Long time no see. This site is 2 years old now, isn't it?
I didn't update this place for a multitude of reasons, but mainly, because of a general lack of motivation. This month has been the worst this year. I want it to end. I was walking through a wrong path, I still am now. I always will.
Since the last time I wrote here, I have hardly made any progress project-wise, and I made no progress as a person at all. I won't promise anything about my projects next year. I'm not saying they're taking a back seat, but I definitely need to improve as a human being first and foremost.
I've been slowly killing myself, I can't let that continue. I can't make shit if I am dead. I need to get rid of this lifestyle.
On the interpersonal side, I need to learn to say NO and FUCK OFF and not be afraid to disappoint others. This last part is very important, because it would have avoided so many problems. I need to stop being a coward. It leads to connecting with people in unhealthy ways, even if no one sees it that way.
I am a coward, scared of causing the smallest inconveniences to those closest to me. Thus, I fail to set up boundaries at all, and that becomes a major problem. I am a paranoid person, it all makes me feel like I am a fool to others, even worse, like I'm an easy target. And I want that feeling to stop. I don't need anyone to tell me “that's not how it is,” and call it a day, because that's also part of the problem, it gets me nowhere. I need to stop it with my hands.
So, next year, I'll try to find a better self. One that will allow himself to do things my current self never allowed himself to do. Physical changes will give way to psychological changes. Psychological changes will give way to physical changes. I need a small spark to start the engine that was stopped during the pandemic.
Sorry for the delayed response.
I understand now, it's something I'll need to acquire with time and consciously keep track of. I guess I can try to find a technique or something to help me keep consistency for each character.
And don't worry, you're not being rude, I need criticism to improve so I'll always encourage it.
Happy new year, everyone!
The month passed so fast, quarantine ended yet time is still going as fast, I can't believe we're past the first half of the year... Time is... Well, I'd like to elaborate but sometimes I believe that it's better to save some of these musings and put it in my games or some other work.
Thinking about time reminds me that my birthday very near and I hate that day so much, I don't believe I deserve a day for myself. I dislike being in the spotlight, I know I should be grateful for that, but it's also something that, if it becomes too explosive, it drains a lot out of me, I would like to talk more about this sometime. I don't belong under the spotlight or rather, my body does not.
Let's just make it about videogames though, I love videogames. I remember two specific birthdays, when I was still a kid, where I spent the entire event playing games. One time I specifically asked my birthday to be celebrated in this place where they had a console with super smash, and that game was the best thing in the world for me at that time. I had this big place all for me with those playground things with ball pits yet all I did from the moment I arrived to the when I had to leave was play smash. A few years later, around 2008, they connected internet on my computer for the first time in years, the very same day as my birthday, people came to my house but I spent the night in my room downloading and playing several MMOs I found on the internet, until sunrise. Ah, when videogames weren't grey...
Unlike time, development of my game is going slow, maybe my fault, maybe not, real life work is shit. I don't have anything new or remarkable to show here that I haven't shown in twitter, but I am aiming for some kind of 'vertical slice' right now, because I need something to show to people. I'm finishing some stuff in the town regarding the NPCs and then I'll make the rest of the world out of blocks and assets I have already made, and then I'll see where I am going from there. I want people to know what this game is really like before I even ask them for help.
Thank you for taking the time to give feedback! The first part is definitely changed, not so much the second part.
It is true that the second part could be a little too unintentionally videogamey in contrast to the first part. I think I need to work on it with the assumption that the player is very into games (which is my target).
I'm not sure what you meant with 'wooden' but it is most likely not intentional too, I'd love if you could expand on it a little so I can have it in mind for the future.
It feels like a loooot of time has happened between the last entry and today. I was out pretty often and I went on trips two times. I am feeling better overall but I have relapses from time to time. Also I started going to the office everyday this week so I'm gonna have a little less time from now on. That sucks. I have a lot to think and not much to say.
So I will tell you one weird thing that happened during one of the trips, just to cover a little more space on this page (don't click these links if you're arachnophobic): We were coming back home and we spotted a big spider near the door. I quickly pulled out my phone and took a pic of it, with flash since it was dark. When I saw the photo, not only its eyes were shining but also its abdomen and it was a different color, and I thought it was epic and pretty so I ran inside to get the camera and take a better one, but it didn't shine on that one, seeing it on the camera's small screen so I missed a lot of the details. I thought it was weird but I quickly forgot about it.
A week later when I was looking at the camera's folder on the computer screen, I was finally able to spot what it was that was shining... Judge it by yourself. Maybe someone can tell me if it was really a few hundred eyes or it's just my imagination.
Okay, time for the status report of the post. First I wanted to show you the intro scene to the game I am trying to make. Please send me feedback if you can! Especially for the dialogue, that's my weakest part I think. Send it anonymously on the main page or you can comment on neocities. I'll place the youtube thingy here:
I'm also uploading a few of the sketches I used for reference for the buildings I made so far, along with pictures of the finished thing:
Church is unfinished
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February was a dull month except for a days. I'm still having a few unwanted thoughts and my mind has been coming up with interesting stuff, but also my addictive behavior has been really bad.
I was still working on the intro scene of my game, but my PC has been working like shit for a while, I was getting a lot of BSODs and it took years to boot each time, I got so pissed I bought an SSD to install windows there. So with the fresh install it's working a lot better now.
But before formatting, I had to go through a process... I explored my whole computer because I didn't want to leave anything behind precious. I had to listen to hours of recordings I wanted to backup online first, while I explored deep inside the file system. There's a lot of gold hidden there, like logs, screenshots I accidentally took... A lot has changed since 2017 (the year I bought this PC) and those accidental keepsakes are all precious to me. The entire thing took like a week or so.
It's gonna sound too overly dramatic but I wanna share this with you, I wrote it right before formatting my old HDD: "Right now, it feels like I'm about to hit the ending on outer wilds again. I don't know why it feels likes this. It shouldn't be a big deal, this is a minuscule change, I already backupped everything I needed, yet it feels like a lot will change. Is this a sign that I hate change?"
Maybe I do hate change, but something that happened earlier in the process conditioned me to feel like that too. I accidentally deleted one of the folders I actually wanted to keep, I noticed quickly and downloaded software to recover them, but it was pretty late already. Some were recovered, but a good chunk of the pictures were damaged, it's so sad...
Something interesting occurred to me while watching the recovered folders though, this scenery of pictures, broken files and empty spots, isn't this just like human memory? I never felt this much sympathy for a computer before. These fragile digital memories are as much mine as they are theirs, and now they get to feel something similar to what time does to us humans.
A lot was lost, but also thanks to this happening I unlocked that line of thought. Still feel pretty bad about it, though. I obsess with the past more than I should, it's probably crippling at this point. Memory being imperfect is part of what makes us humans, but even if that's true, I think the past should still be protected by any means possible. We are our memories after all, they are our everything, so if they are missing or change, by definition we also are changed.
The past few weeks have been weird. I'm feeling weird. I have been uncharasteristically outgoing but also at the same time I feel more empty and hopeless. The words "I want to die" have been popping up in my head more often than usual. But also other interesting thoughts and reflections have been popping up as well, so my annotations have been busier. It might not be as bad, it might be good even. Maybe it's also giving me the drive to write this right now (by right now I mean the several windows of time this week), wish I was able to write a short story or something but at work I don't allow myself to use the phone for too long and when I'm home I'm either working on the game or playing something.
The thing I'm working on is... I don't like to claim it's going to be a thing, I don't have enough confidence yet. It has a form but it's still pretty unfinished in my mind. All the time I'm thinking "where am I going with this?" "this is not interesting or fun" "no one wants to see/hear this" "none of this makes sense + it's pretentious asf and not original" "this could've just been a text entry" "this is a waste of time" "is this really the thing you want to be doing?". I don't know if I can answer these questions. If this is ever finished, it's gonna be a flop, no one will see any meaning behind it. But it's something I want to do. I need to do this before doing anything else, that's just how I feel. It's weird because this is not a game that has been in my mind for a lot of time.
Speaking of which, let's take this opportunity to show you some of the work. I know I've said it's confidential, that's just because I did not want to "spoil" anything (not many people read these anyways, so I guess it's a Neocities Exclusive™?). I'm fighting the temptation of showing my work very often, but I don't blame me, I spend a fucking lot of time on these 3D models, probably more than I need to. I took a month on the last scene I made and it's not even finished, it still feels empty, I needed to move on to other things. So I'm posting some screenshots here so even if this thing never gets finished, there's a record of it here. Every stage is their own separate piece of art and every model in it are their own separate piece too, so you can enjoy this flower as a main dish for the time being.
So here it is, what was not shown on twitter:
Yes, whatever you're thinking about this room right now, know that it is intentional!
I have my opinions about the evolution of artificial intelligence, but I ended up using it to aid me on making this room (and I will continue using it, since I can't draw, some of it -might- be replaced in the future. I did make sure that the results from the usage are CC0 (I still can't bring myself to not care about licenses and stuff)) so I guess I'm an hypocrite? I think in it's current form it's harmless, at least the ones that generate anime girls and characters.
Originally I wanted to use pictures of cosplays for the figurines, I was able to find some pictures of cosplays on the public domain, but thing is, the character design is still copyrighted even if the picture is free to use, so I ended up using Artbreeder, it's pretty good, I'm going to use it for the character portraits but those are one of the things I might make an artist change in the future (keyword -might-, I also want to have something tangible before asking for help). I obviously touched up the figurines a little, also one of them is not from artbreeder, it was a royalty free anime pic from a website (I lost the link, sorry, but it was certainly public domain).
And for the posters, I first wanted to make my own with all the royalty free anime pics I could find, but the problem is, there are not many at all, and it would also take a lot of time to make each individual poster, then I miraculously remembered about thisanimedoesnotexist.ai and it was perfect! I also like the uncanny feeling they give, since they look so familiar until you start noticing something is wrong with them. I want to keep these, I really like them.
