ass backwards!

Hey folks! Marty here with an update about all sorts of things. But first things first, because I'm pretty sure there's a question  a lot of you will want to see answered immediately. Did we already decide what the next project will be? I can answer that with a tentative yes.

I looked at the results of the poll which Cbob put together, made some suggestions and basically left it in his hands. The reason for that is I'll revert back to just being the artist for the next project if all goes well.  I feel writing is the most important part so he gets to have the final say on this. I got his answer this morning, but it's still fresh and waiting for my approval(which I'll give). Since he's the one who  cut that proverbial Gordian knot I'll let him break the news and talk about it himself in a future update and not steal his thunder.  

I can let you know the project will initially be set up as a smaller one, but with potential to grow if so desired. We've finished a project(FET) which took us years to complete so we'd like something a bit smaller this time around. At least initially.

In the meantime, I have other stuff I want to talk about!

The side project which I started a while ago (a Teen Titans parody called 18Titans) was also added to the poll. I wasn't paying enough attention or I would've told Cbob to leave it out.  I was going to work on that regardless of the results. Surprisingly enough it got a lot of votes.

 I can't deny a feeling of happiness to see 18Titans doing so well in the poll. Though part of me suspects the biggest reason for that is simply because people have already been able to play it and now just want to see it finished first. 

So what have I been up to this month? Well I know I said I was going to take a break and I completely didn't.  In fact... been busier than ever!

Since there are still things which I want to add and change in FET, I've been working on that for one day and on 18Titans the other day for the first half of this month. 

Having that kind of variation on a daily basis was more enjoyable than I thought it would be, but also slow going and I started to realize I'd have absolutely nothing ready for this month if I kept doing that. So, I decided to focus on 18Titans instead because that had progressed the furthest.

As for FET,  so far I've added a scene which I've dubbed "Beifong Babes on the Beach" and changed (or rather added) a way to view the credits. The current way is more akin to torture. and I somehow forgot to add at least one patron in the way he preferred so that needs to be changed too. 

I'm changing FET so that if you've played through it at least once, you'll get the option to skip to the  Nagina/Spirit choice when starting a new game.  You'll get a yin/yang sign at the start. There's (way) more I need to do but it's going to be a slow burn as I'll be working on other things too. I have to admit it's difficult to let it go or even go slower since FET has been part of my daily routine for such a long time.

Like I said I've also been working on 18Titans and might have a new build ready for that this month, but I can't make any guarantees just yet since I've been spreading myself thin. I'll try my best though!

I tried to answer as many dm's as I can(though some of you might have to wait a little longer or have felt through the cracks) which kept me pretty busy besides a handful of other things.

Speaking of a  handful....(going fairly off topic here)

One of the more important things I've been busy with lately is trying to stop making my hand feel like it needs to be kept in a bucket of ice water.

I'm right handed when drawing, but I'm left handed when using a mouse. That's actually an advantage because it allows me to manipulate the canvas more easily and quickly when drawing. I use a mouse with a so called infinite scroll wheel to quickly zoom in and out and. It's a normal scroll wheel with virtually no friction and some momentum if you give it a flick.

It's great for going through long documents and essential to me because I use the scroll wheel extremely often. So much it's virtually impossible to use a normal scrolling wheel and not feel like it scrapes the skin off of my finger after using it for ten minutes.

However... It's not that easy to find a left handed mouse with an infinite scroll wheel. Either that or I'm just looking in all the wrong places.

I've been using a Logitech 500s for a very long time now with basically no problems

You'll notice that its shape is explicitly designed for right handed use. At the time I bought it because I couldn't find the same model for a left hand and already had some experience using it elsewhere.

For whatever reason(weird gripping position) I managed to make it work for me for a very long time, but my hand started to protest about two months ago. I added some towels under my wrist, which helped, but also made me reconsider my heavy dependency on an infinite scrolling function. 

So I bought an ergonomically shaped mouse for weirdos... er, I mean... left handed people : )  Besides it being a bit too small for my hand it felt so gooooood!  But it was still lacking the infinite scroll and I couldn't get used to it.  I was having no luck finding a left handed infinite scroll mouse so I picked up a screwdriver, an old mouse and took it apart to see what made it tick and what I could do to shape it to my own needs. I was partly a success. 

I managed to find what introduced friction to the mouse wheel and took it out. Still not perfect since the wheel was too light and had no momentum(and it was a right handed mouse), but it was better than nothing. Armed with this knowledge I opened up my ergonomically shaped left handed mouse(which is a story all of itself) but I'll spare you the details.

Instead of a small removable ring, it had a solid block which I could do nothing about... Crap. 

Okay... so back to square one. Long story short, I finally settled for a Logitech G903, which just might be the only ambidextrous mouse on the world with an infinite scroll wheel. Its shape though... well... it feels less than comfortable for BOTH right and left handed use. But it did start me on the path of programmable mouse buttons, which I never considered using since I either didn't have extra buttons or they weren't where my thumb was. Maybe it can become a good substitute for  an infinite scrolling wheel, but I'll have to break my habit to use the scroll wheel constantly either way. I've started to familiarize myself with keyboard shortcuts a lot more to break that habit.

Oh I'd almost forgot, but I also switched from using Editra to Notepad++ for writing the game scripts. And that happened in a really ass backwards kind of way. When trying to edit the credits list for FET I needed an editor with a bit more functionality and somehow ended up with Notepad++ without realizing it could also easily be used for the same purpose as I use Editra (game scripts).

I has a nice dark theme(never used that in Editra) to prevent eye sore from looking at a bright white screen all the time and some other things which Editra might or might not have, but I never discovered before. Anyway I pretty much started using notepad++ for most of my text editing needs.

A lot of change going on behind the curtains this month!

Well, I think I've bored you lot enough with random BS so let me do a quick recap and return to working on 18Titans.

tldr:   I'm working on the next 18Titans build which might be ready this month. No guarantees though.  I've also been working on a new FET version with hopefully less bugs and some extra's(definitely not ready anytime soon) and the next project is decided upon, but I'll leave it up to Cbob to break the news.

ps.  I went through all of my old art update posts and collected the pics I sometimes added in one zip file. I might have missed some but most should be present.  It's pretty much a grab bag of everything and anything. That means you can see my foray into 3d modelling, Joodee getting nailed during Christmas, spaghetti(yes spaghetti) etc etc. Don't expect any logic behind it Link -  alternative link  but consider all of it NSFW to be on the safe side.

That's it for now. I hope Cbob can let all of you know what we decided on soon!

Cheers!

Marty