Bi-Weekly Report #29

Lord, we're dealing with a lot. Depression. Anxiety. Autistic burnout, apparently. A government that wants me to stop existing entirely on multiple different fronts.

It was a fun therapy session, is what I'm saying. Let's see what I managed in spite of it all!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Drawpile dry run went well, so here's the plan going forward:

I am intending to run two of these a month, both open to all backers in the $5+ tiers. One'll be on a Monday, the other on a Friday. The next one will be this Friday evening, and I'll pop the invite link up on here for however long the session lasts for. We'll doodle and hange out or whatever, and I'll be in the patron voice channel on Discord for anyone into that sort of thing. Fun! It's fun.

GAMEDEV

Okay. So when the burnout really hits, you'll know it, because I'll abandon all plans for a whole weekend and just... do this, apparently? I feel like this has not been the first time, but it was a productive go, so screw it. It's something.

I've reworked the entire save/load process to better account for my intended scope and needs for the final product. This was a bit of a butt, since I use typed arrays and JSON doesn't. GODOT does not like you feeding an untyped array into a typed array, nor does it seem to enjoy just converting an array wholesale, so that took some fiddling around to account for. I did it though, which means y'all get high score lists that save and work now hopefully. Lists!! Arrays are for lists, basically. Kind of. Close enough.

The next step was making these lists actually do what they're meant to, and I started on that as well. Scores are saving but, again, it's all in JSON, which is to say ugly and sort of confusing because it's just a list of numbers and commas in some square brackets right now.

I'm working on that too though! Because my next step is to finally start cementing the game over screen and setting up proper high score submission and display. This involved me actually sitting down and making up some sort of visual plan for my visual brain, and as you can see it is of exceptionally high quality:

It did the job well enough for my needs, though, so I've since taken to actually building the foundation of all this in-engine, and that's gotten us here:

A bit messy still, but a start! Now I just need to make anything here actually work as it's supposed to, as after these changes (and converting the game over overlay into its own reusable scene), I have broken what little function was there (the "Try Again" button) and thus rendered this lovely screen a total softlock of the entire game. Oopsie!

It's all huge progress, though. It might not seem like it as-is, but it's important groundwork for what's coming down the line.

Still no idea how to promote this thing. Social media not exactly rock-hard for a half-baked puzzle game, but hey. One step at a time, I guess.

ANIMATION

I straight up forgot about the Pinkie Pie thing I started until I read this. Truly, I am on the ball.

I did finally start planning some sort of motion for the whole balcony eat-out thing for the manor, though. It's a much more subtle motion than I'm used to working on, and I feel rather pressured to make it look nice and worth the wait and money. I'll get there. It would help if I felt like my arm was attached to my body instead of an alien being that renders me half-comatose next to the living room window, but like I said earlier one step at a time.

Oh, also the Rarity thing is moving. She has tits now!! They move and are colored and everything. And hands, too, but let's be real you're a lot less focused on those ain't you?

COMMISSIONS

Completed:

• PWYW x 7

In Progress:

• Haunted House YCH

• Rarity Paizuri for Rowlet

Upcoming:

• Vale Trading Card

Commission Me Here | Check the Queue

AND THAT ABOUT DOES IT

Good days. Bad days. Good weeks. Bad weeks. I'm just trying to make the most of my gumption when I have it, but it feels like there's less all the time. Struggling a lot with feeling defeated and like the safe boundaries of my own space are rapidly collapsing in on themselves. It's apparently quite hard to pull art from a soul that's in a constant panic for survival. I am so tired of needing help making ends meet and keeping us afloat...

This is my job. I am trying to do it well, but no amount of it feels like remotely enough. It's becoming paralyzing.

I'm trying not to let it defeat me.

• Sera