Winter is Here, More Levels Re-focus

Game Update

Progress continues on releasing new levels for the game. We still haven’t played the new levels as we plod through the content from before that. We did make it to a place where we should have released a new level however instead we got an end credit scene. We will fix that this week. We have also uncovered some other bugs that have been squashed like an exploit that allows players to change class at no cost, and to classes they do not have prerequisites for.

Really questioning how much more I want to do however I am committed to finishing all the levels at minimum. There is a part of me that wants to move on to the next game development project. That said this still isn’t finished. Hopefully this is a case of getting so far and only being a couple of feet away from gold. If I give up I will have missed it. I need to keep going with what I have right now. I want to build something that I will be proud of.

Looking ahead I’m hoping to get a new version of the game out in December but it’s looking more and more like it will be delayed. I think overall I’m trying to figure out where my focus needs to be right now. I was focused on fitness, now priorities have shifted to doing hobby stuff I think. Maybe that will change again in the future. I suppose there is a season for everything.

Personal Update

Looking back at this last month and even before that wow, I have missed a lot of weeks of blog entries. I guess I have been super busy with life and there wasn’t a lot to report on the game as we do testing and keep polishing it up. It’s a slow process.

I had one of the best Halloweens ever this year! I went to four different parties and had a different costume each time. I met some really nice people and one of my best friends was with me at every party. It’s nice to find people that really get you? Sometimes I can spend so much time trying to please people that I don’t get to be myself, or worse I have to downplay or hide it because of who I am with. I don’t feel that way when I am with my real friends.

My boys have taken an interest in skate boarding and I have spent the last few weeks taking them to two different skate park locations. It’s exciting to see them grow as they challenge themselves to do more and more. I have been working on model construction when I am out with them. I will always remember my youngest son losing his mind when he managed to use the big ramp for the first time.

For better or for worse I have returned to Warhammer 40k and miniature painting/modeling in general. This time seems to be different though as I have started to use the new “Slap Chop” method of painting my models which has greatly accelerated my process. I figure I can finish about 40 models in 5 hours or so. I’m also planning to do some crazy things with my Astra Militarum army like adding blinking LEDs to my tanks, and creating a slot to add the Dwarven Forge fog machine under one of the larger ones to add some table ambiance. The game isn’t what it used to be, but I have never really been super serious about tournament level Warhammer 40k. I’m more in it for the hobby and making things that are cool. I’m learning basic electronics to build my lights for the tanks.

I took my kids to Legoland at the beginning of October. My son had a birthday, and has been begging me to go for some time now. There was a bit of a cost involved in going there, but overall the boys had a great time, and I enjoyed it as well. I’m thinking that I might want to go again sometime if we get the chance. The drive to Orlando got a little trying when we were in that area but the rest was ok.

I’m still keeping up my healthy eating lifestyle, but my gym time has fallen off as of late. I’ve been pretty focused on things around my house, and due to my hobby I’ve been focusing a bit more on that lately. Unfortunately you have to make your choices and so for now it is dropping off. I expect I will get back into it when I have a better schedule after work or when the boys are away next summer. I guess I am putting the idea of doing a body building competition on the shelf for now. Still I have changed quite a bit and the habits I have built up aren’t going away so my eating will continue to improve. It will be interesting to see how I handle the holidays, which are typically hallmarked by overeating.

I ran my 3rd half marathon in October, which wasa feat because my knee had felt bad for quite a while. That was another thing that made me take a break away from lifting. My knee injury had quite an impact on me. Luckily the doctor cleared me to run and gave me some advice on how to handle it. Wouldn’t you know it, this was the very first half marathon in which I ran for the entire time with no walking. What an accomplishment for me. I can’t think of a better person to have been there at the finish line for me too. Again my true friend was there for me. I was ecstatic that someone would take time out for me like that.

Big news!

Game Update

It’s been a while but I’m happy to announce that we should have new levels out by Christmas this year! We have been working diligently to get them ready over the last few months. I have really become efficient at going through the steps that it takes to get it done.

We are currently testing the stages that are slated for release and as long as there aren’t any big problems with them we will move to beefing up an all new random event system! The random events inside some cities will be part of a pool of events. This should make those encounters a little more important.

We also created an all new difficulty system in the last major update. This is still on our mind moving forward, but is not on the current plan to get anything past the first difficulty level for now. Lots of new stuff on the horizon!

Personal Update

The last few months have been interesting to say the least. I have really been working on myself as I have decided to make this my year of fitness! I’ve lost a lot of weight and have had the opportunity to do some interesting runs as well as learning weight lifting and nutrition better. I’m not perfect but I am improving all the time. I really hope that this will allow me to do a body building competition next year. I’m really enjoying my new healthy lifestyle!

Happy Fathers Day!

Game Update

Still working on stages for the game. I’m getting faster as I do the same tasks over and over again. At this rate I should be able to finish 1-2 stages enemies setup a week. Will need to revisit random event system to add more to it, and do full battery of tests on it.

Personal Update

Well it’s Fathers Day and the kids are away as usual, but I did get a nice phone call with them today. I’m very proud of my oldest son who is working on learning basic game development skills with the brick breaker exercise. He also impressed me with his ability to talk about some stock trading that we are learning about together.

Momocon was two weeks ago and I had a great time there, and met a lot of cool people! I managed to finally see a band I’ve been watching on YouTube called Bit Brigade and I had so much fun that I purchased some of their CDs. I hope that next time they play Mega Man 2, but Zelda and Castlevania were fun to experience as well.

The Light and the Dark

Game Update

Still working on stages and reminding myself how to build squads. Last weeks session we spent time building 35 new entries for the spreadsheet. A lot of the troops are female with area of effect spells which made me wonder if perhaps I should create a troop that can take minimal or no damage from area effect spells. It’s worth considering. I got the idea from the original Ogre Battle with ghosts, skeletons, and wraiths as well as recently spending a limited amount of time playing Unicorn Overlord in which there are rogues that only seem to get hit 1/20 times.

It will take some time to really get in the groove of building levels but this is a good step I think. Testing will be another challenge as it needs to be done organically and I need quicker unit tests for when I finish the stage with troops that are the appropriate level. Then again maybe I can get away with testing the enemies at a lower level and then swapping it back after testing it a bit. At any rate testing needs to be done which means I will need to figure that out as well.

I had a thought that maybe I should try and start a game development club again. I haven’t run one in many years now. Then again it would be short lived over the summer as I shouldn’t be doing that while I have my boys around. I also have my new healthy lifestyle to think about as gym time and run time is also eating up my schedule a bit.

Personal Update

Been going through a lot of spiritual and personal growing pains lately. I thought that I had finally found what I was looking for and that God had blessed my actions. I was seeking Him more than ever in my efforts and it just fell apart. It left my head spinning. Really bad things came out. I learned that I was thought of as a fake person, and that there were many grievances that were hidden from me up until that point. Worst of all when I asked to work on it, I was denied that request. I had to let go again… Alone again. But I suppose no matter what happens in our life we are lucky for any time we have here and there are no guarantees. I flew to close to the sun, again. It interfered with my time to write blog entries, but I was determined to finish this one.

I decided to be the opposite of daunted however, I decided to be… undaunted and so I soldiered on and have left behind the problems of past situations while moving forward. I did look back a few times, but the door was ultimately closed. Even worse I had closed some of the doors purposefully myself because I felt that was the right thing to do. Those chapters should probably have been closed anyway realistically. A verse sticks out to me that I remember during that time. Rev 3:15-16 “I know what you do, that you are not hot or cold. I wish that you were hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm neither hot, nor cold I am ready to spit you out of my mouth.” This struck me in my situation as it forced me to make a choice twice with those that were lukewarm. Never Split the Difference talks about this a bit too. It says, “a bad deal is much worse than no deal at all.” Still I tried as hard as I could.

Darkness crept in and I was tempted to make decisions that might be bad for myself and others. The temptation was seductive to be sure. I resisted by keeping myself busy so as not to think about it much. I thought that I wasn’t enduring spiritual warfare after some of what I had been through, but thinking about it now maybe I was more than I realized.

Light came in and shown for a moment, but now I’m afraid that it to may not be true. I’ve been a bit damaged at this point, and I probably need rest. Still there are those friends, true friends that have held me up. Some came from unlikely places but they are there and I am grateful for them. Probably to those looking at me from the outside they don’t see much pain. I am a fairly good actor after all. It looks like I have it all together and in a lot of ways I do. We are after all just talking about first world social problems here. Still the pain is pretty real, and trust has been broken more often than I would like or expect.

I came up with something this morning that I’m rather proud of. It may need refinement but here it is. I feel that it’s rather poetic.

• I allow people into my space and if they want to stay they will show me. If not they will leave. Most are just tourists. Once they ride the rides they’re done. Very few want to stay and work the park with me to make the magic happen.

Tomorrow is another day. Who knows what is out there waiting. Things can happen rather quickly if you are open to taking a chance so who knows what adventure is on the horizon next. I have been blessed to love more in my lifetime than most people I think. I feel very blessed and privileged to be where I am today. I will keep going because I’m not done yet. I have my goals set for this year and for this summer. Let’s make it happen. I will not be overcome by the darkness because greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. I don’t need to trust myself, or believe in myself because I believe in God and He is all I need and luckily no one can take that away from me. He told me perseverance this year, and so I will persevere while being obedient to His voice even when it’s not my will.

Running Lake Swan

Game Update

Corrected the problem that allowed players to change classes whenever they wanted to. It looks like we will also need to do a similar operation with the menu prompt to block parts of the menu that do not need to be accessible when it is active. It’s probably something that a typical game developer knows to do instinctively.

We got it done more quickly than I expected, but fixing bugs is getting in the way of progressing with the content that needs to be built so that we can release the next major update. This might just be one of those times where week after week I talk about certain tasks that are being worked on until they get knocked out.

The specific items that need to be worked out for the stages are the enemies, and the dialogue system. I’m really hoping we can beef up the random event system to help out with this. We had started this earlier, but it may need a lot of additional character portraits to be added to every stage so that they can be accessed by the system. It will probably work best to have a catch all face for a little while until we add all the rest of them.

The enemies in the stage is a four part process. First we need to update models to be the leaders on the map. Then we need to head over to the spreadsheet to create the squad for the stage. From there we can return to the stage and set the map leaders to the spreadsheet enemy squad number and set up the waypoints for the enemy movements. Finally we can set the levels for the enemy troops in the stage and test it out. I guess it’s not as bad as I originally thought.

Personal Update

The weekend filled up pretty quickly for me. I got the opportunity to DJ for a work picnic which is always a nice time. I got some kudos and people really seemed to enjoy it! I love playing music for people when I get a chance.

Saturday I went to the Swan Lake ballet. I think the last time I was at one might have been when I was in grade school. Luckily the person I went with explained what was going on so I wasn’t completely lost. There were some really amazing spectacle with all of the dancers. At some moments it took my breath away. In the end the final scene brought me to tears, which was a nice conclusion to the evening.

No rest for the weary the next day on Sunday morning I had my second half marathon race. I felt like I would make 10 miles of running for sure, however I only made it to eight before I had to start a run walk cycle. It was some short hills that did me in combined with the heat of the day. It really just means that I need to train harder. I was able to almost make a sub 30 minute 5k which is exciting. I do need to keep increasing my speed and so it seems like I need to start varying my running work out routines to add in some hill work and some speed work. Overall the race was eye opening with some areas that I am lacking.

Daily devotionals are becoming a norm for me and a way to connect with God. I haven’t been this connected in a very long time. I am realizing now that I had some faulty logic to create situations in which I benefitted myself in a pretty selfish way. Moving into a place where I am changing my ways isn’t easy, but I do feel that it is necessary. I’m discovering a lot, and He is revealing Himself to me regularly. I feel that I’ve become to comfortable in my lifestyle, and now I am being pushed in other directions to be uncomfortable for a better outcome and growth.

Work outs continue with week four. I did some reading and it’s likely that I will gain around one pound of muscle for every month of exercise. It’s been good to see the numbers gradually increasing week over week. I do wish some muscle groups were progressing a bit faster, but I can only do so much. I’m enjoying the results so far.

Joyful! Happy Easter!

Game Update

Did some more work on the stages, we reduced all the levels of the enemies to make it a lot less abrupt when progressing from stage 1 to stage 2. After some testing it looks like this is a good change for the game and one that doesn’t need extra programming to make.

We found a major exploit related to changing classes of characters. We will be hyper focused on this problem next week. We also had some issues with the final stats screen displaying stats properly on some stages so we will be looking into that as well.

Eventually we will be making our way back to creating enemies for the stages as well as implementing the all new random event system. There is a big change coming which will make the game a lot more interesting. I should start focusing more on the game now. I used to spend a lot more time tirelessly working on it. Right now I’m mostly just working on it one hour a week with my mentor.

Personal Update

Missed a week of blog entries as things got a little busy with the boys being away for spring break. I was also on a night shift at work which kind of reeked havoc with my schedule. I did manage to stick with my work out routine, and still get my runs in though. There were a few times that God met me on my run this week. I had a lot of ups and downs in my personal life. Overall, things worked out however.

Sometimes you can have five things going on all at once that just fall away suddenly and then three more come along. Just one thing is all it takes to change the trajectory in your life however. I have to keep remembering that Gods timing isn’t my timing. I can pray and cry out to tell Him I’m at my limit while it ruins a 6 mile run bringing it down to a 4 mile run with 2 miles of walking. My heart pounding and then get an answer in short order. Yes things can happen quickly in life indeed.

Other times I can run, make it to 8 miles before moving into a walk like this past Thursday and something strikes me. It cuts to the core of me and that moment stands still in time more than anything has. Being understood at a low core level can be very attractive when God reveals that through circumstances which may or may not be as random as they look on their face. At any rate I don’t think I can stop running, because I know when I do God keeps meeting me on the road.

My lifestyle change for weight lifting and diet is moving in a good direction. I consulted with a trainer yesterday and I am logging my food for a week now. I know that 70% of my physical fitness will come down to my diet. In some ways I think people will see it as extreme but in other ways I had the thought that it could also be viewed like the scripture that says, “Treat your body as a temple holy and pleasing to God.” What better way than to absolutely nerd out and really understand what I am doing at a low numerical level. I do love my numbers.

Speaking of numbers, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my weight lifting number increases which has been steady so far. Tracking numbers and nerding out again is a positive thing for me. As a gamer I love looking at numbers and squeezing out every last little ounce and percentage of a Magic Deck or an army for Warhammer. Although I’m not really playing those games right now I think that the principles can definitely be applied to body building. Of course I’m not min-maxing just yet, but I will move into that eventually.

Right now I’m just doing the vanilla pre-constructed deck version of working out while I get used to all the systems involved. They say that it will take me 10 weeks to see results, but I already feel them and feel like I see some results. It’s very encouraging. I know that early in a skill going from 0-50% of something there is a lot of fast growth. Then again Atomic Habits says I may not see any growth for a while and then get a bunch of growth all at once. At any rate I’m excited for my new lifestyle and so many things are being effected in a positive way from this one decision.

Happy St. Patti's Day

Game Update

Level work is progressing and we are figuring out how many levels we will need to finish in order to do the next major release for the game. All the terrain is already created and so the next task will be creating the enemies and the overarching story for each stage. I have a loose idea for a few stages but we will see how things shake out later.

I missed last weeks entry and so we came up with an idea to help generate more random events. We used some AI to give us the basic ideas for the code structure and will adjust them accordingly. Not all of the ideas were winners of course. I seem to remember one idea it generated which was “you found a lost puppy wondering in the streets!” It’s nice to have it for brainstorming ideas though. After all is there such thing as an original thought in the first place? Maybe not. I believe that execution is more important than originality.

Personal Update

Rough week as I didn’t sleep well but I did have a couple rays of sunshine towards the end. God revealed some information to me that I had wanted for some time now, and I was happy to finally have the truth. Scripture says, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” I’ve always seen myself as a very honest person with a lot of integrity. Often that gets me in trouble as it would be better to simply hide information to control situations in our society. I’ve just always been this way. When I was in school I tried doing some magic tricks, but couldn’t resist revealing the trick to my audience. I’m a horrible magician.

The book “Never Split the Difference” talks about a lot of concepts, and one of them is the concept of the “Black Swan”. The idea is that in every negotiation there is a Black Swan that will completely flip the negotiation. It was thought at one point in human history that Black Swans did not exist. When one was found the belief in people was so strong that they needed irrefutable evidence to combat their belief. The author goes on to say that in every negotiation there are at least 3 black swans and that it’s imperative to uncover them to ensure that the negotiation can work for all parties.

I did something crazy, and looked up an old flame or rather I spoke with someone that would have information about them. I’m not sure what I thought would happen, it’s not like they will ever talk to me again. Still the short time I spent with them may have been one of the best relationships of my life. I would do a lot to have that back again. I found out some disturbing news about one of their family members, but not much else. I suppose I could do the movie thing and travel far away to find them in person or stand in front of their house with a boombox or something, but this is the real world and that stuff only works in movies.

In life we are lucky for any time we are allowed with friends, family and lovers. I truly believe that. It’s a beautiful existence and looking back can cause agony more than anything. It’s important to be as present to the now as possible. Maybe I should spend some more time in quiet meditation away from my phone. It would probably do me a lot of good. The book “The Way of the Superior Man” talks about this. As a man it’s important to go out on solo quests away from everything. Being in solitude forces you to deal with your own thoughts and your own mind. Often we drown out all of those inconvenient thoughts and then they come rushing in at us at the end of the day when we are trying to sleep. The book is really uncomfortable. I think it’s time to get uncomfortable.

Speaking of getting uncomfortable, my first week of weight training is completed and I can tell it’s already having a positive effect on my run times. I can’t wait for next months half marathon! I’ve come so far in such a short amount of time running 11 miles the other day without stopping. I’m not to happy about my run time, but I’m sure that will start to edge up slowly. Then again Atomic Habits says that I will see a lot of gains all at once when a threshold is reached. I just need to keep the faith and stay consistent. I’m very committed to this year of fitness, and I can’t wait to see how my body responds to it. I’m thinking about hiring a high quality trainer, right now I’m getting some help from a friend. I was so inspired last year when I went to my first body building competition. I’m very curious to know what’s possible for my body. It’s very much an experiment of “What would happen if?”

Running the Race

Game Update

“…Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1

We have come so far and it’s hard to say how much work is ahead. We have made a decision to return to building levels for the next major update. I want to get a solid second act in place. We’ve also discussed how the stages should have a different general feel to them. I would also like to beef up our random event system if possible.

I also realized that I lost a lot of passion over the past few years of moving and getting stabilized, and I need to find a way to be more intentional about my work. I used to spend a lot more hours away from my mentor working on the game or skills to support the game. I remember spending a month to create one 3D model which ended up not going into the game but there was a lot more passion back then. I created time and made time for the game. I need to start being more focused and create some new habits to start accelerating the game development so I can finish and have something I’m really proud of out there.

Personal Update

This year I have decided will be my “year of fitness” mostly focused on running with some weight lifting and more care taken for my diet. I made minimal changes last year and have seen better than average results. This year I finished my first half marathon with a run walk run tactic and the gains since then have been staggering. Breaking through the barrier of what I think I could do before has been great for me. I’m sure that it will start paying other dividends as well.

My next major fitness goal is to run a half marathon with no walking. I had a practice session for that this morning and was confident I was ready for that however I did not complete it and ended up walking the final 1.5 miles. Still I did finish my fastest half marathon and I ran for longer than I have in my lifetime. It’s crazy that I’m doing so well at my age and I feel blessed simply to be able to run at all still.

Next week I have a fun 5k to do and that will be a nice change of pace. I’ve really started to enjoy the runners culture in this area. Going to parties and seeing some of the same awesome people over and over is really a treat. I can’t wait for a time when I can start pushing past my boundaries to do a full marathon but for now I’m in a good spot and I’m happy with what I’ve managed to do. I was told that I need to start doing at least 26 miles a week to start building up for a full marathon.

Beyond that I need to be more intentional about my lifting days. It might take cleaning up my house a bit more as a lot of kickstarter table items came in recently but I am still waiting on other items. Hoping to get the rest of it soon but for now my house is a bit cluttered which makes working out and doing other things a bit tougher. I’m also noticing that I might need a separate space for my music equipment which is occupying the same space as my work out stuff. Eventually I’m sure that I will figure it all out.

Whirlwind

Game Update

We released the soundtrack this weekend and it went off without a hitch. It’s pretty nice that everything went to plan. The image on the soundtrack is a little wonky, but I’m ok with it. People will buy it if they want it even with that image.

On release I made sure to post it on my Facebook and credit the composer my brother in law Moriah. It’s been such a blessing to work with him. I really give him minimal direction and he delivers every time! He has a lot going on too so I’m happy for his time.

Moving back focus on the game project I feel a little loss and so we are in the process of getting our bearings again. I remember that we wanted to beef up the random events in the game, and so I want to do that. We spent some time the last couple weeks cleaning up some old interface stuff and I think we fixed one bug. More testing of the death system should be put in place, and I need to adjust enemy levels in the stages. I’m sure we will have a better idea of what to do next week.

Personal Update

I had my 42nd birthday last weekend, and it was an alright day. I would put it somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as birthdays go. I did have a unique experience of going to my first speed dating event. The best description I have for it is that it was a real whirlwind. We had 4 minutes to talk and then we said yes or no to meet the person and find out more. By the end of it I was quite exhausted. I’d probably do it again, but I feel bad as the last person probably didn’t get the best me.

Last week I finally got my “Project Ironside” tables in, and they work well enough as budget board game tables. I am looking forward to getting my Wyrmwood Table in at some point too, and I’m not sure what to do with the tables. I had so many tables in my house and there is stuff everywhere. It will take me some time to get things back in order around my house.

I feel a little bad about not spending as much time as I would have liked with my boys. I need to raise the priority on the time going forward. Family night was a great idea but I’ve been slacking on it lately. They need a good leader or they will just do whatever and be unfocused. On the note of spending time with my kids I’ve been very happy to be going through the “Attack on Titan” anime with my youngest. It’s been great to see his reaction when things are revealed now and then.

Still running, and I’m regularly able to run for a full 6 miles non-stop now. It’s been great to have reached this level, and I can’t wait to build up even more. I felt some push-back at 4 miles today but managed a second wind to carry me through the final 2. I really want this year to be the year of fitness for me.

Love Soundtrack

Game Update

It’s been a while since I’ve put together an update. I used to be a lot more regular about them, but things have been a little hectic as of late. That said work progresses at a steady pace as we continually worked out getting the soundtrack on Steam available to the public. I’m happy to announce that it will be available on 16 Feb 2024. The issues I was running into were making sure that everything on the Steam Website was correct for the release.

Now that the soundtrack is ready to go we turn our attention back to the game to continue polishing levels, and fixing some consistency with the interface. There were some old remnants of a feature on the end of battle stat screen that needed to be removed. Sometimes prefabs shared across multiple scenes can act in wacky ways when one of them is changed. Some may change while others remain in their old state. When this happens I have to go through each level and manually make the change which isn’t great. That makes me think that maybe I should have designed this part of the interface a little differently/better. It should be more like a function which calls a single prefab, instead of the same prefab in multiple scenes perhaps. Hmmm That might save a lot of time if it’s possible.

I’m looking forward to revisiting the event system to make it more robust too. I think that will add a lot to the replay-ability of the game. It might give it an almost rogue lite feel. It feels like that’s really the best thing that the indie developer can do. Create random systems that randomly present the player with different scenarios.

Personal Update

Been a bit of a turbulent month since the end of January. I got some bad news and prolonged dealing with it. Sometimes you try your best and you don’t succeed to quote a music lyric. Things finally completed yesterday and I feel free to move on to whatever is next.

On the plus side I ran/walked my very first half marathon race, and I did a 15k last month. Circumstances created a unique situation and I’m glad that I was able to finish. It’s really raised the bar for me now. It’s important to push myself beyond what I think is possible, because that means the things I’ve done before that used to be hard become a lot easier. I guess that’s the whole “get your reps in” idea from “Atomic Habits.”

I think I want this year to be the “year of fitness” for me. Finishing that half marathon really showed me something about myself. Another blessing to be this old and still be able to do fitness things. I need to take advantage and really buckle down. A good friend helped me a lot this last year and I’m so thankful they were in my life to help me learn how to eat healthier and exercise more. I have plenty of work to do but they said that I have a lot of good potential. I shouldn’t squander that.

I finally got my metal board game table in, although I’m missing the pieces to do what I want with it. My house is a mess right now. I’m hoping to get it in line before my next D&D session next weekend. I got four tables that can connect to each other. Three of them were supposed to make a large gaming table, and the last one is going to be a coffee table which will double for board games, or kids toys in the living room. The only one that is finished is the coffee table as I wait for the connectors for the large table. Still I have another Wyrmwood table coming in later, and I have the other tables as well that they are replacing. Bottom line I’m running out of “table space” in my house and will need to make some choices.

Back in the Swing of Things

Game Update

We managed to restore all of the lost features in the game and have moved our focus onto the Steam page. Specifically, we want to make the soundtrack available for purchase and download. This has proven to be more difficult than we originally expected.

We have all of the artwork from the game but Steam requires us to make changes to differentiate it from the other artwork. Adding “Original Soundtrack” or “OST” to the images we already have has proven to be a good way forward on that.

There was also a small hiccup with the metadata on the tracks themselves. Luckily those fields are accessible through the windows file system. It doesn’t look like the metadata can be changed but clicking in the fields through the properties of each track allows editing.

The current roadblock is the formatting of the music which is a little confusing. Originally I thought that it wanted it all in MP3 and that was the issue. One of the tracks was in wave format. Steam calls it high definitions audio. I thought there would be a check box so that I could turn off the need for high definition audio, but it might be a necessary part of the upload. More investigation is necessary.

Personal Update

I can’t believe it has been so long since I made a blog entry. All the way back around Thanksgiving it started quite an extended time of working on various things and time without my kids. I guess I didn’t really want to give away exactly when they were or were not away. It’s always a bit difficult when they aren’t in the house. Luckily I did manage to get the one task I wanted to get done finished and even move into a couple of other tasks.

My girlfriend had her birthday and I learned an important lesson about her. It seems that she really cares a lot about getting a certain gift every year. She did the typical girl thing of leaving hints which I completely overlooked. Luckily it worked out. She had a super fun birthday party and I got to dance which I like.

The boys were away for Christmas, but I was able to spend some time with my family and some friends later in the day as well. I feel very blessed to have people that actively seek me out and want me around. Sometimes it can be so difficult to line things up with people and have a regular relationship with normal intervals of time spent together.

I picked up a new paid D&D group, and it’s been working out well so far. We are working our way through the Icewind Dale D&D module. It has enough content for upwards of 50 session which is pretty crazy. The party is in no hurry to finish it so we get to take our time. I really enjoy making the scenarios come to life with all my Dwarven Forge Terrain. I will need a castle soon however.

I also picked up a job DJing for New Years and for a work holiday party. I love playing music for people and had a great time doing it. There was one heated moment towards the end of my New Years set, but overall it was a great time. I guess I learned a bit about how to keep it completely professional to ensure I’m beyond reproach. It’s like I learned early on, “When you’re the DJ all of the energy of the party comes to you whether it’s good or bad.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Game Update

Still looking to update and fix the difficulty setting that we had working from before. It is going faster than last time which is good. We are running into a problem in which the troops are not standing up when we heal them. If I remember right it’s an order of operations problem. We just need to re-order some functions.

I hope we can finish this and move on to building out a lot of random events to prepare for an additional stage release soon. It’s harder to come up with random events that could happen anywhere than I had originally thought. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some things that feel cohesive.

Personal Update

Another crazy weekend with Thanksgiving, gift shopping, and my normal weekend activities. It was very busy for me. Luckily everything worked out well and I was able to host Thanksgiving, get my boys their early Christmas presents, do my black Friday shopping, spend time with family and friends, and even get a solid run in.

The morning of the run I tripped and scraped up my hand pretty good, but I was undaunted and still managed to run four miles. My adrenaline kicked in and I didn’t feel pain until I stopped running. Hoping it heals up quickly as it was a pretty nasty fall.

My Wyrmwood DM screen finally arrived after 15 months and so I’m in the process of putting some finishing touches on it so that it will be ready for some Dungeons and Dragons or other role playing game. I hope that my buddies can use it for their Star Wars RPG game too. I’m still not sure if I made a good choice in purchasing it. My D&D lifestyle was much different back then. I haven’t been playing much lately and I’ve had some issues getting paid players.

I had some holiday blues earlier in the week but once things got rolling it seemed to go away. Maybe I’m to busy to let it affect me. I may have to deal with it again when the boys are away for Christmas again this year. Hopefully I’ll finally be able to get my garage fixed while they are away.

Happy Veterans Day!

Game Update

Work continues on restoring the difficulty setting for the game. We have to work through a couple of problems that we have already worked on prior. We will also be building a couple of developer tools to speed up the testing process when we think we have things working again.

Honestly I wish we could just move on to working on the next items of the game to get it out of early access. Maybe that what I should really be looking at. What will it take to get us out of early access. That said I don’t feel to bad because there are plenty of games that were never fully released.

My oldest son is working on his own game project. He asked me tonight, “how do you keep from getting bored when your working on your game?” I told him that it was unavoidable. There are a lot of times when you are working on any project or passion in which you will get bored with what you are doing. I told him it’s important to establish good habits for those times. Even with this project it was important to have specific sacred time each week to work on it. Sometimes I would become more passionate and push harder to get it done, but that’s not something that happens all the time.

I suppose that it’s also important to know when to cut your losses and move on to the next project. There are a lot of times when the fundamental idea and mechanics are simply not as fun as they were when I thought it up. It’s a balance of knowing when to keep going and when to stop. I feel like a lot of people have a false assumption about being successful on the first try. That does happen from time to time, but in my experience it’s more important to fail as fast as possible so that eventually we can find success. Expecting failure and building up a good mental attitude towards it is the key to getting good at anything.

Personal Update

Still plugging away at all of the weekend festivities. I had an amazing time this weekend running around town with my kids on Veterans Day to see how many deals we could get. I beat my old personal record of 7 deals and managed to nab 10! My kids had a lot of fun keeping track and being a part of it. I hit the music store as we were running around and picked up a fog machine, a tambourine for my youngest son, some guitar pics and a launchpad controller for Ableton Live.

I felt like my youngest son would do well with the tambourine and showed him some basic sounds he could get out of it. I was hoping he would use it in church but he was to afraid to play it. He had no issues annoying his brothers in the car with it though.

I haven’t messed around with Ableton Live in a long time. I own the full version, and had aspirations of making my own music at some point. I’m not sure what came over me to buy the controller. I’m not sure that I will find time to use it. Still I love watching YouTube videos of people playing with it so maybe it’s something I can work with. There is a lot of planning and programming that has to be done to get it to do what it does. Maybe I can find a noobs tutorial for it on YouTube.

I got the chance to DJ for a party on Saturday night, and I had a blast doing it. Some of the people had their kids there and they had a good time playing with the equipment as well. I am probably to much of a romantic because my mind thinks in movie terms of this being the moment when a kid is going to be exposed to something they really like and later become a big time DJ. In reality it probably just made for some Instagram moments for them.

I’m feel less and less draw to play Magic the Gathering and have taken a couple steps towards playing Hearthstone again lately. The new expansion is being released this week, but I’m trying to grind out some experience to earn as much as I can before the reset. Maybe it’s not a great thing to feel like such an indentured servant to finishing and earning what I paid for.

Saga End Saga Begin

Game Update

We had a little bit of a setback with the game files. Luckily the build that’s on steam is unaffected. I was moving a lot of files around to clean up my system and it would seem that I accidently deleted the most current working files. It’s a bit of a setback to the last time we backed up the game. We are assessing what we need to do to get the difficulty settings working again in our development build now.

On the plus side this allowed me to upgrade my version of Windows but I was in for a surprise. I wanted to upgrade to Windows 11 but it would seem that the newest version of Windows wants some very specific hardware. I’m not sure if I can return it which is pretty annoying. I suppose maybe it’s time to build a new computer. Maybe that’s part of their devious plan… Forced upgrades to get us to spend more money. It already felt a little annoying with the way a lot of programs like Steam are forcing the Windows 10 upgrade now.

After we get everything working with the new difficulty system I will focus on building out more random events and creating a new release of new stages for the player to explore. We already have all the landscapes for the stages built out. We will need to create enemies for them as well as some plot points for some of the town dialogue. We might just do a release with all random events to see how that plays with people though.

Personal Update

Things aren’t slowing down anytime soon as we move into Thanksgiving, Christmas, and two birthdays as well as a long drive to get my boys to my ex-wife for the holidays. Every weekend has basically been planned out for a while which is good and bad. I’ll get to catch my breath a bit over the Christmas holiday I expect.

Nordictrack sent me a new treadmill which arrived this last week and I’m not sure how to feel about it. I’m still very frustrated with everything I had to go through to get here and all the good habits I had build up to use it every day are utterly destroyed. I’m sure I’ll use it for a while, although I feel like it will probably fail around 200 work-outs again. I guess I’ve learned my lesson with this company. It feels so wasteful to just throw away the old one but, for all my good intentions to take it apart and work on it if I store it away in my garage I will probably never touch it again. I need to resist the urge to be a pack rat.

On top of the other things that are happening I’m still awaiting some board game tables and a DM screen that I got last year on Kickstarter. It’s been frustrating waiting so long for the items. They’ve really missed their expected delivery date. Then again Kickstarter isn’t a store. It’s being used in a lot of interesting way lately all the same.

Things are in line for me to possibly get my garage fixed in December too. I guess that will be my Christmas present this time. Things started to really fall apart for me a year ago with a lot of household problems, so maybe it’s time to start restoring all of those problematic things from back then. It seems like things are starting to fall back in place. Who knows what the next saga will be now that this one seems to be wrapping up?

Six Aspects Version 2.0

Game Update

Big changes with the game as we have just put out an update that adds on a difficulty setting in the menu options. This setting will cause player troops to die permanently sometimes after missions when their hit points reach zero during the mission. I found the intended effect of creating a situation where the player has to make changes to their squads and spend more time in the Force Organization screen to be a boon to this mode.

All of the landscapes for the other stages have been created and we are gearing up to do an enemies pass as well. Before we do that however we want to make sure that our random event system gets some attention too. Right now there’s only a few test case events. We want to increase that to at least twenty and maybe even more as I keep developing. The good news is that this is work that I could potentially flesh out when I’m away from my computer during break times, lunch hours, etc…

Adding this new difficulty mode really made a big difference in my personal engagement for the game. I hope that it’s something that other players will really enjoy as well. This was a big update and everything that’s changing with “Six Aspects” will be improving and changing to leave it pretty unrecognizable from what it is now. At least that is the direction I want it to grow into. That’s why I have left the original version frozen in time so that anyone that wants to play it before this new release can. That version will be there for anyone that wants to play it indefinitely.

Personal Update

Things have been so busy that I missed the last two weeks of updates. It’s crazy how the holiday season can create so much extra work. It’s no wonder that so many people get stressed out and we aren’t even in the thick of the Thanksgiving/Christmas season yet. I haven’t been able to run as much as I would have like to, and so I’m hoping to get back on track with that this week.

Against my better judgement I started playing Hearthstone again. It’s nice because every time I go back I have so much that there isn’t a massive amount of things to get caught up on. Still the ladder grind is pretty annoying, but I appreciate all the incentives that are in the game for returning players right now. It’s really helpful to move things along that way.

Nordic Track has finally said that they would replace my treadmill. It’s been 10 months of frustration, and I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore. It’s possible that they never designed their treadmill to be run on every day for a year. Again I only did 200 work outs on it, before it developed its malfunction. It’s possible that it’s software related. I’m really not sure what to do with it when it gets in. I will probably try and use it again, although that could be against my better judgement. Still when it functioned I did enjoy using it at the end of the day or during inclement weather.

I’ve been working on painting up my dungeon terrain for Dwarven Forge and it is really clipping along! Once I got my technique down it really started to go quickly. It’s nice having simple pieces that only need 2-4 colors/passes per piece. Typically I will watch anime when I paint and so I’ve heard so much about My Hero Academia that I decided to give it a try. It’s a solid anime, but I don’t know if I’d say its something that would make it into my top 10. I’m waiting for the next Attack on Titan episode which I believe will be releasing in December sometime. They are really rolling this out slowly. The series feels so different from the early seasons to what it is now. I suppose it can’t be helped though.

The Busy Time

Game Update

Still going through the process of testing the build. We spent some time and figure out how to disable the steam plug in for testing. When we make a full compiled build it calls out to steam and then re-starts using the copy on my local machine which means that it bypasses the build I’m trying to test. I have to copy it into the folder over the downloaded steam version to test it. By turning the Steam parts off I don’t have to deal with this issue.

Just in case anyone else wants to know how to do this I’ll put the directions here.

• Go to file -> build settings -> player settings (bottom left)

• In the plauyer settings go to “Scripting Define Symbols”

• At the end of the othersymbols add “DISABLESTEAMWORKS” in order to shut off the steam integration

• Delete it later when you want to bring it back

I’m hoping that I can get a build out soon, but things are starting to pick up here too. It’s likely it will happen during my weekly game development meetings. It’s so important to have regular times each week to work on what you want to get done. If I didn’t have this I wouldn’t be where I am now for sure.

Personal Update

Gearing up for the next birthday this weekend as well as a 5k run next weekend. Halloween is this month too so have been working out scheduling for the kids trick or treat nights as well as some non-kid events. The month feels like it’s already filled up.

I’m trying to focus more on painting up my dungeon pieces for Dwarven Forge terrain. I have been trying to make time for it, but other things have been getting in the way. Running kids around to different appointments, day to day chores, working out, and working on Magic the Gathering decks for Fridays. I should plan out my schedule a little better to be more efficient.

Next

Game Update

Still working on the difficulty setting to make sure there aren’t any hitches with the gameplay. It really made a big difference in my interest levels! I wanted to release some more levels but my mentor said that might be best left for another update. We don’t have a lot of random events for that system built right now and would need some more.

I want to build a new branch as this is a big update and so that might take a little work to get just right. This update is so large that I don’t want to lose the old first version. Then again maybe it has less value then I originally thought.

We also talked about creating a boolean to control when Steam support will be used. Right now it can be a little annoying to test the game with a full build out as it needs to be in a specific directory in order to work properly. If it isn’t there then the game re-starts and looks in that directory which means I won’t be testing the new build, I’ll be playing the old Steam build. It’s pretty annoying to deal with.

Personal Update

The school year is in full swing, and the first birthday is down with three more to go. My son wants to go to Legoland for his birthday, but I managed to bargain with him for some really nice Lego sets instead. I hope he’ll be happy. He really likes building all of his Mario Lego’s.

I got a little obsessed with finishing the Attack on Titan series and I found out that the newest episodes are on crunchyroll so I decided to subscribe to that video service. I think it will get a lot more use compared to Apple TV. One of my sons has become really interested in One Piece so it works for him too. I’m super excited to be able to watch the volleyball anime Haikyu!! again too.

New Release Soon!

Game Update

Currently doing testing to make sure that the latest features are good for the game. Primarily I’m checking the difficulty system, but so far it seems to be working with no big issues. We have noted some other quality of life things that will be in future updates as well. Things that will make the Force Organizations screen easier to navigate for changes that will improve the players squad. Right now there is far to much searching through troops to “find the upgrade.” This is a real drawback and wouldn’t have been surfaced without the new difficulty system that is removing troops sometimes after missions are over when they are dead.

Also I noticed that only one or two of my troops can do healing. With the new system this may become more of a coveted thing to have. This is at odds with the idea of fast levels with a lot of things dying on the enemy side as well as the player side. I’m experimenting with heavy healing to see of the systems we already have in place get broken when we do this. So far so good. The enemy still kills player troops when healing is in play and both teams are around the same level. Obviously when either side is at a higher level than the others then there is less damage done to the superior team in general.

I need to focus some more to get an update out. This update is SO EXCITING that it has me doing something that I hadn’t experienced yet. It has me thinking about the game when I am away from it. Creating situations in which there is a puzzle that isn’t “solved” as they say in the card game space is definitely something we are going for. I would love to eventually put some sort of “Relic” item system in place that would change the style of the game play.

I’m going to do my best to get a couple of solid stages out with the new random town events as well. This will need some testing as well. I may need to change the ending screen. It might be something where I will need to create a branch for the new version on Steam. I’ve had some issues doing this in the past so hopefully I can get it working with little effort.

This week the Unity Game Engine announced a $0.20 per install charge to low level developers for games that gross more than $200k or have more than 200k downloads. Lot’s of backlash in the community and I hope that they completely backtrack it.

My mentor said it probably won’t effect Six Aspects because the version of Unity we are in is quite old, and I know we can’t upgrade to something new without major revisions to our code base. Still it is troubling to see this as it goes back to the OGL debacle that Wizards of the Coast tried to pull on there community earlier this year. The only thing I think that they are trying to do is be oppressive to free software model games (freemium) with micro transactions.

It’s obvious they are targeting some of the big companies like Blizzard with Hearthstone. There is also a possibility that they are trying to devalue their own stock for a buyout as many of their CEOs sold stock right before the announcement. Looks like a lot of bad things are going on at Unity right now. Let’s hope they come to their senses before it’s to late.

Personal Update

Last weekend we did a birthday party for my youngest child. He asked for a skateboard for his birthday and I was a bit skeptical but he seems to be pretty good at it so far. I feel like there will be some life lessons in there with the amount of falling down and getting back up he will have to do in order to really get good at it. It’s been interesting to see how all of my boys are going in different directions with their hobbies.

Things reached a boiling point with Nordic Track as I reported them to the Better Business Bureau. They became mysteriously more compliant and more engaged after I did that. The treadmill is still broken however and I’m still seeking a replacement or a refund with them. We’ll see how long this goes on for. I would NEVER recommend their products to everyone as they have had many complaints besides my own and don’t seem to truly care about fixing the problems. I did however finally get some straight answers about some things that I had asked about for months. It’s likely there is a software error that is not fixable. I’m also pursuing legal action with them as I feel that this should fall into lemon laws with the company. At any rate, don’t buy Nordic Track, get a cheap treadmill, run outside, and take the money you would have spent and invest it in stocks or bonds instead.

Difficulty Settings & Arcadian Atlas First Impressions

Game Update

Still working on implementing the new difficulty system. The dead troops are not standing back up when we heal them due to a weird interaction. We almost had it fixed but are still working on it. There is a lot of slow testing that I have to do with it to get it going. Mostly playing a stage to damage and kill troops to make sure that it is triggering properly when the difficulty is turned up to the proper level. It’s been a little slow going. It did uncover a separate bug that we fixed so that was good at least.

I spent some time playing a fellow developers game Arcadian Atlas. For all intents and purposes I see them as my friendly rivals as I met them so many years ago when they had just started working on their game and I had started working on mine. I’m fairly certain they have no awareness of me now. It’s also a fantasy strategy game that has a similar style and feel to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre.

After playing their game I would say that they made a really solid game. We definitely went in different directions with what we built. Their story telling is solid, and I wish I could hold a candle to it with what I’ve done. Maybe building my own Dungeons and Dragons scenarios will help there. The animations and the art for their game is very solid. It was always apparent that they would shine there.

I have a couple of critiques, but a lot of this is my own preferences:

• Sometimes when clicking on tiles it can be difficult to target the tile I want. You can’t rotate the camera in their game, which is most likely due to the way their artwork and assets function together. I was able to add this in my game to help out with some troublesome camera problems due to some player feedback.

• Sometimes playing battles drags a bit toward the end. I feel some fatigue and loss of interest at the end of a battle.

• It can be difficult for me to always know who is on my team and who is an enemy. I know that the enemies and players are red and blue, but an additional note on the selected character card to say as much would be helpful. Sometimes the shading is close for me, but I’m also color blind.

• The troop turn order at the bottom of the screen doesn’t seem that helpful but I may not be using it properly. It’s not clear if I pass part or all of my turn if that makes my troops come up faster in the line up.

• I’ve only seen four of the maps but two of them felt very same-y. I’m hoping that there will be some more variation in future levels.

• The enemy healer characters don’t seem to be able to fight when they run out of allies to heal. It seems like their AI is a little limited.

• It’s unclear if facing improves or reduces anything when in combats.

• All attacks seem to always hit. I’m assuming this is by design. I feel that if this is the way it’s been designed that removes some sense of anticipation when taking actions.

I would suggest trying Arcadian Atlas, and I’d like to know what you thought of it. It feels like a solid plot driven game with some great pixel art.

Personal Update

I had a chance to do some DJing for a friends party this weekend. I had a blast doing it! My buddy had his own DJ light which had a fog machine attached and it was super cool to see how that effected the light. They all said that they really appreciated it.

The new Magic Set Wilds of Elcraine was released and I wasn’t able to pull the card I was looking for in all the packs I bought… So I just went online and ordered it. I’m glad that I did too, because it went up by $10 since when I ordered it. Scrubbed pretty hard in the sealed tournament at my local game store. I only won my last round of four, but I ended up finishing with two wins overall for the night as my first round was a bye.

Got everything moving forward for my sons birthday next weekend. We are moving into the birthday season again here. He asked for a skateboard, which worries me a little. Then again boys love to be physically active and challenge themselves that way. He will need a helmet and pads.

One of my friends lost their dad this weekend. I did my best to support them. The older I get the more people pass away. Selfishly, it made me remember my own parents and ultimately my own mortality. I suppose I should be using that to help me focus more on my kids, and finishing things like this game. I still feel like I tend to squander a lot of time, money, energy, and resources at time. I’m trying to do better and I feel like I’m getting somewhere at least.

Working The Bugs Out

Game Update

We’ve discovered a couple of bugs with the new difficulty system that we are working out. Characters aren’t standing back up when we heal them, and the difficulty isn’t turning the death system on and off yet as we haven’t implemented.

We updated the notification system when troops die to show the players which troops have been lost. Displaying the classes and number of troops will help the player know what they need to replace and focus on making changes in the force organization screen.

Personal Update

Spent this week focusing more on my boys and coming up with a plan to set time aside just for us. I decided to make Thursday nights our family time. One of the boys will choose what we do and we aren’t allowed to have any other distractions. This week we had a Lego night and so we all built Legos together and watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

I’m still a bit worried about the Air Conditioning and so I’m trying to save and brace for the next problem with it financially. Meanwhile my garage door has been broken for more than a year, and my Nordic Track Treadmill has been broken for 8 months now.

The treadmill problem has been such a headache that I’m thinking about recording my phone conversations and making a YouTube series about it. That way at least I get some value out of all the problems. The last time I called them they didn’t know what to do and I had to swap to 5 different departments. I have to believe that don’t know what they are doing, and the company has low interest in taking care of customers once they have made their purchase.

I’ve been running a lot more lately even though the expensive treadmill is broken. I managed to get four runs in last week, and I’m looking to keep this up with some lifting days. I’ve also been drinking some protein shakes and changing up some of my diet. My friend gave me a really solid meal plan and it’s been crazy to see how diet is changing my body with no real big changes to my work outs.