First productive work day in a while, although I ended up staying up way too late because I lost track of time (it’s now 0540). Significantly expanded the motion camera UI, including a much-improved label-based navigation experience consistent with other systems, and developed a general framework for all the repairs moving forward. I’m starting work on a sensor radar device now which will help the player locate sensors in the immediate vicinity. It’ll vibrate when Avery enters a world cell with a sensor within it, and pinging it will return both its type and current status.
Saw the doctor again today. It was nice seeing her. I wasn’t feel so good when I woke up but talking to her made me feel a lot better. The weather outside was also really pleasant today. I decided to just stay outside for as long as I could. I didn’t end up working today either but I don’t feel so bad about it. I’ll have to spend some time tomorrow writing this month’s update. It should also help me orient myself back towards my tasks moving forward.
Guess what? I got nothing done today, either. I’m seeing the doctor tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track done again after I see her.
Last day on break. Felt a little better, or maybe just not so bad. Back to work tomorrow.
Took another day off. I feel… unwell, in a way can’t quite articulate. Like I’ve been suddenly robbed of all hope in, and concept of a future. It’s not even a question now of motivation, but sheer purpose. It’s like I’m drifting through an abstraction of the world, and who I was even just a week ago. My work holds almost no weight to me anymore… everything just feels completely insubstantial. I don’t necessarily even feel bad on a foundational level and truthfully, I only start feeling bad when I start becoming frustrated with the realisation that I don’t even really feel bad. I just feel utterly adrift, is what it is…
Ended up just taking the day off. I felt oddly a bit… off today. Not necessarily in a wholly negative way, but something just felt disturbed within me. I feel like I’m growing bored of living…
Started implementing the technical framework with the sensors, beginning with the motion camera. So far, I’ve implemented basic controls for removing the battery cover and batteries, and laid out the foundation for the draw stack. Before I progress much further, I should probably spend some time developing a draft for what elements go where, and more importantly, what elements I even need to begin with…
First day of in-engine work (technically) in almost a week, although technically it was still entirely spritework. I think I’ve settled upon a pretty satisfactory UI solution for navigating the sensors, that’s mechanically applicable on a universal level to all of the sensor types, while allowing a good degree of flexibility in terms of specific details and approaches. I also finished the sprites for the toolkit, and the four different kinds of batteries. I think I’ll definitely be able to have at least one fully functioning sensor by the weekend.
Decently productive day, got the spritework done for the motion sensor, the camera trap, and the EMF reader. I also finished the spritework for the toolkit, which I have to remember to add into the global inventory at some point. (Along with this, I also have to build in an extension to the inventory framework to accommodate for the new module system… that’ll probably take a day of work, I don’t imagine it’ll be too hard but the thought still fills me a sense of vague dread). Didn’t end up implementing anything in-engine though today: I still have to figure out the specific mechanics before I start designing any UI, and that’ll take some time for me to think through in general.
I woke up really late today – around 1400 – and felt awful at first, but then I started feeling a bit better. The weather’s gotten very pleasant lately. This evening, there was a strange scent in the air: something sweet and vaguely reminiscent of fresh hay, or maybe even Christmas trees. It made me a bit sad, although I don’t know why.
Spent the day researching designs for the motion sensor. I’m pretty confident that I’ve settled on one and I’ll spend tomorrow implementing it proper. I also am close to settling on a design for the trail camera, I might be able to get the spritework done for it tomorrow as well. I hope I’ll have the energy to be able to work effectively.
Felt awful today, but persisted through it and spent some time organising my immediate priorities for the next week (or two, but hopefully not that long). I think for the rest of this month, or at least the part of it I can/am willing to look ahead to anyways, I’m gonna be focusing exclusively on overhauling the game’s existing interfaces, including building new ones to accommodate a few more mechanical nuances.
Next week (tomorrow), I’m going to start with the sensor interfaces, getting one done every two days max. That includes initial design, and spritework for each of the three repair procedures. I hope to have at least four interfaces completely done in terms of design, graphics, and audio by next weekend.
Another dead day. Thought this morning that maybe I’d actually get something done today but, well, it was just another day. I’m gonna spend tomorrow laying out a list of hard priorities and tasks to accomplish. I should’ve done that a lot sooner honestly… there’s just too much that needs to get done and I don’t have the strength to even just sit down and think through it. I feel constantly distracted, but I’m not sure by what. I’ve become trapped on an obstacle of my own creation. An utter absence of either push or pull.
Just need to get through these next couple of months intact…
Accomplished nothing today. Didn’t even try honestly… I just suddenly started feeling like shit some time around yesterday and I hoped it would subside but, it didn’t. I’ve been sleeping worse and my appetite has been pretty poor as well, and every night I have these incredibly unpleasant dreams, a bunch of them about some girl I’ve never even met stupidly enough…
The doctor’s away next week on personal business, so I won’t be able to see her about it until the week after. I’ll probably make it through fine, but… I wish I could talk to her. I don’t want to capitulate to my weakness and waste away yet another week. The amount of work left to do right now seems impossibly insurmountable, even though I know logically that that’s just a matter of perspective, and logistical positioning. Even still though… it just makes me want to give up.
I want to say I got stuff done today but the truth is that even though I “worked” the entire day, I accomplished basically nothing of worth. The medical menu is now “finished” in the most nominal sense, in that I can no longer suffer thinking about it anymore. I don’t even know what I’m gonna work on next. I don’t want to think about it right now. What an awful way to start off a new month…
Spent basically the entire day procrastinating on writing item descriptions… but fortunately they’re now all finally finished. I also integrated the global inventory into the medical menu. Now all I gotta do is add in support for consuming items upon use and checking usage against the global stored quantity… shouldn’t be too difficult, just another day of boring work. Well, I suppose I’ll have to get to it…
The end of the month’s now here. It fills me with anxiety, and a sense of restless despondency at the realisation of just how little I’ve managed to accomplish with my time. Granted, this month was pretty disruptive with everything that happened with… well, you know. Hopefully things are more settled next month…
Today was not as bad as the days before. The weather was very pleasant and I felt a lot better in general, especially after I visited the doctor. I won’t be able to see her next week so I hope my mood can remain relatively stable until the week after. I think it’ll be okay though. It feels like a lot of my stressors dissipated, or at the very least, receded today.
I finally decided to re-attempt converting the project file to GMS2.3. In my last few attempts, which were over a year ago at this point, I suffered some major technical issues and in general I found the new update to be rather dramatically overrated in terms of the expanded utilities it promised.
This time however I’m compelled more by necessity: a project that I’m collaborating on as designer is targeting a Switch release, and I discovered today while watching Nate port Dogworld that the Switch runtime will not function properly with earlier versions of GMS2. So I decided to just bite the bullet again and commit this time.
It seems like they fixed a lot of the issues and incompatibilities that I’d been plagued by the last time I tried. The transition was remarkably smooth and as far as I can tell, the project seems to work completely fine without any major modifications to the code base. I still have to get used to some of the new code-based features they’ve implemented, but overall the process went astonishingly well. The entire IDE just feels a bit more stable and responsive now than before. I’ll keep the old project files on storage for a month or so until I can complete a more thorough rundown of everything, but with what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t seem like that will be necessary. Here’s hoping.
Minor progress today. Continued modifying the medical menu a bit, I moved around some of the elements in order to accommodate a new information panel which displays the item attributes, including the quantity and description. I think it looks better, and has as bit more functionality now. Barring any unforeseeable personal issues, I’m pretty confident I’ll have it completely done by tomorrow. The rest of the work on it is just busywork.
I think Gloria and I are more or less done. Not that there was anything much there to begin with, but… it’s gotten to the point where I want to talk to her but when I go to message her I find that I can come up with quite literally nothing to say. She barely responds anymore and when she does she might as well not have with how little she gives me to work with.
I think I’ve tried my best, I really do. Told her everything I meant to say and actually meant everything I said. Reached out when I thought I should, gave her space and time and most of the patience I usually reserve for my friends and myself. I dunno, maybe I’m just not a very interesting person. Maybe the distance was just too profound.
In any case, I don’t feel any kind of anger or bitterness or even frustration, nor do I hold anything against her. I don’t regret anything either. I’m just disappointed. In the way things turned out, in how quickly they turned out that way, in how easily I’m giving up, and all the stupid expectations and hopes I’d placed into this to begin with, even though I knew better from the start. Most of all though I’m just disappointed in myself. In who I am, in what I am.
God-damned coward.
Felt even worse today than I did yesterday. Went to bed real late last night for no reason at all, woke up in a mild haze with something like a headache and didn’t even try working on anything for the rest of the day. It’s days like these that really make me reconsider the possibility of a future.
I felt pretty awful today for some reason, just totally apathetic and filled with resentment. Regardless, I actually somehow managed to get a decent amount of work done today. I spent the entire morning clipping samples from a bunch of ASMR videos to make a breathing track for Avery. Originally I’d only intended the tracks to be used in the medical menu but actually they sound good enough that I might consider using them elsewhere as well… they’d certainly add a bit more texture to a bunch of the generic animations.
I also ended up actually achieving my goal earlier this week to fully finish one wound treatment. All the basics are in place and can be easily modified to serve as a template for other wounds in the future.
Spent the morning working on more log entries. I feel like I should start setting aside dedicated time for them soon, get at least two done every day… I definitely need to catch up work on that part of development, it’s been almost three months since I last took a serious look at any of it.
I spent the entire afternoon and evening hanging out with Haolun. We went up to the dam at the reservation, and then just drove around for a while and talked about a bunch of stuff. It was pretty nice.
Spent the afternoon recording and mixing a bunch of sound effects for the wound UI. There are a few that are still missing and/or need to be improved – basically all of the tools – but most of them are good enough for now and have been fully implemented in-game. I’ll have to give the remaining ones a bit more thought…
I also started implementing full functionality for the menu itself, in accordance with the description I wrote out a few days ago. It’s mostly just a lot of tedious work, although I’ve been facing some logistical difficulties trying to figure out the most efficient solution for dealing with alternative solutions animation-wise: for example, due to how involved the sprites are, I potentially may have to create up to four different copies of each wound model based on what combination of treatments they decide to apply (sutures + bandages, sutures + duct tape, glue + bandages, glue + duct tape). It’s not the end of the world but it’s definitely not my preferred method… although I’m not sure how else I’d go about doing it in a way that won’t cause massive potential frustrations later on should I decide to add more treatment methods. Lastly, I also have yet to do any of the sprites for when bandages/tape are applied…
Regardless, today was a pretty good day. I made a decent amount of progress – more than I’ve made on any single day in a while – and I felt pretty good about things in general.
Finished iconography for the medical UI. I hope I’ll be able to get the menu fully finished by the weekend… I’ve been spending way too long on this, it’s starting to really frustrate me.
Saw the doctor again today. I like talking with her. She asks the right questions, makes me feel like she really gets what I’m trying to say. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive to talk to her. I get it though. I’m gonna need to figure something out pretty soon, I don’t think my current savings will last me long at this rate…
I took the day off. Gloria was acting a little weird I think. It felt like she was being oddly reticent, and in the few moments she did get back to me, she came off as a bit passive-aggressive for some reason. I hope I’m just being paranoid. I wish she would talk to me more about how she feels. I wish she would just talk to me more in general. I dunno, maybe I’m just projecting. Whatever, it’s not my problem. Back to work tomorrow.
Added visual selection options for the wound treatment UI. So far I have two categories done in terms of iconography – cleaning/disinfecting, and tools/devices – which leaves two more: sealing, and pain management. Neither should be particularly difficult, and I hope to be able to get them done tomorrow. I’ve yet to implement functionality to any of it but I’ll work on trying to get one full wound model done by this Saturday.
Started working on a proper revamp of the wound treatment UI, focusing on the information hierarchy as well as setting up the initial visual layout. After a few hours prototyping a bunch of designs this afternoon I feel I’ve finally arrived at one that feels straightforward enough to simplify the user’s experience (as well as my own workflow) without sacrificing nuance.
The system revolves around a universal three-step treatment solution – roughly, cleaning/disinfecting, tool application (stuff like scalpels, pliers), and sealing/binding – with two additional optional steps in the form of pain management and medicinal aids (stuff like antibiotics, and booster shots). The player chooses one tool to use in each category from a list of any available treatments in that category and the efficacy of the solution will be calculated using a hidden list that attributes each tool a percentage (for example, using sutures to seal a wound is much more efficient than using duct tape or superglue). The final efficacy percentage, which is additive and takes into account each category including pain, will determine how much willpower Avery loses after the procedure is complete.
I wanted to get the wound treatment UI done today but I ended up wasting a bunch of time trying to figure out the iconography and eventually just got frustrated enough that I decided to do nothing. Otherwise the day itself wasn’t too bad at all actually. It was the first day of spring and the air was light and cool. The mood felt apropos to the weather despite my utter lack of progress, and I felt vaguely optimistic all throughout the day.
Didn’t get as much work done today as I wanted, but I did get the UI for the journal app finished. I still have yet to figure out a landing screen (or whether I even want a landing screen at all) but I don’t think it’s that important right now. Eventually I would like it to display in reverse chronological order (latest entry to earliest), which shouldn’t be too hard.
Actually managed to get a bit of work done today. Set up the foundation for the journal app in the PDA: the entries properly display with functional scrolling and navigation, although the formatting is still pretty off and I think I’d like to have an index screen that allows the player to scroll through a list of all entries. I’m pretty hopeful that I’ll be able to get it done tomorrow.
Nate launched his game today. From the initial streams and impressions, it seems that the reception is overwhelmingly positive. I hope that the sales will be able to corroborate the sentiment. I’m proud of his achievement, and seeing his success in being able to accomplish what he set out to do makes me feel a little bit more optimistic about my own chances.
Wanted to work on the PDA a bit more today, but suffered a rather extensive spike of anxiety which persisted all throughout the afternoon. Ended up getting nothing done.
Managed to finish up the update on time, got it out around noon. A minor victory. Didn’t get much else done beyond that, but hopefully that can change tomorrow. This afternoon I visited the doctor. She seemed nice, a good conversationalist. Asks the right questions, picks up on the right things. It’s a bit early to say anything for certain, but so far I like her well enough. I’m going to be seeing her again next week, the same time. In a bit of an odd way, I’m looking forward to it.