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What are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
Work, as per the norm. Gym after work on M-W-F. Despite my failure of a gym session on Friday, I'm not giving up. Try to remember to do my physio stretches and foam rolling before lifting weights (since my issues seem to be related to a tight IT band on my left leg).
Maybe start on my project again, or work on some graphics. If not that, then play some Rise to Ruins or Forager. Watch my shows that are now in full swing again: Arrow, The Flash, Riverdale.
Partner flew down to the US for some vacay with one of her close friends. They travel somewhere every year, so she's gone until the 30th.
There are no failures: only things that didn't work out as planned. That's alright. I thought I was gonna be a translator – and I'm making a web app.
Not a thing of the same magnitude, but I think you get my meaning.
Keep up the physical: it aids the mental.
What's the project?
Thanks, FanFicGuy :) my mental needs a lot of aid.
The last project I was working on, the one I want to keep working on, is this. It's a platform-adventure game. I'm debating on either it being a Mario-like or a Mega Man-like, but I've yet to firmly decide. I have the functionality for both written, mostly, but there's still some fine tuning to do.
It seems your struggle is with following definitions. Ditch that, and make it what you most feel like. Whether it's mechanically similar to one classic game or another is irrelevant, as long as it's playable and the player may enjoy it. :)
Best wishes. I hope it pans out for you, whatever you decide.
It's easier to describe what the idea(s) are similar to, than to type out how each mechanic works lol at least until I have an actual game as opposed to a concept/prototype. Which is basically all it is at this point.
But you are correct, what it is similar to is irrelevant, as long as I make it how I want to, and it is enjoyable.
Thanks :D
My thinking is that maybe you're painting yourself into a corner by defining it as "XYZ-like". Many artists experience this. They have a mental model they enjoyed, and then they make something in its image, and they're left unsatisfied because while the model hit some of the critical points, it didn't hit all of them, and they don't understand why until later.
If XYZ is the experience you're looking to recreate, have fun with it. If it isn't, don't let it constrain your design.
I don't particularly feel that I'm in a corner at all, though. I just have a lot going on with life: newly attending the gym, spending a lot of time with my partner, and work.
My preferred form of arts are writing and drawing, but I feel that the former is better than the latter. I have thousands of scenarios, thoughts, worlds, and ideas all floating around in my head. If I didn't put up my fence to say "this is xyz", like I have done in the past, I tend to sink and get away. I need order to balance my chaos, rather than chaos to balance my order, as I have enough chaos as it is hahaha.
That's fair. I didn't mean to assume you're doing poorly, somehow: just a warning.
Like I said before: best wishes with the game – and with the rest of it. :)
Hahaha no, do not worry. I didn't view your comments as being with ill-intent. Just merely continuing the discourse, trying to explain my side within context to what you said.
Thanks Guy! The conversation means a lot, it really does. :)
I recently got a very nice new grill that I've been saving up for. I went to the store and stocked up on meats and other things to try out.
So...grilling a lot of stuff?
I love cooking and I'm very excited to have a whole new method of cooking open up to me (I've never owned a grill as an adult).
Please let us know, I've thought about grilling, but it's always seemed so dificult to me!
Of course it's been raining here all week so I haven't done much. I did make some veggies on the grill that came out fantastic. But that's not exactly something I couldn't have done inside...
My fridge smells amazing since I've got 4 different sets of meat marinating/sitting in a rub though!
I'd love to take a break from being a caregiver, but I can't. I can only be there and do what's needed, which is exhausting and emotionally draining.
The one thing giving me some hope is a family member who's coming to our house within the next couple of days to help out, relieving my overbearing father of his caretaking duties so he can finally leave.
As much as I'd like a break I have too much stuff I want to get done. I've started real development on my game and I'm kinda slogging through the art portions but I am getting a real working prototype done for once so it's exciting. I finally finished mixing/mastering a bands EP that I've been working on/off for a few months now which is a huge weight off my shoulders. I am heading to their "album" release show in the city Friday then throwing a house show/party with live art Saturday. I will probably spend some time setting up for that as we are expecting way more people than we usually do at our house gigs. I've also started running in the mornings instead of when I get home from work and it has really changed my attitude during work, although I do get a lot more tired around 2 PM than usual.
What's the game?
Don't want to speak to much to it, since I'm so early in dev, but my goal is an action adventure, Majoras Mask-lite mixed with Pathologic 2. I always loved the central hub town in MM so I'm taking that along with the time-sensative task keeping aspect of both games. I also mention both those titles because I love how the world changes around you as the game progresses as well as the darker themes lying beneath the surface. Besides that I haven't gotten too much into any story/music/world building/etc stuff because I very much want the core combat system to be as fun as possible before I even touch anything else. I'm planning on doing it all myself so I expect it to take a pretty good amount of time. I may hire an artist eventually though since that is my only weakness, for now I'm stuck with crappy pixel art.
Best of luck. If you ever wanna discuss plot, characters, worldbuilding etc. – the story part of it – feel free to PM me.
There's a cinema near where my parents live that'd been rebuilt and has recently opened. It's all modern and shiny. My father and I are going to see a film and check the cinema out in the process. The film's Gemini Man, which I thought is a decent sci-fi for the purpose: not too dramatic and thoughtful (like, say, Joker would be), and with an okay budget and SFX. My father is not a complicated man: he might not enjoy Joker the same way I would – and I'd like to be able to be on the same level with him for this.
Gonna keep working on Intergrid, the web outliner in the vein of Indigrid. It's at the stage where, if you don't close the tab, you can keep taking notes as well as you could in Indigrid, except online. (Well, in browser locally, but still, it's very exciting for me.) At this pace, I'll get it working entirely online by December, so that you could open the website, take your notes, close the tab, and return to the notes you'd taken just as you left them.
Also gonna keep designing the RPG system behind Frontiers. Right now, I'm thinking about the combat system – in particular, if there's anything I can make it that's not been explored well before. I was impressed by how John Wick Hex – the in-franchise game about the famed assassin – handles action. You can see an earlier version of the system between gratuitous shots of Wick kicking ass in the announcement trailer.
Instead of being turn-based, it offers you a small set of actions – each taking time to execute – and tracks that time for both John and his adversaries. As you spend a second and a half hitting your close-by enemy, another might be taking aim at you – or even firing from afar while you're busy in melee range. I'd like to explore implementing something similar without restricting the breadth of actions a tabletop RPG character may take – or overwhelming the player with a large amount of calculations.
Still looking for a good domain name for the website. Here's hoping it comes this week.
Not at all. Digital RPGs have been employing "tactical pause" lately to help you plan out your otherwise-real-time battle. Dragon Age was probably not the first one to do it, but it's the first one I remember seeing this feature in. Pretty sure Pillars of Eternity has it, as well.
Granted, it would still be difficult to control 8 characters and their familiars all at once.
You could experiment with the settings of the combat system. One thing you could check is the 2/2 split. Split party and opponents into two parts each. (If you're a party of one, your hero occupies both parts. Same for opponents.) Out of the four resulting parts, the one with the highest Initiative/Dexterity/Agility/Speed stat acts first. Their second part then necessarily goes third. (So, if enemy acts first, your party's highest-Initiative part acts after them. Then enemy's lower-Initiative, then party's.) All characters in a part act at the same time.
Needs playtesting, of course. It, too, is a middle ground between real-time ("I'm the swiftest so of course I reach the enemy and attack quicker") and turn-based (because it lets you control the flow of the battle with your heavy-hitters from behind).
Heh, it definitely wasn't the first. Tactical pause in real-time combat oriented cRPGs goes all the way back to at least the 90s. The first game I can remember having it was Baldur's Gate (1998) but it undoubtedly predates even that.
Project time? SV + GSXR front end! Glad to see there are more motorcyclists around.