Magic Dog

       I don't know. This is the folly of all game designers on this level I presume. Our problem is, we don't just want to "make a game". We could do that. We could probably do it "well". The biggest hurdle is that we want to make a perfect game. Not an absolutely perfect game, but we are gunning for that 10/10 awesome game. Not only that but it's a game we both want to play.     Now I am caught in a depression rut, because I don't know what we are doing. I am aimless right now. Hopefully this is just a tiny snag.

My Brother sidewinded me with another game idea. It's frustrating to say the least. I say "frustrating", but I enjoy every minute of game design so I wasn't mad til after the fact. The problem is, we are a two man team, with the possibility to expand to a 4 man team. We only have so much ability between the two of us. We have to choose a realistic goal. But I also want to make a game that I want to play. And we have come to a disagreement. I really enjoyed the idea of our original game idea, but I fear my brother might not feel comfortable doing it or may have hit some snags that discouraged him. I am unsure. He is smart and has great analytical abilities. He will come up with something. But for now. All of my game design energy is expended and put on hold until we have a destination.

  A doodle.      Yes. I've been busy working on music. I don't know where I am going with it. But I was trying to think in my head, what a start to a great adventure should be. The theme to "The Fool", the beginning. If Steve asks for what I've got, I'll show him, or maybe I should wait til its complete.      I was playing around with some Kirby soundfonts from Kirby: 64 , just to get a feel for something of that era. But ultimately, I decided instead that the soundtrack to this game isn't going to emulate anything, and will truely be my own. I looked back at everything I've already written in my life, and knew I need to grab a hold of the spacey orchestral stuff I was really into writing. It's so - me.  Imagine cats, in space, on snyths: have an orchestra accompaniment. Yep, that's my music. So I think. For all I know, this soundtrack is going to drive me insane. ***      Something you need to know. When I was 13 years old. I promi...

Most days it's hard to wake up. For starts. I sleep on an air mattress, one that has finally popped and has given me the worst night sleep ever. I am in the transition between mattresses since the move out from my old place. My old Mattress was from ye old college days. But today I might be on a quest to fix this air mattress until I get the money saved up for a great mattress. Sure, I could get a El Cheapo crap mattress, but I won't be able to do anything with the crap mattress once I finally get my GOOD mattress. But besides the mattress situation. I admin a lot of different groups. So when I wake up, I check every chat and do my duty. After that, I go to my social medias, starting with Bluesky, but then I end up on the dreaded Facebook. Facebook sucks. I hate Facebook. All it ever does is enrage me. All it ever does is feed me low quality content and advertisements. I am better than this. Needless to say, my morning routine consumes an entire hour or two from my life every ...

  A rug? An empty room?     We just keep stabbing at the dark until we find purchase. One step at a time, one little small doodle at a time. Soon enough we'll make enough things that it will start to look like something. It's like making a clay bowl, but we have to create the clay out of a bunch of atoms and stick them together in the right way. Once we get enough clay, we can form that vase.     I also started to write a magazine artical for the tabletop roleplaying game "Deadlands", as just a means to excerise my mind and do some writting. It will go on the next episode which is quarterly.

I have spent the past 2 days watching tutorials. Drawing a little bit of things like ropes, nets, a rug, and stone bricks. Nothing too crazy. Letting my Tendonitis heal up. I got sick on Thurs night into Friday from food poisoning. It was caused by soured chip dip I had left out for too long. Thankfully unlike food poisoning I have had in the past, this food poisoning was smooth sailing and only lasted for a few hours. I recovered quickly and was able to keep water down. I am going to the zoo today with friends. Another chance to heal up.

I suffer from Tendonitis. This developed back in highschool from Marching Band and Drumline. Occasionally, it flares up and I cannot continue working until the pain heals. Yup. I indeed have been drawing that much... The only things that help are stretches and rest. Today I may choose to hit up some thrift stores or talk to people on discord. Nothing that requires my wrist. I can take ibuprofen to help with the pain but my wrist doesn't get rest and that's not good. Ice and Heat helps the recovery process. I'll likely be back pen in hand tomorrow. Funny enough. There is a interesting equalibrium where my pain becomes negligible and my wrist control is turned onto maximum. I have zero understanding as to why that is, but I am able to draw better once I have a little bit of wrist pain.

I've done large projects before. I built a fursuit, created the game Rocket Brigade: https://www.rocketbrigade.com , and another being the creation of Machina and Magic:  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/367981/machina-and-magic-core-rulebook . One of the biggest tips I can give is "stab in the dark". It means take action even if you cannot see what you are hitting. If you get purchase, then try to strike again in the same place. You don't know where you are aiming when a project gets so big. The size of you project will blind you. So you must try to attempt aiming in correct directions until you finally do. This can be an annoying process, but if you frame it as "practice" or "commiting something to memory" then it is never wasted work. Reminder that motivation feeds off itself. If you are able to make motivation happen, you can keep things rolling. Part of every battle is keeping motivation afloat. The more motivation you have, the more s...

     Ultimately at the end of the day, I don't know shit.      Did I render this right in Unreal 5? The short answer is... no.     Anyways... What am I doing? Yeah? Right? - I think the big thing is, I haven't figured out a way to build everything from scratch. One of my biggest gripes about the unreal 5 engine, is the fact I cannot start with a completely blank project. It comes with a sun, baked lighting, some cool other effects, and a bunch of default settings I am not going to use. I spend HOURS wondering why everything looked extremely high contrast and saturated - which I found out was caused by the camera deciding to auto expose itself. If this was the real world, AWESOME, I would love a camera that corrected lighting and made it easier to see. But for a video game? No, this isn't going to work. Well, it's not going to work for me . Did Paper Mario have this intense of lighting? No. So, me trying to delete things without making the fun...

The thing about writing stories, especially with another writer, is that all of the early ideas are "cringe" until they aren't. One of the big things, is me reaching out to my own life an experiences to build these NPCs. I think if I focus more on the quality of the story, moreso than how epic the story is, I will have a better time. Needless to say, my brother is probably groaning every time I tell him I have story ideas. Or maybe he isn't? Lol.

       I had just found out today, that Ernie Gygax had died on the 4th of this month.      While I didn't know Ernie personally, Ernie did bless Machina and Magic the days of its release. He only ever had positive things to say to me and my work, for what little he said to me on Twitter during his very brief time there. He was someone from the old guard, being the first mage ever in Dungeons and Dragons.      Sometimes "big people" are in your life at "little times". I hope someday, if I end up being one of those "big people", that I also have positive interactions with people that the remember.

  Yes... that's a big room.      So anyways. This is what I got done today. The celing, I don't like. It need support beams, the "truces" if you will. But seeing things in a large sort of way is inspiring, to say the least. I wish my bother was home and awake, because I have story ideas to pitch to him, and I need him to listen.

Ah yes... the Bakery. "The Paycheck". That's just not nice to say. Cookies. With marshmellows. Our "hot choco cookies" from winter time. Real talk. I love the bakery. It's an awesome place. I don't think I could work for anyone else right now. They love me there. I don't stress out about making mistakes anymore. I come in, do my duty, and feel pretty okay about myself. The work stopped being so hard despite the workload increasing. We are all getting paid better over time, and our new store is doing wondeful (so I am told). I don't want to leave this place (yet). I like it here. You may have noticed in previous blog posts that I was unsure about the bakery, and that it gave me a lot of stress. But most of the stress in my life melted away from my workplace. (Though different stress came in and was mostly resolved). And while it is true that the Bakery is NOT my destiny, it keeps me alive, and keeps me physically active. My job is one ...

I moved out... I officially moved to a new place, January 1st. I moved in with a friend of mine. Turns out my old place was literally making me sick, from black mold, sewage, smoke, other drug fumes, and just general terrible things. The fallout between me and my landlord was horrible, tragic, and I lost a friend over it. Not only that but I lost a creative connection too. This should have never happened. The apartment was terrible. My new living situation is a great improvement. I am actually saving some money and I have more time to work on game stuff. Also, the office is greatly improved but my personal space is not. I am also not a huge fan of all the yelling between roommates, not directed at me, but over petty shit. It's annoying. And as someone who works in a bakery during the night time. I need my day time hours to not be so loud. But also... I am breathing! Isn't that wild? Turns out I was struggling to breathe most of my time at the old apartment (I wonder why). Cough...

Guess what! WE are back to working on game stuff. What Happened? The short answer is: Life. The long answer is me, the artist decided to do a bunch of commissions for other people over the course of 2024 and had no time to dedicate to geme assets. It was somewhat popular, and made me some money. It helped me increase my art skills as well. What's going on now? Turns out my brother (the lead programmer and co-game designer and story writer) is back in action, and is motivated. However, we have decided to work on a completely different game. I will explain that game more once I have the time to explain it. This motivated me, and now I am back to doing art. We also had the chance to sit down and work on story stuff. This was good and helpful in ways outside of just writing for this game. But heck, are the early parts of story writing so embarrassing. Nothing like seeing your ideas you thought were pretty decent get shot down for good logical reasons. Makes you feel dumb. But it truel...