April Update: Sickness, Space, and Research Rabbit-Holes

Hi! It's been a while, so I thought I'd let you all know how things are coming along.

I did get quite ill since the last update post which ended up setting me back quite a bit. I feel I haven't had an illness that's lasted less than a week in a long long time. I wonder if my two rounds of COVID messed with my ability to fight these things.

Either way, it was very inconvenient, especially as it came after I took a week off when all the projects I was doing began to feel like they were overwhelming me. Let's go over them now!

(Also here is the last update where you can hear the pitch for these videos)

SPACE QUEST

The edit for this is about halfway done. I mentioned in previous updates with King's Quest that these adventure game videos seem to take me longer to make for a variety of reasons. Needing to work harder to make a quite flat presentation more interesting is a big reason, for the sake of both the audience watching and for me editing (cutting on explosions is a treat for me too y'know). It is also a bigger project than KQ1+2, which means it takes longer still.

But a good rhythm has been found and I'm 90% sure this will be the next project. Working to get it out this month, but it may end up being early May if work on other projects progresses, that way there won't be as huge gaps in the video schedule.

BAD BOOK AMAZON

This one has evolved somewhat.

You may have seen the comments of the initial update, Patron Air Stratus offered to help with recommendations of material relevant to the subject of Amazon making cheap and awful books. I would like to thank Air Stratus as this has proved actually extremely helpful, and now a video that originally said "I guess don't buy old books from Amazon" has turned into "Oh the future of publishing and physical books is messy and Amazon leads the parade to a world of shit". Or something to that effect at least.

Plus, when ordering some of the material, the funniest thing you can imagine happened.

I've split this video into two with my initial plan being the first part and everything else that I'm getting into will be in the second half. I am still doing research on this, finishing more material and want to talk to some people about this subject too as a variety of perspectives will likely help.

But one advantage I have is that I know where the boundaries are with this project. I know where it begins, I know where it ends, and at this point it's just about making sure the middle is appropriately supported with all information required.

Still, God only knows when this will come out. Getting Space Quest out of the way will help make the path clearer though.

TONY HAWK PRO SKATER 1+2

No change or progress. Played some matches online last week. That was fun.

It's still ready to go into production, but it definitely needs my undivided attention. It might be after Space Quest, or it might get kicked down the way.

Now for the big one.

PROJECT ROGUE

Project Rogue is my secret project that I didn't give much words to in the last update as I figured I could casually do the research needed for that while I worked on everything else. It's going to be the next BIG video, and it needs a lot of work done related to it as the subject matter is going to get a bit real.

So I went and did some reading.

Then more reading.

Then things began to spiral as I discovered the depths of this were beyond my sight, but I was already freefalling.

A lot of time I was going to use on other projects went to researching on this project, which has included buying a few books, a magazine issue from 1994, and playing through a different game than the game I am actually meant to be "reviewing".

Some material I've found has been taxing and dark. It is nice to know I'm not desensitised to this stuff, but that also makes it not nice to deal with. Not all of what I've learned will make it into the video simply due to relevancy, but I ended up working myself up with this and have had to put the current related book down and away in a drawer until I am ready to conquer Project Rogue. This was also when I took a break to reset my brain, and then got ill. There's a chance the subject contributed to this.

There might be a video before the big one related to the other game I played, or I'll mix it in if I can't get a whole video out of it. It's fascinating in its own right, and somehow lighter in tone despite trying to be violent and nasty, but I'm getting ahead of myself. It's still a far-off dream right now whose time has not yet come, so it gets to stay in the drawer while I work on everything else.

__________

And that's it for this update. I'm feeling well and tackling things again. I have considered doing smaller videos on some smaller games I've been playing, but that will end up delaying these projects. We will see how we go. Sometimes we have to feed our brainworms to make them leave.

Hopefully it won't be too long before you hear from me again. Thank you once again for your support. I hope that these projects will interest and entertain you.

Stay safe

• Jack (why does patreon turn the dash-space into a bullet point now, that's weird and I don't like it)