spncryn/log

Ended up inadvertently taking the day off. Felt a vague sense of unrest throughout the day; no identifiable source. Nothing else to report.

Finished the medical treatment UI for now, and compiled three more clips for the trailer. It turns out I have about a minute’s worth of footage left to record, and roughly twenty (nineteen, to be exact) potential cuts to account for. I’m thinking about creating a few more cinematics as well – maybe four or five – which reduces that number a bit. There’s a lot of miscellaneous actions that I can showcase which can fill a good bulk of the required volume but the main issue is that I’ve yet to figure out a way to showcase them in an interesting manner, as I’m not confident zooming in for the footage which means that at least for now I have to have diverse environments for each individual action, which is a total pain in the ass. It’ll no doubt be worth it in the long run, though. I suppose what I work on will ultimately depend heavily on how I’m feeling over the next few days. I’ll try to work on some new environments tomorrow.

Started working on the medical treatment UI today since I realised I needed to get it done anyways as part of the trailer. Managed to get the general graphics laid out – placement, size, basic interactivity – so tomorrow I’m gonna work on text. I think for the trailer I’ll just use a sketch of the final version as the internal framework is gonna take far longer than I’m willing to dedicate right now for what’s probably gonna end up to be a five second shot at best. 

Freezing rain. The branches and needles and leaves were all covered in this thin  and brittle encasing of ice but at the right angle in the right light it looked rather beautiful, in a strange and inexplicable kind of way. Today was the first time I’ve been outside for a significant period of time during the day time in a while. The air felt cold and clean and the sky was a real dismal, lonely swirl of grey.

Made good progress on the trailer today with Sawyer: finished up the initial draft, meaning the entire intro and most of the major structural elements have been successfully coordinated and executed. Now it’s up to me again to start working on additional content to fill the remaining space – just over a minute of fairly rapid cuts, which is honestly much better than I expected – over the next two weeks or so. Most of it is already in some stage of development so it’ll just be a matter of implementation. Luckily, a lot of it is also very UI-based stuff meaning I can get away with repeating some environments since most of the screen will be obscured significantly, if not entirely anyways. In any case, having gotten this much work done today at once has substantially improved my optimism moving forward for the next few weeks and I feel freshly motivated. If this feeling endures, it’ll be an excellent way to start off the new year.

Small but significant update this morning: implemented Steam integration (the game now shows up in the Steam library, although there’s no store page info as I’ve obviously yet to publish that), and created a new icon and splash screen for the game. I also sent in the Kickstarter for review – a process that apparently usually takes around two to three days, but which, much to my surprise, was cleared almost immediately after submission. I don’t know if I just got lucky or if their approval process has changed and the information page just hasn’t been updated accordingly, but whatever the case, I’m glad that I encountered virtually no friction here. 

On a semi-related note, I’ve decided to push back the release date of the campaign and Steam page to early next month. Not only does it give me more time to work on assets for the trailer, but it also works better from a strategic point of view. Releasing around the holiday season as it turns out would have been a pretty risky maneouvre. 

Failed to make an entry yesterday as the internet was shut off for the entirety of the day. I’ve mostly just been working on more cinematics, and have managed as of today to more or less complete the intro sequence. I’ve also edited the music for the trailer a bit to feel better aligned with the more stark and minimalist pacing of the visuals. It’s been over a week now since I’ve worked on anything in the game itself and it feels strange. Now that the most major work is done though (well, hopefully, at least), I can get back to working on new environments again. In two days I’ll have reached the original deadline for having finished production on the trailer. 

I’ve been feeling pretty disturbed lately lately, and the one day without internet really crystallised that feeling for me into a tangible reality. Today I fell asleep at 1300 and slept for almost twelve hours with few interruptions, experiencing a number of incredibly strange and vivid dreams whose physical toll I could feel in my body after I awoke. I had an argument today with my mother – the usual things, what else – that further exacerbated my general unease into an overwhelming cloud of palpable dread and anger. I thought I was getting better this entire time, that I was improving and becoming a better person… calmer, kinder, more forgiving. In reality though, maybe it was just because I went unchallenged for too long, that I developed a false sense of progress. That this whole time I’ve just been under some kind of delusion of self-improvement. Well, it’s as they say. It doesn’t matter how many things you do right, as long as you manage to do one thing wrong at just the wrong time. 

Haolun came over again late last night, the first time we’ve met since Thanksgiving. We went to the diner as usual and then drove around until 0300 or so. I felt pretty exhausted throughout the day but still managed to get one cinematic cel completely done as I hoped yesterday, and started on two others which are structurally finished but need to be tweaked and cleaned up a bit. I’m hoping tonight I’ll be able to correct my sleep cycle so I can once again return to a normal schedule of work.

Managed to recover some momentum today: worked at a steady pace throughout the morning on a new cinematic, and arranged the framing/pacing of the previous ones. Although my rate of production was technically under expectations I don’t feel too bad about it as it’s still an improvement over yesterday.

Looking at the amount of work I have left for the trailer, I’ve realised that it will probably be worthwhile both for the sake of its quality and my sanity to extend the deadline for it a bit, maybe a week or two. With the holiday coming up, it’ll be difficult to coordinate meetings which means that for at least an entire week I’ll basically be unable to implement anything anyways, which works to my advantage at the end of the day as it buys me more time to develop more interesting assets. 

Completely lost momentum for some reason. I woke up early, stepped outside and looked at the sky, and immediately realised right at that exact moment that I would get nothing done today. I don’t know why. It snowed last night but most of it didn’t last past noon. I spent the day in a restless, listless mood, pacing around my room in circles and staring at spots in the ceiling that appeared for a moment to be patterns. I’m too tired to do anything else tonight, let alone work. I hope tomorrow is better.

Another productive day. Once again was able to not just meet but in fact exceed my target goal by evening, and also managed to draft out what I believe will be, with minor tweaks, the final layout for cinematics. I haven’t opened the project in several days now; I hope the rest of the week goes according to plan and I’ll be able to return by next week to working on stuff in-engine. 

My sleep schedule has become compromised as of late, although I’ve yet to feel any noticeable negative consequences. I have a feeling I’m wasting away my nights, but it’s also hard to work during the day too. I feel more easily distracted than usual… so far it hasn’t presented any serious logistical problems but it’s something I should definitely seek to address moving forward.

Got two more cinematics done today, which means I’ve started off the week on schedule. I’ve been encountering a lot more difficulty than I initially expected getting Avery’s facial features consistent across multiple angles – it turns out I overestimated my ability to maintain facial consistency across multiple angles entirely without references – but to be honest I actually quite enjoy the challenge since I can feel myself improving on a moment-to-moment basis as I gain a better understanding of her features and angles. I have a strong feeling that a good part of my disorientation stems from the fact that her facial structure and body type are both ones I’m pretty unaccustomed to drawing, which makes it harder for me to visualise what she looks like from different perspectives. Either way though I got it figured out for today and I feel satisfied with my progress.

Started working today on some cinematics for the trailer. I spent the entire first half of the day trying to figure out how exactly they’d look, which is almost always the longest and most difficult part of the process: but once I got the first one sketched out everything else fell into place almost immediately afterwards. I’m gonna continue working on them for the rest of the week: hopefully I can average around two or three a day, to a total of a dozen or so. Since I’m working at a smaller resolution, hopefully it’ll be a bit easier. All the images are gonna have to be drawn and assembled at 4:3 (or 1.33:1) aspect ratio which is gonna be a little bit of an annoyance because it’s not a resolution I’m really used to working at but I reckon I’ll get used to it pretty quickly in due time. I’m looking forward to this week’s work.

At some point this afternoon I fell asleep in such an odd position that upon waking I found the entire left side of my upper body uncomfortably stiff, unable to turn my head left without feeling considerable pain in the neck muscles. Although it’s subsided a bit the pain and stiffness are still both very much present hours later…

I worked today on mixing two new tracks which I recorded yesterday. Although I was initially hesitant on having any kind of music at all I realised that the slightly distorted nature of the recording (which I did via my phone) actually suited a diegetic score very appropriately, leading me to reconsider my earlier reluctance. I’m thinking that each outpost will have its own theme that plays automatically the first time upon entering, and can then be replayed via a console. Listening to music will help improve Avery’s mood, as well as improve the quality of her sleep. 

Speaking of sleep though, maybe it’s time I should get to sleep…

Skipped yesterday’s entry for no reason whatsoever beyond sheer lack of will. Sawyer came over, we discussed the details of the trailer and then we set up the Steam product page. I worked on that a bit more throughout today, and everything now except the trailer is basically complete. Everything about it is a fucking trial to work through, to say the least… I remember it being pretty goddamn bad but it’s somehow even worse than I expected.

My goal for next week is to finish all of the scenes for the trailer. I’m considering the possibility of making some brief cinematics shots throughout: I’ll start on those over the weekend.

Decided to take today off. Nothing to report.

A cold bright day. Nearly all the snow has melted away. I spent the entire day working on assets for the Kickstarter page and made a substantial amount of progress. I’ve managed to finish nearly all of the key visual assets, meaning the only things left to do are the trailer, and some miscellaneous headers/interface elements. I imagine it should only take about another week or two at this pace, which puts me far ahead of schedule: if all else goes well maybe I’ll be able to finally get back to working on stuff I’m actively interested in again sooner than I expected.

Moderate snowfall all throughout the day. The sight of it made me feel rather listless and disconnected from myself and the outside world. There’s this curious sensation often associated with fresh snowfall called anosmia: a near total lack of smell. The snow blankets the environment, trapping and burying beneath it the usually dense cloud of natural odours and scents lingering in the air, which our minds on a regular basis barely register on a conscious level as anything above ambient noise. The whiteness of the snow, combined with the general lack of sound, combined with the near total lack of scent – there’s something terribly eerie about it all, an almost praeternatural kind of stillness to the world for just a few moments. For just a moment you become intimately aware of just how much stuff is actually going on at any given moment which you’ve just filtered out into the fringes of your attention; and only in its absence are you able to finally recognise, if not distinguish its presence. There’s a real loneliness to it. It makes me feel both calm, and slightly uneasy.

I’ve spent the past day or two writing up the content for the Kickstarter campaign. All of the text is mostly done, although I have to go over it a few more times over the next week or two to edit for consistency across sources. Tomorrow, I’d like to start compiling images for the page (which I’ll most likely recycle as assets for the store pages as well).

The first snowfall of the year, and with it, the arrival of December. For some reason, lying in my bed just looking up at the ceiling, I was overcome with a sudden vision of spring which both seemed like so long ago yet not so far away at the same time. The past few months have been permeated with a particular creeping sense of melancholy whose origins I can’t quite place, and which itself remains teleologically elusive. I can’t tell if something’s just a little bit off in my life, or if it’s something beyond my control… it’s frustrating, to say the least, especially since it seems to be affecting my overall productivity pretty significantly, in ways I have difficulty articulating, let alone defining.

Another month gone. I want to say I’ve made significant progress because I feel as if on some level I have, but also, I’m not really sure. I do know for certain though that I wasn’t able to complete all the intended objectives for the trailer in time. I’ve realised that actually the consequences for that aren’t as dire as I wanted to believe: I have most of December to continue brushing up on pre-existing assets, as well as creating new ones, on top of writing all the copy for the Kickstarter and Steam pages (most of which is already written to some degree). That should be more than enough time – if I don’t get complacent like I have been most days these past few months, that is. Just gotta keep on keeping on, as they say.

Spent the first part of the day improving environmental assets, then decided to cut a new track for the trailer after realising how difficult it’d actually be to actually pace the footage to the old one. Everyone who’s now heard the new track says that it’s a significant improvement over the old one both in quality and tone, and I’d tend to agree: it feels more unique I think and does a better job setting the mood. Best of all it heavily samples a track by a buddy of mine, whose work I’ve wanted to feature for a while since I met him back when I was working on MA. He hasn’t worked on music in a long time I think but hopefully this will be able to turn him some new followers, for whatever it’s worth.

Didn’t end up seeing my high school friends after all: some logistical fuck-up as per usual when it comes to these kinds of things. Well, we always have next month, during the winter holiday – or so it goes. Thankfully it meant I had more time today to work on things, which is always good. Tomorrow I’m gonna clean up the track and add some finishing touches, and start working on a new environment. Two more days till December…

Started the day off in a rather dark and dare I say frangible mood, which thankfully resided over the course of the day into a more stable kind of melancholy. I was able to get a bit of work done today, mostly focusing on lighting effects for the interiors, but I’m still dragging at an unacceptable rate in terms of overall assets. Tomorrow, I might be visiting some old friends, meaning my schedule is once again uncertain, and Sunday, Sawyer’s coming over to begin work on the trailer, meaning the only day I have left to actually devote fully is Saturday. Well, I suppose I only have myself to blame for this rising wave of nausea building within me.

Woke up after sunset feeling like absolute shit. Nevertheless, perhaps spurred by the dismal state of my affairs, I immediately set about work and was able to maintain a reasonably steady pace for the rest of the night. I’m almost done with the environment I’ve been working on the past few days – probably the most difficult one actually, since it’s an indoor location and requires the implementation of fairly advanced lighting paths (which I finished up today) – so it’s just a matter of persisting and not getting distracted. Just a few more weeks and all of this will come to fruition…

I woke up at a respectable time again today but, as you can probably tell given the time of this entry, I have a feeling that’s about to end pretty soon. Despite my early start I managed to completely waste away the entire morning on various trivial activities of which I astonishingly have almost no memory; and then I spent the afternoon labouring away at a handful of pixels at a painstakingly glacial pace. The upside is that I have indeed finished what I was drawing; the downside is that yet another day passes in which I’ve accomplished virtually nothing of substance.

Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. Haolun came over tonight and after spending a few hours driving around aimlessly and eating fries I felt freshly imbued with a newfound sense of energy and over the span of an hour or so managed to design and implement a better torch effect, which is leagues above the previous one and which I’d even say almost singularly vindicates the failure of the latter. The luminosity of the beam now drops over distance in a semi-realistic manner (had to make some slight adjustments to account for the range of the spaces in-game, so it’s much less powerful than it most likely would be in reality) meaning the further the light is pointed, the narrower the beam, and the weaker the light. It’s a cool effect that dramatically improves the feeling of darkness in the game, allowing the player to navigate and perform basic actions without negating the effect of the darkness (and I’d say that in fact it actually amplifies it). I’m surprised I didn’t think of it earlier.

Maybe I really do work best at night after all.

Woke up before dawn and worked without pause for the entire morning, which allowed me to accomplish a good variety of unexpected tasks including revamping the general ambient audio, implementing a pointer-based hand torch, and adding furniture and paneling to the interior of the cabin. 

For all the things I managed to get done though I still somehow feel it wasn’t enough. I was supposed to work on a new environment today but for some reason, once again, I just did something completely off the schedule. It really frustrates me in a way that I feel is actively burning me out. I have to keep on persisting though. It’s a shame that this period had to coincide with the holidays, when all my friends are coming home. Maybe I can take a few days out. Either way, just a handful of weeks left before I can get back to feeling more normal…

Aurora and I went out to the reservation today and looked at the water.

I enjoy spending time with her. We’ve known each other long enough that our conversations are imbued with a certain kind of history and understanding that only longevity can grant, even when it exists beyond our articulation. 

It was the first time I’ve seen her this month, as well as the first time I’ve been outside proper in several weeks. It was a warmer day – relatively speaking, anyways – and the air felt clean and bright. For a moment I felt properly invigorated, my mind and spirit eased of the fog of my work, and I felt I could finally look clearly at myself and the world around me. I became aware of the sensation of what I can only really describe as a kind of brightness emerging within me… which lingered for just a moment before giving into this wave of immense sadness, or perhaps more accurately weariness: the sudden realisation of the fact that my work is not as profound as I sometimes believe it to be, and that my actions will most likely have no great weight or bearing upon the lives of others in any foreseeable manner. But before I could confront it with any proper sincerity or reflection, the feeling vanished and was replaced instead by this kind of dim, melancholic ebb that lent to the rest of the day a kind of somber and wistful quality. I fell asleep some time around evening and woke with the acute sensation that I’d just drifted through vast stretches of time with no consequence.

I guess all of this is to say that maybe I really just need to start getting out more. 

Spent the first half – well, over half technically – of today asleep, and didn’t wake until 1600. It was already beginning to darken outside by the time I finally came around, and recognising that, on top of the fact that I’d basically wasted the entire day, filled me with a sense of profound disappointment. 

I immediately set about working when I finally got up, and managed to significantly increase the density of several pre-existing areas, which now look suitably forest-like. I also worked on several new generic environmental assets, and cleaned up some old ones. It turns out that at some point through some adjustment or other I’d disabled shadows on all the trees without realising it, so I fixed that as well, and added a bit of directional randomisation to all flora instances to further increase the complexity of their appearance in-game.

Next week I plan on working exclusively on environments for the trailer, and I’m very seriously committing to getting one done per day. At that rate, if I’m able to maintain, I’ll be able to get all of the new environments I needed done on schedule. Once Sawyer returns from Thanksgiving holiday we’ll get to work on the trailer. I’ll spend about a week planning the layout with him and brushing up assets, and then commit the rest of the month to producing promotional materials and documentation for the Kickstarter.

Didn’t end up visiting Norah after all: turns out she was too hungover apparently from whatever she was doing last night and felt too tired to meet. Well, no surprises there, I suppose. This happens nearly every time: we’ll schedule some time to meet and everything will seem fine right up until several hours before the agreed time, when she’ll tell me that for whatever unpredictable reason she no longer wishes to meet. She’ll then offer to schedule it to some other day but both of us know that it’s just a displacement of responsibility for the moment. I guess in some sense her ability to disappoint never quite fails to disappoint.

As they say though, fool me once…

Anyways, that ended up completely throwing me off so despite starting off the day in a productive mindset, I ended up losing control and slipped back into a state of vague uselessness. I just sat around all day and played video games in a state of mind so disconnected from the tasks at hand that I can’t even recall in any detail what I actually played today. I’ll have to make up the lost work tomorrow.

I have to stop placing so much emphasis on the presence of others when it comes to planning. People always end up coming up with some bullshit excuses and honestly, I can’t really blame them, because I do it too, and I’m even doing it right now, probably to a more harmful degree, pushing the responsibility for my frustration and the resulting ineptitude onto the (in)action of a convenient other. But who wants to confront their own shortcomings willingly? At the end of the day I suppose it really is just best after all to place one’s faith and sense of balance in work above all else. At least that way the only person I can blame for letting me down is myself.

Another early sign-off. Trying to improve my sleeping schedule so I can spend more time working in the daylight. Today was productive: I woke up around 8 and worked throughout the day creating and improving assets, including some new animations, and further refining the pointer system. It now consistently tracks real-time mouse movement instead of simulated (meaning the pointer speed is much more predictable now), and checks for overlap between the cursor and the entire sprite of the target rather than just the bounding box (which has to be smaller to accommodate the depth stacking system). The pointer now actually feels good to use. I’ll leave it be for now. 

Tomorrow, I’m visiting Norah so I’ll be gone for most of the day but when I return I plan on working on more environmental assets. There’s just over a week left in the month and a bunch of stuff I’ve yet to finish but I’m confident I can get it all done on schedule.

Checking out early tonight, I feel incredibly drained for some reason. Another day with decent but irrelevant progress: I implemented a pointer-based text interaction system that allows me to implement a dynamic and semi-randomised array of item descriptions (ie, flavour text) upon hovering the mouse over the object. I’m also considering switching the direction of the hand torch from being dependent upon Avery’s current walking vector – which makes for a rather awkward and imprecise control scheme – to being tied instead to the mouse, which allows finer and more intuitive control over the light. I’m considering tying Avery’s direction as well to the mouse, at least when she’s standing still: if the mouse’s x-position is to her left, she’ll face to her left, and vice versa. In order to do that, I have to figure out what the hell is going on with the mouse cursor in the first place.

All of that sounds good and all, but truth be told, it’s completely not what I should be prioritising at the moment. Why do I keep dragging on this shit? I know exactly what needs to be done, yet for some reason I just never actually commit to doing it, and instead end up doing some totally non-urgent task that’s just enough to convince me that I’ve accomplished something for the day even though – and this is the most frustrating part of it all – no one’s actually being fooled otherwise, myself in particular. What a monumental waste of time. I have to get started on actual work tomorrow. This time for real.

Just another day. Spent a good while this afternoon writing log entries for Avery, which turned out better than expected. It’s not exactly a total waste of time seeing as I did get a good amount of content done, but it’s also not what I should be prioritising now, which is stuff for the trailer.

I really hate this feeling – of feeling guilty for doing the wrong thing, just because there’s something else that needs to be done first. I mean, of course, there are priorities and deadlines, that’s the nature of work; but it just feels like it wasn’t so long ago (although I suppose it really wasn’t, not even a full half-year since I’ve started) that I could just do whatever I felt like doing and enjoy it in the moment. Well, no use complaining about it, it’s just the price I pay, and one I’ve chosen to pay.

A decently productive day. I decided to stream again, during which I was able to successfully finish two fairly involved animations. Although admittedly I don’t particularly enjoy streaming, it definitely helps keep me focused for sustained periods of time, which is probably the area I struggle with most. The awareness of persistent surveillance and external scrutiny ensures that I’m actually working instead and not getting sidetracked by random pitfalls. 

The month is almost over, in less than two weeks. The plan was to have all of the content assembled for the trailer by the end of the month so that I could work full-force come December towards getting the trailer and campaign out in a coordinated manner. While I’m still confident I can make the upcoming deadline, I have to admit I’m cutting it a bit too close for comfort, and as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, my rate of progress but more importantly my mood these past few months has been concerning. My pace is practically glacial at this point and the only thing that really keeps me going consistently is the sense of structure I’ve enforced upon myself. I hope there are no issues regarding the trailer; if it comes down to it, I might have to end up cutting it myself after all, which is a contingency I have to be prepared for.  

There are some days, I have to be honest, where I don’t feel as if I’m working at all. Or as if I don’t even feel like I really exist anymore. It’s when I see what other people are doing – my old friends – with their lives, earning money, moving away to distant corners of the country, even just grinding away at the jobs they hate, day in and day out. There’s a certain kind of envy I feel. Not for their work itself, which I’d hate to do, but for the sense of externalised purpose and meaning. Their work is not solitary like mine is. It’s grounded in something beyond themselves. However petty that ulterior purpose is, they’re part of something – and for now, at least, I’m not. My friends and I, we’ve got each other’s backs and we’ve got others in whom we can entrust parts of ourselves… but at the end of the day, our work is solitary and it’s unbearably lonely, even to one another, and there’s no solace from that, not even release. We’re here I suppose because of that: because we couldn’t fit in with others, because we couldn’t tolerate the stupidity, the redundancy, the sheer repetition of the world. But I’ve discovered now that in all of that, there’s something else too, which we don’t have: the reassurance of one’s place and purpose. I wish I could say the same for myself; but honestly, some days, I just feel lost.