another day of writing. i decided to complete all the dialogues for the chapter before proceeding to make the cutscenes (what we wrote down was the plan for each playable level, not the detailed dialogue bits). I was gonna do just the intro and then write stuff as i went along for no particular reason, but i realized that i might as well just do the whole thing and then film the stuff in order to get a better feel for every character.

writing for games is really weird, man, since there’s gameplay in between i tend to get confused about the length of the dialogues. Moreover, i might have stumbled upon a technical bottleneck with the way i do normal conversation cutscenes, so it probably requires a small rework and integrate some sort of scripting mixed in with some timeline shenanigans.

all in all pretty comfy, i managed my stress pretty well and did some exercise every hour to not sit for long periods of time. Shaking off the crunch habits has been difficult but i’ve been mostly crunch-free since november or something, and i’m pretty proud of that! i just need to keep improving.

not a whole lot to report since all i did was write dialogue so i can keep making cutscenes tomorrow. the one i was working on kinda doesn’t fit anymore since i don’t have a good pipeline for detailed traversal for cutscene models, so i’ve decided to make a lot of these cutscenes playable even if they aren’t going to feature any battles or deep exploration. I think it’s for the better, makes for a more unique experience. Yay for creative solutions to dumb limitations.

i also bought a smart watch thingie so i can keep track of my stress levels since i’m not feeling good again and i feel it’s the same thing i had last year with the anxiety stuff, so imma try to control that while i get stuff done. Call it a long term investment since controlling my health means faster and better work.

Newprogrammer finished a rudimentary enemy editor and next in the list is a weapon editor, with both in place i’ll be able to churn models like crazy and integrate them fast into the game.

Small reminder to myself: request a script for character movement that’s just character movement so it can be used during interactive cutscenes.

mostly productive day making a new environment that didn’t need much planning since it’s not playable, and the cutscene that takes place in there. It looks really funny using only temporary assets, but it makes me think about the viability of cutscenes as i’m doing them right now. I’d like to get one of those mocap suits to do em since i focus on rather mundane sequences, but we’ll see what the future holds for us. Newprogrammer made a breakthrough in the work he was doing so things are going rather smooth again.

See you all monday!

Spent the whole day tweaking and finishing how scenes and cutscenes are loading, which is something we completely forgot about. So let’s say there’s a cutscene and then we wanna load another scene that starts another cutscene, it’s that kinda problems we had no idea about starting out, but we finally came to a good solution that basically splits the elements of a cutscene in its own scene, then we load that along with the environment it takes place in. Tomorrow i should probably finish chapter selection to hook each button with their respective intros, and start doing some cutscenes with the new workflow. Multi scene editing is very comfy, but not gonna lie, it kinda made everything a mess since we knew shit about that, good thing to take into account for future games. Motivation is still shaky but i still get work done, even if small.

ughhh still stuck in a rut when it comes to motivation but it’s coming back steadily so i’m not too worried. Between last night and today i managed to write the intro to file 03, and map inside unity the scene i had already drawn beforehand, pretty happy with the layout but i need to find the sweetspot for room length, i feel most of my scenes are pretty short in traversal and outside battles i don’t know how to make them longer-yet-interesting yet. It’s also possible that i think this because i’m not the player, i’m the guy designing everything, but i’ll find out soon enough when i give this to friends once it’s functional. I also did a quick timeline event for a more deliberate exploration phase, and need a clip or an emitter that can lock the player out of sprinting so they can only walk in certain areas.

i hope i can map the rest tomorrow, since it’s only 3 or 4 more areas that aren’t very complex. Newprogrammer fixed a bug that broke everything for a couple days, so i have to playtest his commits.

It’s been a rough week, not gonna lie, suddenly losing motivation is linked to something i’m yet to discover, but it’s coming back, just gotta be careful to not force myself while i feel like this and do my best whenever the ideas start flowing.

Forgot to write yesterday! Spent most of the day gathering references for the big last scene of File 03 and drew the plans to then proceed to block it out inside the engine. Been also doing some extra research on the subject matter to better have a grasp of the dialogue I need to write.

While I have a very good idea of how each event and sequence should go, lately I’m feeling extremely unmotivated and I need to find a solution for this. Now today I should be blocking out the aforementioned scene, and write based on the ideas and research I made prior, but I’ve reached a point where I’m not seeing huge tangible progress and it’s making me a bit anxious, as if all the effort we make everyday is not seeing as many quick rewards as before.

I doubt this is all that’s wrong with my current state of mind, but it might be related. Newprogrammer is still knee deep trying to untangle how scenes are structured currently in order to better integrate asset loading between doors, and a lot of timeline and playable directors no longer want to work, which is extremely worrying. We thought we had something solid but it was shakier than expected.

A lot of thinking needs to be done here, see where we can cut corners and whatnot. I’ve said this before but I don’t wanna spend more than two years in this project, though sometimes is not even scope (I think ours is very reasonable) but something more complicated, and I’m yet to figure out what’s causing me to get all uneasy. For now I’ll be a bit more liberal with my work hours, and instead of working from 9 to 5 in a mostly uninterrupted fashion, I’ll try to spread it throughout the day in between more mundane and life-related tasks, at least for a couple days just so I can still get work done without forcing myself to produce content I’m not happy with.