#and I think gamedevs trying to plan for a thing like that like some other studio entirely who might try to make it so that

[nebulaad]

I like, get the appeal of heinrix, especially when compared to other fictional cops because you can make him not a cop anymore (or at least a cop for you?), but my thing is that I've never intentionally romanced him and I always arrive to commoragh like. boy this man sure is touching my face a lot.

[dokidokitsuna]

GameSwap!AU

Just a random idea I had: what if Magolor and Hyness traded games with each other? Like, their character/personality remains the same, only now they each have the other’s roles and goals. I thought it would be fun~

-So making Magolor the main antagonist of Star Allies would be a trip; I feel it would change the whole ambiance of the game…probably in a detrimental way, from a gamedev point of view. You don’t really wanna put the super cute and charming new character with the most memorable heel-turn in the series…at the center of the “nostalgia” game. ^^; With the return of the Helpers and a dozen familiar faces cameoing as Dream Friends, Magolor’s theatrics would be too much of a distraction.

But whatever, let’s say we put him in anyway: now Magolor is the leader of Jambastion, trying to resurrect a god of emptiness and despair. I predict he snaps immediately. XD

I just think handing that kind of leadership role to an obviously power-hungry character like Mago would grow worms in his brain incredibly quickly. ^^; That isn’t to say that he’d do the cuckoo-4-coco-puffs schtick that Hyness does– I think instead he would be a sort of annoying “chuunibyou” character; constantly popping up to ramble about being Void Termina’s chosen one, destined to succeed because he’s the specialest and bestest ever, so you might as well give up now.

And he’d give off this completely unserious vibe like, “...Are you just making this up? Is this god you’re trying to resurrect actually real; or are you just a very lonely, understimulated, disturbed little egg…?”

And then by the end of the game we realize that he *wasn’t* making it up, and as he starts abusing the Mage Sisters (who probably hate working for him to begin with...) and rapidly becomes a real threat, suddenly we’re forced to take him seriously. ^^; We’ll rescue him from Void Termina’s innards anyway, though, because we’re nice, and similarly to his true character arc; he’ll probably realize that he got in over his head and beg to be saved.

-Hyness in Return to Dreamland would be interesting…primarily because he doesn’t seem like the ‘manipulator’ type to me. I think he’d be more of an ‘absentminded professor’ type: enthusiastic and silly but in an awkward, understated way. He’d just come right out and tell us he wants help to find the Master Crown, but he’d present it as a mysterious object of limitless possibilities that we should ALSO be interested in…y’know, just for curiosity’s sake. Conveniently leaving out the fact that he’s taking it for himself, and he’s more than just curious– he already knows exactly what he wants to do with it. ^^;

And similarly to *his* true character arc…I think Hyness would go all in. ‘_’ No hesitation, no regrets; he’d dive right into Mistilteinn’s clutches and become its twisted avatar, forcing us to literally carve him out of there if we want to stop him. This would probably call for a much tougher boss fight, with a more serious ambiance– none of Magolor Soul’s cutesy juggling; let’s aim for something more like Zero’s eyeball exploding out of his face, but in 3D~. Or all the horrific stuff Fecto Elfilis had going on, since we have the benefit of hindsight. XD

As for the end…this may hurt some folks, but I think it would make sense for Hyness to die, like the devs originally planned for Magolor before they decided to have mercy on him. The thing is, without the Mage-Sisters to highlight Hyness’ changes in behavior, there’s not as much to gain from redeeming him…maybe that’ll be part of his character arc too; seeking to become the instrument of the Master Crown because he has nothing and no one else. This version of Hyness still has his empty heart, devoid of care, but without Void Termina to pledge himself to, the tree-demon is the best he can do. ^^; And with a little fleshing-out of his backstory before he goes (perhaps a chance to learn more about the magic vs. science users…?) he could make a good tragic antagonist, the first of his kind in the series.

-...Seeing as RtDL was supposed to be like a fresh start for the Kirby series, though, all this lore and sadness would be a little heavy for that concept…from a gamedev point of view, I would reject the idea. But if we did go with it, I shudder to think how it would influence the rest of the games to follow…perhaps the franchise would actually have taken the grimdark turn that people like to think it has. ^^ Which would be cool to see, admittedly.

[anyalovesu]

hi!! i just wanted to say i loved your jungwon fic did you like her in the morning its so good! esp cause i love niki too like you literally had me crying at midnight. i was wondering if you had any plans on a part 2? you dont have to but i kinda had an idea of making it based on the song paths by niki and it will be in jungwons pov? maybe the reader became a famous figure skater and maybe an olympian and jungwon watches her from the screen thinking of what could’ve been. like maybe ae-cha and won’s relationship didn’t end well and jungwon regrets everything but hes so late. you can choose between a happy ending or not but this is just an idea! thank you sm again cause i really needed a cry

𝓟aths

—Wherein Jungwon's and Y/N's paths cross again in a common friend’s wedding.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

genre : angst ; hurt/comfort ( ??? )

pairings : jungwon x ex!reader ; sunghoon x fiancee!reader

wc : 2k+ words

cw :

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ oc(s) is mentioned ( ae-cha and miyeong )

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ non-idol!au ; gamedev!jungwon , olympic figureskater!reader

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ jungwon is still slightly an ass , but he gets over it and gets his shit together

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ y/n is still weirdly very nice for her own good

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ ( ft. ning ning from aespa , riwoo from bnd ; heeseung & jake from en- )

☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ not proofread ( yet )

song : paths - niki ( buzz , 2024 )

part 1 : here

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

The sound of his mechanical keyboard clicking filled their office as he groaned in frustration trying to figure out what went wrong with the game they were developing. It wasn’t much help that almost everyone in their department was yapping about the Winter Olympics and how the country’s figure skating pair representatives came from the same university as their game development head. 

Jungwon was fully aware of your endeavors, you won several national titles with Sunghoon in the past year and it was no secret to anyone that your chemistry has evolved your partnership into a beautiful relationship. You were the country’s favorite couple at the moment, you and Sunghoon were on the news everywhere when you both were announced to be selected to compete for the Winter Olympics in Italy.

Of course, Jungwon was happy for you. As he should. You did nothing to stand in his way of his success. If anything, you have always been supportive of his game development dream—there was even a point in time where you’d stay up all night, looking for the best companies he could bag a great internship program for. But it was rendered short lived after he made his decisions. 

Him and Ae-cha managed to stay together for the next two years of their lives after what happened. After graduating, they went and bought a house together and even got engaged at some point. Jungwon was on top of the world and over the moon when all of those things laid themselves before his eyes… but life happened.

Things didn’t work out too well for the both of them with Jungwon being absorbed into this project, and Ae-cha being too busy with her community service as she began to work her way into competing for the Miss Universe title which then started to take a toll on their relationship, as Ae-cha is determined to win her title first before getting married. They used to fight so much about not having time and not being able to give their part of the relationship anymore—maybe that comes along with the fact that they have drifted far apart while they chased for the dreams that they were well aware that the other had. But one time, the fight got so bad that the both of them came into the point of questioning whether it was still right to stay in that horrid situation. They were as bad as being broken up anyway with the both of them barely seeing each other because of how busy they got. 

It wasn’t like they didn’t notice that they were drifting far apart from each other. They knew. They most definitely knew. But were they strong enough to face the truth that their relationship that came at the cost of someone else’s peace was going to waste? Were they brave enough to accept that after you forgave the both of them for breaking your heart, they were going to break each other’s next? No.

So for the love of everything good, they tried to make it work.

“Oh my God! They won!” Riwoo jumps from his seat, raising his phone proudly showing everyone the competition live stream, as if he was the one who won the title. “Gold! Jungwon! Your schoolmate won gold with Park Sunghoon!”

Jungwon decided to pick up his phone and check his social media accounts to see how the competition turned out. And there it was,

Milano-Cortina 2026: Park Sunghoon, Y/N L/N Receives Gold Medals in Artistic Pairs Figure Skating.

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride that you have finally reached your ultimate dream of competing in the Olympics and won gold for that matter. He knew you’ve always been passionate about skating, it just wasn’t something he was interested in back then. Even so, he was busy supporting Ae-cha to realize that he’s neglected you in the process. He has been unfair. He has been cruel to you and up until now that he and Ae-cha have gone their separate ways, the guilt still keeps him awake at night, like a monster in his closet when he was a kid waiting until all the nightlights are turned off before it jumps and mauls him.

It feels unfair and delusional of him to feel the need to reconnect, especially when she’s asked to never show his face to her again when the both of you last spoke, which was the day he picked up his belongings from your apartment. Either way, you were happy with Sunghoon and even after everything that happened, he still loved Ae-cha very much. Every insecurity about Ae-cha that you confessed two years ago is coming back to bite him in the ass because everytime he looks at Sunghoon, he just knows… that Sunghoon is everything he will never be.

“Holy shit, man! Park Sunghoon is proposing!”  Ning Ning rises in glee coming over to Riwoo to hit his arm repeatedly out of excitement. “Holy shit that is so cute!”

“Did she say yes?” Jungwon blurted out, making everyone’s eyes turn to him, suddenly curious as to why all of a sudden Jungwon was interested in what was going on in the competition. 

Of course they didn’t know you were Jungwon’s ex-girlfriend. None of them went to the same university so, without a doubt they would not know if he didn't bring it up. Plus, not letting them know would be for the best, as it could possibly taint Ae-cha’s rapidly rising career. It was for the better that they didn’t know. You guys agreed to keep your relationship private when you were together anyway, so it was no big deal that it remained private even when you guys broke up. 

“Of course, Y/N said yes!” Ning ning chimes at him. “They’ve been so in love since they were like competing against each other!”

Wrong. You loved Jungwon first. Before there was Sunghoon, Jungwon loved you first. He was there before him. Which was a stupid thing to think about because technically, Sunghoon was there before him. Sunghoon, albeit only being seen by you as a competitor or a partner, only exclusively saw you as a friend and you, the same for him.

Not that it still matters though. He fumbled and Sunghoon was there to make sure he wouldn’t make the same mistake as Jungwon did. So there he was on international TV, proposing to the love of his life, after they both just reached their dreams of winning the Olympics. 

“Good for them,” he lied. 

He could’ve had that. As enraging as it sounds, he once dreamed of marrying you too. He once imagined living in a house with tall fences and having dogs and a kid probably. However, as life happened, he began to see that world more clearly with Ae-cha. Now apparently, life happens in the most mysterious and fucked up ways, because everything fell apart and he lost Ae-cha in the process of it. 

Real love was an active thing to do and along with making good decisions, Jungwon has failed to do it. It wasn’t as easy as relaxing and sleeping next to them—it’s a constant thing to do that you continue feeling even when you get tired or even when you’re going through your lonely nights. 

Jungwon gets it now. And while he still has Ae-cha’s name written all over his heart,  it’s already too late.

Even Ae-cha has made her peace with all of these. And he should actively strive to do that too.

So, when Jungwon receives an email inviting him to a common friend’s wedding, he contemplates whether he has the stomach to be there even if the groom was his friend after finding out that you were going to be the bride’s maid of honor.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

It confused Jungwon as to why he didn’t feel uncomfortable in the presence of both his ex-girlfriend and his ex-fiancee in the same room as him. Maybe it really comes to a point where if most of the people involved have already had their peace with what happened, it doesn’t feel that hard to deal with anymore. 

“Jungwon!” It surprised him that Sunghoon was the first one to greet him. He had this light aura to him, Jungwon didn’t feel judged that he even showed up after everything that happened. Even you and Ae-cha were speaking. You seemed to be having a wonderful conversation with the bride as you guys danced with the bride on the dance floor.

“Hey man,” Jake, the groom, smiled at him, patting him on the back.

Two years have gone and past, and seeing all these, most of their college friends being around enjoying the night made him realize that he was the only one left to not accept how things happened—the only one left to not have peace with what was already in the past. He was bitter, even though he absolutely had no right to because he was the one making his problems in the first place. 

“I heard about the game,” Heeseung asks him, seemingly interested. “How’s that going?”

“Well,” he replies, completely avoiding looking behind him where the girls were having the time of their lives. “Still has a few more months before we send it out to some for beta testing. Congratulations on the wedding, Jake, by the way.”

“Miyeong and Y/N have been stressing about it for months now,” Jake chuckled at him, glancing at his wife fondly as she laughed, holding on to Y/N for support. “They were really trying to sort everything out before Y/N goes to compete in Italy.”

“Congrats on that too,” he turns to pat Sunghoon’s back “And your engagement.”

“Thanks man,” Sunghoon grinned at him. 

Jungwon could not feel but be left out. Most of the people around here have accomplished so much in two years since graduating, may it be in their home lives or their careers. While here he is, dwelling on the bitterness of him being stuck in his game development project that’s progressing slower than he expected, after him and Ae-cha called the wedding off. He couldn’t help but feel insecure.

“What happened to you and Ae-cha anyway?” Heeseung blurts out. “You were going so well.”

‘Doing so well’ was such a big fat lie. Everything was crumbling behind that facade and they had to keep it that way for Ae-cha’s image. 

“Ae-cha realized she doesn’t want to get married until she’s won her title,” he explained calmly. “We’re fine though. We’re still friends.”

“I’m sorry man,” and there it goes.

He didn’t want their conversation to turn into a mini pity party for him. They’re supposed to be celebrating the union of two important people in their lives that are too disgustingly in love with each other—not pitying him for his failed love life. He manages to excuse himself to get some fresh air and enjoy some silence after all the small talk he had to do with a bunch of acquaintances that he met during the reception.

On the other hand, you spot him sitting alone outside. You contemplated at first whether you should approach him or just leave him be. After all, you didn’t want to stir the pot and cause trouble over something that has already been peaceful for years now. 

“It would mean a lot if you could explain to him that you meant your forgiveness,” Ae-cha hummed next to her. “If that’s okay with you.”

Minutes ago, you found out about the called off engagement along with the whys and hows of the way things played out. As much as you hated to admit it, even from afar, you had caused the both of them to feel guilty for how you left things. Despite Ae-cha explaining that it was completely on them, you knew deep inside that Jungwon took it to heart that you never wanted to see him anymore. And yes, maybe at the time you said it, you really meant it to the bottom of your heart. You were desperate to find comfort and peace as soon as possible after it happened before your eyes. You did what you have to do and you’re glad that you did. But now that you’re older and wiser, you suppose it shouldn’t hurt to help someone find peace in it too, right?

“That's okay with you?” you glance up t Sunghoon’s tall figure now standing behind you.

“Doll, I already have our last names engraved on that ring on your finger,” he chuckled, always so confident, “I’m fine with it. I trust you, jagi.”

“Alright, let me get a drink first.”

You walked right up to him, with two glasses of Manhattan cocktail in your hand and settled next to him. 

“You should be inside there getting wasted with your brothers,” you chuckled at him, handing him the drink. “Moping around here isn’t going to give you the peace that you’re looking for.”

“I thought time would give me that peace,” he mumbled honestly. “Lousy motherfucker never gave me anything.”

“Sorry,” you blurted out. “I shut you and Ae-cha out of my life as soon as I could.”

“You were hurt,” he replied. “You had every right to do that.”

“I’m sorry because it affected you more than I thought it would. I didn’t say I regret doing it,” you laughed lightly, looking up at the clear sky, though the stars were blurry from all the light pollution coming from the hotel’s ballroom. “Leaving things behind sometimes gives you more comfort than you think it would.”

“Cha and I hurt you so much, Y/N. How can you just forgive that?”

“Well I’m not hurt about it anymore, Jungwon,” you sigh heavily. “I’m okay. You should be okay with it too because if not, you’d be dwelling over nothing and that’s going to hurt you more in the long run. It’s all in the past, Won. You still have the future to write however the fuck you want.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because the sooner you accept how things turned out the easier it will be for you. And it has been two years, Jungwon. I’m okay now. I’m getting married. I’ve forgiven you and Ae-cha a very long time ago. It’s about time you forgive yourself too.” Your voice was soft and understanding. For the record, it has always been like that. The only time he ever heard you raise your voice was the last time you guys spoke and it broke his heart to realize that he had caused that. “You’re never going to learn how to love Ae-cha unless you let go of what’s already said and done. You can do better. You can be a better person. The mistakes that you made when you didn’t know better doesn’t have to be who you are for the rest of your life.”

“It’s too late,” he replied, remembering that even if he does end up forgiving himself, Ae-cha has already called off the wedding.

“Ae-cha is literally just waiting for you to get your shit together, you dumbass,” you snort. If he wasn’t certain whether you were intoxicated a while ago, he’s sure as hell that you are now. “It’s hurting Ae-cha to see you dwell on it for so long that she had to step back for the meantime. Why else would she have agreed to your proposal if she didn’t want to marry you? For as far as I know she only said she didn’t want to get married until she got her Miss Universe title—which I’m sure as hell with your woman’s incredible brain and beauty, she will get as soon as she steps in that stage. She never said she didn’t want to marry you! She wants to be with you even when you’re a complete fucking airhead and could not take context clues for the life of you.”

“I’m still here,”  he replies. “I never left.”

“Which is the fucking problem, Yang Jungwon,” she rolled her eyes. “Get your ass up and get your girl back because I did not just leave my dapper, handsome, wonderful, great of a fuck, Olympic gold medalist soon-to-be husband just for you to sit here and act like a kicked puppy. Chug that shit down and get Ae-cha back you blithering idiot.”

The playful harshness in your tone managed to get through his lonely facade and made him laugh. He chugs Manhattan down and looks back at you.

“I’m glad our paths crossed again, Y/N.”

“That, I am glad for too,” you smile at him putting up your fist as he does the same to bump it with you. “Ae-cha deserves better. You can be a better person for Ae-cha, Jungwon.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

“Thank you, Jungwon.”

—end.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

masterlist

a/n : i could not stop myself from writing this right away :') i enjoyed buzz so much and paths is another one of my favorites ( + heirloom pain lol ) i hope anon does not mind that i changed the plot a little bit hehe i tried to stick to it a as much as i could <3

( i'd appreciate your feedback and notes sm ! you can leave a note here or send it ur feedback here if you'd like ! )

thank u !

xo, anya ୨୧

[freerange-binaries]

Simple boid simulation

Hello! over the past weekend I made a very quick flocking simulation in ebitengen. Each little boid follows a few simple rules - defined here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids plus an extra rule of my own to flee from the mouse cursor. Longer blog/discussion under the cut

I'm still trying to dip my toes into the gamedev world (most of my experience is in web technologies) and this was a fun little afternoon project to get to know things a bit better. I chose ebitengine for a couple reasons: first, I feel a little more comfortable with the code-only or code-first engines/frameworks coming from a non-gamedev coding background, and second, I've really been liking Go/Golang from what I've tried so far. A fun, but perhaps overboard, fact about this little demo is each boid calculates its next move in a go function, so the 'game' is multi-threaded. Also on my list of frameworks to try is monogame since C# is the language I've worked with the most professionally and it has a good reputation. I still have some hang-ups about tying myself to a Microsoft product, though - every time I look at the naming conventions of different versions of .NET I want to rethink my career choices, for example.

I'm not sure how far I'll take this idea, but I did have a loose plan to expand this little simulation into a prototype for a sheep herding game. However, spending more time thinking about what it would take to bring this into a full game makes me a little hesitant to fully commit to using a tool like ebitengine. Essentially, once I need a level editor I'm a bit worried if it would be a better use of time in the long run to just use a full fledged engine like Godot. Still, other big projects have gotten by on tools without built-in level editors in the past, so maybe its not as big of a downside as I think.

That's it for this first update post! I'm hoping to post little summaries like this of my future hobby projects, as well as maybe some older things I've done. If you've read this far, thanks a ton! If you're curious about how I made this feel free to ask away

[micalpixel]

May Flowers Game - June 2024 Progress Report

Another month has passed, so here’s another update on my gamedev journey. The goal is to create my first video game using the Godot game engine.

(Prior Updates: May, Initial)

Research

The main goal for June was research. Play other character/exploration-focused games with no farming or combat elements and see what they do to keep things fun. Here’s what I played (or watched others play)

A Short Hike: A game about a penguin climbing a mountain. Finding new people, new areas, and moving/gliding were very enjoyable. The game’s 3D environment with pixelated graphics was also a new experience for me. A very nice cozy game.

Rakuen: I love this game. You play as a kid stuck in a hospital, trying to help other sick patients, while also exploring a fantasy world described in a book. Lots of exploration, puzzles, and focus on characters. Catchy music too. Kind of exactly what I was looking for. I think Undertale fans would enjoy this one.

The Stanley Parable: A choose-your-own-adventure game. No NPCs, just movement and a very entertaining and well-crafted narrator.

Potion Permit: You play as a chemist who just moved into a town, and must make a living brewing potions while getting to know the town, its people, and the wilderness. The first life-sim game I’ve actually beaten. The lack of time limits was greatly appreciated.

Shenmue (Watched not Played): An important piece of gaming history. I watched a playthrough of this one, just so I could see this game at its best, and not miss any important events.

Freddi Fish 2 (Watched not Played): A point-and-click adventure for children??!… What’s this doing here?!?! Well, this one wasn’t on my original list, but I realized the point-and-click game genre had many similarities with the walk/talk/trade-items gameplay I originally envisioned. Plus this one had no game-overs and no frustrating trial-and-error like many do. Studying how a different genre handled that kind of gameplay, while making it very accessible and entertaining, was a good learning experience.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (WIP): I started this one, more for fun than research, but haven’t finished it yet. Beautiful game. As others have noted, it’s like playing a Pixar movie.

OneShot (Not Started Yet): Ran out of time. 😒 Next month. Really looking forward to this one.

All in all, I took 10 pages of notes. Things I noticed, liked, disliked, wanted to think about.

Prototype

On June 20, I began work on an actual prototype (“Prototype 1”). Code from my earlier Godot projects was collected, combined, and improved. The goal is to implement every important mechanic in the game. Everything the player should be able to DO in the game, the prototype should have at least ONE place where the player can do it. In a very condensed environment that's easy to test. Physics and graphics can be fine-tuned later. This prototype is all about functionality. For example:

Walk in 8 directions.

Talk to an NPC.

Choose an answer when the NPC asks a question which triggers different outcomes.

Walk to the edge of a room and appear in an adjacent room.

And overall, things have gone very well! I have a page-long checklist of everything I want to implement in this prototype, and it’s about half-done. :D

Except menus.

And except puzzles.

Puzzle mechanics aren’t added yet. I realized the mechanics I was planning did not have much synergy and were very simple. I also want to review the notes I took during research and study puzzles in general. So, back to the drawing board, for now. Puzzles are the next major step. And I think I have a pretty good idea how I want to change them.

Audio

I made a text-blip sound effect (hear it in the video above) and a placeholder “song” of 6 notes to use for testing music. Since this game’s art style is based on the Game Boy, I did some research on the Game Boy’s sound capabilities.

It has four “instruments” that can play sounds simultaneously, aka “channels”:

Channel 1 and 2: Pulse Channel. Each can emit a quadrangular wave

Channel 3: “Wave” channel with user-definable waveform

Channel 4: A noise wave (think static)

Channel 3 is the most fascinating imo. You can define your own timbre of the sound to be played. If you ever played a Game Boy game that had a unique-sounding song that, chances are it was a custom waveform via this channel. (Also, if you ever played Mother 3, the movie theater part with the retro-sounding music did in fact use the original Game Boy audio capabilities in the Game Boy Advance, and also includes these sounds.)

There is software that can reproduce the capabilities described above in order to create Game Boy-sounding music on a PC. I’d like to experiment with that in the coming weeks. The Game Boy was capable of some really good music. Limiting my scope to its capabilities for the same of my own sanity, plus the flexibility of that wave channel to create custom sounds, seems like it can produce some really nice results, which is very appealing to me.

Graphics

I made a font! It only includes English letters, for now, but it works! I used it in the “Save Pointy” art earlier this week and the prototype video above, and intend to use it for everything going forward.

Closing

And that’s June! Have a nice July, everyone!

[just-a-carrot]

Hey! Just a heads up, I'm sending this to multiple people, since I wanna get as many different viewpoints on this as I can. I hope this doesn't bother you. Also, this is pretty long.

So, I have a question about gamedev, but more on the marketing/presence side.

Most gamedevs I know, even hobbyist ones, keep their accounts relatively professional. Sure, they may shitpost here and there, but it's mostly in relation to their games, the gamedev sphere in general, or very general inoffensive stuff. And, most importantly, I've seldom seen my favorite gamedevs (or any of my favorite internet personalities, for that matter) comment on random videos unrelated to what type of content they usually post.

All of my social media accounts are quite unprofessional. I've also had them for a long time, so there are a few things on my digital footprint that I'd rather people not see. I also, for lack of a better way of explaining, watch and read random shit and like to leave comments on it sometimes.

I feel like, I were to become a gamedev, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd have to treat my internet presence as its own balancing act, rather than a place for me to express myself unabashedly. I know this is working under the assumption that I would get big and that people would give a damn about me, but there is always the off chance of that happening. Of a random game you make suddenly blowing up because it hit the algorithm just right. So it's better to be prepared. And even if I don't get that big boom in popularity, I still plan to at least make games consistently enough to build a community of their own. Nothing like, huge, but I really enjoy the idea of people enjoying my work and sharing that enjoyment with others. But I don't want that to cross over into my personal life!

I know that's not an impossible feat, but I feel like it kind of destroys the purpose of the internet for me. To me, it's always been a safe space where I could express myself and easily connect with people with similar viewpoints, but I am now coming to odds with this concept as I consider how I want to become a gamedev.

There's also the side note that I don't wanna rebrand. At least not completely. I don't mind cleaning up my accounts or deleting some old ones, but I've grown very attached to being "Quamai". I can't imagine myself having any other online identity, even if there are some cringy moments attached to it.

So, do you have any advice for my situation? How did you personally go about your own online image, and what do you think is the best course of action?

Thank you in advance!

oh gosh what a question ldkjfadl

hmmmm

putting this under a cut because it got long and rambly lakdfa

for me personally i don't think i've ever made that many "right" choices when it comes to how i handle my online presence in game dev, it was mostly just me doing what seemed like the right thing to do at the time. it's also changed a lot all throughout my time as a dev

tho i guess the main thing is that i did create a whole new game dev online identity, so to speak, when i first got into game dev. this wasn't really due to any purposeful thought put into it though and was more just because 1) i didn't really have much online identity anyway at the time and 2) in the beginning i was trying to be more "professional" LOL

when i released easter, i did it without any presence at all. i had no accounts or anything. i literally just finished the game and threw it up on itch and gamejolt using the new studio name i had come up with based on an inside work joke. it wasn't until i started to get a few people talking about the game or linking to it/making vids that i was like hmmm i should have a twitter maybe LOL so like a week later i made a twitter. but i barely posted on it, it was just responding to other people. a year later when i released the 2.0 update i also made a few posts. then thought i might start using it more so started posting just a few random updates of new stuff i was trying out/working on (this was when i made my first couple of posts about early OW stuff)

but then when i shifted out of game dev again for a while, i abandoned it

it wasn't until august of 2021 that i began actively using my account again to post production updates for work on ow. but back then i was a lot more "emotionless" for lack of a better word. like i approached it in a more no-nonsense way than i do today. i also never got that much response from it either, usually lucky to get like 2 or 3 likes on stuff 🤣 over the course of that first year or so though i would change a lot in how i handled my online stuff, acting much more like myself, interacting a lot more with people, and getting increasingly more unhinged(???) LOL perhaps because i'd begun to see that being "super professional" when i'm just a little random person making a game all by myself there's no reason to be so stiff (and it's just much more fun and genuine to not be afraid to be myself and be a bit silly). over this time was also when i'd shift away from using my studio name and just taking the "carrot" identity. because i realized i didn't like people thinking about me as an impersonal studio and wanted to just be me, carrot, interacting with people, making games, and getting unhinged about my chars and stories

is this the right way to do it???? i have no idea. but perhaps since i never have any aspirations of grandeur and don't plan to be any kind of business, it's fine for me. and while it's true that i don't like to post, reblog, interact with, content unrelated to my games or other VN stuff, that's mostly because i don't want to annoy people who i know only follow me for game stuff (i worry about annoying people a lot, actually, it might be one of the core foundations for how i handle myself online LMAO). i don't have any other presence online though. once i started my game dev stuff, carrot became me, and it's all that's out there. so it's not like i need to "separate" anything. but also i'm not a very avid user of social media in general so it's not like i have an active desire to have different accounts so i can tweet about or comment on other stuff lakdjfasd i'm an old socially anxious duck who gets mentally exhausted just scrolling my feed. i don't need to spend any more time online than i already do with my game dev stuff hahaha. i do know some other devs though for instance that have private accounts on twitter just for their friends and more personal thoughts. so that's always an option too

as for what you should do in your own situation with your own online presence, i'm not really sure, as it all comes down to what you want. for me, since i didn't have much presence anyway, and because i wanted my game dev stuff to be its own thing, it made sense for me to create a new presence just for game dev (that eventually evolved into my entire self LKDJFAS). so it's hard for me to say what would be the best course of action if you already have an online presence that forms a core part of your identity that you don't want to lose. it also depends on what you want to eventually do with your games and if you see yourself really wanting to pursue it actively and make it a big part of your life. most devs that i know do have "game dev" presences for lack of a better word, where if you go to their accounts, it's just for game dev. or they create studios and studio accounts. i think no matter what you decide to do, even if you keep the name the same, it would probably be best to at least keep your game dev stuff separate, because people could potentially be put off from following an account for games but then their feed gets filled with a lot of non-game stuff from you that they don't care about

no matter what you decide to do though, i recommend being yourself no matter what. whether you keep with your same identity or craft a new game dev only one, still do what feels right for you on that account and be yourself and have fun with it!! game dev can already be such an isolating and hard experience, so creating a space where you can be silly and have fun with other devs and fun with your chars and ideas can really help so much to give you motivation and just enjoy your time creating games!!!

(sorry if this was a complete ramble that didn't even still fully answer the question; i can only speak from my own personal experiences that i went through after all and i don't really have any good or professional answers since i also have no idea what i'm doing most of the time 🤣)

[beesbeesbees]

Various things

I’ve once again been falling into the trap of feeling like I need to have something meaningful to say to update here. Like some kind of grand moral to my parables. But there’s just... not always going to be that. My life and my attempts to work on a hobby project are not like, a series of stories for consumption.

So it might be kind of boring but I wanted to talk a bit about what I’ve been doing.

The aforementioned artboard has been getting some big expansions. I added a lot more stuff and organized it.

I’ve been thinking more about what the NPCs in the game will look like. Because there will inevitably be NPCs - to interact with, buy from, etc.

Been getting closer to nailing down the art style. I have a pretty good sense of what I want the girls’ outfits to look like.

Speaking of outfits, feature creep has unfortunately hit me and I am intent on making a dress-up segment where you can dress up your girls. Not only will it give bonuses to various stats, it will help differentiate the girls from each other. And also it’s cute and fun and I want it. Princess Maker and Long Live The Queen both have cute little outfits you can have your daughter wear and I grew up with dress-up games.

Watching more coding tutorials. Struggling to fully comprehend signals and their implementation. Played around with them some more in Godot. I watched this tutorial, this one, and this one as well.

That last one is terrifying because it was saying something about signals only communicating with each other if they’re a child/parent of each other which, I didn’t know, and seems bad? Maybe I misunderstood it?? Question mark??

Something something I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it and also rewatch the video until it sinks into my head.

A lot of fleshing out little details here and there, just thinking about various logistics and nailing things down.

So here’s some things I can share.

I was having trouble kind of putting together in my head an image of what the game’s architecture would look like and how the signals would talk to each other, so I came up with this rough idea using MasterPlan (not a software you need by any means but something I had on hand which worked well for the purpose). I haven’t tried implementing the bulk of this but it helped me kind of think about it better having all of the ideas outside of my head.

When trying to figure out how it would all interconnect, I kept wanting to have something kind of like sticky notes that I could drag around and attach to each other with string like some sort of fucked up gamedev conspiracy wall. This is the second best thing, I think.

And some concept art I did for some outfits:

The colors are very not final, and the colors in the second are specifically for visual contrast.

My notes on outfit design. Basically, an emphasis on the child characters being children and not even remotely sexualizable. This might seem weirdly common-sense to write down, but unfortunately I am painfully aware that certain games in this genre in the past have been... designed, to some extent, for sexual gratification. Including, regretfully, Princess Maker 2 (one of the primary inspirations). There’s horny shit in there like your daughter being able to wear skimpy stuff, work at adult establishments once she gets older, increase her bust size, et cetera. Yeah! It’s nasty! Also the unsettlingly common tendency in newer works to sexualize young or young-looking characters, have them wearing very skimpy things, et cetera. Something something Fate Grand Order.

I abhor this (as anyone with good sense would, I’d hope) and so everything in the game is being carefully planned to discourage that as much as possible. Of course, pedophiles will exist no matter what you do, and some may even prefer the characters to look more childlike. But my goal is to make the game as anti-horny and Wholesome as possible. I’m taking the things that made me love Princess Maker 2 as a child, amplifying and remixing them, while cutting out the things that I find gross.

Some screenshots from my notes where I took a bunch of games from the same or similar genres (Tokimeki Memorial, Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side, Princess Maker 2, Cute Bite, Long Live The Queen) and wrote down their stats as well as what raises/drops them. You can see where I inserted screenshots from GameFAQS guides, lol.

I wanted to get a sense of how long it takes to increase stats, how often they’re decreased, how many stats there are, et cetera. Generally just getting a feel for what I did or didn’t like in a game and what I might like to incorporate into my own. I’m thinking 8 or 9 stats for my game so far, including that old classic, Stress. More stats can be fun, but considering we’re going to be raising 3 girls at once, the simpler the better. I might drop it even further, to something like 6 or 7 - we’ll see.

Here’s what I have down in my notes:

I’m pretty set on “Booksmarts”, “Stamina” (meant to represent physical strength), “Creativity”, and “Style”. These feel like pretty good pillars that can create a variety of diverse endings. Less certain on Fighting and Magic, though since it’s taking place in a magical universe it’d be nice to have. Affection I’m not really sure how to handle and it’s kind of a backburner thing. “Evil” would be fun, though I’m not really sure what would increase it yet. I also don’t want to copy PM2 too closely...

That’s it for this post. There’s other little things here and there. I think one of the most important things I’ve learned is to do small steps every day - and I mean REALLY small steps. If you don’t feel up to working on it, don’t, but try to think of one new idea and write it down. And inspiration and come from anywhere. I was reading a manga I liked, it had some nice classical outfits, so I took a picture and stuck it in the reference sheet.

Oh yeah, here’s that. It’s gotten fucking huge, hahaha.

[becausewerehere]

Hey, there! I thought I’d drop by with a little (long-overdue) update on Because We’re Here. I’ve just re-read the last devlog post (the, uh, February 2020 update) and oh gosh, it’s like unearthing a time capsule! I was very optimistic 2020 was going to be a productive year, wasn’t I? Uh. Whoops.

Like last time, please manage your expectations! :’D This isn’t a very big update at all, and it’s more talking about the process rather than the game itself - but I thought I’d check in and just let you handful of faithful devlog-checkers know that the project’s still ticking along, haha.

Act III Development Update!

Act III is taking a bit longer than I’d hoped back in February, but it’s coming along! I've been trying not to burn myself out like I did with Act II (those last few months before publishing it were rough! And took me a good few months to recover ^^;) but also, it’s obviously been a bit difficult to stay focused and energetic throughout most of this year, and I’ve had a couple of points where confidence wasn’t really in ample supply either. What a year. Hoo boy. (This probably isn’t a very professional tone of voice for a project update, but that’s fine, I’ve long since accepted what kind of shambolic operation I’m running here and I’m sure you have too. xD)

The good news is: I’ve been on a bit of a roll for the past couple of months! I'm feeling much more clearheaded while I write, and I’m starting to get back to the level of gamedev optimism and energy I had in February. Which feels great! Obviously all those other factors mean that Act III isn't going to be released in 2020 as I’d hoped, but I doubt many of you are expecting that at this point, hah. :') However, I really want to get it out in springtime. As any of you familiar with the project's development will know, I'm effectively working as a solo dev and timetables may change, so that's very far from a guarantee, but that's what I'm currently aiming for! So watch this space!

(I will also mention that, with the work that’s been done so far, Act IV is unliiiikely to take a full year after Act III, and it's very plausible that that'll also be out in 2021 (albeit late 2021). But again, I really can't talk timings with any degree of certainty just yet!)

Anyway, the main thing I wanted to say today is: I'm actually going to start this devlog up again in the new year, and open with a proper, detailed update in earlyish 2021 -  looking more at where Act III (and IV!) are at that point. I’m aiming to have work on Act III almost complete and it sent off to my handful of beta-readers by then! But in any case, I’ll be able to give a much more concrete estimate of timings and so on.

It feels good to have broken the seal on posting again - this is me trying to slowly return to the world of Being Online. But for the most part, I'm staying true to my online nature (which is: hermit) and I’m going to keep quietly working on Act III for the rest of this year. And by January I’ll have done more of the programming and integrating the graphics, so I ought to be able to give some nice screenshots, and I’ll actually tell you a little bit about the act. And maybe launch the Steam page shortly after!! Exciting.

Though in the meantime, I might try and be around a little more than I have been. I was thinking of posting some more fanart up on here - I’ve had some really nice pieces come in on Discord and Twitter since Act II was released, and I’d like to keep them collected here with the rest! ;D

The Leftfield Collection

A really cool thing that happened (that I teased in the February update but ended up going a bit quiet on social media and didn’t get around to properly announcing on here) is Because We’re Here got accepted into the avant-garde Leftfield Collection showcase for the EGX Rezzed expo in London! It was supposed to be in March, but obviously fate had other ideas. Although BWH was briefly in a digital Rezzed showcase that got featured on the Steam front page and I got a couple hundred extra wishlists from it, so that was a really nice boost!

There was a neat article written about the collection on Rock Paper Shotgun here! I was very excited to go and exhibit there because I had such fun at AdventureX last November, so it was quite a disappointment that Rezzed couldn’t go ahead! But, I mean... by that point, it was definitely for the better. So, c’est la vie. In any case, I was super honoured to have had BWH selected for it, and it was really lovely to be included on a lineup with so many cool and interesting games! ^^

Alrighty, Then.

So that’s the Act III update. Thank you all for your patience! It's (QUITE OBVIOUSLY) been a strange old year. I know that a good amount of my setbacks this year have been shared by basically everyone in the world, ha. And I’m aware of how lucky I am that 'unproductivity and nerves' is roughly the extent of my 2020 troubles, so I can’t really complain. I hope you're all doing okay with everything the year has thrown at us so far.

I’ve had fewer people getting in touch and asking me about Act III than I did about Act II, and I think that’s a combination of ‘pandemic; delays understandable’ and hopefully ‘Act II left people a lot more sated than Act I’ ahaha. But fear not... Act III is definitely still on its way. And things are going well! I hope you have a good rest of the year, and I’ll update you properly (and if things have gone to plan, maybe start on a longer run-up to release this time around) next year! :D 

~~~~~~

Because We’re Here is a bittersweet otome visual novel in an unforgiving WW1-inspired setting.

Acts I + II are out now on itch.io and Steam!

You can also support Studio Elfriede on Ko-Fi! You’ll help towards the cost of the new Act III artwork, and get in the Special Thanks if you’re not already~

[rawliverandcigarettes]

So...

...I finished Halfway Home’s Draft 2.

Yaaaaay.

177 058 words this time, 21 chapters and 150 scenes.

No but actually, I’m proud! So let’s throw a celebratory gif because it’s worth one (also, have some free spooks along the way).

More deep tired thoughts under the cut!

This was a wild ride. Not as wild as Draft 1 (because nothing beats the thrill of a first draft imo), but... a Lot happened this past year as I rewrote my Mass Effect fanfiction about one Sad And Revolted Space Frog who discovers the joys and pains of sociopolitics, capitalism, militarism, and other things in -ism. I cut more than 100k words from Draft 1 to Draft 2 due to a very involved structural rework before I even started to redraft, and honestly? I think it paid off.

Nobody will be surprised when I say my 2020 wasn’t super easy, because who on this poor sweet Earth could claim to have had an easy 2020. I had worse! But given that’s not a contest at all, this is a thought of little comfort. Work has been rough on me this year, for reasons unrelated to quarantine and related to gamedev instead. Living abroad away from friends and family was also a challenge, and so was dealing with the whole thing while recovering from burnout. To be perfectly frank, I don’t have a ton of memories of what my drafting process looked like... at all. I don’t exactly recall how I managed to draft a full rewrite without being able to go out much. So I’ll stop, because brainfog and memory jamble is spooky and I don’t like it!

I’m looking forward to reread what I did, which I won’t do before the second part of november. I need my break, y’all. But from what I already reread in the past, I think I’ve done a solid job on the structure and most character arcs. The prose is more inconsistent; sometimes I had great streaks, sometimes it’s shaky and melodramatic (often is). But overall, I think the intense re-outline post Draft 1 did most of the heavy lifting structure-wise, which was the point of a rewrite. So good! Mission accomplished!

The point is: it’s done. Draft 2, that is.

What’s next now?

As I already said, first I rest. Then I will enter a revision phase that I’ve planned from december to late march of 2021. This will encompass some last tiny little developmental rewrites, mostly the first two chapters (Again, I know. I know.) and a couple of scenes here and there, as well as my first go at line edits! These changes will be cemented into a Draft 3, that will then be sent out to beta readers ( o_o ). After I collect Opinions, I will assess and do one last round of edits that will become Draft 4, also known as the final draft. That will be published.

a t  l a s t.

So yeah, the road ahead is long and windy still, but most of the journey is behind me. While I do experience project fatigue for obvious reasons, I do believe I’m closing on the threshold of quality I want. Structurally, I think it’s ~mostly~ there, and I surprised myself with the quality of dialogue scenes. I’m a bit more worried about the prose. The line edit work intimidates me right now, but I’m also looking forward to dive into it and polish what’s already been done. I’ve never done that level of nitpicking on my writing before, and I’m curious to see how far I can push the craft.

Getting there folks! Getting there!

I’m wishing you all the best spooks and all the courage and juice needed for your creative endeavors in these trying times. We’ll manage, somehow we will. <3

[yeahyeahbaby]

GameDev Log # 1

General updates on my game dev journey~  Wow. It’s really been a minute. And by minute I mean a month. I low key forgot about this blog. But I promise I’ve been putting in that work!!!!! 😤 Unfortunately I couldn’t meet my one month development + release goal for the Bunny Teeth game. TBH ya girl really doesn’t know when she’ll be done. Implementing the rhythm game functionality has proven to be a lot more difficult than I originally expected. I was following a great tutorial series on youtube on how to make a rhythm game in Unity, but a few videos in I realized that I would have to manually map the note game objects in the scene. Although I could totally do this, I just think its tedious and time consuming. I only planned to have 3 songs with this game but what if I wanted to expand it? What about when I want to make a full length rhythm game in the future? I mean, I don’t have any plans as of yet to do that but bottom line, I figured that there had to be a better way to implement this. I wanted to generate note game objects in the scene based on the midi track being used. After googling for a while I found a few different tools that I could use. I wanted something that was free and landed on Midi Took Kit - the free version. Can’t lie, the first few days trying to use this tool were frustrating. Not because of the quality of the tool but because I’m still very uncomfortable with C#. The tool comes with a lot of documentation, but once again, because I don’t know C# very well, I was just confused AF. I didn’t know what properties and methods were available to me and how to really do anything. For those first few days I was LITERALLY just trying to log to the console when a midi event occurred. 

Funny enough, I started having a breakthrough in my understanding because I paired with another developer at work and he gave me a quick rundown on typescript. Once I realized that if I just imported the classes in my file correctly I could use autocomplete in VS Code to see what properties were available to me I started to make some shit happen! Also I started looking through the package to find examples in the demo and tests. I was finally able to log the midi events to the console! Fast forwarding a little bit, right now I’m stuck because I can’t figure out how to map the game objects in the scene relative to each other, if that makes sense.  I had to take a break from game dev stuff for a week-ish. Work was getting CRAZY! I’ve been so busy and by the time I got off I was just too tired to even think. Because of this I was feeling pretty down.  But we’re back!  I haven’t started working on the bunny game just yet, I was still a little emotionally scarred from my troubles lol I planned to start learning 3D modeling again this month (August) but that was when I thought I would be done with my game. Because I still felt that I needed a longer break from the game I started 3D modeling again. 

Right now I’m doing Mort Mort’s Blender series and I love it! Over a year ago, I did the very very long doughnut tutorial that everyone is familiar with and this year when I decided to get back into game dev, I started the 2.8 version of the tutorial but I just couldn’t finish. Its just so long and I don’t even want to make photorealistic stuff so the tutorial isn’t even interesting to me. That’s why I really love Mort Mort’s series. Its 4 videos, all pretty short. The last one is the longest being 45~ mins. I really like the art style he’s demonstrating and he explains things very well, just enough depth to get you going. I’m almost done with the last video, I plan to finish this weekend. 

So that’s where I’m at right now. This weekend I want to finish up this Blender tutorial and get back to working on my game. I really would like to release the game this month or the beginning of September but we’ll see. What’s most important to me is that I get back into the habit of working a little bit everyday. Even if its just 30 mins, that time will add up. 

[rpgmgames]

August’s Featured Game: Shroom Soup

DEVELOPER(S): Shroomy ENGINE: RPGMaker 2000 GENRE: Adventure, RPG, Psychological Horror WARNINGS: listed here (may contain spoilers) SUMMARY: You play as Arnika, a gloomy teenage girl. Perpetually tired, you live off excessive sleep, lime juice, and instant soup. You look into the vortex forming in your cup of said soup, this time mushroom flavour. Next thing you know, you are in an entirely different world where everything, from buildings to people, is being devoured by fungi. It seems like you have no choice but to walk on... Your journey involves exploration, puzzle-solving and battles.

Download the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Hello! I am Shroomy, and I still haven't figured out which one of my nicknames I should go by, but I use "uboaappears" for art and "toxic shroom swamp" for games. I have a bachelor's degree in biology since two weeks ago and like everything surreal, gory and gay. Nice to meet you. I have been in the community since about 2012, and that might be also when I first wanted to make a game - a Yume Nikki fangame, because YN brought me here. I messed around with the engine for a long time, and certain characters and ideas gradually mutated to whatever this is now.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Shroomy: It's about making a cup of instant soup and accidentally going on a very weird adventure. ...Okay, actually, it's a coming-of-age story with an emphasis on mental health, relationships, and toxic flesh-eating mushrooms. The idea came to me when I made myself an instant soup once. For some reason, I thought it would be cool if there was a portal into another world in the cup. That's how it started. (I was also into drawing mushrooms growing on people at the time, so that naturally made its way into my Awesome Game Idea.)

How long have you been working on your project? *Shroomy: ...A while. It's enough to say that I graduated from both high school and university with it. But to be honest, I didn't really do much with it until about two years ago. Right now I tend to think of the time before that as trial and error, playing around with ideas and learning to use the engine. I feel a little self-conscious about how long it took me to come up with a coherent story, but that might be a good thing. Since this is quite a personal game, it helped to grow as a person. I think it made for a more interesting and mature work than it would be otherwise.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Shroomy: I feel like I take little bits of inspirations from everything. But I'd say Yume Nikki and Re:Kinder were the biggest game influences. Maybe Hello Charlotte, too - the minimalistic world gave me some food for thought :> Design-wise, I think my current (character) style is a lovechild of Danganronpa, Killing Stalking and something else I am not sure about. Maybe just me.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Shroomy: I think the biggest challenges for me have always been centered around the lack of free time, the lack of energy or the lack of motivation. Some people manage to juggle life and gamedev, but I get exhausted really easily, so it's hard. This is an ongoing issue. I tend to try and free up a day just for relaxing and creative stuff. I've also started using the Forest app for focusing on things, and sometimes use it for gamedev as well. At the beginning I found it frustrating that my skills (in pixel art, for example) didn't match what I wanted to create. That one was improved by - you guessed it - making a lot of pixel art. Making and scrapping a bunch of tilesets for the game. It's as simple as practice and learning how to get the most out of your art program. (It also helps me to make a detailed sketch of a map before I start working, or at least brainstorm the main elements of it.) Another challenge was the incoherence of the story. Originally I wanted to make something really vague and open to interpretation, but... that actually didn't give me enough material to work with. In the end, I played around with the characters, tried to write them some backstories that no one was going to see, and somehow ended up with an actual plot..? Shocking, I know! And the final thing is putting gameplay into the game. To be honest, the puzzles in the demo were pretty random on my side, I just thought them up on the spot. In subsequent locations I tried to make them relevant to the game's themes and/or hint towards the story.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Shroomy: For one thing, the current project has a story and a plan, even if the story is presented in quite an obfuscated way. The original concept was not much more than an idea of a shroomy world. The characters also have a lot more depth and pain to them than they used to. The locations have changed a lot as well, to the point where most of the original ones don't exist anymore.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Shroomy: My team is mostly just me. At the beginning it was a young and naive me, and now we have a slightly older and better-at-art me. After I started my dev blog, I was contacted by Tommuel, who now helps me with sound design and music. And my old friend Robin has made a few NPC sprites for me, and might give a hand with more pixel art in the future. They're not really involved with other aspects of development, but I really appreciate their help anyway! I prefer to keep most of this game to myself - it feels too personal to share, plus I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Shroomy: I would say it's putting my work out there and sharing it with the world. I'm also really proud of how much I've grown as an artist and writer through developing this. I got attached to this story and this world, with all of its fun, weird and sad details. It's also been really fun, amazing even, to get to know other devs and make friends through being part of this interesting and creative community. I owe some wonderful friendships to it.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Shroomy: I definitely play other games for inspiration, it helps me a lot. Though I try not to make things "just like" other games, but make it a transformative learning experience instead.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Shroomy: I feel like I have been through stages. At first I was Arnika, then Lina, now I feel like I'm turning into Arthur. I guess I put my traits into all of them. (Does that mean that Bernard is the next stage? I'm /so/ ready to transcend humanity, finally learn how to do maths and become everyone's favourite character.)

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Shroomy: I think the biggest mistake I made was jumping straight into making a game without thinking it through or considering the scope. In the end, the lack of planning set me back a lot. Admittedly, I was young and excitable, so I guess it was a learning experience? I didn't really know how to write stories or plan long-term projects, but over time, I somehow built up those skills. I think it's good to have a clear-ish idea of what you want to make before you start, and maybe start with something small. (So basically, do the opposite of what I did.)

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Shroomy: Aha. Actually, yes. I have accidentally started writing two sequels already. They will be small games focusing on other characters' perspectives (as opposed to Arnika). I'm not actually touching them yet though, only making some notes and writing scripts. Perhaps by the time the first game is released I'll have enough material to comfortably work on them.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Shroomy: Fan reaction, I think? To be honest, I'm not really sure. I think I'll just be enjoying the incredible dopamine rush after finally setting this child of mine free to explore the world and infect people's brains with all the shroomy memes it contains. (Also will probably get off the internet for about a week from the anxiety.) Then maybe being free to work on other things, indeed. And posting spoilery concept art >:D

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Shroomy: I am a little worried about the reception of the game's subject matter. If you looked at the list of warnings, you might have an idea what I mean. Sometimes it feels dangerous to explore certain themes in your stories, because people misinterpret depicting something bad as promoting it, for example. But that's why that list exists. I'm just going to let people know straight away that I explore dark themes in this project and I'm not going to hold back on how I do it. Creativity should flow freely, I think. (I am also a little worried about the ratio of my free time vs. gamedev time and /when/ I will finally be able to release it, but... Thankfully, I'm the one in charge of that.)

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Shroomy: Take some time to make a plan for your project, start small, fail faster, and aim for something finished before you aim for perfect. Make a system for organising your files. Back up often, and on a different drive/cloud than your game is on, preferably several. Most of all, make something you would love to play! And don't be too hard on yourself.

Question from last month's featured dev @blackcrystalsrpg: What are your game dev pet peeves?? *Shroomy: I dislike the fact that sometimes I want to have made a game more than I want to make a game, but to have made a game you need to go and make the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But there's no escape from fate, so... go, go and make that game happen!

We mods would like to thank Shroomy for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Shroom Soup if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[draco-omega]

10 months ago, I decided to make a game.

10 months later, I have a bunch of art and a bunch of interface code and a whole pile of design notes, and not much game.

This is my story.

(Now in bullet point form so that I can stop redrafting it >.>)

I have a treatment-resistant anxiety disorder which significantly interferes with my ability to work - both on my own projects and other things that might be called 'gainful employment'. (I still feel some shame at admitting this so bluntly, even though I feel ideologically that there should be no more shame in this than any physical impairment that resulted in the same. Fuck mental health stigma, defining self-worth by employment is toxic capitalist dogma, etc, etc.)

In part because of this, I had been effectively unemployed and living with my mother for a number of years. (I still did my best to hammer out projects, but nothing, y'know, actually PAID anything... >.>)

Then in late 2017, my mother died (somewhat unexpectedly) of cancer, which left me with no home (we'd been sharing an apartment that she had been covering most of the rent on) and literally zero income. Obviously grief and upheaval did not help with any of my prior difficulties managing employment, either.

After some debate, I decided to combine the savings I had left over from my last stint as a network administrator with a (modest) inheritance from my mother and try to actually make a living at making games. This is something I had always theoretically wanted to do, but never put actual money on the line for. (Okay, in a perfect world, I'd happily give all my work away for free and live on some minimum guaranteed income, but we do not yet live in such a world).

One of my historically biggest gamedev weaknesses was a lack of artistic ability, so this seemed a perfect thing to put money towards. I could hire an artist, which would not only allow me to make a more commercially appealing product, but would also free me up to focus on the mechanical and writing aspects of gamedev, which are the areas I most wanted to be working on and also consider myself best at. (Any followers that remember my work on ToK may recall me complaining there about how it seemed I spent my time on nothing but graphics? >.>

This was shortly after Touhou fangames had been given the official blessing to be sold on Steam, and some had already achieved great success there, so this seemed like a good way to create some instant appeal and interest in my game, while working with a franchise that I already loved to death and had written hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction for (eg: This or that or this other thing)

And so Chronicle of False History was born!

...and yet I somehow still spent most of my time working on art. You see, having never worked with an actual artist before, I underestimated a number of things:

1) I underestimated how much work it would be to find a suitable artist in the first place (though at least this part is done)

2) I gravely underestimated how much of my time would be spent on 'art direction' or 'project management' or whatever you want to call it.

Every sprite that is created, even for canonical character designs, requires making a large number of decisions regarding:

What attack and spell poses it will have (and how to cover the broadest range of signature abilities with just two 'frames', for budget reasons)

Which of enumerable (and sometimes mutually-exclusive) costume details from canon (and fanon) should be selected (and do you have any idea just how many variations there are on things as straightforward as 'the hilt of Miko's sword'?)

Gathering a pile of reference images that clearly detail every element of the character (and action poses) to be drawn (which is also harder than you might think; a lot of art is sufficiently suggestive of details to view without actually being a good reference to reproduce and anything that isn't exactly what I'm looking for risks my artist misunderstanding my request entirely)

Designing alternate-history variants of this character in a way that can be clearly conveyed with minimal costume and color changes alone (as any significant redrawing would cost far more and the cast of the game is so large already) and doing so before the part of the game they would appear in is even written.

Gathering reference images for all of those things

Writing up a detailed description of all the decisions listed above (and often drawing actual diagrams of action poses and projectile overlays that are ambiguous to express with just words) and handing it over to my artist

Waiting a while, then getting sketches back and finding out that there is inevitably a whole pile of things that need changing (either because the artist misunderstood my request entirely - despite all that previous effort - or because an idea of mine looked far better in my own head than it does, or just the usual 'incremental improvements' to something that is on the right track but not quite there - like a sort of collaborative redrafting.)

Spending hours poking at these sketches in an image editor, testing how well individual details resolve at in-game size, how well the action frames snap together, and how I feel about each questionable element. This often extends to (crudely) adjusting and readjusting the position and angle of individual limbs and eyebrows and projectiles that feel 'off' so that I can figure out what I would like her to do with them (and whether it's even worth making her take the effort to do anything with them at all)

Finally, summarizing that feedback into a detailed list of change requests (often with new diagrams to clarify my words) and repeating the last two steps over and over and over again.

Like, she does great work - don't get me wrong. I'm very pleased with the end results and this is just an inevitable part of the process of making something professional. But it does also mean that my original idea that paying an artist would free me up to work on things other than art has been... laughable in retrospect, to say the very least. In fact, it's very possible that a greater percentage of my dev time is spent on art-related tasks than on previous projects where I was doing all the art myself - I just get better art for my trouble (and money....)

This is especially true given that:

3) I underestimated just how much art work I would still need to do completely independently of her

Raven is doing character sprites. These are arguably the most individually important art content in the game, and certainly the ones that give it the most screenshot appeal, but that has left me to do everything else. Which has included:

Figuring out how to make battle backgrounds that passably match the art style of the game (since commissioning enough of these to fill all the locations needed would absolutely blow my budget)

Designing the entire look and feel of the combat screen to mesh well with Raven's sprites while also being something I am personally capable of making (using only cheap/free resources)

Creating all tweened animations and particle effects

Designing every single little UI element that exists in the game:

Elemental symbols

Dialogue boxes

Spellcard icons (and the entire menu design that requires them in the first place)

Combat action menus

Icons to indicate spellcard usability

Spellcard tooltips

Targeting overlays

A turn order bar

Spellcard availability reminders

Font choice for damage/healing numbers, spellcard names,

More cursors that you can shake a stick at

Lots more stuff, I'm sure

And even the completed sprites I get from Raven still need multiple hours of processing each to split them into component parts with sufficient information to re-composite and animate in-game. (If you've ever wondered why my screenshots seem to only involve Nazrin while I've already shown sprites for multiple other characters, this is why)

It never ends!!

...which is a fact that has been extremely draining. Like, it is probably difficult to overstate just how demoralizing it has been to pay this much money and work this hard and long and still somehow be mostly doing art (or visual-related coding) when I naively thought this project would offer some freedom from this after the endless, endless hours I spent doing this for ToK.

And it has also revealed a very tangible (and extremely stressful and troubling) fact about this game's development:

I am going to run out of money before I am remotely close to having a saleable product

When I first laid out plans for this project, I ballparked a modest but realistic budget for the artwork. I chose an art style that could provide pleasing visuals for a very large cast of characters at a cost-effective rate (for a game, at least). I deliberately limited my cast size based upon the agreed-upon cost per character with my artist (and have repeatedly held myself back from various fun ideas because I felt I simply could not afford to make a habit of such things). I studied sales figures for comparable games to aim for a target that had a reasonable probability of sufficient return (or at least breaking even). Game development is always a gamble, of course, but I felt (and still feel) that I made a sensible budget call and it was an amount I was fully able to pay.

But in all this, I neglected to factor in what has been, by far, my most costly development expense: remaining alive.

You see, at the rate my artist is able to produce work, the cost of retaining her is utterly dwarfed by such banal things as food and rent and not freezing to death in the winter. I live about as modest a lifestyle as possible - a one-room apartment, no car, no eating out, nothing in the way of luxuries (I don't even own a cell phone) - but that is still awfully expensive when you have no income and no prospect of it in the immediate future either.

It's a vicious cycle. The less work I get done, the more I feel future financial pressures breathing down my neck, the less work I'm able to get done (due to stress and general demoralization), the more I feel future financial pressures, etc, etc, etc.

And there's a logistical problem even outside of my own stress and anxiety and being damnably human in my need for actual rest: I've spent nearly 10 months working together with my artist and thus have a pretty good sense of how fast she's able to get character art done. And unless something changes dramatically, the time required for her to finish the art assets for the game will be several years longer than I will have any savings left to pay for them - because, as it turns out, hiring an artist is actually a tiny expense compared to merely continuing to exist.

I... don't really have a good answer for this problem and I've spent a lot of time consumed by it at this point. I have faith that Chronicle of False History can be a great game... eventually. But that does no one any good if I can't stay afloat long enough to make it. I've considered pivoting to another smaller-scope game project in the meantime, in the hopes of generating some modest influx of cash that could be used to fund the rest of CoFH's development, but there are a whole slew of reasons this is dicey (not least of which is that small-scope projects have a tendency to not be nearly as small as one anticipates...)

I've also thought about exploring Patreon, but like... I'm fully aware that I don't currently produce nearly enough interesting content for people to just want to throw money at. Tantalizing glimpses of it, perhaps. The promise that in the future I might. But what do I really have to show for this at the moment?

And so, here I am, exhausted by a marathon of work I did not properly anticipate and without the tangible reward I'd expected to have by this point (not a finished game, by any means, but like... much more of one than I actually have). And every month that passes by in which I get less done on my game than anticipated is yet more cash bleeding out of my bank account, like I'm trapped on a badly leaking boat with no shore in sight. I need a rest from all these stressors (and some more personal ones not described here), but when time spent not working has itself become a stressor these days, where can I even find it?

...wow, this sure sounded upbeat, huh?

In any case, I still care a lot about CoFH and have no intention of stopping work on it. I just... need to figure out some way to allow myself to continue to do so without this enormous capitalist behemoth crushing me beneath it.

(I had originally intended to provide more of an overview of the useful work accomplished over these past 10 months here, with mockups showing the evolution of the game's visual design, but clearly that goes into a future post at this point).

[vortex-parallax]

How to Fight Procrastination in Gamedev: Advice from an Expert Procrastinator

Last winter I wrote a post about motivation on my Russian dev blog. I decided to translate it now, since I think it was pretty good. Also, it's about time I make some devhelp content for this blog, rather than just reblogging from other people.

I have a lot of trouble with procrastination and unmotivation when it comes to gam mak, as someone with ADHD and a busy university schedule as well. These are things I personally do to try and fight it. 

✍️ Advice from a superhuman gamedev friend: try to identify the problem and act accordingly. Don't know what to do with Location X? Brainstorm it, sketch out some ideas, make concept art. No time/energy/motivation to make graphics right now? You can go write out dialogues or event something. Don't like Location Y, or maybe it seems redundant? Go ahead and delete it without mercy. :D

✍️ Make a list of everything you need to do. The more detailed, the better - at least for me. Subheadings help. You won't jump on top of a mountain in one push, but little steps will slowly bring you to the top c: Here’s a piece of my demo checklist. Crossing things out has never felt so good.

✍️ Another thing that is useful to do is to write out your progress. It may be hard to estimate, but useful to track how you're doing! I can't seem to do an overall estimate for my game, so I just wrote it out by level like this. (Also 2/5 is 40%, I know. I’m bad at maths, okay?)

✍️ Get inspired! Play some other games; watch, read or listen to something new. Some people prefer to take everything from their own head (which isn't even quite true), but I am more inclined to absorbing as much information as possible. I live off inspiration from all kinds of things. 

✍️ Share your work! Getting feedback from players is incredibly motivating. All those likes, comments, impressions, fanart even... It makes me really happy and makes me want to keep going, because it's not just for me anymore, someone actually enjoys it! (So for fans: don't be afraid to give feedback to authors, feed us~)  ✍️ Oversharing isn't good, however. It's a psychological thing - if you talk about your plans too much, your brain may feel like they have already been fulfilled and you don't need to do much else. So I am careful about what I share. That's why I don't post too much about my game's plot besides the demo.

✍️ Take a break! Seriously, just put it aside for a day. Don't think about your project, do anything you want. It might clear your mind and bring the inspiration back.

✍️ Watch a cute anime about Overcoming Hardships and Achieving Goals, or just listen to some music from it... Yes, this is the final point of my post because it really does help me. My favourites for this are Love Live! and Little Witch Academia. You might have something else that motivates you. (Please do share, or give recs for similar cute things as well :>)

And this concludes my advice. Feel free to add to this post if there's anything that helps you!

[chaoticcrustacean]

So... 2022's almost over. What have I done this year? I mean, not too much, I don't think, especially in terms of art. Don't think I've made many actual proper pieces of art, really. More just sketches and character designs. But in terms of gamedev, I've made a few games on the game design course I'm doing that I'm pretty proud of!

Colour Dash (Small platformer game level)

For this project I was tasked with making a platformer game that incorporates colour into its game mechanics somehow, and I think I did a fairly good job. I did spend a bit too long making certain mechanics work, and some things didn't quite turn out how I'd planned, but overall I think this little project turned out pretty well!

Hand of the Spider

For this project I wanted to make a game that was less reflex-focused and fast paced than my previous projects. I'd also been playing a lot of Slay the Spire at the time of making this, so I decided to make a deckbuilder. Turns out that's a lot harder than I'd thought, and it took a while to get all of the mechanics working, not to mention making all of the animations for every single enemy. Realized why I generally work in pixel art—animation, especially at higher resolutions, is time consuming and difficult and I don't entirely enjoy it. Still, that was a learning experience, and now I know to avoid doing lots of animations in future projects. Altogether, I think this game turned out pretty well, especially given how complex making it turned out to be.

Unity

Other Stuff

Outside of college, I also tried out a few other game engines, not making any finished games in them but just trying to figure out how they work and how to make games in them.

I found this site called MicroStudio which I decided to try to make a small game in. Compared to Construct 3 and GameMaker Studio which I'm used to, this engine is a little more complicated in some aspects, as I had to actually tell it to draw every sprite on the screen, and there wasn't built-in 'objects' for all the characters, so I had to create these objects in the code. It was a bit more complicated than I was used to, but I think I sort of got the hang of it, even if I didn't finish the project (mostly due to running out of ideas for enemies and wave formations and stuff.) It also made the concept of coding in pico-8, which I think is similar in a lot of these regards, a lot less intimidating, and I experimented with that a little more. Again, I didn't actually finish anything though.

I also made a tiny little 'game' in Bitsy, which I did finish, though I'm pretty sure I made it at like 2am when I was like super tired so I'm not sure how good it is? Still, it's something.

As well as this, I decided to take part in a game jam! Due to laptop troubles I didn't end up having as much time to work on it as I'd wanted to, but I still decided to work on it and finish it. It's not much, but it's nice to finish a project, however small. I think next year I'll try to take part in at least one game jam, as I think it can be a worthwhile experience.

Don't think too much else has happened this year. Developed my characters some more, fleshed out their personalities, though I don't really have much to show that just yet. Maybe in the future I'll make some small games with some of my characters.

Oh shit its past midnight, better wrap this up uhh, happy new year everyone! I hope the new year is great for you all!

[lizziebobizzie]

Psst. Hey. Friend. Wanna stare at some amateur art?

Oh. Hey. I didn’t see you there. because this is a text post and I have no idea if anyone’s actually reading it  I said I’d post more art “Tomorrow” in my last post, but I think I technically posted at like 4 or something, so this might still qualify as “Tomorrow”? I dunno. I’ve still got some art though, and after this and maybe one more art dump straight from my hard drive, I can start posting art as I make it. That would be kinda cool! Anyway, Art below. Click “Keep reading” to stare at it.

This beautiful space belongs to Delbrot Baggins.

I play a decent amount of DnD, so it was inevitable that I’d draw some of it. This shack belongs to a Halfling I’d play. Crotchety old man that wanted to kill Poseidon. Good times. My lord was he fun to play.

Another DnD Character. Her name is Diana.

I don’t think I ever have, or ever will finish this one. Diana never got a lot of time in the limelight, so at least I have this to remember the game by. Could have drawn the hand better, though. I might be interested in redoing this piece later, too!

I just redrew this old picture of mine today!

This beautiful prick’s name is Lenny Smiles. I played him in another DnD sort of game called “Fate”. He’s the kind of jerk that smokes, drinks, and can’t stop himself from speaking his mind. He’s genuinely a horrible person, but he’s somehow so lovable. He’s a chronic liar that always makes good on a promise. 

...I miss him.

This is one of the oldest pictures I’ve drawn.

Another character, Vahn Sicrihel. A retired lawyer turned law professor, stern and skeptical. Official, buisiness-y type of person.This was my first real attempt at digital art, and I put a special focus on all the wrinkles of the cloth. If I could do it again, I’d finally fix that face, as well as the hands and general perspective here. It looks wrong enough that the character looks flat.

I consider this piece to be my best landscape drawn in photoshop.

I made it a while ago and if I could, I’d completely redraw the clouds and clean up the linework. I’d also focus on color a bit more to clean up the reflections. I love the palette though, and I feel like the subdued colors really make this piece feel like water coloring. It’s pretty, but it could use a loving touch.

Do you watch ProJared? I do! He’s one of my favorite youtubers!

He was playing a lot of “GameDev Tycoon” a little while ago, and I kinda sorta latched on to “Circuit Break”, which is the name of one of his first releases in the game. Boy that’s confusing to type. I really wanted to draw a cyberpunk dystopia for cover art, and I considered trying to share it with Jared himself, but I feel that that’s a bit naive... I never really put it anywhere because I never really liked the result and I had a really hard time cleaning it up properly, but looking back I think it’s a little pretty for what it is. If I did it now, I’d focus on a strong sketch before carefully planning color. I’d also want a few reference pictures for this one, so that maybe I could put it on reddit. That would be nice.

I don’t even know what this hot mess is.

I think I just wanted to make something spooky one day. I don’t really have a story behind this one, to be honest. Part of me wants to redo this so I can carefully plan the color and do proper shading. This could have been so great if it wasn’t so, so unfinished. It looks so visibly amateur. I can gladly say I’ve grown a lot since then, both as an artist and as a person.

That’s all for now!

I don’t have much more art to dump, so I have a feeling the next thing I post will be recent art. I hope so, I think that would be pretty neat.whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope you enjoyed this retrospective on my art as much as I loved sharing it. It’s very comforting to see this art somewhere other than my hard drive, and I like finally being able to talk about it. I’ve come a long way, and I still have a very, very long way to go. The best thing I can do is keep pushing forward and hoping for the best. 

I hope you have an absolutely splendid, fantastic, enchanting, wonderful day. Even if it means crying a bit.

[loftyloftyloftyloftylofty]

Indie GameDev: ThoughtDump

So, I’ve had this project for awhile. It’s really, really ambitious! I’ve spent a lot of time on Cat Story.

Progress continues every day. I am happy with the leaps and bounds that I have been making toward milestones, and I expect the coming months to yield even more fantastic results!

I wanted to take an opportunity this evening to share some thoughts about what it means to me to be working on this project. If that kind of stuff interests you, check out the Keep Reading link below. ♥

Hey everyone!

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of things on my dashboard that have caught my attention.

Many of the projects that I’ve been following for a long time have been finished and released! 

Many more of the projects that I am following are making excellent strides toward having a release date, and I’m seeing a renewed interest from many people in making sure that you take care of yourself to avoid burnout.

All of these things are awesome. I’m proud of all of you!

I’ve also seen several projects die before they are complete. 

It’s hard for me to see posts like that roll through my dashboard. I like to think that I’m rooting for a lot of these projects and it feels bad to be reminded that not all projects get finished.

There’s some silver lining to each of these projects ending though. I’m glad that most of the time, the projects end on a note of the developers having learned more about what they want to do and how to do it better next time. 

I am glad that so many of the devs I follow take advantage of the learning opportunity and jump right back into the fray with new projects and new ideas.

You know who you are. Hang in there - I’m still rooting for you!

I feel that the kind of progress I am making on Cat Story is evolving. 

With each day that goes by and with each little bit of progress that I grind out, it feels like the colossal scope that I set for myself is becoming more manageable.

I feel that I have a better grasp on the remaining goals that I want to achieve with Cat Story’s programming. Building an entire engine from scratch took a very long time, but iteration and persistence have blossomed into a toolbox that I am intimately familiar with and understand how to leverage effectively. It’s not perfect, but I am very happy with it so far!

It’s difficult to succinctly describe how important to me it is that I am happy with the code I’ve created for Cat Story.

I notice details in other video games that I play that can only be explained by corner-cutting. I’m not going to get too deep into a discussion about cutting corners in the video game industry because it’s orthogonal to the point I want to briefly focus on: I hold myself to a standard of not allowing myself to implement systems that I personally feel are lazy alternatives to “doing it right”.

There are a lot of reasons that developers might not always do their very best. Deadlines happen - people need to get paid. Mismanagement happens - tech debt accumulates. Design requirements change and so does the market landscape.

Since I’m designing, coding, and refining Cat Story by myself in my spare time, I’m not subject to a lot of the constraints that would often necessitate corner-cutting for the sake of finishing the project.

I’m sure that a lot of you have seen my constant backtracking over the last four years- I’ve redrafted most of the systems in Cat Story’s engine multiple times. My source code is littered with namespaces like PhysicsTry2, EnemyRegistryV3, MapEditorMK2- the list goes on.

I know that there are still areas where I can improve Cat Story’s programming, and I’m sure that in the future I’ll have opportunities to explore each of those pressure points one by one. I have time to work with right now, and I want to leverage that time to make something that I’m proud of- inside and out.

Each little step of progress brings me closer to that coveted status of having a release date.

I’m envious! It’s awesome to see so many of these folks finishing their projects and it motivates me to keep pushing forward on my own project. 

I am definitely looking forward to completing Cat Story. I have a strong desire to close this chapter of my game development career and move on to a new project, and I also have a strong desire to follow through and complete my current project. 

My hope is that Cat Story does very well when it launches. I’m banking on the idea that I will generate enough momentum from Cat Story to begin a new project with enough money to pay a team! 

I feel confident in my vision and would prefer that my next project is something that I’m designing and guiding, instead of doing all the heavy lifting and individual implementation on my own.

The possibility exists that Cat Story won’t give me the momentum that I want, and if that ends up being the case, that’s fine too. I’ll still have an awesome game in my portfolio and I’m perfectly capable of building more momentum solo.

I’ll cross the solo bridge if I have to, but for now, my plan going forward is to do the best job I possibly can with Cat Story, launch the game when it’s ready, take a much-needed vacation, then begin a new project alongside good company to really take my game development dreams to the next level.

It’s midnight. I’ve got work in the morning, so I’m going to end this post with a list of rules and notes that I’ve built for myself during the four years I’ve been working on Cat Story:

Hang in there. Try to make a little progress every day. This gamedev stuff is stressful and complicated.  Whether you’re building your own engine or not, gamedev is a demanding place to be and it requires dedication and effort.

Take care of yourself. A break once in awhile is okay. Your brain is the most expensive organ in your body to upkeep. Try to eat regularly. Stay hydrated. Get sleep. 

Keep your eyes on the goal. Little steps. Steady progress is better than burning out because you’re rushing yourself.

Surround yourself with people that motivate and support you.  Cut deadweight out of your life. 

Leverage the money you’ve got to create momentum for yourself. Spend your money on things that build momentum. Invest in your future.  Get an Acorns account.

Never forget these three people. Study them. Satoru Iwata - Blue Ocean Strategy Bruce Lee - Striking Thoughts Jackie Chan

Understand your next goal. What tools do you need to transition into your next composition?

...

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you ♥