Today was a day of writing. I’m a bit stuck in some places as it seems like I wrote myself into a corner over something really stupid, so I’m considering changing a couple things. Time will tell if they are big things.

Last week I spent a couple days just working on environments and level layouts, the the rest was spent doing a second draft for chapter 4 of Project D and writing what’s left of chapter 5. I finished chapter 4’s second draft in roughly two days and it came out pretty good. We’ll start putting that one together this week inside the game providing newprogrammer feels better health-wise.

With that second revision and chapter 5 well on its way towards completion, I feel like Project D is about to complete a big milestone. We set out to do six chapters and so far we have 1, 3, 4 and soon 5. It’s possible we cram an extra one in there but it depends on the resources and writing needs. It could also all get compressed into a single stand alone story if it’s too big to make in what’s left of our self-imposed deadline. Gonna be interesting to see what actually makes it, but I’m fine if a lot ends up not being used since the experience is very much priceless and ideas are never truly lost.

This week the most important tasks are:

• Finishing chapter 5
• Start putting together chapter 4 inside the engine
• Write more n1rvanna customers (literally finished one today so it’s looking good)

At one point I’ll have to start scheduling a bunch of these and go all gas no brakes, but until then I’ll keep working like I’ve been doing so far. Just taking my time to get a feel for every task, get stuff done one by one, etc.

Sometimes it feels as if no progress is being made but that’s natural even when I’m busting my ass on these projects. Just gotta hang in there some more before it can get speedy again.

• Sequencing tool in project D is approaching mimum viable product. Would be ready if it wasn’t because we forgot to add an extra feature but after a call we came to a really comfy solution that I hope to see working this week.
• Did more debugging of tools. They are surprisingly robust so far! I’m really happy with how things are going
• Need a tool to automatically set up NPC’s
• More progress on writing, N1rvanna getting closer by the day. Need an extra hand here but I’ll search once I’m happy with the whole enchilada.
• hit the books to learn best practices when making 3d games (underrated thing a lotta amateurs should do)
• Work on merch is aaaaalmost done except for one last item that requires writing. Shop design getting there too. Gonna be really cool :o)

There’s probably a lot more I don’t remember, which is why i shouldn’t do this weekly lol.

Been writing scenes in little 3 by 5 cards and N1rvanna is becoming this beautiful thing that gets me very excited. The game is all about little moments and I’m glad I can get a solid preview of these on paper without strictly seeing it play out as a video game yet. Once I come up with a story I’m truly 100% happy with I’ll begin to transfer all of this to digital and into the game engine. I want the drink mixing to carry a ridiculous weight so it’s gonna be a huge challenge to get that right as well. Very excited though, despite the long road ahead.

I have to mention that I still have no idea what I’m doing and the writing of this game could completely suck so don’t get excited. However, I have faith in my own taste and if I like it then surely it will resonate with others bigly.

edit: It looks as if the writing is in a super early stage, but reality is that there’s a lot done, just full of things I don’t 100% vibe with and I don’t work on shit unless I 100% vibe with it at the time.

Newprogrammer is knee deep writing documentation so I can use the sequencing tools properly without bugging him every three seconds. So while he does that I’ll focus some more on writing.

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.