, realising that, at least for the moment, all the things that weighed down on me so much before – finding a job, a partner, an external sense of self and meaning – have completely evaporated in the midst of crisis. And to be completely honest, I must admit that I think I’m deriving some genuine satisfaction from all of this: at seeing the frustration and anger, even desperation beginning to build as people start getting restless, start being confronted with the magnitude of their own impotence and irrelevance in face of all that’s happening. It’s not glee I feel, or superiority, or even spite: just a sense of profound calmness and relaxation, knowing that their power over me has begun to unravel and weaken. That, maybe for just this moment, we’re living in my world now.
Worked on a “new” – in reality, it’s mostly just a composite – animation for Avery opening her bag without fully taking it off (allowing the player to ideally access the contents of the bag quickly on the go) as part of the animation for unloading the pack in the decontamination chamber; but in reality, I’m not sure it’s gonna be used in any capacity, because a) the former presents a lot of individual logistical issues in its own right and b) the animation is, at least in its present form, unsuitable for the latter purpose.
I’m thinking that either I’m gonna have to just bite the bullet and create an entirely new animation, which will be annoying but probably the most straightforward solution; or I’ll create an interface menu that opens up when the pack is unloaded, obscuring the actual animation (or lack thereof). Of course, that means I have to design a new interface altogether, which means I’d have to figure out the information structure for what gets transferred over and how it gets transferred, which gets into the altogether different subject of the inventory, which is something I don’t really want to deal with right now…
In either case, I’m kinda at an impasse and my only conceivable paths forward it seems are all deeply unappealing in their own ways. Usually I’d just shift focus to something else in these cases and defer the decision, but I can’t stop thinking about this particular issue because it’s the last thing remaining before I can declare the decontamination sequence completely finished…
Maybe I’ll just work on some of the other interior furniture tomorrow and take some time to plan it out.
Took the day off. Nothing new to report.
A very productive day, and I even managed to wrap up early! Spent the morning finishing up all the things I set as goals yesterday – namely, all of elements of the entry decontamination sequence – and then recorded and mixed two new audio tracks, for walking indoors (barefoot, and with shoes on). I also composited a new ambient track for the interior, which is a very low industrial-sounding hum, that does a good job filling in the silence without feeling overbearing. All I have left to add to the outer sequence is the container for the pack, which will most likely involve a pretty complex animation (and accompanying audio), but otherwise straightforward implementation. I’m not sure if I want to take tomorrow off or not; but whatever I decide on, that’s gonna be my next objective.
Today was a bit less productive than I intended but I still got a decent amount of work done, the most major being the completion of the audio for the external decontamination shower. I also modified the mask for the vestibule shadow a bit to accommodate for a more natural transition.
Tomorrow I’d like to completely finish up the decontamination sequence, audio included. While it’s not a lot of work in terms of sheer content, it’s still pretty substantial so I imagine it’ll take a real concerted effort and some organisation. I think it’ll be worth it however, and I’ll finally have finished a process that’s taken me by this point far longer than it had any right to take.
Another productive day. Spent most of the time cleaning up the UI for the console, reducing its height to the upper letterbox margin, along with a number of other changes:
? Fixed input glitch that previously prevented arguments from being read properly; the fps and create commands now function as intended
+ Added tgm (god mode) and tbm (build mode) commands, which respectively toggle invulnerability to survival elements, and uncapped resource requirements
In regards to other miscellaneous fixes:
? Fixed bug preventing fire from being lit when using the butane lighter. The fire can now be successfully lit after the flame is present for some time.
? Fixed bug causing grass surface to be cleared upon entering/exiting fullscreen. The grass surface is now repopulated and drawn properly, so that it displays correctly even when surfaces change.
Finished up the animation for the external decontamination shower; just gotta add the text prompt and audio tomorrow and it’ll be complete. I’ll probably get that done tomorrow, as well as the internal hygienic shower and toilet animations. Those are probably gonna be a bit more complex as I have to create an animation for actually entering them, but I think I should be able to repurpose the one for opening/closing regular doors – we’ll see. The door layers will also probably have to be duplicated as overlay objects.
Today was not as productive as yesterday but I still managed to maintain a steady pace throughout the morning. I worked on more furniture for the outpost, implementing the toilet and shower I made yesterday, as well as rearranging the room a bit to accommodate the new facilities. I imagine that tomorrow’s work will be much of the same as well. I was distracted around noon though by the arrival of a new major content update for Breakpoint, so the rest of my day’s work proceeded at a spottier rate. I think it’s okay though so long as tomorrow I’m able to get back on schedule.
Missed my entry yesterday because I fell asleep again in the evening, but there wasn’t much of anything to report anyways. Today was considerably more productive, and I managed to maintain a steady and consistent pace of work all throughout the day. I managed to accomplish a number of tasks, the most major one being a significantly-improved UI experience for the developer console (which has also had a number of commands added/cleaned up). I spent the latter half of the day working on new sprites for furniture within the outpost, which I’ll hopefully be able to implement tomorrow.
I’ve been feeling pretty disrupted lately on a number of levels. Gonna just try to just work through it…
Another wasted day, spent nearly the entirety of it asleep. The few hours that I was awake, I just reviewed some notes and read a bit. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of history in lending legitimacy to faith on the cosmic level. Not just in the sense that ancient traditions are afforded legitimacy solely by their endurance in broader memory; but more specifically the ways in which religious principles are so often, in so many systems of faith across the world both present and past (and probably future), grounded in what are astonishingly concrete and local histories.
You can still (and to this day, a not-insignificant number of people definitely do in the name of pilgrimage) walk the exact routes between locations described in the Bible; virtually all of the places are or at some point were real. Here’s the clearing where the angels descended to earth and had a picnic; here’s the mountain which God struck in two with lightning to deliver a point. Eden for all its mythical glory could just as well have been on the other side of the valley, visible beneath a satellite on Google Maps. So much of the Old Testament is just as much human record of history and genealogy, precise census of military might and territorial boundaries, as it is an outline for the practice of faith on a societal level; which is ultimately to say that all of this is a kinda curious thing to consider, that we still rely on these ancient pinpoints, so many of them no longer the same as they were described, fundamentally warped by territorial conflict and zoning codes and ecological erosion, can still serve as the tangible bedrock upon which our faith rests. There’s something at once oddly intimate, and also sobering about it.
All of this is to suggest that maybe it’s not us who changed after all. For all intents and purposes, it seems as if we’ve been more or less the same from the moment we were created: hopelessly vain, ambitious, brimming with pride and righteousness and envy, fickle and uncertain and stubborn. That’s not to say that we haven’t made efforts to change our circumstances, or that those efforts have gone without consequence: overall I think it’s undeniable to acknowledge that we’ve improved our living conditions, maybe even become more aware on a mass level of each other, ourselves, our fragility and vulnerability. But on a long enough timeline, all those changes still fit within our grand narrative about ourselves, our ability to read the poetry or law or philosophy of ancestors millennia ago and still relate to them on that profound level which we call the “human condition”. It’s not that I believe we’re exactly immutable, so much as it is that our nature is fixed: our progress is incremental, our systems and fashions and attitudes may evolve over time, but no amount of revelation or intervention can change our fundamental state of being.
It’s not us who have really changed, but God. God, who trusted us with obedience only to be surprised with our betrayal; God, who wiped out nearly all life on earth in disgust at our pettiness and vanity, only to regret it a day later and promise to never do it again; God, who relinquished command and descended to earth in the skin and shape of a man to feel what it was like to be us, knowing full well the cruelty and intolerance of the authorities of this earth. Our actions and presence upon this earth have changed the nature of God as far as our narrative as a species is concerned, drawing God very slowly over the centuries into our fold of existence, our precarious understanding of this world and one another and ourselves.
I dunno… maybe it’s presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions the way I am – who knows, the timeline and scale God has existed on is incomprehensible to me, and who can say to know the will and nature of God anyways – but ultimately I think what I’m trying to get at is that, if we are truly God’s creation, we will last with our humanity – whatever that is, whatever that’s worth – uncompromised, regardless of what happens. It’s the rest of the world beyond us that changes in reaction to us; and it’s in their consideration which we should be ever vigilant as shepherds and custodians of this world, to at least try to act in good faith and with good intentions – or at the bare minimum, a modicum of self-awareness and sincerity.
Or so it goes.
Spent the morning working on writing for the game, which was a nice change of pace although to be completely honest it didn’t feel like actual work. In other news, I recently did an interview which was published today in the form of an article on Rock Paper Shotgun. I thought the author did an excellent job within the obvious constraints of the publication, but to be honest, I thought that most of the comments betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding – intentional or otherwise – of what I was saying and my intentions with the game and the interview; which, I’m not gonna lie, does not bode well for my sense of confidence in the slightest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I was given the opportunity to do the interview and I very much enjoyed the discussions I had… but I’ve also been reminded rather painfully of why I don’t feel comfortable engaging much with the general public anymore.
I woke today filled with extremely negative thoughts, which continued to plague me throughout the day and made concentrating on work exceedingly difficult. Nevertheless I did manage to get some stuff done today, the most significant being the implementation of a system which will randomly create thoughts for Avery when she’s presented with stressful situations or disruptive thoughts (ie pain, bodily needs, etc). The frequency of the thoughts, which is synced to the global tick, must be manually set and thoughts are spawned using what is essentially a random number generator.
Didn’t get too much done today. Spent an hour or so in the afternoon recording foley for the defecation audio. It was rather unpleasant, but now I can finally check it off my list of things to get done.
Finished up the caloric system and implemented thirst/hydration, which for some reason I completely forgot about earlier. All the major physiological systems are now foundationally complete and the only things I have left to do – well, “only” makes it sound like it’s not gonna be too much work, but I by no means am underestimating the scale of this endeavour, mind you – are to integrate the systems with the actions, along with any other additional balancing/statistical tweaking down the line (I know for certain I’m probably gonna have to revisit hydration at some point).
I also spent a few hours this afternoon recording foley audio for the vomiting animation, which is more or less complete by now. It was a rather taxing experience, to put it one way.
I spent some time today working on the caloric system. I’ve decided to simplify it a bit after all – previously I had planned to allow Avery to overeat and accumulate stored calories in the form of body fat, but I felt that would’ve been too complicated both to implement and to understand when playing (not to mention the kinda absurd proposition of someone gaining substantial amounts of reserve fat in a matter of days), so I instead reduced the caloric bank to a fixed value which is determined at the start of the game, and which will serve as a backup supply allowing Avery to starve for a bit without incurring substantial damages. The system is all set up and basically complete as far as implementation goes, but I didn’t get around to actually testing it in-game so I’m gonna get that done tomorrow and then start working on implementing food like I’d initially planned yesterday.
Missed my entry yesterday even though for whatever godforsaken reason I stayed up the entire night doing effectively nothing of worth. In any case though, I just finished up and posted the March update article, which you can read here. I’m gonna try to pull my schedule back in order for this weekend and get back to work proper. Tomorrow I’m gonna try to finish up the caloric balance system, and then start implementing all the animations for eating.
Spent an hour or two this afternoon writing up this month’s update for the Kickstarter, which will hopefully be posted tomorrow. I’ve been feeling really out of it though these past few days… it seems like all sorts of things have just very suddenly accumulated into a single monolithic and overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. I think after I publish the article tomorrow, I’ll try my best to take another break this weekend, a proper one this time.
I spent two or three hours this afternoon trying to work on more biomechanics stuff – finished up thirst, started working on caloric balance and intake/output – but I kept on thinking about this whole pandemic thing and I began to feel overwhelmed to the point where I was no longer able to concentrate.
Spent the entire day until basically 1900 in a state of strange and restless sleep, in which I experienced a number of intensely vivid dreams which left me feeling disoriented and confused when I finally managed to awake. Completely wasted away the day, obviously got no work done.
Today I worked on hunger, which is basically more or less finished at this point as far as general implementation goes. It’s roughly tied to the fullness of the stomach, and begins incrementally decreasing once the stomach reaches a certain volume. Hunger here doesn’t exactly represent physical hunger (which is more accurately represented in the game by calories, which I’ll discuss later), but is a closer measure of psychological hunger: as Avery’s hunger level depletes, she’ll slowly and eventually steadily begin to lose willpower. This means that, should the player choose to, she can go a decent amount of time – about two or three in-game days, depending on other covalent conditions and/or deficiencies – without eating anything, although it certainly won’t be a comfortable experience for her. Tomorrow I’ll finish up the same process for thirst, which I started today but which I didn’t get around to really properly balancing.
I also added in a new UI element, representing overwhelming thoughts. These, in contrast to inspection-based thoughts and interaction thoughts, are usually more urgent in both nature and tone and as such, represent thoughts that are more sudden and intrusive, such as pangs of hunger, or desires to relieve oneself. They take up the entire screen for about a second before disappearing, similar to the appearance of intertitles in film.
I woke from the strangest and the most moving dream today. There was something unbearably nostalgic about it and when I woke I felt incredibly light and adrift, as if I’d become dislodged from reality. The feeling dissipated about an hour after awakening though.
It was a rather pleasant day outside today, unusually warm given the preceding ones, and I spent the afternoon working outside. I built the foundation for the digestion biomechanics today, which includes the movement of solids through the body (I think it’d be better to merge the urination script here as well, I’ll probably get that done tomorrow). Tomorrow I also plan on finally implementing hunger, based on stomach volume.
Woke up still feeling agitated so I decided not to work again after all. Hopefully by tomorrow this cloud will have dissipated enough so that I’ll be able to feel comfortable getting back to a normal schedule.
Woke at 1630 feeling vaguely disgusted but otherwise fine. Unfortunately getting up so late completely threw off my entire sense of purpose for the day so I just decided to take the day off and work tomorrow instead.
Woke up feeling sick of looking at my computer so I spent the morning instead preparing food for the rest of the day and walking around outside. It was a cool, overcast day and the air felt remarkably clean. I read a book for some time before spending the rest of the afternoon in a conference call, during which I worked on and finished the final map for the game. I’ll probably release it tomorrow for the #screenshotsaturday post… although I should go over it again to make sure there aren’t any spoilers (although I don’t imagine there should be any, as the print is effectively illegible). Tomorrow I’m going to start working on the outpost again. I’d like to get back to work on in-engine content next week. Finishing the map has made me realise just how much work I have left before me.
Spent most of today working on the map for the game. The general layout has now been finished, and the only thing that’s really left to do is plot out specific locations and adjust for topographical variation (specifically elevation, which is gonna be a real challenge to communicate). The current map is a 20×20 grid… which means that I’m potentially looking at over 400 rooms upon completion if I stick to this layout. That’s a pretty fucking wild number – even adjusting for the fact that several hundred of them will be generic forest layouts – and I should probably tone it down a bit. We’ll see though…
I started the Warlords of New York expansion for The Division 2 tonight. It’s superlatively good in nearly every sense, and I’d say it definitely represents the peak of the series’ accomplishments heretofore. Playing it has helped inspire me to work on my own stuff, which is very rare for a game these days; I’m looking forward to experiencing the rest of it over the next few weeks.
Implemented functionality for inspect mode, and reconfigured the backend for item descriptions allowing for more variations (all descriptions are now initialised in the object’s Create event, whereas previously they were all initialised in a single script that made variations very difficult to implement due to the finnicky nature of the choose event – or perhaps more accurately my inability to work through basic logical operations). No visual effects have been added yet beyond a special cursor upon hovering over certain objects that display text so I’ll have to figure something, if anything, out tomorrow. Once I get that done, system UI will basically be completely done (excluding any additional extraneous elements I may decide to add later), meaning I can finally get back to work on interactive objects within the outpost.
Worked mostly on interface stuff today: added a new font (Perfect DOS VGA 437) for the satellite overlay, improved the visual effects for opening and closing UI windows, and fully implemented the Information window, which lists all the controls for the game and refers the player to the manual (which I have yet to write). I didn’t make as much progress as I hoped but I definitely still made some regardless so I’m satisfied overall.
It only dawned on me today – in the physical sense, that is – just how much time I spend in front of my computer (let alone in front of a screen in general). I came to this realisation this evening after looking away from my computer after working for a while only to feel my eyes burning. Nearly every day for the past month I’ve been on my computer I reckon 95% of the day, from the moment I wake to the moment I go to sleep. I have a feeling that’s definitely not good for me on any timeline, to put it lightly; I should start taking steps to remedy that, starting with developing and recommitting to a stricter work schedule. That first requires me to start getting to sleep and waking up at better times, though…
Didn’t end up working on the inspect feature today, but I did manage to finish up a few major promotional graphics that I’ve been putting off for a while. I woke up pretty late into the afternoon after working late last night but managed to work consistently for the next six hours without feeling distracted so today ended up feeling pretty productive despite the unideal start. I felt a bit calmer and more positive today as a direct result.
Not a great start to the month; just worked on a single UI panel for most of the afternoon, but couldn’t even bother to really finish it. I’ll get it done by tomorrow and then start getting to work on the observation/inspection mechanic. I don’t imagine it’ll be too difficult to implement mechanically as a lot of the foundation has already been built but I do want to investigate the possibility of some additional visual effects for it (ie unique cursor, object highlighting).
Didn’t realise it was a leap year. In any case, I took the day off for no particular reason. I feel kinda empty, to be honest: in neither a particularly positive nor negative way. I just feel devoid of sensation and continuity.
Finally finished up the bed animation, and got it implemented as an interactive. It doesn’t look great, but it’s perfectly serviceable, meaning I just have to design the actual sleep mechanic now… I’ll probably just build the rest of the interactive objects though over the next week and then get started on fleshing out each one.
In other news, GDC has been “postponed”, which means for all intents and purposes it’s been cancelled. They probably made the right choice, for less-than-right reasons. Either way though, that leaves me with little choice on my end. On one hand I now no longer have to assemble a build by the 15th as there’s now no more event to attend. On the other hand, there’s now no more event to attend and to be completely honest, I was in some respect very much looking forward to it despite my wariness. Of all the years a fucking pandemic-level outbreak has to hit…
A very slow day. Woke up late and worked pretty inefficiently on the hunger mechanics, before starting to feel restless so I started working instead on the sleeping animation again – which is still not finished, to no one’s surprise. The month’s almost over and I’ve accomplished not even a single week’s worth of work, even being generous. I didn’t really feel distracted so much as I just felt aimless, although I’m certainly not lacking concrete aim. I just feel very unfocused in general and all the work I have to do right now seems fundamentally tedious, although it has to get done and in reality once I see the results I think I’ll actually feel quite invigorated. I’ll try to finish up and implement the bed animation by the end of tomorrow; I suppose it’s the least I can do in terms of completion.
Woke up late again, although I managed to work consistently throughout the afternoon into the evening. Although I initially had planned on finishing up the animation for getting into bed I felt absolutely unmotivated to work on it so instead I decided to get back to work on the hunger system, which led directly to the realisation that actually, this entire time, the entire time system had at some point become undone. I spent a few hours fixing that, as well as remodeling the time scale and display to be built around minutes rather than half-hour intervals. One in-game minute now corresponds to around five seconds of real-time, which I feel is a good pace.
I’ve also decided to add an additional unlockable item in the form of a biometric tracker, which will allow the player to view numerical biodata such as stomach capacity and caloric intake/output; it’s a useful solution to the issue of ambiguity – for example, does Avery feel thirsty because she’s just not drinking enough, or because she’s contracted a disease which dehydrates her at a much faster rate than usual? – while remaining diegetically consistent. I’ve added it to the list of things to take care of down the line but I imagine that once I get the biomechanics done for digestion I’ll be ready to start working on it sooner rather than later.
Today has just been one long series of mounting aggravations and frustrations, almost entirely due to poor decisions on my part.
First full work day in a while: spent most of it fixing up the interaction text, which I feel is now consistent and legible enough to my standards. Basically, there are two variations so far: a) situational text, which appears as text bubbles over small objects such as stones and sticks that can be picked up in the world space, and b) captioned text, which appear in the bottom margin of the letterbox and indicates either a more significant action (such as opening a door) in white with parentheses; or a thought, which appears in yellow (no parentheses). I’ll obviously keep iterating on it moving forward, as with all things, but for now it displays consistently across all available cases and looks pretty legible. Tomorrow I’m gonna start working on animations for other processes in the outpost. I should be able to get at least two full ones finished by the end of the day.
Woke up at exactly noon after accidentally connecting to an active call, and ended up playing games with my friends for nearly twelve hours straight afterwards. While I had a pretty good time overall there is no doubt in my mind about just how profoundly unacceptable it was on multiple levels. I’m gonna be making an active effort to ease up a bit moving forward, while investing a significantly greater amount of time and attention towards work. The month’s nearly over and I’ve gotten way too little done; I’ve definitely fallen behind schedule at this point, especially if I want something even remotely presentable at GDC. Gotta just clear my mind and reestablish control.
This morning I went with my mother to help my father pick up a refrigerator. The area was up in the mountains, a large stretch of townhouses. It was the first time I’ve been outside for an extended period of time in what feels like quite a while. The air felt very clean, almost rarefied. It was a very pleasant day today.
I spent most of the afternoon working on animations for Avery undressing and changing her clothes. I managed to get all the standard animations – walking, idle stances, basic actions such as opening doors etc – finished but I still have a few transitional ones to take care of such as getting dressed and loading/unloading the washer. I’ll get those done tomorrow along with proper text captions and effects, which means that hopefully the entire entry sequence for the outpost should be more or less finished by the end of the weekend. Next week, I’d like to ideally start working on foraging and cooking.
Didn’t work much today at all, although I did manage to finish up the animation sequences that I mentioned yesterday. I’ve spent a lot of time these past few afternoons and evenings playing games with my friends and while I certainly don’t regret the time I spent in their company, I do feel a sense of guilt that I’m perhaps dedicating too little time, relatively speaking, to actual work. It’s not that I feel burned out or even just tired or bored of it in the slightest; it’s just very difficult for me to choose between the two because they’re both things I value very much. I don’t know why, but it feels like I’m running out of time again. Just like how I felt at the end of high school: like all of a sudden, without any apparent reason, my endless days had just became very numbered and very soon, I’d wake up one morning and discover that the world was exactly the same as when I went to sleep the night before, only a little bit different. That feeling filled me with anxiety and fear back then; now though it just makes me sad.
The router got replaced this morning, so the connection has been incredibly fickle all throughout the day. I felt an enduring sense of dim unease all afternoon for some reason, although I was able to successfully finish the animation I started yesterday. Tomorrow I’m gonna finish out the rest of the set and get them all implemented proper. Hopefully the internet situation stabilises by the time I wake up.
Woke up pretty late today, around 1500; for whatever reason I stayed up until almost 0600 earlier just lying in bed watching videos about things that were evidently not that important after all, as I no longer have even the slightest memory of what they were about. Regardless though, I made good progress with the remaining time, which was spent almost entirely on a rather extensive character animation I’ve yet to finish; I also managed to finally fix the issue with closed doors clipping into the player, resulting in them getting stuck in the door when attempting to close it. Minor progress, but still steady progress…
Woke up a bit late, but still managed to get in a good amount of work today: finished implementing all the essential elements of the outpost’s layout, tomorrow I’ll work on adding a final few finishing touches in terms of optional interactives and decorations before beginning on the individual animations for each major piece of furniture.
Jacob, Nate and I tried out a group call this afternoon as well, kinda meant to simulate working in a shared physical environment. It helped me stay on focus and maintain productivity throughout the day, and it was also nice spending time with them in general working towards something. I hope we’ll be able to do this more often in the future.
Got some work done today; disconnected my computer from my main workstation and moved downstairs, and found that I had a noticeably easier time concentrating for sustained periods. I successfully implemented functional mirrors with complex (ie, accurately – for the most part… – reflects player direction relative to the mirror) reflections, as well as a rudimentary developer console which allows me (or rather, will allow me once I actually start building commands into it) to have a greater degree of control in-engine, which I hope will make development slightly faster and more efficient in certain regards. I hope to be able to finish laying out the interior of the outpost completely by the end of tomorrow, so I can finally start working on animations and interactions.
No work today despite what I said a few days ago. Instead I went to see Birds of Prey this evening, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was a fun and straightforward affair that looked great and didn’t demand much of me. I had a good time with it.
Tomorrow I really do have to get back to work proper. It just struck me suddenly earlier today that February is already half over and my rate of progress has begun to slip considerably behind acceptable levels. I feel like my discipline’s been wavering a lot recently – as of the beginning of the year, I mean – and I strongly suspect a lot of that is the direct result of some kind of growing instability in my overall mood, although I don’t know why. I’ve been getting very easily frustrated and even angry lately, at things completely out of my control; and it’s definitely taken a palpable toll upon my general ability to concentrate or maintain focus on things.
Wrote up a new update for Kickstarter, then took the rest of the day off. Not much more to say for now…
Woke up around 0900 in a queer sort of mood, as if someone had peered into my skull when I was asleep and groped around inside. Decided to just take the day off (will most likely make up some of the work on Sunday instead) to reorganise my desk.
The new computer arrived today – it’s exceeded expectations so far, and has not only performed excellently, but was remarkably easy and quick to set up – so over the next few days I’m gonna dedicate some time to figuring out how to incorporate it into my workflow more fluidly. I picked up some more Guinness as well. I’ve been burning through money a bit too quickly though for my comfort and after this week I’m really gonna have to start reeling it in and regain control of myself. This has gotta last me until at least the end of the year…
A mildly productive day. Woke around 0800 but just stayed in bed and stared at the ceiling for another two or three hours. The sky was filled with fog and darkness all throughout the day, casting a dim pallour upon the day’s activities. Regardless, I managed to implement a number of smaller but still important changes, most of them QoL-related including:
+ Created and implemented new animations for opening doors (might go and significantly rework this some time very soon to look more natural)
+ Initialised a number of furniture objects as physical instances
? Finally fixed the occlusion masking shader which allows the player to appear as a silhouette behind doors in interiors
The money from the Kickstarter finally cleared and came in, although it’s gonna take a few more days to process probably. Tomorrow I’m gonna start writing up the release for the campaign about my plans moving forward, and a projected timeline. It shouldn’t take too much time, I imagine (famous last words)… I’ll probably release that for #screenshotsaturday.
I woke this morning feeling mildly agitated as the direct result of a very vivid and troubling dream I can no longer quite remember. The day’s work as a result progressed slowly, although I did manage to get some things done: the rain audio should be completely fixed now for both internal and external audio (instead of using an approximate check based on a place_meeting with the roof object or whatever, I decided instead to just risk redundancy for the sake of ease of mind by creating an independent sound mask object which directly controls the volume of both the normal rain audio and the low-pass one for interiors). I’ve also started drafting out the interior of the outpost and began separating the various pieces into individual sprites; tomorrow I’ll initialise them as independent objects and sort out their depth, so hopefully I can start working on them proper.
A more productive day: I woke up pretty early, at exactly 0700, and worked steadily until about 1300. I managed to successfully draw and implement the roof for the outpost, as well as adding external details to the front wall; which now means the exterior of the outpost is more or less entirely complete. I’m thinking about adding some additional structures such as the water cistern and the sewage treatment operation, but those might work better when placed into their own separate rooms. For now though, the exterior is finished finally; now, onto the interior…
I also managed to implement a number of smaller but still significant changes to the backend, including:
+ Added a new variety of generic bush
+ Added new sound effects for the outpost’s outer and inner seals
? Reversed the angle of the sun, which previously implied an inverted polarity in which the bottom of the screen was geographic north; the shadows now display at such an angle where the top of the screen represents geographic north
? Redesigned the collision masks of all the buildings, so that the player can now properly walk behind the back wall and be appropriately occluded
I also finally got the Platinum trophy for Siege today! At long last…
Another day with no progress. I woke around 1400 and the sky was dim with rain. I didn’t even really try to work today; I just felt constantly tired. I did manage to do a pretty extensive (~3k-word) write-up for an interview about the game, which I suppose is something… although honestly I was too tired to bother reading it over so I have no idea about its quality or coherence. I hope the money from the Kickstarter comes in soon so I can finally write up the “moving forward” post for the campaign. I’m gonna try to go to sleep earlier today, hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Took the day off. I’ve been feeling incredibly tired lately in a physical sense, and I spent the better part of today asleep. Tomorrow I’m gonna get back to work proper; my goal for next week is to finish up the outpost’s exterior and begin work on the interior elements, which includes all the various interactions (and animations) associated with them.
Didn’t get much work done today, just minor QA adjustments. Felt particularly prone to anger and frustration all throughout the day for little discernible reason.
Spent the day fleshing out the the UAV interface, it now looks a good deal better and is fully functional in terms of measuring all the things it’s designed to measure. I also removed the tracker for now in favour of an automatic FLIR-styled effect which highlights the player (and other sources of significant heat) while darkening the rest of the environment. I think I’ll modify it a bit tomorrow to dim out other sources of heat as well, as the sensor is specifically tracking Avery and not general IR-based phenomena; we’ll see how it looks though.
Among some more significant changes beyond that, implementing the bloom properly – ie, so it wouldn’t render UI elements illegible – forced me to completely reorder the post-processing stack. Before, it went application surface to palette shift to digital distortion to Gaussian blur + bloom; now it goes application surface to Gaussian blur + bloom to palette shift to digital distortion. It was pretty annoying to keep track of the surface stack order but eventually I got it done. Reordering everything also managed to produce an interesting fringing effect when using certain lighter palettes (or really anything that doesn’t use a flat black as the dark tone) where the edges of all the objects become pronounced and, with the rest of the post-processing effects on, kinda ragged, similar to how lower-quality VHS tapes or TV signals would display on older television sets. I’ve decided to keep it in as the default although it can be toggled off like everything else with the other lens effects.
Didn’t get much work done today, I woke in a strange mood and found myself frequently distracted by vague and generally formless thoughts. I did manage to build in an uptime clock into the HUD, which measures the total duration of the current session.
Started working on the ID verification sequence for the outpost today, and successfully completed the initial draft, with full implementation including audio. It turned out looking a lot better than I initially expected and I feel a sense of accomplishment for today’s work, even if I didn’t make too much progress in the grand scheme of things.
I felt a spike of anxiety earlier today as I was hit with the creeping concern that, at the rate of progress I’m moving at, I’ll be unable to hit my intended deadline on time. I do certainly think that that concern is not without basis – there are plenty of days where for whatever reason I struggle to get anything done, let alone of substance – but I think I just have to learn how to accept the possibility eventually while maintaining as best of an effort as possible in the present, both to remain optimistic and to try to get some work done, no matter how little, every day. I really don’t want to have to delay the game’s release at all but also I think (or rather hope) that people will understand and be sympathetic as long as I maintain good communication with them, which heretofore I feel I’ve done decently well.
In any case, it’s best not to think about these things too much for now and just keep on keeping on. Not much use in trying to predict the future.
Finished cleaning up the general ambient audio, started working on the exterior of the outpost. The latter has gone surprisingly well; all of the major generic environmental work has been finished, I just have to build a few more unique assets, the biggest (in both the sense of the size, and the amount of work required) being the roof. I’m probably gonna dedicate most of the work tomorrow to getting that done. Once it’s finished I think I’ll be able to have a presentable #screenshotsaturday ready for the weekend.
Not much progress today, mostly just technical fixes and minor graphical updates across the board. I attempted to implement a new effect where water droplets appear on the camera when raining but the sample I used wasn’t that good so I’ll have to either find a new one or alternately just completely cut it. I went out earlier today to the reservation again to record new audio for the general ambience; it was rather cold but I think it was worth it because now I have a few hours of significantly cleaner audio with few birds, which I think will considerably amplify the sense of unease. Will probably continue working on audio tomorrow.
Nate, Jacob and I watched You Are the Apple of My Eye tonight. As always I had a very good time with them and they seemed to enjoy the film as well.
Took the day off today again, went to the diner with Julia this morning for lunch and then a little bit later in the afternoon, met with Staoue. We picked up some ice cream cake to celebrate the success of the Kickstarter and then went to the parking deck at the IKEA, where we sparred for a few hours. It was nice seeing my friends again. Tomorrow I’m getting back to work – most likely on finishing the major outpost sequences.
Woke at 1640 today; the sky was already beginning to dim when I opened my curtains. I experienced a number of strange and vaguely feverish dreams last night which left me feeling very disoriented when I awoke. I decided to take the rest of the day – or, well, what remained of it anyways – off, and went out for about an hour around evening to pick up some more Guinness and go for a walk.
It was the first time I went out for an extended period of time in several weeks. The air was cool and pleasant and I started feeling a bit better about things. At the Rite-Aid I met a girl while waiting in line. Her name was Marisol, and we talked for a bit afterwards about random things, various bits and pieces of our lives, before parting ways. She seemed like a nice person, and she was pretty in a kinda nondescript manner. Both of those things made me feel pretty anxious at first, but then just sad.
In any case, it was a lot less intriguing and romantic than it probably sounds. I think she just started talking to me because she was bored on a Saturday night; and I had made the strange and potentially reckless decision to offer to pay for her cigarettes after I watched her card get declined once, twice in a row. I don’t know why I did it. It was a very instinctual motion that happened before I even really consciously registered what was going on. The truth is it made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be there. I felt I needed to do something or else I’d be there for a very long time, or else the situation would never end.
But regardless, the whole encounter just left me feeling kinda uncertain in a very broad, maybe existential sense. I didn’t know how to really process her presence on a very fundamental level. I don’t know if it was just because it was such a strange and unexpected series of interactions or if there was something about her in particular or something wrong with me but whatever it was it left me feeling somewhat sad, in the sense of a kind of acute weariness or maybe melancholy. Maybe it’s because the unexpected success of the Kickstarter has had such a profound effect upon my thoughts lately, in reorienting them towards some vague idea of the future. I dunno.
January’s now over. Stayed up until 0600 in a nearly incoherent state working on the postmortem for the Kickstarter, which I’ll probably read through tomorrow (or, well, later today, that is) and end up completely regretting in its entirety – after which, of course, it will already have been too late. Well, I have nothing more to say about this.
Much less productive today: felt oddly agitated in a mild but undeniably palpable and perhaps even troubling way, at least to the degree where it distracted me enough throughout the day where I found it very difficult to focus on much of anything. I had an uncomfortable dream – well, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose – about Hana last night that left me feeling physically drained when I woke. Shortly after, I spent almost an entire hour after waking trying to shake off a vague sense of persistent nausea that came over me as I found my thoughts inevitably drifting again towards Alexandra. Well, I suppose this isn’t the place to talk about these kinds of things…
Nearly all of my friends with whom I keep in regular contact seem to be in troubled or otherwise generally disrupted spirits lately, but especially today; I wonder if there’s anything to it.
In other news, the Kickstarter cleared tonight, meaning that tomorrow, I’ll have to begin writing the final update for the campaign cycle, which includes the postmortem. That’ll be a real substantial piece of work… I’d like to have it done by tomorrow so that I can release it either tomorrow night or maybe even the following day for my #screenshotsaturday post… but we’ll see how I’m feeling when I wake up (and given the time right now as I’m writing this post, that probably won’t be until well into the afternoon).
Another day with decent progress: I finally got around to implementing a proper options menu allowing the player to configure a variety of visual settings. Along with that came the necessity to implement a whole bunch of new toggles – for things like film grain/noise and even letterboxing – which has made the overall design feel a lot more modular and customisable to individual tastes (and now I’ve also preemptively secured myself against complaints that the VFX look like shit). I even got the save/load features done for it. The menu still needs some work down the line just touching a few elements up but it’s basically finished now at the foundational level. Overall I feel pretty satisfied with the progress I made today.
Spent most of today working on additional post-processing effects, which included implementing a slight bloom effect into the Gaussian blur shader, tweaking the values on the noise levels, adding a lens dirt/smudged filter, and adjusting a number of the chromatic palettes. Made a lot of progress overall on visuals, although I’ll have to check tomorrow to see how much I actually like any of them. I also would like to build in at some point a proper menu to toggle all these elements. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow…
I started working on an additional visual effect for when the player enters inspection mode, resembling some kind of composite between a digital video camera and a satellite image: it features a number of stats (things like current resolution, zoom level, FPS, etc) as well as a locator similar to the face tracking sensor on a phone camera or something, which starts in the centre upon being opened and tracks to the position of the player (thus counteracting visibility concerns somewhat). I’ll finish up the effect fully tomorrow and improve the range and visuals of the stats, but I’m glad to report the idea came out a good deal nicer than I thought it would.
Had a difficult time working today for some reason, and ended up getting virtually nothing accomplished whatsoever (although to be honest, I didn’t really even try). Woke up at 1540 to a bleak and overcast sky whose colour reminded me of the lividity of bruising. The rest of the day just proceeded at a uselessly slow pace, during which I wasted a lot of time looking up shit on the internet that I can’t even remember anymore. I hope tomorrow’s more productive. Perhaps I should start by at least making an attempt to get something done…
Finally got around to implementing 6-directional movement sprites. I think I’ll just use it for normal walking (w + w/o pack) and with the multitool out; all the other variations such as carrying the tarp for the bivouac for example would be too time-consuming to draw and more importantly would be too difficult to coordinate with all the other animations.
More minor progress today: worked on implementing unique doors for the entrance sequence, and completely redid the shadows in the interior of the outpost, removing the dynamic lighting. I wasn’t able to make a #screenshotsaturday post this week… but there’ll definitely be one next week.
Minor progress today, probably no net outcome: implemented directional sprites for movement along the vertical axis but it ended up looking pretty inconsistent so I’m probably just gonna end up cutting it, or saving it for a much later consideration. I also made some minor adjustments to the behaviour for the event triggers (well, the one existing one anyways) and cleaned up some of the inconsistencies on the decontamination sequence (mostly dealing with the doors being able to be retriggered or eventually reopened etc). Nothing really to show but hopefully tomorrow I can put in some decent work and get something out for #screenshotsaturday.
Woke up late around 1300 and spent the entire day basically working on the new update (which you can read here). The new portraits turned out pretty well and I’m satisfied with them, although I’m vaguely bothered by the fact that I fucked up Avery’s VSC on the earlier version – which also extremely unfortunately happens to be the one used in the trailer – as well as a very minor typo in the 417s… hopefully nobody notices because I sure as hell can’t fix either of those things at this point. Whatever… accept the things I cannot change…
Tomorrow I’d like to get back to work on the stuff I was working on yesterday and hopefully get the shower sequence started, or alternately finish up the initial decontamination sequence. (I’ll probably end up working on the latter, but just in case…) I really need to start getting more content out again soon, it’s been a while – hell, the entire month basically – since I’ve produced anything of worth in terms of the actual gameplay. I’m thinking the outpost will be a really substantial update both for the game and publicly, but it’s gonna quite a bit… my next major milestone is reaching the initial production build for GDC so I’m gonna have to really start committing to a hard schedule these next two months (really, 1.5 months seeing how I’ve wasted most of this one away) if I want to stay on schedule. I think I’ll be able to do it. I have to be able to do it.
Didn’t get too much work done in the game as I’d hoped today but I did make a lot of progress on the IDs of the other members of Avery’s team: basically finished their designs completely including the 417s and VSCs so I’m thinking I’ll include them in the write-up tomorrow (which I suspect will take most of the day). Tomorrow’s update will probably focus more on lore and introducing the characters than mechanics…
Finally managed to get back to work today. Nothing major, but definitely progress: managed to implement the inner door seal in the outpost, including the addition of an event trigger for the decontamination process, as well as rudimentary effects for it. I also implemented mild film grain to the game overall, although I have to remember to add a toggle for it eventually.
Last day of the break. Went over to Sawyer’s place to record American Idiot, picked up a new monitor on the way back. I didn’t play as well as I hoped – I haven’t really played much in a a while, almost over a year now probably, excluding the brief compositions I made for Work – but what’s done is done, I suppose it has to be good enough because I haven’t got much other choice. I also spent some time talking to some publishers who expressed some interest in my work; I’m not too interested honestly at this point in what they have to offer as I probably wouldn’t benefit too greatly from it, but I am certainly interested in what they can offer in general, if only just for curiosity’s sake.
In any case, tomorrow it’s time to get back to work proper, and this time I’m actually gonna try real hard to commit to that. I honestly can’t remember what the last thing I worked on was, or even when; yeah, it’s pretty bad, but hopefully I’m able to at least begin to recover momentum. Wednesday I’ve gotta post the third update for the Kickstarter… which means I actually have to write it, so I have to allocate some time for that as well. I think I’ll work on the game all throughout the day and switch over to the update in the evening. I’ve been wasting too much time lately. Gotta get back on track, re-establish the order of things.
On break. Nothing to report.
On break. Nothing to report.
Woke up this morning to discover that the Kickstarter had cleared its goal by almost a thousand dollars. Of course, I have a lot of thoughts about all this, which at some point I’ll have to get around to processing in full… but for now I’m just tired. I think I’m gonna take the entire weekend off.
The Kickstarter experienced a rather extreme upwards spike in activity today of which I’m still trying to make sense; but needless to say I have basically no concerns anymore that it’ll hit its funding goal. Accounting for this aberration for the postmortem is gonna be… challenging, to say the least, and honestly leaves me feeling a bit conflicted; but I’ll try my best.
To be honest though, as elated and kinda blown away as I am by the sheer increase in volume of attention I’ve received today, some part of me also can’t help but feel a bit wary of it – to put it lightly – and it’s come with a spike of pretty intense, although subdued anxiety. Before, the vast majority of my backers were people to whom I had some personal connection, or for whom someone I trust could vouch regarding character and intentions. But the volume of backers now has just increased so significantly and suddenly that I can no longer keep track, nor do I feel like I have the energy to even to attempt to keep track anymore; I’ve completely lost sight, not to even mention control, of the scope and scale of my campaign and that fills me with a kind of tremendous unease.
I’m not gonna lie, a lot of this feeling probably comes out of residual paranoia about what happened with MA: the fear and intense suspicion of sudden exposure, the reactive shunning of the general public as a defence mechanism… well, at the very least, I now know that no matter what happens, I feel confident that I’m much better equipped to handle it than before, in virtually every possible way. If nothing else, this campaign has proved to me just how many people out there – both the ones I already knew, and the ones who surprised me – care about my success in some way and will have my back when I need help. I only hope that one day I’ll be able to do the same for them.
Published the second progress update for the Kickstarter campaign, marking the halfway point. Surprisingly the uptick in activity and interest has yet to abate, and seems to even be growing; every time I refresh the page there’s at least one or two new backers. I’ve yet to take a look at the list; embarrassingly enough out of a slight fear that I’ll be too moved upon seeing the actual names, and maybe even recognising some of them. Well, in any case, best not to get too sentimental right now: just gotta focus on getting back to work, and keep on keeping on with it.
There’s probably a few more things I could say but I’ve been writing for almost the entire afternoon into the evening and I’m tired of writing at this point, so I’ll leave it at that.
Made some decent progress today on the campaign through social media: looks like my efforts paid off after all, much to my surprise. I’m gonna continue exploring new avenues for promotion in the days to come but I’m keeping my expectations in check just in case.
Tomorrow I’m gonna release the mid-interim update for the Kickstarter that I’ve been working on the past few days. I didn’t get to work on it nearly as much today as I hoped – a bunch of random distractions, many of them arising directly out of my own fault – so I’m gonna have to pull double-time a bit tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to get it out by evening. I hope I’ll be able to have at least one or two images ready by then to break up the text but if it comes down to it, I suppose I can do without…
Started working on the midway interim update for the Kickstarter today. Didn’t attempt any in-engine work but the update’s coming along nicely, might continue working on it a bit more tonight before signing off. If I can finish off the text content today then tomorrow I can start working on graphical assets for it so it’s not just one massive wall of text. I doubt this update is gonna bring in too many people, if any, so I’m mainly just writing it for my own sake at this point.
I also think it’s time to start marketing more aggressively from here on out, especially since I’ve basically done nothing heretofore beyond my comfortable channels. I’m gonna start committing now to at least one post a day until the campaign ends, one in the evening which I’ll recycle the next morning. That should be sixteen posts exactly, some of which can be reused assets, meaning I’ll probably have to make maybe ten new assets altogether. Not too bad, hopefully it’ll get me back into working on the game proper…
My mood today improved overall although I’m still feeling pretty imbalanced. I’m gonna try my best to get back to work on schedule tomorrow: I’m feeling optimistic about it although I’m keeping my expectations in check just in case.
I woke this morning to a dream – or perhaps it was a kind of nightmare in its own way – that filled me with a sense of debilitating impotence and envy. I’m writing this now in acknowledgement of the distinct possibility that these repercussions will continue to cascade as the day progresses and that I’ll be left feeling completely drained by the end of the day. I feel seized by violent thoughts which seem to only grow crueler the more I struggle against them…
Of course, none of this is anything new or even unexpected. But with the recent lapse in my ability to work as well as the physical fatigue of the cold I’ve felt the effects of this particularly acutely.
EDIT [17:55]: Some friends were supposed to come meet me at the station at around 3 so, thinking I’d only wait about an hour or so, I decided to play some games to ease my mind. Well, it turns out they’ve dragged and now, three hours later, they’re still stuck trying to figure out the logistics behind their trip and the soonest they’ll arrive is at around 7.
It was a very pleasant day outside today – bright, unusually warm – and I hoped that being able to do something with my friends would help bring me back and calm me but it turns out instead that yet another day has just wasted away the same as every other day, spent on stupidly and senselessly grinding through games just to pass the time, waiting for something that always comes too late or not at all. The Kickstarter also hasn’t progressed in the slightest since I woke up this morning and I’m pretty certain these past two days have seen the worst performance during the entire campaign. Honestly at this point I think I have to just give up hope on it. I have almost no money left and my mind’s become completely clouded with dark and volatile thoughts.
Another mostly unproductive day although slowly, it’s getting better I believe. I spent about an hour or two tonight working on some initial planning for the food printer, which will most likely be the next major feature I work on, whenever I can get back to work proper. I think I’ll take the next three days or so on relaxed schedule since I probably won’t be able to commit to standard anyways, and work on more logistical stuff like figuring out and maybe even balancing the material component requirements for each food item. I’ll have some more details most likely tomorrow but I’m feeling pretty tired right now so I’ll just end this here for now.
Did nothing again today. Sat around and played through Dead or Alive 5 again a few times: finally figured out Kokoro’s moveset after all these years. I like her a lot now, even a bit more than Momiji (although Christie still remains firmly at top): although her moveset isn’t that diverse it feels very powerful and, at least against CPU, can absolutely hammer through defences and holds. To my mild chagrin I’ve discovered I’m no longer too great with Helena – I barely managed to get through her Arcade on Legend after an entire hour – largely I imagine because I don’t really remember anymore how to effectively capitalise well upon her tech, which is where I reckon she shines the most.
Well, in any case, tomorrow I have to get back to work, I’ve spent too long away wasting time on random shit. Gotta regain momentum…
Woke up feeling like shit again, and didn’t do anything related to the game today – didn’t even bother checking the Kickstarter campaign, although I’m sure it hasn’t progressed too much. Put up some porn on the projector and tried to read something – From Hell, I think – for a few hours but felt too listless to concentrate for some reason. I think – I hope – it’s just the sickness taking its toll and not a sign of something on a psychic level.
Woke up with a sore throat from all the mucus that accumulated overnight, and felt like absolute shit for the rest of the day. Didn’t wake up properly until around 1300 and by that point I felt exhausted just attempting to get up in the first place. Man, I’m really not cut out for this life…
As I was too tired to work on anything directly in-engine, I decided to spend my time instead writing up a case study of the trailer, which ended up taking me the entire day for whatever godforsaken reason. I’ll post a link to it shortly after I finish writing this, but it turned out considerably longer than I expected. I’m too tired to actually read it so I can’t guarantee its quality in the slightest… but at least it looks sound, I suppose. Hopefully I don’t feel as shitty tomorrow, but realistically, I’m not too optimistic…
EDIT: Completely forgot to post the link to the article after writing this post but here it is.
Finally finished the exterior door for the outpost. Asides from the audio and player animations, the mechanics and animation are now completely finished, including the shadow mask. I don’t know how this shit took me nearly two days to figure out but I’m glad it’s finally over with.
I think I’ve contracted a mild cold, undoubtedly from my time in the city. So far it’s tolerable, but it’s very noticeable and I’ve noticed that these past two days I’ve been feeling unusually lethargic. Granted, it could be due to any number of other factors, but I definitely suspect this recent affliction has been slowly sapping my strength. I didn’t spend much time today doing anything for the campaign so tomorrow I’ll have to start putting in some work. It’d probably be best to start by actually reading and responding to some of the messages that have begun to accumulate in my inbox…
Saw Ip Man 4 today in the AMC Empire with Sawyer, Nick, and Ash. It was superlatively good in a certain manner I can’t quite describe. I suppose a good amount of my appreciation for it was built on the foundation of having watched the last three films in rapid succession over the past few days; but the fourth film, especially with the past three driving it, is really quite astounding and an incredibly moving and effective finale for the series.
Launched the Steam page today! It happened a bit later than I wanted and the initial Twitter post is not doing as well as I’d hoped (although I suppose that was pretty predictable as the image I made for it was substandard), but I’m glad to have finally gotten it out of the way. The first results come out tomorrow around noon, I think… well, I’ll know for certain then how well it did.
Got some more work done on the structure of the outpost and more or less completed the basic foundations and layering for the walls. Doors are still a bit of an issue currently due to the incredibly stupid and rigid way I set them up earlier, but once I’m finished writing this log I’ll go back and give them another shot. While I was laying out the foundations I was able to revisit and improve a number of other seemingly minor (but actually pretty significant) issues, the biggest being
The Steam store page also finally got approved tonight so I’ll be launching it tomorrow with #screenshotsaturday. Hopefully that’ll drive a bit more traffic to the Kickstarter, which has really slowed down today…
First post of the new decade! A lot of things have happened over the past two days, some pretty bad, but mostly very good. I launched the trailer and Kickstarter campaign on midnight of New Year’s Eve under a spell of anxiety so intense I felt like vomiting and had to lie down on the floor afterwards. It’s been doing very well so far, I think, although I feel as if the momentum is subsiding a bit. That’s natural, of course, although I’m a bit concerned since it also feels like I’m beginning to run dry on my connections. Well, there are still 28 days remaining as of today, so who knows what can happen. I’m still waiting on Steam to stop fucking around and approve the store page but once they do, that’ll be the first major update I’ll write for the Kickstarter campaign. I think that’ll give me a better understanding of the commercial feasibility of the game through wishlists, although I don’t feel that confident about it for a number of reasons, some more substantiated than others. In any case, we’ll see how it goes from here. It’s been going well so far and as long as I maintain optimism and a healthy sense of commitment, I think it’ll continue doing okay.
This morning I awoke to news of a minor personal tragedy in my family which initially appeared to be a lot worse than it eventually (at least for now) turned out to be. I spent the morning in a rather grim and contemplative mood but thankfully it lifted and I was able to get a decent amount of work done on new assets for the outpost, which I want to focus my attention on for the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow I’m gonna brush up on miscellaneous assets – stuff like floor tiling and decals, etc – and then start separating the layers into individual objects. Once the foundation and walls are set and I’m able to layer them properly I’ll start working on individual animations and functionality for all the furniture objects. A lot of work ahead, but at least it’s steady…
I originally wanted to write something much longer and more detailed for the occasion, but now that the time’s almost come, I feel like it’s more appropriate – in regards to both my overall feelings about last year, and my hopes for the one soon to come – to keep my thoughts relatively brief.
This year’s been a rather strange one: it feels like it passed far more quickly than any before it, and despite the amount of progress I achieved both as a person and through my work, it barely feels like I moved much at all. For whatever reason, about halfway through this year, I finally had some kind of change of heart and realised with full force just how unacceptably I’d been living before: how petty, how angry, how needlessly callous I was towards those around me, and myself. It feels like one day something just lifted and all of a sudden I could see everything more clearly, the way it was meant to be seen. Although I realise it’ll still take me a long time to get there, for the first time in a long time I finally remembered who I could’ve, should’ve been.
It’s my goal for next year to continue acting upon that. I wish to continue striving to be a better person – kinder, calmer, more forgiving – for the sake of both myself and those around me; and just as importantly, learn to forgive myself in the moments where I feel myself slipping. I don’t want to hold onto all this anger anymore and I don’t want to hate so many people; I don’t want to hate myself. I want to be able to maintain a better relationship with women in general and I’m going to try my best to learn to let go of my hatred and distrust of them as well. I’ll continue trying to help my friends and peers where I can and I hope to be able to find success with my game, which I hope will enable me to reach a better position from which I’ll be able to pull up those around me. I hope that if I do find success, it won’t get the best of me and that I’ll be able to resist its temptations and snares so I can maintain my sense of commitment and dedication to my friends.
I understand that I probably won’t be able to maintain all of these things every day or even most days but I hope that the good I am able to accomplish will be enough to keep us all going, and that in time and through reflection I’ll be able to forgive myself the bad days. I hope that I’ll continue to find the serenity to recognise and accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can. Most of all, above all else, I hope I can continue being a good friend to those who consider me as such and a better one to those who have found me lacking.
Well, it’s a bit early, but I’ve got things to do, so I’ll end it here. I dunno who’s been reading this or where you are or who you are or what you desire, but I hope that we can all find the strength and clarity to strive towards becoming better people regardless, and that we can be forgiven when we can’t. God’s grace and good tidings be with you.
So be it.
