june 29 to july 12

Shit, we already in the middle of July?

So these two weeks have been dedicated to relentless debugging of the sequencing tools, writing, concept art and learning new tricks. I also discovered why I’m more productive when I don’t post here: For some reason I think I’ll be judged if I write about my discoveries whenever I use “work hours” to learn things seemingly unrelated to current projects, which is really funny when put into perspective.

The way my brain works to stay productive is to never get bored with work, and a big part of it is learning stuff I have zero experience on, lay the foundations for future projects, or simply prototype random shit. So I guess I should talk more about that?

In any case things have been steady even if a little slow. Considering we have three and a half out of six chapters already written for Project D and an almost complete outline for N1rvanna I’d say tons of progress have been made in the past couple months, and I should keep reminding myself of that.

It’s really hard to truly see where you are if you don’t check the road traveled.

Newprogrammer had a funny thing happen where he was coding a feature that was already included in the Tween package we got for Unity. Then once implemented it proceeded to crash the whole engine until he found an undocumented option that needed to be turned on. He asked for a long weekend and had to give it to the poor guy. I know that feel too well.

Also took time aside to review and plan some merch stuff on the way. Hopefully it sells cause it’s been its own little nightmare to put together. And honestly, we could have gone for the lazy route of just selling print on demand stuff on an already established website but merch production is something I needed to tackle sooner or later.

Been playing around a lot with n1rvanna’s interface too. It’s sort of a thing I take personally since a lotta people disagree with the direction it’s going but I’d be lying if I said that I give a shit. I’m not making Va11halla again. It’s gonna be its own thing and part of it is looking different. Not saying there’s no merit in telling me it looks bad, just don’t ask me to make it look more like the previous game or I’ll eat you alive.

Still a mystery when the sequencing tools in Project D will be useable but I swear it’s looking great already. If Newprogrammer wasn’t doing that shit with really wonky spanish for the dialogues I’d post a webm (spanish ruins the dialogue window because the current font doesn’t support ñ or tildes. I’ll prolly need to add them myself).

Current tasks for this week include churning out more N1rvanna dialogues.

For this one I’m working in a non-linear fashion. For example, I make a list of the scenes I need depending on the story, then I write them in whatever order I want based on my current mood.

It sounds a bit chaotic, especially since I write Project D in a very linear process when it comes to the scripts themselves (not the chapter order). But N1rvanna is a lot more about the little moments rather than “moment to moment” conversations like in Va11halla. It’s a game that it’s gonna pride itself on being written in little bubbles; capsules in time that capture the lives of these characters in all kinds of situations, so I don’t think any other writing method will work to achieve this. It’s imperative that I focus on these little bubbles and then find ways to connect them seamlessly or else they won’t feel right.

Aside from this I also need to find a 3d artist for a secret thing, draw more characters and keep writing. I really don’t feel like working environments or doing anything visual so it’s probably gonna be just writing for the next four days.

Let’s see if I feel comfy enough to return to daily posts now. I’m not stressed or anyhing, just in case it sounds like that. I just enjoy identifying issues and writing them down, then check the results. Makes for effective quality of life improvements.