Asymmetric Design - Root

Game Update

I continue to work on the combat particle effects and just like last week I’m getting a lot done now that we made the pipeline simpler for testing. The newest edition to the spells is a wind storm that only hits the center three rows. I posted a picture of it on my twitter after it was done.

I started with one storm column and placed it in the center. That was OK, but I needed more coverage and at best it looked like it covered the center square. I added a front and a back storm which also looked pretty good. Then I thought what if I rotate around the center? So I found a rotate script that we had already written and implemented that. I kept iterating and eventually I ended up with 6 wind effects rotating around their centers in different directions and speed while showing good coverage over the center column. It was nice to feel like I had really expanded on what I had started out with to make something a little more unique.

I finished up the storms and on my game development night with Chris we worked on an issue where AOEs weren’t spawning on both the player and the enemy groups. After 45 minutes of plodding along looking at three different scripts and setting down a couple of debug statements the issue was in the initial coding. We had a conditional statement in which both conditions were being triggered properly but we were pointing to the same center point no matter which one we chose. So all that had to be done was to change a one to a two and that fixed the problem.

Personal Update

I’ve been getting more and more interested in board games lately as I settle in some more at home. I watched reviews for the board game Root and Nemesis a while back and I found that they started to come to mind more and more. I decided to see if I could pick them up at my local game store here in town. It turns out that everything I was looking for was sold out and I was unable to even order it later. I was specifically interested in Root as it has an Asymmetric Design that I haven’t seen in other games. I also watched some Let’s Plays on the YouTube channel Quackelope and it really seems like they have fallen in love with Root.

They didn’t have what I wanted but I did purchase the new Aliens game. I remember the Aliens 2 movie and the miniatures were pretty nice so it was an easy decision. I also picked up the big box for “Carcasonne” as I hardly see it available and we have played it often in the past. My girlfriend scolded me of course, but she was supportive overall and excited to see the miniatures for Aliens. She said something about them being cute.

Luckily Root is available digitally so I got it on my phone. Wow, this game has a ton of depth and just the right amount of complexity. I even think I could introduce people to it after they have played some easier games like “Ticket to Ride” or “Settlers of Catan.” I wouldn’t put the complexity past what “Agricola” does but it feels like it has more choices. It’s just a great fit of a game for me.

Game Development Insight

Being introduced to Root this week has opened me up a bit more to Asymmetric Design. Although I’m pretty new to it, I find it to be intriguing. The interesting thing is to play a game in which each player is playing a much different game but they are all using the same playing field. A good example of this in Root is how there are factions at war with lots of troops and economies, but then you could forgo all of that to be a hero character in which case the game will feel more like an RPG in which the other players are almost like NPCs.

I don’t know if I could make something quite like this. In the game I’m working on no matter what the basic game stays the same. You are building an army to run stages and complete the game. I can change some outcomes or allow you some agency with player choice but it’s not like I can implement an entirely new system to layer on top of the game in which you can win by forgoing the core mechanics that I’ve already built.

That said even in Root it has a couple of core mechanics that I notice are mostly the same no matter which faction the player chooses. From what I can tell those core mechanics are combat, crafting items, using cards to match suits for some purpose, and scoring points to finish the game. Beyond that everyone has different and unique ways of completing those tasks which makes for some amazing interactions. I would recommend this game to anyone that wants to try something fresh in the war game genre.

There are a lot of rules in the game, and if you manage to get the board game version it’s likely you will make mistakes. For that reason I think that it works best if you get the digital version on Steam or your mobile device. It’s also a lot cheaper than the full board game. It’s a great way to try it out first before you take the plunge. As for me I’m really hooked on it now.

Perfect Imperfection

Game Update

Managed to get some additional game development time during the week which has been rare as of late. I finished all the male character animations for the game which is quite a milestone. I moved on to the female characters and found that the animator for the flying ones was shared with the ground versions. This means that I had to duplicate the animator and make some changes to get it working correctly. It would look a little silly to have the ones without wings hovering during the battle.

I found a new issue with the way that we are spawning the area of effect (AOE) type spells in the game. It would seem that no matter who is casting the spell it always spawns centered on the enemy squad. Obviously a big problem which we will have to change. It will probably be a simple conditional statement to test which team is casting the AOE spell.

I’m not sure when I will move my business licence over but it’s a big thing that needs to get done. I just need to sit down and carve out some time to do it. I should also work on getting a solid schedule together of when I do my game development.

Personal Update

I had an exciting development with my second son who told me that he’s interested in making a video game this week. He said that he wants to make a “builder craft” type of game. Of course he’s drawing some inspiration from Minecraft. I told him that he needs to build a tree to combine items and play some other games in the genre like Stardew Valley, and Harvest Moon. I might build a simple construct for something so that we can go from there. It’s a good thing that I’m already well versed at making large lists of things and doing spreadsheets for my in-game troops.

I couldn’t be happier with my girlfriend as she’s taken a lot off of my plate lately which frees me up to get more done at home and be productive. She’s the reason that I got more done this week than previous weeks. She really likes some of the animations that I was working on and so I’m excited to give her an opportunity to add her own ideas to the game.

Game Development Insight

Perfect Imperfection

I was building all of the spreadsheets for my game and I had a friend ask me, “how did you come up with the numbers for your game?” My answer was that I was mostly guessing at what the values should be for the various skills. One core idea I’m trying to stick to is making AOE damage lower than single target damage unless the AOE is confined to anything less than the whole squad as a target. Something like 3 to 1 or even 4 to 1 in favor of single target spells.

Perfect Imperfection is the idea that if we have enough values and choices for the players we will come up with some things that are lower than the power curve and some that are higher. This will create some things that are simply better than other things. In this way we can make players feel powerful when they optimize and find the strongest pieces. I’ve experienced this a lot with mini-war gaming, trading card games, and online multiplayer battle arena games. Often a character, or item will simply be more powerful and more rare than others.

It needs to go beyond numbers though. Eventually I want to create some skills that are more about changing the board state in the game. I want to create a pre-combat phase which will allow for interesting mechanics like randomizing enemy positions, pushing/pulling troops, status effects, adding/subtracting attacks, etc… Doing this will create much more interesting player choices in the long run. It’s important to have things which aren’t necessarily “strictly better.”

What should we call it?

Game Update

Last week we finished a system to accelerate our ability to build new spells for our troops to use in the game. I don’t think I was ready for the speed improvement that I experienced when we had everything running. We almost finished 3 new skills in an hour last week. The last time we had built skills for the game it would take maybe 1.5 - 3 hours. That’s a massive improvement and so I would say it was definitely worth doing.

The other thing that improved was my motivation to work on the skills. Making them easier to build made me more willing to work on them. I found myself trying to figure out some of the interesting things I can do with skills in future iterations.

One other thing I had thought about that we may have to work on and iterate later would be to build skills that have no damage component or minimal damage due to a secondary effect. I had thought it would be amazing to shift troops during combat. The issue might be the animations when that happens however along with the fact that 3 round combat means it won’t effect enemies until rounds 2 and 3. I’m thinking about introducing an initial first strike round for status effects that will run before combat starts to make things like shifting rows more effective. Some troops only have one round of attacks after all.

I had some other thoughts about things I might be able to implement in the future. Possibly building some sort of random stage spawning mode eventually along with some items that will change the way the player approaches play. Maybe an artifact that improves all the players fire damage but reduces all ice damage as those elements are opposed to each other on the Aspect Wheel. I’m not sure I should call it that.

After showing some of the game to my girlfriend she mentioned that it should be “Elements” or called “Six Elements”. This is the same critique I’ve gotten from my good friend. The thing is the word “elements” is used all over fantasy games and that’s not the point. The “Aspect” idea originated in my RPG make game in which there is one deity (God) that has multiple “Aspects” that surface themselves in the 6 elements. The people of the game worship God using the elements and they all believe that their way of worshiping is best. This was done on purpose to mirror what we see in our own religious communities. One God worshiped by many with arguments about the best ways to serve Him. I should probably spend more time making this clear. A lesson of how being divided hurts everyone in the end. I see a lot of possible parallels in our society.

Personal Update

I realized this week that as I move my business licence from Texas to Florida it might be time to think about changing the name from Lancer Games to something else. I’ll be talking to some people to get some ideas, but I think I have a solid way forward. One of the things I want to do is build a company that I can make games with but also use when I’m DJing or conducting other artistic services. The name “Lancer Games” feels a bit restrictive now.

I recently read the book “Start with Why” which focuses on the concept of finding your why for your company. After reading the book I came up with the why for my company which is, “We Engage Players and Respect Their Time.” This “Why” is something I can apply to a lot of things, even ones outside of games. Maybe something like “We Engage While Respecting Time.” So many things in our world are built to dominate our attention, and maybe that’s better for business. I suppose I’ll find out.

Lots of other transitions going on this week with my girlfriend. Some things were a bit stressful but it’s important to see how strong a relationship is by putting it through some trials and tribulations. It’s painful but that’s how we grow as individuals, and how we grow as a family too. It’s nice to have someone I can really count on. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had that really until now. Being aligned is something that I appreciate so much.

Game Development Insight

Value Doubling for Quick Iterations

One of the concepts that I learned early on from my mentor was the idea of doubling or halving when I fine tune values in games. An example of this might be lining up a spells x/y/z coordinates in 3D space. Let’s say it was spawning around the characters feet and we want it to be centered. Instead of moving the value from 10 to 11 for the coordinate we should try 20 or even 30 to see a noticeable change and then bring it in from there.

We do this for 2 reasons. The first is that we need to make sure that the value is actually having the effect that we want. Often another issue might mean that we’re changing the wrong value. The second reason is to save time as incremental changes can be less than noticeable. Making extreme changes helps to get things done quickly.

Once we go way past where we want to be we can start going halfway between the values or make a judgment somewhere where we expect it to be. In this way we can zero in on exactly where we want the values to end up. We might also use sliders to move it in real time and then save the values or record them in some way to code them in.

Tools for the Trade

Game Update

As we work through adding all the new spells to the game we realized that one of the bottle necks was being able to iterate quickly on the model we were using in combat as well as adding the spell effect. We used to have to make a bunch of spreadsheet changes, then wipe out the save data, and then reload and hope that our new changes took. After making the changes we would have to set up the squad and then save the data and finally go to the combat screen and load in the correct squads for combat to see the spells and troop animations to match.

We shortened this iteration cycle by directly changing the troop and their spell in code. We now only have to change 2 hard coded values in order to get the same effect which should speed up spell creation considerably. This took a lot less time then I thought that it would which is pretty exciting.

I mentioned this last week but it’s always a trade off when making a new tool or learning a new tool. Those activities have to make the development process more efficient in order to have real value. In this case I think that we made the right choice and I’m very happy to have this option available to me now.

Personal Update

Time marches on and my work situation has changed a bit which is kind of a good thing as it’s an indicator that we may be moving away from Covid restrictions and towards normalcy again. I think that a lot of people are tired of it at this point. There has to be some time when we say to ourselves, “I understand the risks, and I will make my own choice.”

My girl friend keeps impressing me more and more each day. I’m very happy that I met her. On top of all the things she does for me, she helps me focus and take care of business. I thought about it and maybe I would have been a lot happier if I had tried working with previous girlfriends to see if we made a good team first. Who knows maybe I’ll write a book on it someday.

Last week was the last week for the new third section “Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer”, and I rather liked it. I’ve decided to convert that section to “Game Development Insight” which will probably just be me giving my take on Game Development industry news etc… I’ll be staying away from any sensitive topics however.

Game Development Insight

Speed running video games has become quite the phenomenon over the past decade or so. I tried to put a couple of things in the game to help speed runners out. Maybe I’ll add an on-screen timer to help out too. I could only be so lucky to have people like the game so much that they want to speed run it.

Moreover I’m intrigued to see the glitches that have to do with memory replacement lately. Ones like the Mario 3 World 7 glitch that moves from the stage to the end of the game, and the one in Ocarina of Time which teleport Link from the starting area to face down Ganon as child Link. It’s interesting to see what kind of memory replacement glitches that teleport the player are out there.

Again it makes me wonder what kind of memory replacement glitches could pop up in my game to teleport the player. That said the amount of scene loading and unloading is only for stages which is different from the games mentioned above. Still I’m curious to see what the public will find and break in the game. It’s not like I have a whole QA department to look for things like that.

Happy Easter!

Game Update

We’re working on a system to speed up the time it takes to get spell particle effects created. Currently I have to make a lot of spread sheet changes in order to test out a new spell effect. The new idea would allow us the ability to designate characters per each row to overwrite the current characters and thus we wouldn’t have to make spreadsheet changes. Figuring out what that will look like, or how many things we need to change to get it done is where we’re at right now.

Whenever something like this is being undertaken the same question comes up. That question is, “will the new process/tool help us build content faster?” Hindsight is always 20/20 here. Ultimately I feel that the biggest win will be setting aside more time during the week to focus on development as things calm down around the house more and more.

Personal Update

This weekend was Easter which gave me some additional time off. My girlfriend helped out a lot with setting up Easter baskets for my kids. I managed to finish up what I needed to do for 2020 taxes which was quite a lot with all the moves I had last year and all the transitions that happened. It was quite a crazy year all things considered.

I’m probably still not focused enough to get this game done, but I keep chipping away at it. The next big things that I need to get out of the way are paying off my 2nd vehicle, moving the title to Florida, closing my old business licence in Texas, and starting a new business licence in Florida. No rest for the weary. I guess in some ways I could consider that when I’m getting my personal life stuff taken care of it’s not directly game development but it’s still necessary to have the ability to get things done on the game.

Sometimes life is all about framing. Instead of looking at most of the things that happened this past year in a negative way I can always re-frame them to a more positive outlook. Even looking at future possibilities it’s important to see them as opportunities and not something to be fearful of. I wonder sometimes if things from my past are holding me back. It’s possible that they are, I need to keep moving forward but also make sure that I’m being mindful about my thought patterns and where they are taking me on a daily basis.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

10. What is the difference between game design and game development? Also, he needs your credentials for video game design as in what is your background and what training have you gone through?

I googled this because to me they're pretty synonymous and something tells me that most people in the industry would say something similar. According to google it says, "While video game designers are involved in all the creative aspects of making a game, game developers or programmers are responsible for the actual coding and technical aspects of putting a game together." So really what it's saying is that designers do the creative parts and programmers do the technical parts. A lot of indie developer teams over the years have come together this way. I'd suggest looking into the original Doom with the legendary team of John Carmack, John Romero Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Specifically John Carmack did all the programming and John Romero was more of the hype man pushing the product. More recently if you watch the movie "Indie Game the Movie" the team that made Super Meat Boy is shown there. Again there's an artist and a programmer. Be careful watching this movie as it glamorizes development and makes it seem like all indies are going to be successful and make a ton of money. It's more likely you will fail, and fail over and over. It's important for you to like what your doing while still taking care of your bottom line. You might also look at the team from Vlambeer with Rami Ismail. He's really good at spinning a narrative about how he and his partner "hate" each other. It's not true but it makes for a good story. Still you can see the relationship that the 2 men have.

Efficiency

Game Update

More work done on spell particle effects this week. I managed to get some extra time to finish up the new ice storm effect. This spell is being used for three different classes. It will be a big win to get it finished. I had a hard time finding a good spell sound to use with it. The sound of snow falling isn’t exactly something most people think about.

That said I did notice that I’m starting to get faster at going through the process of making the spell effect. Chris said that there may be some things we will want to create an editor for. It’s a bit of a trade off as I’m not sure how much time it will take to make the tool. I always knew it was going to be a lot of content authoring.

Personal Update

Having the boys out this week was a good chance to rest and get a couple of things done around the house. I missed the boys of course, it’s just not the same in the house without them around. I also had the chance to spend some more time with my girlfriend. It was nice to just relax and get some one on one time. Looking forward to Easter next week as we went out to get some small gifts for the boys together. It’s nice to have someone that supports me in my life.

I feel like I need to spend some more time working out and running. I’m still getting everything lined up here. It’s very true what I was told by another retired friend. He said, “it will take about a year for you to transition.” I still feel very blessed to be where I am.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

9. How do you design a video game?

I have basic ideas and a lot of my designs come from the experiences I had playing games when I was younger. The game engine for "Six Aspects" takes a lot of inspiration from an old Super Nintendo game called Ogre Battle. I loved it so much that I wanted to add on to it. I say that I love it but I still see issues with it. Namely the time it takes to complete a stage which led me to my pillar of 15 minute levels. I also think about who I'm marketing my game to. Because I'm a single dad and I'm older I don't have the time to spend 50 hours on a massive RPG anymore or just throw unimaginable time into a lifestyle game like League of Legends or World of Warcraft. I'm building this game for me and other single dads and moms that are out there. It's perfectly fine that my game will probably take around 20 hours. I'm an independent developer and that's still a pretty big accomplishment. I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish.

Discipline

Game Update

Finished up the particle effect connected to the staff attack in combat. Both our Male and Female caster types are using the same effect then they strike with their staff. Of note our Male Wizards do not have an actual staff. Not sure if I want to just add something to the model or not for them. We also added a tinkling sound when the spell effect is triggered which is a nice touch.

One of the issues we ran into was understanding the size of the spell effect that we were creating. I went ahead and dropped one of our prefabs for the wizard in the scene where we warehouse most of our spell effects. It seemed to be a good decision to save time in the future as we will likely be tweaking and full out authoring spell effects in this scene.

I’m happy with what was accomplished but I should get more disciplined to get more done. It’s been lacking a bit and now is the time to start some new habits to get things done. The big time vampire for me has been Arena of Valor but that should be over after this month as I’ve accomplished the things that I wanted to get done. I need to change my outlook on game development and make it into something I want to do instead of seeing it as a chore. So many things in live come down to the narrative that we tell ourselves. After re-reading my response to the aspiring game developer, I think I need to take my own advice and make a calendar and do my best to stick to it.

Personal Update

As stated above I need to get a little bit more discipline and make myself a calendar to get on track. I’ve been spending to much of my off time playing games instead of making them. Maybe they served a purpose at one point in time but I need to refocus a bit. I wonder how many other indie developers go through this.

Good timing to focus this week as I will get some downtime. I’ve also made some headway with working out a couple of household issues out and hope that they will be resolved soon. There is always something else to get done around the house, and it would be nice to make some headway on that. Of course I still need to start the process to get the business licence moved over.

Most of the boys and I were under the weather this week. It was probably something seasonal as it was mostly tied to a sore throat. Luckily my girlfriend knew what to do and she took care of us. She’s really been a great thing for my boys and I. I’m really thankful to have her in my life. It’s amazing what a supportive person can do to improve so many aspects of your life. It’s finally starting to feel like I’m getting back what I lost in 2020.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

8. What are some of the attributes of a good game designer?

Discipline - set regular times to work without distractions and when the time is over hard stop yourself. This will help you focus and keep your interest high. When I say no distractions that means no tv, no phone, no social media, and maybe music that isn't distracting (know yourself). Creativity - when you start out you will clone games, it's how you learn but start asking yourself crazy questions like "what if Mario had one life and couldn't get any more? Could we make Mario into battle royal." I'm using Mario because most kids tend to try to remake what's popular but it will be important to build something all your own. Super Meat Boy is a platformer, Mario is a platformer but they are not the same. That said don't be afraid to "borrow" aspects either. It's a balance. Focus - we alluded to this earlier but it's important to know you can build anything if you spend the time on it and it's within the computers limitations. Just because you can do a ton of things doesn't mean you should. This is called "feature creep". I could build 200 different troops for my game and implement a unique skill for each of them but how long would this take? How long before the characters become to similar that I'm making? Could I maybe make 20 characters and still have just as good a game? Be focused and aggressively cut out things that aren't getting you high value.

Spring Break

Game Update

We’re clipping along with building all the spell animations for the game. This week we started working on some stars that would pop out of staffs/wands etc… This particle effect will happen when a magic user is using their weapon in melee mode. We had to build this effect from scratch but I’m happy with it so far. My mentor Chris has been really good about helping me learn the Unity particle system.

Still looking to move my business licence over to Florida and I think I might have enough time this next week to finally make it happen. It really depends on how busy my kids keep me this week. It’s Spring Break this week and they’re all home.

I’m making headway on the Steam Capsule art as I have a bite on someone that’s interested in helping out with it. I’ll be going through some of the ideas I have to see if they will be able to do it or not this week.

Personal Update

I was kind of thrown off this week as I expected next week to be Spring Break and had planned accordingly. I had to pivot pretty quickly when I found out that it was this week. Luckily things worked out and it’s not going to be as hard as I thought to shift scheduling over a bit.

I had the opportunity to DJ for a friends daughters birthday party this past weekend and that’s always nice when I get to do that. I was thinking that I might want to start a second website just for running a DJ business on the side. It might take more energy away from finishing the game however and so I’ll have to weigh how much time it will take. I’m also not sure of the costs to run a second website with Squarespace. Hopefully it will be a nominal amount. I can’t see myself doing it if I end up doubling my yearly fees for the website.

On the love side of things, I couldn’t be more happy right now. It’s nice to finally meet someone in which I feel so aligned. I keep saying that over and over again, I’m not sure if there’s another way to describe it. I’ve had to deal with a lot of detractors or demons with past relationships and so it’s nice to finally be in one that doesn’t seem to have that factor. It’s really helping me to focus more and get things done.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

7. What are the best tools/resources to learn video game design?

Learn the engine that you decide to work in. For the most part the developers making the engines want you to use them and so they've at least attempted to make something that will help you build your game. For RPG Maker I spent 3 weeks following some PDF's to learn the engine. Some tools I have spend time in outside of game development engines are Blender 3D to make 3D models, character game hub to make 2D sprites, Ableton Live to create music, etc... There are a ton of tools out there that all do all kinds of things as well as plug-ins. Think about how much time it's going to take to learn how to use a new tool and if it will actually make your job easier or not. Every minute you're spending to learn a new tool or plug in is time you aren't making your game. Be jealous about your time, and don't be afraid to walk away if a tool isn't working out. I've had to do this more than once. Also when this happens don't look at that time lost as a "waste of time" it was time spend learning something that could come in handy later or that time needed to be spent anyway to find out that it wasn't the right path.

Game Update

This week my game development time was cut into by an unforeseen circumstance. Still we made the best of it by re-vectoring some skills for launching animations.

The skills on character like the Male Wizard and The Female Ice Queen were to specific saying things like “Cast Fireball” or Cast “Ice Storm”. The issue with this is that we need them to animate as a caster no matter what spell they are casting. Then we add on different spell particle effects which are launched separately and have their own sounds. Additionally, down the line I would like to add items to the game which would allow players a little more customization. Things that might allow a Knight to cast a Fireball for instance. This means that it needs to launch a generic casting animation for all models casting spells just in case.

We fixed a couple of triggers this way, and did some unit testing to make sure they were working. Even with only 30 minutes there’s a lot that can get done.

Personal Update

As stated above we can’t always predict what’s going to happen and sometimes emergencies come up that take precedence. I have a way forward and hope to figure out the problem soon however. The good thing is that I would rather experience this worker issue now before the game goes public, so that I can practice the skills that will be needed if things really get big and I end up having to hire a lot of people.

Super excited to be focusing on one person again. It can be scary but it’s nice to have that focus right now. Of course my kids will always be my priority but it’s been a long time since I’ve had the support that I’m getting now. I expect it will pay dividends in a lot of ways.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

6. What is the best video game creation engine?

There is no one "best" video game engine, they will all have different good and bad parts. I use Unity 3D because it's free to sell the games I make with it. They make their money off of selling assets and if I sell a certain number of units I will owe them money. Unreal had to compete and so now it's free too. Most of the triple A industry focuses on that or adds their own proprietary stuff on top of it. Some other engines you might look into are RPG Maker, Construct, Game Creator, etc... Keep an eye on Humblebundle for some of their Game Creator bundles which can get you some assets for between $15-$25. I find that making solid art is my weak area which why I purchase it or contract it out for the most part. It's not that I can't do it, it's just that my standards are higher than what my skills can do.

Easy Targets Big Wins

Game Update

This week I returned to something that I might have been avoiding for some time. Back when I thought I was ready to release the game on Steam for early access and I was pushing really hard for that I knew that I had to get the spell particle effects functioning. That said after assessing that pipeline there was something like 27 steps in the process to go from concept to fully implemented spell. Pretty daunting when I think about creating 2-3 spells per character and I have around 40 characters. The one saving grace is that I can re-use some spells once they have been created.

After working through it with my mentor Chris last Tuesday it looks like I might have been more scared than I needed to be. For one thing I can batch some steps together which I had done and then refine them. This week we focused on 2 spells in particular. 2 ice spells which we’re calling Ice Blast and Snow Ball. I had already made a lot of updates to the spreadsheet that handles all the spells in the game. Most of the additions are related to changing the “Single Target” spells to one of our multi targeting modes. The modes range from randomly attacking enemies, to targeting specific rows or columns.

When we use an “Area of Effect” (AOE) spell mode it centers the graphic on the target squad and we have to adjust it from there. Snow Ball used to be a single target spell that moved out from the caster to the target. The new mode centered it on the enemy unit and it looked bad. Also the spreadsheet had it tuned for single target. In order to fix this we just reverted it to its old single target mode.

The numbers for damage are pretty fuzzy right now but it seems that generally we want single target to be the highest damage, followed by row/column, followed by random whole squad, followed by whole squad damage. The reason for this should be pretty obvious but hitting 7 troops with the same damage that the player is dealing to 1 troop makes for less decisions in squad creation. We want real decisions not simple answers.

A general idea I’m thinking right now is a comparison of damage. For every 7 damage we do to a single target we should have 1 damage for whole squad AOE.

Single Target - 7 damage

Row/Column - 4-6 damage (depending on how many rows/columns)

Random Whole Squad - 2-3 damage

Whole Squad - 1 damage

This should have some deviations to make some classes notably stronger. Things like typically Whole squad is around 1 damage for every 7 single target, but on a class we might increase it to 1.5 or even 2. This would mean that a single target spell might do 70 damage with an AOE vs a 7 member enemy squad typically doing 10 per troop for around 70 damage. A more powerful version of the AOE might do 15 per troop which would raise its damage considerably to 105. The drawback is when the enemy squad does not contain a full 7 enemies. Later we plan to make larger troops that will count as 2 or even 3 troop spaces in squads and that should change this dynamic a bit creating more choice.

The Ice blast spell hits the front row of the enemy squad. Originally I thought that it might blast out from the caster squad but we settled on an Ice strafing run which looks pretty good. I’m also really happy with the notification message the player gets in the combat log. The drawback to this spell is pretty obvious as it only hits the front row meaning if there are no troops in that row it does nothing. This drawback justifies higher damage which means that if it is hitting 5 troops compared to the 7 troops from a whole squad AOE.

These things aren’t difficult to do nor are they completely ground breaking but they are a big win for player choice and keeping the game interesting and engaging. As I keep working on the spells I can only increase in my speed to get them completed. This will create a better video and better screen shots for Steam. I still have the capsule art on my radar but I need to move my business licence over before I consider releasing on steam and so it’s become less of a priority for now.

Personal Update

Getting back on my feet with meeting new people you never know what’s going to happen really. Things can progress pretty quickly and a person can go from having no plans to suddenly having all the interest. Sometimes all it takes is focusing on the things that are important like family and work while staying open to meeting new people.

I think this is what people say when they say, “don’t look for it, it will happen.” Always a ridiculous phrase to me because it assumes that things are going to magically just fall in your lap without work. I’d prefer to have a little bit more control and be active. Not to say that the strategy of “just sit back and it will happen” can’t work but more often than not it takes work. Looking forward to see how my newest flame works out.

We’re getting to the end of the school year and I’m looking forward to some summertime down time. At the same time I do have some quality of life things that I need to do around the house still. It’s so good to be back in an environment that I love to come home to. I think that it’s helped with stress levels as well as I’ve lost some weight. I look forward to more health and wellness opportunities like running, and working out.

I need to bring more balance to my life with a schedule however. Right now I’m not spending enough time working on my video game, and that is my passion. I’m chasing some things to hard and playing to many phone games. It’s time to bring balance back for a higher quality lifestyle. Instead of playing 10 20 minute games a day, maybe just 2 or 4. Maybe cut it out completely if it doesn’t serve me. At least the phone game side of things will naturally curtail itself in 2 months.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

5. Do you need to know how to code to design video games?

You don't need to know how to code to make games, however you are limiting what you are able to do. Making levels in Mario Maker is game development. That's level design and there are plenty of people that specialize in that. But could you make a new kind of brick with a new graphic and add it to Mario Maker? No you can't because it's locked down but if you had access to the source code and know how to code you could add a new feature or function that's not there. This is modifying the game, and for a lot of young developers it's how they start out. I mentioned this earlier. Additionally, think about how replaceable you are in the job market. Ask yourself "how many good level designers, artists, sound engineers, network engineers, security, and programmers are out there?" How easy would it be to replace them? If you follow this path it's likely that you will need to supplement your income for a while or find roommates with a dream. As an example I've heard of developers that live in California sharing a 2 room apartment between 3 people and hot bunking because of the cost of living there. That said there's a lot of changes coming down the pipe for developers. For me I work on my games in my free time and have a day job to supplement my income to make sure my boys can eat every day. This isn't an easy road and it's not for everyone. Also think about how soon you want a family as that will also effect the amount of money you will need to survive.

Living in Abundance

Game Update

This week we did some more interface polishing and we fixed the positioning of the text on all the characters in the game. The text was left justified and we needed it to be centered. Little pieces of polish like this go on in all games and it’s crazy to think how much of it the player would never even realize happened.

I think that I need to put together a schedule to push myself to get more work done during the week. A lot of my time is going to everything but game development and I have a lot less excuses than I used to have. I just need to set aside time so that things can start progressing. I’m tired of saying the same things need to get done every week. I need to focus a little better.

I got some feedback on the game today from one of my beta testers. He said that he had a lot of issues assigning leaders in the Force Organization screen. I think that I may still want to put together some sort of tutorial video to bundle in and run once. Some simple things like this that should be part of affordance are falling by the wayside.

Personal Update

As stated above I need to make a schedule so that I have times where I allow myself personal time to be social, play games, etc… and other time devoted to game development, and getting household tasks done. I’m not managing my time as closely or wisely as I could be. This week I transition to night shift and I hope that will go well for my family dynamic as well.

I dove back into the dating pool again, and went out this past weekend. I didn’t do the things to make my energy more expansive and abundant. I was inside my head to much. It made me less approachable and I kind of knew it was happening. Maybe I just didn’t want to be social, or maybe I wanted to have a pity party for myself. I had some good friends and family support me after that happened and luckily I didn’t do anything that could have opened up old wounds.

Meeting people again this week over apps has been mostly good. There are some one off poor interactions but overall I’m enjoying the opportunity to get back out and give value again. Having an abundant mindset here is so key. With that mindset it makes it easier to give and not worry about getting back. Of course I can give you value, I’m overflowing with it. Giving value for me doesn’t typically mean something monetary. It’s usually related to sharing emotions, listening, a positive word, or sharing knowledge.

Often in our society we get into a taking scarcity mindset. The type of mindset that says, “don’t allow people in they’ll just hurt you.” “Don’t share with others because then you will have nothing” is another popular trick our mind plays on us. It’s a narrative of fear. 2020 has shown me how divisiveness and fear can take root in our minds and create all sorts of problems.

Eckart Tolle talks about this in “A New Earth.” He talks about how children see their toys not as objects but extensions of their very being. In this way we can become offended when others disagree with us or take our toys. Our very being is being attacked and that means reprisal is in order. He further goes on to talk about how we are not the things we own, our jobs, accomplishments, or so many other things we associate with ourselves. We are a consciousness that is something amazing.

It’s not as though I’m not caught up in the things of this world, but I do think there’s more to it than that. When I do release the game I expect that there will be plenty of people that will have not so nice things to say. When that happens even though I’ve spent so much of my life on this project, it will be important to make sure that I understand that the game I made is not me.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

4. Do you have any advise for a beginning designer?

Absolutely! It's the same advice I would have for anyone that's getting into a new skill.

1. find a mentor and don't be afraid to pay for it. This will give you leverage over yourself to motivate you to work.

2. Think about how much effort you want to put in and what you're willing to give up. I've had to spend a lot of time putting in hours to get where I am now. I may not know what's going on in the latest episode of a TV show but I chose to do this.

3. Find like minded people to connect with that will encourage you to work. You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. I'm not saying walk away from all your friends but think about how much time you spend with them.

4. Finally, I touched in this earlier but START MAKING GAMES NOW. No one is stopping you from making something simple and don't let anyone downplay your accomplishments.

Boundaries

Game Update

This week we added a notification to show the player when the leader is dead in a squad. There wasn’t a lot of information to make this clear until now. I feel like this was a big win for us. It’s nice to know that all the information is there in the game, but it just needs to be displayed to the player. More polishing creates a better user experience.

We talked a bit about adding additional information to the squads in the stage so that the player can make good decisions on engagements. As of right now the player has to click on each squad to see the characters that are still left alive and their total hit points. We could total all the hit points and add some other numbers from stats to give the squads a “power level” and then surface that under their name. It’s possible as the information is all there, but it may not be to our advantage to do that as it might take the player out of the experience a bit.

The question is, “when is information to much information?” I can surface a lot of information to the player about what’s happening but every time I do the experience gets less realistic. I guess the obvious response is that, “video games are already unrealistic so why care about it?” I would say that we use numbers to create systems that give the player an engaging experience. If surfacing a bunch of stats and numbers takes the player out of that experience then we should pull it back a bit. A game is more elegant and beautiful with less mechanical logical pieces. Engaging is done on an emotional level not a logical one.

Personal Update

Big plans this week for Valentines Day but it fell through and I had to make a difficult decision. Ultimately it came down to a decision of setting boundaries and what kind of man I want to be. It never feels good to be firm with someone, but it’s very important.

When I was staying with my family a couple of times situations came up in which boundaries were tested as well. Honestly I look forward to having my boundaries tested now. I’ve heard people say things like, “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.” Having boundaries ensures that I know when they’re being tested.

Often there is a thought that we need to give in to other people to make them happy and keep our relationships in tact. Nine times out of ten the opposite is true. When a person is taking advantage of someones kindness they will actually feel more resentment and contempt for them if they keep folding under pressure. On the other hand when a boundary is set a person needs to be ready for the other party to walk away. The question is what’s more important? Personal integrity or the friendship?

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

3. How difficult is video game design?

3. Computers have limitations, and so do we as human beings. We could build something that realistically makes grass grow, has a social component, and allows you to rob banks but that doesn't help if we're building Fortnite. You have to choose what you want to build and be very specific with the pillars for your game. As an example a pillar for my game "Six Aspects" is fast play time. I don't want the player to spend any more than 15 minutes in a stage. This one pillar guides a lot of future decisions. That said as far as how difficult it is, there's a lot you can start doing quickly. I would suggest taking existing code for a project and fiddling with it first. It's difficult to stare at a blank canvas, it's a lot easier to trace over someone else's art and modify it at least when you're starting out. So I guess it's really as difficult as you want it to be. The first things you're going to want to learn about are how to draw graphics on the screen, checking for collisions between objects and setting an outcome, and the concept of the update function which continually runs as your game runs and allows you to move graphics around or check states actively.

Programmer Art

Game Update

This week we completed the sounds that will be played when the player ends the stage. This was kind of a complex problem as we needed to turn down the stage music and let the other stage sound effects run out. We had to delay the final sound start. We also added some strobe color effects the the “Congratulations.” Timing that and playing with the colors took a little bit as well.

I put out a message on my Twitter to see if I could find an artist to build my capsule art for Steam. I might try to do a little art myself with what I’ve collected from screenshots in the game. It’s possible I’ll find someone that will be a good fit. I’ve been pretty lucky so far with the past artists that I hired.

A good friend of mine suggested that I read the book “Start with Why.” In the book it talks about finding people that believe the same thing you do. Instead of the idea of, “I am someone that makes games because I want to make money, survive, be successful, etc…” I need to have a stronger belief. I’m not sure what it will end up being in the end. For now I think that my why is, “We build engaging games that respect the players time.” So many times in our society companies go commercial and are driven to make more and more money. My company needs to be different. I want loyalty and passionate players.

Personal Update

Things seem to have settled down quite a bit at home. I had a small crisis with one of my children, but he’s good now. Moving to a new place is a lot for a child, and I’m glad that I won’t have to do that again. I’m starting to accept this place as my home as well.

I managed to start a weekly board game club for a social outlet. It’s important for me to have something that I can lead, and give back with. Normally I would go out to the local hobby shop, but with the virus climate that makes things difficult. Also at times it can be difficult to convince people at the hobby shop to play something that’s not Magic. At some point I might try to run a Dungeons and Dragons game.

I’m pretty excited about Valentines day as I have a lot of surprises waiting for a special someone. Crafting an experience has been a lot of fun this past week. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

Question - 2. What degree would assist me in video game creation?

Answer - 2. The best thing I can tell you about learning any skill is to start doing it NOW. If you want to make games start making them. Take a degree that matches the specialization that you want to do. You won't know that unless you've actually built something first. I have a Computer Science degree but there are plenty of professionals that have different degrees in digital art, cyber security etc... in the industry or some with no degree at all. In the programming realm there aren't any certifications like there are in cyber security, and networking. Keep that in mind. Figure out what you want to be really good at and start there.

Hunting for Errors

Game Update

Sound continues to be the focus of my game development sessions with Chris. Meanwhile, the capsule art is still in the back of my mind for completion to get this thing to Steam. The other issue with Steam is that I need to move my business from Texas to Florida. That might be hindering me from putting effort into working on the artwork.

We spent thirty minutes hunting for a duplication of a graphic when entering combat. We couldn’t get the bug to re-surface which is interesting. I’m not sure if I did something to try and fix it before the session. I also have to do some work to balance all of the sound effects with the music as sometimes they clash or the music is to loud to hear the sound effects. It’s likely that we will have to turn the music down a bit globally. When entering combat I have a rotation of 8 random sounds that launch which should keep it a little fresh. There are a lot of things in the game that are like that from the player portraits that represent the same class to some of the other random factors during gameplay.

Personal Update

I’m still trying to get everything lined up with my house and future appointments. It’s difficult for me to want to do game development when the house needs so much attention right now. Additionally, there are other time factors to consider. It won’t always be this way however. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

I also had a former military college reach out to me to answer some questions for his son who is doing a research paper for becoming a game developer. I kind of wrote him a book and so I’m going to enclose one of his ten questions over the next 10 weeks. It was a nice feeling to look back at all that I’ve accomplish and how my mindset helped me along the way. I’m still very proud of what I’ve accomplished.

Still excited to see what’s in store next in my dating life. It feels like every day is a new adventure. Of course when you look at fantasy adventures they are all filled with a fair share of conflicts. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Answered Questions for an Aspiring Game Developer

Question - 1. How long did it take for you to code your first video game?

Answer - 1. The first game I finished was a practice game called Brick Breaker and I finished that in about a week. Most of the time when you're learning any skill you're going to do projects that have already been done for practice. This is especially true in the art world. If you're asking about the first game I finished that was an original work then that was Constantine which took me 3 months. It's built in RPG Maker and it took me around 3 weeks to feel comfortable working with the engine. You can still download and play the game today for free if you're interested. It won't take more than 3 hours to finish.

Slow and Steady

Game Update

We’ve been adding a lot of sound polish to the game. This week Chris and I beefed up the combat initiation from the Overworld stages. I put a place holder sound in place during our game development session and went back after to add 6 random sounds that came from a viking pack. It was then that I noticed sometimes when we start a combat it’s trying to launch it multiple times which is spawning a lot of particle effects and now sound effects as well. This sounds like a giant spaghetti mess and so we will be sorting it out this week.

I know that I need to focus on spreadsheets and working on the capsule art but having to change my business licence over from one state to another has kind of taken a little bit of the wind out of my sails to get it done. On the plus side I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel on the things that need to get completed at the house to get everything lined up.

I was thinking tonight while I was grocery shopping and I think that I really need to set a regular schedule for my after hours time to make sure that I’m leveraging it effectively. I do when to devote more committed time to game dev, but I also want to work out. The kids are getting older and so that’s becoming a lot easier although I still have a fair share of my time spent teaching them how to get things done and be self sufficient.

Things aren’t moving as quickly as I like but some progress is better than nothing and there have been many times in which development has slowed to a crawl on the project. Maybe that’s what it’s really about. When you push yourself even though you don’t feel like it.

Personal Update

As I stated above for the most part my household is in order now. I feel pretty good about it as I have said goodbye to the last of my boxes today. I always know it’s getting to the end when I can start hanging up things on the walls. It’s a little bitter sweet doing it right now as I still have to put all the things in my retiree shadow box. It brings up mixed emotions all by itself, but I think I’m finally in a place where I can accept it and feel peace about it.

I took some time to go out dancing on Saturday which is the 2nd time I’ve done that since I’ve been here. I felt a little guilty for not working but I didn’t stay out to late due to church the next day. Meeting people with a passion for dancing was good. Kind of a big win as I now have some people to chill with when I’m out there.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my dating life lately. What I want, where my boundaries are, and how it relates to the other aspects of my life. Sometimes things happen quickly and can catch you off guard. It can be like a whirlwind that’s hard to hold onto, scary and exciting. It’s important for me to remember to temper those fast times with stability being free from outcomes giving the most value I can while setting strong boundaries. I’m happy for everything that has happened on my journey in this area and I’m excited to see what’s in store for me next! That said I need to temper my expectations and time lines at times. Who knows where I will be in 6 months to a year from now? I have to keep slow steady to find out. It’s what has kept me going on my game all this time and so many other things.

Focus

Game Update

We keep moving along slowly but with intent to finish this project. Last week we did a play test to better understand the changes that we had been making and how they were impacting the player. We also looked for some quick fix items as well with the play through. I’m now worried that the player isn’t gaining experience fast enough. This has been a bit of a fine tuning exercise as originally the player gained levels way to fast.

The big change is that we have surfaced the descriptions for the abilities assigned to all the player characters in the Force Organization screen. This is a big deal as our area of effect damage abilities vary widely. Some of the abilities only hit the center 3 columns while others randomly hit the entire enemy squad for instance. It’s always a balance when thinking about how much information to give to the player compared to trying to use affordance instead. (Yes affordance is a real word there’s an Extra Credits video that explains it well)

We’re also looking at giving more visual cues during combat to ensure that the player has a good grip on how their squad composition choices are effecting combat. This might prove to be more difficult than originally thought because the combats are pseudo-simultaneous. It might be to overstimulating to have to many particle effects launching at the same time.

Personal Update

The last of the boxes in the house are cleared out in the common areas and I will be dropping what’s left off with family nearby to use in an upcoming move of their own. It’s nice to have the house finally come together although there are about 100 different little things that still need to be accomplished to bring everything into alignment.

I have been socializing off and on, although it hasn’t been a major focus for me. That said I recently made a difficult decision that will allow me more life focus. It’s important to be decisive sometimes, but also compassionate with our life decisions. I hope to have the ability to speak more specifically in the future but it’s probably to early right now. I will say that I’m very happy.

Hope

Game Update

This week I focused on adding a little more bells and whistles to the town capture. We now have some extra sounds and a particle effects which add a lot. I still need to change the odds from 50/50 to something that reflects the player choices a little better. I want to tie it to the reputation so that as your rep goes up you have a better chance to get positive effects and as it goes down there’s a better chance to get poor effects.

The other items I need to focus on this week is the key art for the game as well as the spreadsheets. I already started working on the player skills and that might be a better thing to get working so I can take some high quality screen shots for the key art. Adding particle effects is kind of a big deal here.

Personal Update

I’m still waiting on all my household goods to arrive, and this week will be interesting as I’ll most likely be alone for Christmas this year. Just another day for me I suppose. It’s fine as I have plenty to keep me busy in the meantime. My shipment is getting here so late that I’m asking that my children have another week away so I can set up the house.

The more time I spend in my house and in the area here, the more blessed I feel. I’m leaning towards naming my gecko Hope now. I learned a lot from this little guy so far. One major thing is that you can’t really control it. Just like children or players. You put them in a situation and you think you know how they will react but often they do something you haven’t even thought of.

I went out to a country club in the local area this weekend. What a great experience! It’s been so long since I’ve been in a club social setting. I felt like I might have a hard time relating to people and getting social again, but it was like riding a bike for me. All of the things that I did back in 2019 came back. I didn’t go in with any specific expectations. I just wanted to dance a bit, get a drink, and talk to some locals. It really made me feel like things were getting back to normal finally in our society. Other parts of the country seem to be more strict still.

Plenty more to work through. I’m excited to see what the future holds!

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Game Update

A little late on this update, but I’m still chugging along. This week we worked on a lot of the sounds in the game. I listened to around 1000 different beeps and boops to find something I wanted for the various spots in the game. We also started to juices up the sounds when we take over a town. We added a booing sound when the God figure “tests” your characters by lowering stats and a cheering sound when you get a “blessing” and they increase. I still feel like this should be tied to reputation or possibly a hidden deity score based on your choices in the game.

I’ve been picking up some more motivation to get things done in game as I started finally cleaning up the spreadsheets. The issue with those seems to be that I have so many at this point I have a hard time finding the latest ones. I didn’t do a good job of making sure I know which ones are being used and which ones aren’t. It’s a bit of a mess and I’ll have to look through them.

On the positive side I have started making changes to the abilities. I’m finally utilizing the new Area of Effect (AOE) attack modes that I added so long ago. Some attacks split damage among enemies while others do flat damage. I also like that I can target certain rows or columns. This allows me to tailor certain attacks a little more with higher damage to have less targets available.

Personal Update

I’m finally starting to stabilize in my new house. I have a couple more things to set up for my kids. It’s been about a 5 year journey to get here and it feels good but it also feels like something is missing. I might need some time alone, but I’m not sure. I’ve been living in this temporary state of always saying, “I’m moving so this is temporary” for so long that I may not know how to deal with settling in one place now. 20 years of moving does that to someone I suppose.

Add to that I’m sitting in a void waiting for my household good which will arrive just in time for me to not have enough time to get my household situated for before my children arrive. It’s pretty frustrating, but I can’t be to mad because all said and done God really provided for me and my family during this global crisis. Still the last year feels really bad. Like a perfect crescendo to a lot of failures in leadership over my military career. I had a couple good ones too, and some lucky things. All said and done when I talk to other friends about what they’ve been doing for the past 20 years it makes me feel a bit better. I wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t change anything, but there are worse places I could be right now.

It’s so important to stay thankful for the time we have, and the blessings afforded to us in times like this. I’m very blessed and I need to keep that in mind. I have to keep going and stick with it or else I’ll be like so many other failed projects. I need to keep in mind I’m not doing this so other people can clap for me, I’m doing this to prove to myself that I can do it.

Settling in with a Gecko Roommate

Game Update

I missed a week of game development with my mentor last week as I hadn’t moved into my house nor did I have internet last week. I managed to get online just in time this week however and we did make some headway on a couple of items.

We primarily worked on updating a sound that happens when the player takes over a town depending on the buff or de-buff that get’s rolled for the player. A cheering sound now plays when the player gets a buff and a booing sound plays when there’s a de-buff. I’m still trying to find solid sounds that will be enjoyable for the player however. It’s impossible to find just the right sound and now I know why being a sound engineer is it’s own talent set.

I think I finally found a good sound for the go button. It kind of reminds me of the horns sounds in the song “Losing It” by Fisher. The baaaaaa horn sound really gives an oomph when I push the button now. I’m not sure it’s the exact thing I want but it seems pretty good so far. The only issue is that when the button gets pressed by the computer because the timer runs out there is no sound. I may need to find a work around for that.

I worked on some text sounds as well. Right now it’s only playing a slight knock sound when advancing text. This is pretty good but it might be better to do the conventional RPG thing and make a beep-boop-beep-boop sounds as text scrolls on the box. The issue is that text doesn’t scroll on our boxes it simply appears. This might go back to one of our tenants which is to make sure that the game play is fast. If we choose to add scrolling text that will make the stages longer. Then again scrolling text is more fun to read, and it might be more engaging for our players than simply having appearing text instead. This might be why that’s the standard you see in so many RPG games. I feel like I need some advice so I reached out to an industry friend of mine and hopefully we can get a phone call in sometime soon.

Other than that I still need to get the capsule art worked out and author some other content like the spell particle effects for the game. It feels like I’m almost ready to set a date for early access though. I hope that the game is fun for people and that someone out there really likes it.

Personal Update

I’ve talked a lot about moving lately and now I’m finally here. It feels very comforting to finally be somewhere that I can settle for a while. Somewhere where I don’t have to say to myself, “this is OK it’s only temporary.” It hasn’t been a completely smooth transition but I’m seeing where things will hopefully be really good here.

When I did the walk around at my house there was a small gecko in my kitchen sink. It was still there when I closed on the house and he stayed there for the following week. Well I decided that it needed a home and so I purchased a terrarium for it and some other supplies. I’m a bit worried about it starving or not getting enough water. It doesn’t seem to want to eat the bugs that I got for it. I’m learning a lot about geckos right now I suppose. I don’t have a name for it, and I’m not even sure if it’s male or female.

It’s funny how you can become attached to such a small thing like that. I suppose I have something inside of me that wants to help people or animals where I can. Still I need to make sure to have boundaries as well. That’s the key thing about being kind that doesn’t get talked about enough.

I’m not sure but the gecko might be teaching me some things about myself as well. Some of my family in the area came to visit and it completely disappeared in the terrarium. It was very confusing for me and I looked for it multiple times. I thought it might have escaped somehow but that seemed like a near impossibility. It turns out that it had burrowed down into the sub strait and I found it again today.

When it happened I thought to myself, “why do I care so much about this thing?” It’s not as if it was my child or something like that. It’s probably related to what Eckhart Tolle talks about in “A New Earth”. He talks about how we as humans associate ourselves with things, when in reality we aren’t those things. I noticed it in myself when I was writing the address for my new house in so many places to take ownership, set up billing cycles or do any number of other things. I started to associate myself with my house. In that way if something were to happen to my house it would be like something was actually happening to me. I’m not my house, but in a lot of ways we all do this. The saying goes, “don’t take it personally” but it’s very hard not to.

Very soon I’m sure that I will be investing in a lot of new things, and associating them with myself. I need to make sure to keep in mind that those things are not me, they’re just things.

As a side note the Gecko doesn’t have a name yet. I’m open to suggestions. My mom wants to name it George. I was thinking Hope or something similar to that. I’ve felt a lot of hope lately in my new home, with my new job, and new life here. I’m very hopeful for the future of my household.

Happy Thanksgiving

Game Update

We finished fixing some more interface problems with some inconsistencies with the way the buttons were functioning. That was a quick fix and we started moving back into focusing on the Capsule Artwork. It might be a good idea to add a build to my laptop to do screen caps and work on the art. I seem to do better with working on artwork using my laptop anyway. I guess it takes me back to working on 3D models in Blender 3D. I’m hoping that once I have the game built I will be able to keep making more levels and 3D models to keep adding to the game.

I’m a little worried about the plot line and some of the human interest parts of the game. I haven’t added any functionality to the game to allow the player to make choices during the levels. I’m not sure the dialogue is all that great.

I haven’t had any word come back from the lawyer that I retained, and I don’t think I will hear anything until after the holiday. I’ll re-engage after I move and settle. It is on my mind, along with a lot of other things lately.

I’m a little worried about my motivation over this time period. I think that paying a mentor all this time has helped me keep focus even in times like this. I have time every week blocked out to work, even if I don’t get anything done in between sessions.

Personal Update

Getting ready for this move has been the primary thing on my mind lately. Lining everything up and dealing with inevitable delays. It will be good to have everything settled next month. I’m not sure how much time I’ll be able to put into game development while I’m transitioning and adapting to my new job.

Thanksgiving is at the end of the week, and this year is going to be tough for everyone. I’m lucky to be spending it with my parents this year right before my transition. It brings back memories of last year. I was in a really happy place and everything seemed to be falling into place. Little did I know then that I might have been laying the ground work for the biggest love loss of my life. It still weighs on me and it’s been difficult to move forward and really allow my heart to love again. It’s not as if I haven’t met anyone in since then. I just need to make sure live in the present and not in the past. Giving appreciation for the time I was allowed back then.

I can’t say to much but recent events have made me a lot more aware of how I’m attracted to certain traits that aren’t good for me or my boys in the long run. It’s frustrating because when I meet someone that is a good thing they are less attractive to me. I’ve had to really take a hard look at myself and fight my own instincts that way. Still I keep moving forward hoping to break the cycle. I’m sure that my new life in Florida will have all new adventures to embark on.