Shame, and such

Oh boy, it has been a spell, hasn't it? Such an extended time with no updates on my personal project causes the part of my brain which produces shame to light up like a Vegas billboard. But I'm going to push on, and hope that the part of my brain that controls the "ah, fuck it" response can maintain the balance.

So, what have I been up to? Here are a couple updates:

Story

The hardest part to really provide any updates on, but time-consuming nonetheless. I've created so many Google docs, some of which I dump a lot of words into. I then delete many of the words, sometimes replacing them with new words. Some of those Google docs I then archive, reopen weeks later and think, "well this isn't ALL bad, but it sure isn't all GOOD". It's a fun process of wearing myself down until I feel like all the notes I'm trying to hit are touched on. 

It's kind of like drawing. Say you want to draw a face, you know all the parts you need to draw. A nose, a mouth, at least one eye. And you think you know what those things look like, but your hand fails to reproduce it exactly. So you and your ego look at your creation and say, well this is a big turd, isn't it? And therefore, we are a turd. The logic is air tight.

Anyway, I currently have one Google doc that seems like it will be what I roll with, so that's good!

Engine

I am not a programmer. I've dabbled, I know what a bool is—a funny word, is what it is! So I had been using an in-development engine that produced the look I wanted with a lot of the work already done. However, as I started to pin down the things I wanted to do, I realized the limitations of this engine. Ultimately it was too difficult for me to create some pretty basic scenarios.

So I spent some time looking into other options and landed on Smile Game Builder. This past week was golden week here in Japan, so I took the time to experiment with it and move over some of my assets. And the results are promising! Frustration giving way to a sense of "okay, I can do this, and it's easy". But switching engines is a setback. I'd already made numerous maps and some of my sprite sheets can't be carried over 1:1. But hey, whataya gonna do? Draw a lot of small dots all over again, apparently.

So that's where things are! Thanks for reading. I should have an updated truck model to post soonish.