Finishing touches and Indie marketing

Game Update

Added one final feature this week which is a tracker for the game economy in the stages. It helped me understand where all the money was going a lot better. I just recently did a spreadsheet scrub and will need to do at least one more before I release. When I may need to think about some of the troop costs that are being used.

The economy will need a couple of number tweaks as right now the player is having to play some stages over and over to make enough to pay for their troops. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing though. Stages in which players just sit for even one day are impossible to turn a profit on, but maybe that’s a good thing. There is a small loophole to this strategy anyway.

The best way to make money seems to be defeating enemy troops. Everything else seems somewhat incidental. More testing is needed. Also the experience that troops are gaining might need another look as well. There are times when troops will skip three levels, but the catch up of that hasn’t seemed to detrimental honestly. I like how troops seem to be growing at different rates throughout the game.

It might be interesting to include past mission towns in some sort of passive income for the troops. There’s no way I could have a feature like that built before release however so I will think about it some more. I have thought about having an army graphic that moves around the map and also charges for movement.

Speaking of add on graphics, I noticed a chance for an improvement in our class screen. We need to add some sort of small graphic accent to classes the troops are allowed to change into. There seem to be some issues where I am needlessly clicking around looking for available classes for a troop. Another option might be graying out, or hiding classes that cannot be swapped to.

I got back on twitter last weekend and this past weekend to promote my game. I started using the hashtag #screenshotsaturday. It’s made a lot of difference for engagement! I think this is the most interactions I’ve had on the platform since back when I used to stream and do other. When I post I typically use the technique of “give 99 take 1”, “freedom from outcomes.

I still need to create a trailer for when I eventually get back on steam. I got a letter from them today saying they still cannot find my EIN. I’ll call the controlling authority about it tomorrow to see if it has posted yet. Something tells me it’s still to new.

Personal Update

I sprinted all week to have the game done so that I could spend the weekend focusing on my girlfriend. Last year my Valentines Day was a complete disaster. A car accident I couldn’t look away from although I can’t say that I didn’t see the writing on the wall for. I’m happy to say I was able to put down my game development to focus, and the most I did was post a bit on twitter during down/waiting time.

We celebrated a lot this weekend. Valentines day, my birthday, and the game release. There’s a lot that’s happening all at once. I’m happy that I have that feminine support from her. I feel very blessed in my life right now. I feel so blessed that I noticed that I’m looking for where the next crisis is going to come from.

My boys have finally started to start to normalize. We made some big strides this past week to keep the house more clean, and for the kids to stop raising their voices so much. They haven’t had the time that they usually would have had with me but we still managed to get some TV time in watching old 90s sitcoms. I miss television with some actual focus for a message that’s good for our society. I don’t see much of that in shows produced now.

I’m still keeping up with my treadmill regimen which requires me to get on their once a day. It’s been very good for me. That said I packed so much into this weekend that I’m falling asleep with this blog entry. Looking forward to next week which will be the last one before the final release of the game.

Make It So

Game Update

This week has been difficult as I am pushing toward the 22 Feb early access launch for Six Aspects. Steam has not accepted me yet still, and I have submitted my documents 3 times now. I applied to Humble Bundle, Good Old Games, and the Epic Games Store. I kind of expected it might be more difficult to get on those platforms and don’t know a lot about Good Old Games but it was worth a try I figured.

I received a rejection letter from Good Old Games saying that Six Aspects is to niche and to small in scale. I feel that the scale is fair for now, but I feel that niche is why we are indie developers so that seemed a little silly. Then again there are a lot of things that are in the engine that are mostly hidden from the player that they won’t realize are happening.

I also looked at releasing on Amazon but it was difficult to understand what that would entail and it seemed like they want a monthly fee which I can’t justify if the game isn’t selling. Additionally, there were a bunch of varying cuts that they are going to take out of the product and it wasn’t clear what that was going to be. I can try it if I get a regular revenue stream going on other platforms, but right now I don’t feel like I can justify it, especially as this is early access and will change over time.

Finally after a suggestion from my mentor Chris I tried out Gum Road. It was so easy to set up and it looks like they host digital projects no problems. The only issue I found with the platform is that all the game related sales are for game assets and engines. It does give me the exact capabilities I’m looking for however. I’m able to push new updates as I make them to users that have a login account and have made the purchases already. So for now on Feb 22 “Six Aspects” will be releasing on Gum Road at a minimum unless some of these other platforms pick it up.

I managed to fix a bug on entering stages. Leaders weren’t reading correctly and halting the start of stages. I managed to fix the issue, but I might just put a work around in that will bypass and auto assign leaders instead of displaying an error message which forces players to make the assignments themselves.

I surfaced the cost of the army on the Force Organization screen. I think that creating these balance sheets should help players focus and realize that there is a financial element to the game. While I’m doing that I’m refining the money system in the game. I started to add more information during the stages but found out that enemy squads with dead members were getting counted for gold for the player every time the player entered combat instead of just when they die one time. Still working on fixing this but I have a way forward on it. I am considering removing gold received from enemies during combat but this leads to another issue which is that experience is likely behaving the same way. I think I can fix them both at the same time however.

Renamed the “Toy Box” to the muster area after speaking with my buddy Aron about it. I considered some other names too. I’m glad that I settled on this though. It seems a lot more accessible this way. I also added some more tool tips and extra information for the economy in the game. That turned up some more issues with the combat that I will fix this week.

Personal Update

Looking forward to next weekend with Valentines Day coming up. I have already put everything in place for that. I’ve been focusing on the game so much that it’s pushed out a lot of my personal stuff. There’s not a lot to update here this week.

Distribution

Game Update

Started the task of scrubbing all the spreadsheets that run the objects tied to all the characters. In doing so I discovered some issues with the combat system. Namely, the way that we are handling hit vs agility attacks wasn’t quite right, the numbers weren’t scaling correctly. After fixing that I discovered that damage was being duplicated as the character stat was being over written with the combat ability damage. Both stats get added together before damage is assessed. I’m still going over the spreadsheets to normalize stats for a the troops. It was helpful to plot them all out around the Aspect circle to have some idea where each class would exist in relation to each other. This gave me an idea of what stats should be higher while others are

I found that the critical system also needed a second look. I noticed that two sets of my six skills are linked. I decided to tie critical attacks to hit points. The idea is that as a troop looses health they will become easier to get a critical attacks on. I think this makes a fair amount of sense, and it makes me consider other ideas like reducing the stats with HP, however I feel that might make battles drag out. The current idea with ramping up critical attacks feeds into our design pillar of short stages.

I’m still having issues getting my new Steam Account up and running and have resorted to looking at three other digital platforms. I’ve resolved myself to get this game released in some form or another. I want to have it finalized soon for its 1.0 version. I’ve even considered burning disks or using cheap USB drives for physical distribution. It would seem that putting software on an optical disk isn’t going to work for my needs. I might look into what it will take to create a log in server with digital products that can be downloaded. I expect people will pirate the game but I want to have the ability to take care of legit customers too.

I finalized my artwork last Friday and will get final images on Monday. I’m very happy with the way that it turned out and can’t wait to have it up on a digital store. I’m also planning to see what it will take to create a store in which fans can purchase tee shirts and other items with the artwork on them. I thought it would be cool to get the 6 aspect wheel on a licence plate for the front of my vehicles and possibly create some other advertising materials.

Personal Update

I’ve only made it to chapter 3 in Tony Robbins book “Awaken the Giant Within” and it’s given me a lot of resolve to get the game out on Feb 22. It’s probably why I’ve started to look at so many other ways to get that task accomplished. I am happy that I haven’t become to impetuous to get it done yet however. I might have wasted a lot of money making disks that won’t be useful for people that will want the software. I’m considering going the USB route as that might be better overall. It looks like I shouldn’t need more than 1GB thumb drives if I decide to do that.

I have managed to incorporate my morning work outs with my treadmill and it’s having a good effect on me overall. It’s made things a lot easier to have built up my own gym at the house. There’s a lot less excuses to get the work done. I also like the fact that my treadmill keeps it fresh with the way that it does content. I wish that I could develop software for it, but it’s a closed platform.

I had a small emergency this week as my house keeper was in a car accident with my vehicle and my youngest child. My son and the car are OK but my house keeper is a little worse for wear. I’m hoping that she will be feeling better this week. I’m so lucky to have finally found someone that does a good job with the kids, is reliable, and really goes above and beyond.

It feels like once I resolved to release and really focus on making that happen I have all kinds of distractions that are trying to take me off my path. One of my sons is having more issues at school now and so I’ve had to do a couple of phone calls with his teachers. At one point he had to re accomplish a large school assignment which I had to hold his hand through to get it done.

I started listening to the book “Cashflow Quadrant” which was written by the author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” It’s been interesting to gain more understanding about the different ways people can make money. The break down has been enlightening and I can see how the actions I’m taking with my finances. Reading these books has really made me look at money differently. I’m interested in his board game “Cash Flow” but I’ve resolved myself to reduce and eliminate as much frivolous spending as possible.

Overall there is a lot going on but I need to focus to get this product to market. It’s very true what industry people have said to me, “making the game is the easy part, everything else is the hard part.”

Taking the Steam Out of My Engine

Game Update

I spent the bulk of this week hunting down some of the business side of thing that need to get done. Due to my decision to change my business from Texas to Florida it changed my EIN which created a problem with everything I had in place to this point. I had to get a new bank account, a new EIN, and a new Steam Account. Right now if the game is delayed past the Feb 22 date it will be due to not having a Steam account in place to host the game. I suppose I could always do a release on my website. Maybe I should talk to Humble Bundle about options. I just thought about that while I was writing this.

I also need to get on putting this trailer for the game together as well. I ran into a ton of technical issues when trying to get the footage done, or moved, or edited. It feels like forever since I have had any new footage posted to my YouTube channel. I did manage to set up my Twitch again and I let my son stream Terraria today which seemed to go well. Maybe I’ll take a break and see if I can do a game stream sometime, or ask my oldest to do that to promote the game.

I did everything I could to get the ball rolling on the Steam account. The issue seems to be that they cannot find my new EIN. I have been told that it won’t show up in the system for 30 days. I sent them all the paperwork to show that I am legit but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

I got some of the first concepts from my artist this week, and so I sent a lengthy feedback to her to get some more focus. I’m happy that she has agreed to do the logo for Lancer Entertainment and her first pass on it has been very promising for me. Her artwork for Six Aspects has a lot of good points but ultimately it looked very cyberpunk futuristic and not really medieval. Hoping my feedback will help her zero in on exactly what we are going for. It’s also difficult to get the text to show up at such a small scale which was another noted issue although I liked what she tried to do with the lettering. She stacked “Aspects” over “Six” which created a cool effect that wasn’t readable enough at small scale.

Personal Update

Still finding time on the phone with my girlfriend. We went exclusive recently and will be seeing each other again close to the Valentines Day holiday next month. That’s also really close to when I want to release and so I’d like to have as much done as possible so that I can focus all my attention on her when she visits me here. She’s been very supportive of me.

I carved some time out to go to my church’s “first steps” class tonight and it was very enjoyable. I really feel good about making this place my church home. I felt called to join the praise and worship team and so I have been auditioning and working on some of their music. I bumped into the worship leader today and he will be sending me some more music to work on soon. I let him know it wasn’t any rush due to my video game release. It’s interesting to think about this now as when I started getting serious about game development I distinctly felt that God had told me to work in the children’s ministry and move away from the praise and worship team when I lived in San Antonio. Now it would seem that God wants me to go back to it so many years later now that the project is moving into its first major release phase.

I spoke with a friend in marketing tonight. We are buddies from a self development group we used to be a part of together. It was interesting hearing his perspective on what I am going through right now with this release. One of the big take aways I had from the conversation was when he told me that Jeff Bezos had said, “there are 2 kinds of decisions, ones you can reverse and ones you can’t.” It really struck a chord with me as even after release if there are problems with the game they can be fixed later. That said I have done my best to make sure the product is a cut above the standard “early access” game on Steam. I have said all along that I will be building out the rest of the levels, adding more troops, more spells, more content in general after release. The game is good enough as it has a beginning middle and end, and very few bugs none of which are completely game breaking.

I guess the main thing on my mind right now is getting this trailer done and getting my new Steam account set up to sell the game. Hoping I can get it moving along very soon.

Overcoming Road Blocks

Game Update

Managed to knock a couple of small polish items out this week while I followed up with a lot of the business side of things. It turns out that when you change your business from one state to another it effects pretty much everything. It turns out that as soon as you change your EIN it means you need to start over with the various entities that require it instead of just changing it.

I spoke with my artist and gave some more direction on what I need for the final artwork. Hoping to see that soon before the end of the month. I still have some artwork available if this doesn’t work or if it gets delayed. I might also be getting a new Lancer Entertainment logo as well.

Personal Update

Things are moving along well with my relationship. I was able to meet my girlfriend this weekend which is exciting as I thought it might be some time before things would line up. She’s been very supportive, and I like where things are going. That said I’m doing my best to be careful going forward.

The treadmill has been working out well as I’ve been encouraged to work out for the past week. At one point in time I asked myself the question, “what would happen if I dressed well all the time?” I changed a lot of who I was in order to learn how to be fashionable. I’ve started to ask myself a similar question about working out which is, “what would happen if I used my treadmill every day?”

I noticed that I have started to feel better but haven’t started to lose weight. We have a weight loss pool at work. I suppose I’m trusting the book Atomic Habits which talks about the concept of doing a lot of work and having a break through that will present a lot of results all at once. I kind of want to challenge the notion of necessary rest when working out for gains as well.

Remember, and Boldly Move Forward

Game Update

Building up more footage this week and a minor setback doing so when there were some sound problems with my recording computer. More importantly I found out that although I have a business licence in Florida I have not obtained an EIN yet which I will need to update on Steam as the one I used to have was for the old Texas company. That is my number one priority this week.

I did create a new opening splash screen for the game to replace the old one with the old company name. I was happy to get that done, but I need to buckle down and do a lot of video editing moving forward. My oldest son has been good about putting footage together for me.

I also contacted my artist about the “key art” that we will need for Steam. I have a meeting set up this week and look forward to see what direction she ultimately went in. I might have made a bit of a greedy request to see if she might also whip something up for my company logo as that was on my mind again this past week. I spent some of my break time drawing new graphics and moving away from the night with the long lance to try out a castle idea, which is interesting but probably not as good as the original idea.

Personal Update

Things have progressed and I’m very happy to be in a committed relationship again. I always hope that this will be the one that sticks, but I’m also cautious. It feels better than all the others this time, and so I really see possibilities. I suppose it couldn’t come at a better time as I will need all the support I can get as I push toward the Feb 22 release.

I spent some time this week framing my old Hex the Shards of Fate posters and some super hero posters to hang on all the nails in my house which is kind of a long story. Suffice it to say that I had a lot of someone else’s artwork in my house and then they went up in smoke which was pretty heart breaking. It’s good to see something hanging on all those nails I put in now.

I couldn’t help but think about my time creating videos for a couple years on my YouTube channel for the online card game Hex. It was quite a time in my life as I was working on my bachelors degree, learning game development, trying to hold together a failing marriage, and putting my best foot forward as an instructor. The game is gone now, it will in all probability never be played again due to litigation between a massive juggernaut of a company and a small peon. In a way I suppose you could say that the footage that I have along with all the other people from that community is all that’s left of it. Just a memory on video for people to relive to see what it was like.

I gained a lot from that time. I really explored and I suppose I wasn’t as successful as I had hoped. I’m no stranger to failure, I almost expect it. Still I do try to put my best foot forward. Someone told me once, “let’s not plan to fail” but as I think about that phrase I just don’t think that’s how I can do business. I prefer to know the risks I’m plunging into, and then many times I go in anyway. What’s life without a little bit of risk? I just like to have some idea of what I’m risking, along with the possible outcomes.

Time to move forward, it’s time to release.

Happy New Year! Full steam ahead for Feb 22 Early Access Launch!

Game Update

I’m two days late on releasing my blog entry this week, but at this point it has become such a habit that I need to do it. I guess that’s a good thing as every week it’s a check in for me as much as it is information for anyone that will read this. Today I feel tired, frustrated, and a bit on edge with all my personal stuff that I will talk about later, but I’m happy because I still showed up to “get my reps in” as the book “Atomic Habits” would say.

Primarily focused on getting with my artist to change out the capsule art, but if that falls through we have art in place and can release. I also spent time over break fixing my setup to allow me to record footage which I can edit together to make that holy grail of a trailer for the game which needs to be short and sweet while displaying the best parts of the game.

Speaking of the “best parts” of the game after soliciting another round of beta testers I actually got some amazing feedback from one of them. A lot of it came down to expectations and sensibilities that we were not explaining properly in the game. I didn’t even realize how many times I was taking “the road less traveled” until I looked through his feedback. That said we managed to glean some last minute upgrades that we can put in before the fateful Feb 22 date.

Speaking of that date, I need to swap my EIN on Steam, and talk to my bank to make sure that all my ducks are in a row on the business side of things after moving my licence from Texas to Florida. Kind of a lagging item that needs to be looked at.

Overall I feel confident that if I showed the game to someone right now it’s good enough to pass, and I can release it. I’m just putting as many last minute touches on it as I can before I get it to market while doing what I can to make sure all my ducks are in a row for release.

I’m not sure how much spreadsheet balancing I’ll be able to do before release. It was also noted that I need to take a look at the skill tool tips as they are to verbose and need to be reduced. Less is more.

Personal Update

Sometimes you come back from vacation and everything that was working when you left is suddenly broken. That was exactly the case this week and it has added a lot of stress to me. On the plus side I spent some time with a wonderful woman over some of my time off while working on the game of course. She gave me a lot of support this week which I am very appreciative of.

The things that are broken range from child sickness that’s keeping them from going to school, to car trouble, all the way down to my mouse malfunctioning. That mouse thing was pretty annoying to trouble shoot as it was super suspicious when I couldn’t move windows around my screen by clicking on the header bar. It turns out that it was double and triple clicking on a single click and is simply past its prime.

One of the biggest “game development” wins over the holiday is the fact that I now have a clean and clear office to work in. Often I say that there are a lot of things in “game development” and running a business that aren’t specifically related to the product that are important none the less. I figured that with all the paper I had in my office it hadn’t been important all year and so it wouldn’t be such a big deal to simply toss it into bins instead of going through it to spend the time to figure out what to keep, what to throw away and then to organize it all. It still need to be done eventually, but having a clean office is more important than getting that task done right now.

Things feel like they are in place, I just need to keep working hard and focusing. Over the holidays I picked up a new self development book “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins. He makes some good points in the first chapter about how most of us “dabble” and never really focus. That said I couldn’t help but think about “Atomic Habits” which also presents the idea of creating small habits and working from there. I can see how the two concepts may seem to be at odds with each other, but I can also make sense of them in such a way to know that they can work hand in hand as well. I’m definitely in a place where it would be good to plan out the next 10 to 20 years of my life because it will be here before I know it.

Christmas Fishing

Game Update

Made a new build for the game, and I’m starting to record some various footage to create the trailer. Having some issues with the sound quality however. On the subject of sound, I have a new intro that my musician just got over to me which I think will be a great track to use for the trailer.

I also need to work on re-balancing the spreadsheets. I will have more of an idea on where things need to go after I do some test plays of the game. I already know that the paladins have way to many hit points to keep things interesting. Battles are being extended unnecessarily.

I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked but there is still plenty of time to focus and buckle down. I just need to start working and build solid habits to do this every day, and bit by bit it will get done.

Personal Update

I finally finished cleaning up my office this week. It’s been more than a year since I moved into this house and this is one of the last things that I had to do to get the house cleaned up. I did short cut it a bit kicking the can down the road a bit, but the overall effect is a productivity boon for my office area. I no longer dread sitting in here working in this mess.

I don’t usually talk about church but this week there was a good message on Sunday morning which could apply to a lot of different areas in life. The message was about the passage in scripture in which Christ tells His disciples to cast their nets on the other side of their boat in order to catch fish when they had been fishing all night with no luck. I think this is a good lesson as I will be trying to “catch” some players when I release the game.

Speaking of release dates, I think that I can safely set a release date for the early access again. I am striving to release on 22 Feb 2022. This day is pretty neat as it is the same backwards and forwards. I guess you could call it a number palindrome.

I didn’t spend as much time on working on my game as I would have liked but I did get a couple of upgrades which should return time and give me a boost. First I received my treadmill which has been a great thing to wake up and do as it allows me to walk on different tours around the world and clear my head. The exercise is welcome as often the conditions for walking and running in Florida aren’t great with all the rain.

I also picked up a vacuuming robot for the house, and that had a curious effect. I’m mostly alone in the house for the holiday but having it around makes me feel like something else is in the house. Maybe I’ll get a robot dog eventually to keep my company for times like this.

Looking forward to ringing in the New Year with someone special. I feel very blessed to be able to make friends and date even though I am focused on my stuff. I’m hopeful but cautious as always. I also made a great connection with a local guy which will be great if the game does well as he is in heavily in the wealth generation business which I am starting to look at more seriously after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”

Productivity

Game Update

Started the process of blocking out the game trailer for Steam. It would seem that in the genre of strategy games have three key elements a hook, a mini tutorial, and some various game play elements. Most trailers are between one to two minutes with an average of a minute thirty. Some other nice elements are social proof statements of good reviews from news outlets. It’s likely those won’t be available to me however.

I spent some time cleaning up my office to make it more inviting to work in. I think I might just take a lot of this paper and put it in plastic tubs. Realistically at this point the paper has been sitting around for a full year and I haven’t looked at hardly any of it.

I will need to go through the spreadsheets still as some of the stats aren’t where they need to be. Primarily I know that the knights likely have to many hit points right now. It’s going to be a balancing act to get everything right, but if a character ends up under powered or over powered I’m not to worried as the concept of imperfect perfection takes care of that.

Personal Update

I spent most of the weekend driving to take my boys to be with my ex-wifes family for the Christmas Holiday. With the boys away there will be plenty of time for me to work on my game. The issue is that a lot of my habits are built around the kids. I don’t have a lot of habits to trigger my productivity which means I need to be aware and start habits right away. A habit like coming home and sitting at my desk to look at the game will be a good start.

I got lucky and will have some people to spend the holidays with this year. I feel so blessed to be in the position I’m in. I’m starting to get settled in here with friend groups which is strange as I am still used to my military way of life in which things are much more temporary.

I’m following through to audition for the church praise and worship team. I do that on Wednesday, and so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. I try to be free from outcomes as much as possible, and this case is no different. That said I am spending some time working on music for the audition which is taking some time away from development, but I think the overall effect will be a net gain to give me more focus to get things done.

Liabilities

Game Update

The stage swap is complete but I need to do some testing to see if I missed something. The next step is balancing the spreadsheets and creating a game trailer for steam. I figure that making a trailer will probably take between 10-20 hours to get right. It will probably be the most editing that I’ve ever done. I think the main issue right now is that the office in my house has been a mess for the past year. I’m going to focus on getting it into ship shape to encourage me to get the work done.

We also have a bug that isn’t game breaking but it’s still annoying. I will focus on doing that with my mentor for the next couple of sessions. The issue is that if a leader is set in a squad and then is subsequently moved to the toy box the squad still thinks that a leader is assigned. All the squads need to have leaders assigned in order to start a stage, but when the squads start the stage without a leader it triggers more issues. It’s not game breaking as it doesn’t benefit the player in any way, but it’s still an issue. Hopefully the player would only make that mistake one time. It’s a bug, but I can release with it.

Fixing all the spreadsheets is going to come down to setting the appropriate numbers for the game to keep things feeling good. As an example it’s likely that some of our defensive troops have to much health and defense which goes against our tenant of keeping the stages short. What’s going to be more difficult will be the damage done when multiple factors are increasing it. Most of that isn’t very intuitive, it just sort of happens when the stars align and the player probably won’t know why a troop that does 20 damage is suddenly doing 67 damage.

Personal Update

I started reading the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. It’s been pretty eye opening as I realize that for most of my life I was investing in a lot of “liabilities” instead of “assets”. Luckily I had accidentally been doing some things right which has been helpful overall. I’m hoping that the lessons learned from the book will help when I start selling the game soon. It’s made me want to take some more financial classes to shore up my financial intelligence. I have been worried about government taxation.

I released a couple of jokes on my Facebook, and I had a couple of good responses. The well seems to have run dry for now. I’m not sure if I should push to write even when I’m not inspired or not. The book Atomic Habits says that Jerry Seinfeld would write a joke every day and focus on not breaking the chain. Maybe I’m diverting to much energy to things that aren’t my game development. I might shelve the idea for now and just hit it when I’m inspired. If I’m going to create a chain that I don’t want broken it needs to be focused on working on my game instead.

Waiting to get the audition information for the church praise and worship team. I will be putting my best foot forward as it’s renewed my interest in playing. I’ve done some practicing at home lately, and I had a chance to spend some time with my family and play some music this past week. Maybe it’s finally time to get back into the music scene. The last time I played in a band was about nine years ago. I distinctly remember moving from the band to children’s church as they needed the help, and I wanted to work on learning how to make a game. Maybe in some ways I do this thing where I will put things off until I feel like the timing is right. The problem is that when my timing is right, often the moment has passed. Such is life I suppose.

I’m still dating and socializing but not putting a lot of effort into it. It’s nice to have people that are supportive in my life. It’s still strange to me to live somewhere and not expect to move in 3-4 years. I guess I’m starting to build up friend groups for the coming years.

Sacrifice

Game Update

Started the process of swapping stage one and two. It took some time to swap the two stages on the map, but I managed to get it done. After that I had to go in to each stage to move dialogue around I also ended up making some changes to tighten it up and make it more focused. I worked with my mentor to create a checklist of items that need to be covered for the player to understand how to play the game.

It’s important to make sure that someone can use just the game to understand how to play. It would never be possible to sit next to every person that purchases the game to explain how to play. Even if it did really poorly and sold 1000 copies it wouldn’t be feasible. I still need to finish up with the stage swaps as not all the work is done yet.

Another point of change for the stage swap is ensuring that the difficulty level of the enemies in the stage and the way that they move around. All the enemies are unintelligent and move by way points that are invisible to they player. This makes them rather unintelligent, but it works well enough. You might call this AI that focuses on a pattern. In the stage two of the way points is on the home base which is a threat, but now that stage has become the first one. It would be to intense for the player to have to deal with the enemy invading their base on stage one and so I moved the way point to just in front of the base to make it threatening.

Making sure that the dialogue is focused is pretty important as I don’t want to have unnecessary fluff that doesn’t have meaning in some way. I remember seeing a GDC talk about it. Dialogue should either do world building, or exposition. The first couple stages are more heavy in exposition but the later stages are more focused in world building.

I’m considering adding some more functionality to give us the ability to do enemy dialogue in battle before a combat triggers. We might be able to do this already by attaching a new trigger zone for dialogue that’s larger than the trigger zone for combat. Once the dialogue has been triggered once we can destroy the invisible trigger object which is similar to how we trigger secret zones. Some testing will be necessary to try this out. We might also build in some text that triggers at the end of the stage to give some closure to each mini plot line for the stages.

Personal Update

I think I had a lot of stress from the Thanksgiving Day weekend in which I also did Christmas and on the prior weekend I did a birthday for my oldest. Not having to prepare for another birthday this weekend gave me a bit of a breather but I will need to do one next week. The boys go away for Christmas shortly after that. From there I will need to buckle down and really get to work.

The boys seem to be acting up a little more than usual right now. I think it’s due to having to go away over the holidays. Setting boundaries with my relationships has been a big difficult, but I think that it has already reaped a lot of benefits for my home dynamic. I’m lucky to have found another solid house keeper so quickly.

Moving forward with my application to the church praise and worship team. Meeting people at church and getting plugged in is going well. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to do this if I didn’t feel like God was prompting me to do it. In their documentation for the team it talks about making sacrifices for the team. Beyond the time commitment I will have to make some changes in other areas as well.

There have been a lot of times this past year and even before that in which I would say that God has moved me, and even my family. I wouldn’t have made the changes myself as I was comfortable where I was. Often I find that’s how He works. Growth means pain, and sacrifice. Sometimes it means doing things I didn’t choose myself, not that I don’t like the path I’m on, it’s just interesting how a path that wasn’t even on my radar can suddenly become everything that I am.

For some time I have thought about writing a book, or doing a comedy routine. Something struck me this week and so I’m starting to write down all the things I find funny and post them on my Facebook to see what kind of responses I get. Facebook isn’t really built for this type of engagement I’m finding that my “jokes” which are basically observational stories about my life experiences are probably to long for the average Facebook browser that’s looking for the next dopamine hit. It just goes to remind me about removing all my swipe apps, and how they were having a major negative impact on my mood and time.

Moving forward I just need to stay focused on my goals. I’m still dating and moving slowly. It’s been good to have the ability to socialize with the possibility of something to develop eventually. I feel very blessed right now.

Shifty Characters

Game Update

The polishing process has begun as I fixed a problem with the map camera and the water on the map. We made some changes to the skybox which made the water look black on the map camera. In order to fix the issue we added a blue plane which can only be seen by the map camera and is otherwise invisible to the normal player view.

I still need to do the four items I outlined two weeks ago. I should focus on swapping level one and two. I feel like those will be the most straight forward although a little work intensive to get done. I need to set aside more times during the week to focus on getting the work done. Hopefully I will have less distractions and more focus over the Christmas holiday.

Still looking to release in February and I have a date in mind but there is plenty of work yet to do and so I don’t want to say a specific date yet. I do like the fact that I can have a lot of twos in the date though, so there’s a hint.

Personal Update

I’m reviewing what I wrote about last week and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind this week. I see that I had put down all my dating apps which has been good overall as I just don’t have a lot of time to meet new people right now. I’m starting to think it won’t be until after the game is released that I will be back on them, but then again maybe one of the people I’m currently seeing will become more exclusive before then. It’s been a good decision overall.

I spoke with a good friend about counseling and still ended up with a price that was a bit to high for me. I think that I will pursue something through the VA this week to explore those possibilities. That reminds me that I need to follow up on my sons Autism treatments which have been taking some time to get set up.

Florida truly is the land of a thousand scam artists. It seems like everywhere I turn there’s another one. I’m not sure what it is about this state that attracts so much of that. I wonder if there are some social reforms that could help out. I’m not sure if the government should or shouldn’t be involved as on the one hand a person could say that a person that is foolish with their money will be parted from it. Then again I do believe that government should protect certain people like the elderly and children from such practices. The nice thing is that it has exposed me to a character that has inspired me to write once again. I’m not sure where this will go however.

The World of Six Aspects

These stories set in the world of Six Aspects are not cannon but might become cannon in the future.

Marcus the Virtuous

My brother Kyle left home because he’s selfish. All he thinks about is his future and what he will become. He has no love for what the empire has done to give all of us here a better life in Zelteris. I on the other hand signed up for service on the day I turned 18. Nothing was going to hold me back from my duty to defend the empire whatever the cost.

I left my hometown in Kingsland after enlisting and was sent to Sherman area to begin my on the job training. I primarily worked in Din and there is one incident that stood out to me in particular when I was there.

The population of Din was divided between the merchants at the top of society with much of the wealth and the worker class which often lived in spaces with a lower standard of living. I wouldn’t say that they were scraping by, but their standards were pretty far from the upper echelon of society. Often I would hear about how they felt it was unfair that they worked while the ruling class made money off their labor. Some various worker revolts broke out and I was called in to help suppress them.

This unrest led to some grifters living on the edge between the working class and the merchants. One such person was Mr. Hagerman. This guy was smooth. It took us months of investigation to figure out his exact scheme. We were always one step behind him. The city would often have individuals coming in and out, and Mr. Hagerman knew that he could always find a soft heart among them to sew his seeds of discourse.

He would tell people that a family member died and he needed to get some money so he could go to the funeral. He would even promise to pay double back which was pretty amazing. The targets would hand over the money and when the time came to pay up he would produce another emergency related to his mothers roof. Everyone knew where he lived and it’s a wonder that he did this for so long. The thing is that travelers come and go. He figured they would forget and they didn’t deserve the money if they listened to his lies anyway.

He was a master of telling people about how he needed to take care of his sick family members to solicit good feelings. He was so good at telling lies that he really believed that he was the most virtuous one in the city. No one deserved the money more than he. Often if someone asked for a return on their money he would simply make them feel bad for asking and tell them they would get their money tomorrow.

When we finally figured out all the things this malcontent had done we were too late, unfortunately. He had already left town to go to the next one to peddle his lies there. Is this the grand Empire I serve? A place where we can’t even police a simple grifter to protect our local population? I suppose it could be worse, but I wasn’t ready to deal with this. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference here at all. I’m just a cog in a machine. Someone needs to do something to take charge before something really bad happens. I feel powerless to fight back.

Maybe I should have put a stop to Mr. Hagerman earlier and less people would have been scammed. I had a chance but I didn’t act. I’m the one to blame for this. Sometimes smooth talk and a friendly face hide a dark heart, and I guess I found that out the hard way. I pray to Gods Aspect of Snow to give me clarity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Game Update

Finally secured an artist to work on the capsule art to really push it over the top and make it pop. I’m excited to have that done and I’m doing my best to buckle down and adjust fire into polishing other parts of the game now.

I should probably focus my attention on swapping the first and second stage now. This will take a bit more than just swapping the position they fill on the map. I will also have to re-work the dialogue a bit. That reminds me that I need to fix the water reflection as we made changes to the sky box and it doesn’t look quite right now.

Balancing the spreadsheets is also important as some stats are to far off base like the paladin tree. Often it feels like we aren’t doing enough damage so that troops die quickly enough. I’m not sure if I want to make an assassination skill that takes troops to 1HP or kills them outright. That always felt a little cheesy and counter to the other systems in the game. Maybe upping the critical damage could help a bit here.

Creating a trailer will also be something I should jump on. It’s been so long since I have done any streaming or made/edited video. I guess that was a different era in my life. I do miss it, but I’m not sure I will be able to go back to it.

Personal Update

I’m glad I got rid of all my swipe apps although for a while I was going through withdrawals. I’ve always been a believer in “video game addiction” due to anything that has a random reveal mechanic becoming addictive. To that end I would say social media can also become pretty toxic feeding into that Skinner Box of dopamine hits we all love. I plainly remember my phone being on vibrate upstairs in my bedroom in a house I used to live in. I could hear it vibrating from downstairs because I was so tuned into the feedback. I should probably set “no phone hours”.

I know it’s not Thanksgiving yet, but I should probably say it now as I’m not sure if I will be on time with my blog entry next week or if I might skip it all together. I’m hosting Thanksgiving which should be a good time, but it’s also a fair amount of work. I have come a long way to get here from my tumultuous military retirement in 2020 to now. I am so blessed to be here.

Still spending time with a couple of the girls I met on dating apps to see where it leads me. It’s kind of nice to just calm down and date without feeling like I need to get on an app to see who I’m missing out on. Just enjoy the time dating to see where it goes. Lately our phones have been programming us to always be dissatisfied with “the now” by forcing our thoughts into the future. It’s a bad thing for society in general to have one more thing to take away our sense of being present to the moment.

I had a chance to start working with an elite coach, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about it this past weekend. I talked to a lot of my friends in that field and it really helped to get their insight. Ultimately it came down to the value proposition. I felt that if I did work with this coach the money spent (which is high) would not have been returned for the value I could have received from it to upgrade more things around the house or do a number of other things. It also felt like if I decided to do this it would have been more about my own vanity than wanting to get better. I decided to pass on it for now as I’m simply not ready, nor do I have enough motivation to really follow through with it as the game is becoming such a priority for me to finish and get to early access. I’m also looking to release in February of 2022 but we will see what I can get done between now and the end of December so I can make that decision with as much information as I can.

Less is More Focus

Game Update

Managed to get some capsule art images on the Steam page, but I’m not completely satisfied with them. They’re way to brown. Still it’s a step in the right direction. Art takes a long time to really get right sometimes. Talking to another local artist to see if they can work on taking what I have and tighten it up to really come up with something special for all the work that has been put into the game. How is it that you can sum up all your work over the past 8 years with one image that will entice people to want to know more? It’s a pretty daunting proposition.

I think if I can fulfill everything on Steam I can start thinking about a release date again while polishing everything else in the game. The numbers in the combat definitely need some more balancing to feel correct. I have about 2 weeks over Christmas to really focus and get things done while my kids are away. It will be important not to squander it and feel bad for whatever reason about what I’m doing.

Personal Update

It’s been a heck of a week for me, and I think that I’m emotionally drained at this point. So much so that when I was at church today I think I felt God speaking to me which hasn’t happened in a long time. He told me to uninstall my dating apps, so I did. I have a few girls I’m still talking to and we will see how it goes but I don’t think I’ll be actively meeting new people again until after Christmas at the earliest. I really needed to reduce the things I’m doing in my personal life to focus. And thus less is more.

I think my heart needs a bit of a rest anyway, maybe some counseling again would be good. I talk a lot about being “free from outcomes” when I date, but there are times when that’s just not possible.Some of those past flames won’t ever go away but they had their time and it’s over now. Still it’s important to be ready for a new flame that might not burn in the same way, but will still be special all the same.

I pulled the trigger on a new treadmill for my house which I think is a great thing to increase my health over the long run as it rains here in Florida so much which can ruin running days. Even the option to take a hike after my kids are in bed is appealing to me. I need to make sure to make good use of it. I could have easily have purchased other items like a new table for board games, a new TV, etc… I’m happy to be investing in myself this way.

I had some good talks with my older two sons this week. One in particular with my oldest which was pretty awkward to say the least. I really wonder sometimes what is getting through to them and what isn’t. It’s hard to know for sure. More than anything I feel that being a man that says something and actually follows through on what he says is important. If I didn’t it would invalidate what I say. I do my best to be congruent to the things I do and say but it doesn’t always follow.

Quick Sidetrack

Game Update

Worked on getting the menu screen to show two different backgrounds through a series of menus. In the future this will also include a window for stats that the player can look at. Kind of exciting to see the polish come together for the game.

Due to this I had to take a break from looking at my capsule art this week. Bringing it up and looking at it hasn’t been helping as I feel like it’s 80% there but not quite where I want it to be yet. We got thrown way off when we shrunk it down to see its size in the steam client. Going to check another local artist that I was recommended by a good friend.

Things I need to fix for release after getting the big hurdle that is the key art done are.

• Re-balance spreadsheets

• Check all the sound effects (most have been added already)

• Swap the first and second levels to create a more cohesive first level experience for players

• Create a trailer for the game

There are some other polish items that would be good to get done that are mostly visual and one or two bugs that won’t come up often but I think that those five things (key art included) are the main ones we need to go live. I guess it’s a lot less than I thought it was. I just reshuffled the priorities on my Trello board to properly reflect this too. Who knows maybe I can get an after Christmas early access release going.

Personal Update

I was able to teach again this week, and it’s been a real boon to my self esteem. Not teaching others really takes a lot of energy away from me these days. It’s kind of strange as that’s more of an extrovert thing, and I’m more naturally introverted. I feel that I made really good use of my time this week as I knocked out a lot of items that have been lingering for the past year.

I started working out again in the mornings, and it has been a great addition to my day! Running and lifting each morning before I go into work seems to work really well for me. Later in the day, or the day after I can feel the soreness which is great as I know my body is doing the work to rebuild the muscles I tore down while I worked out. I need to be careful not to push to hard, which feels bad as I was in a lot better condition last year. I suppose atrophy happens to everyone when they neglect something long enough. If you’re not getting 1% stronger every day then you’re probably losing at least that much, maybe even more. I can’t say that I’m happy about my run times right now, but I am happy that I was able to run for the entire time. It can only get better as I “get my reps” in just like it says in Atomic Habits.

Happy Halloween!

Game Update

Spending more time this week struggling through doing capsule art with my mentor. I say struggle because just when I think I’m going in a good direction it ends up being something that’s lackluster or something that just doesn’t work at the tiny steam page scale that we need it to. The example I have is a logo that surrounds my text made the text to small and thus in order to make it more readable at that small size we had to make the text take up most of the frame. This meant the logo needed to be moved which messed up the whole composition of the piece.

I guess you could say that art takes a lot of revisions to really get it right. It’s important to remember to enjoy the journey instead of focusing on the end goal. That goal is important but the only pressure I have is the pressure I place on myself. On the flip side it’s also important to set deadlines to keep myself moving forward. I would like to have this done by the end of the month. There I said it and now I have an actual goal in mind to get this done.

I’m also still working on some additional menu items for turning on different force organization screens in the background. I think I may have been a bit distracted this week with Halloween and my transition from days to nights.

Personal Update

I think I’m going to take a break from doing a third section of my blog for the foreseeable future. I want that to be a section to be focused on freedom of expression and creativity, and lately it has felt like I was forcing it and not giving it the time it deserves. I think that focusing on the game and some of my personal stuff is more important to give context going forward.

I guess that I write these blog entries as a way to keep myself accountable to getting this game out the door, but also as a historical way to look back at everything I’ve done and been through to get there. I know they aren’t read by many people, but it’s still important for me to do them. That said I once heard a wise person say, “it’s important to do at least as much game development as we do talking about game development.” It’s easy to theorize and go down rabbit holes filling our time with a lot of talk. Taking action should be the focus though. Maybe I’ll make a new third section called promises to myself to try and force myself to get more done during each week.

Spending a fair amount of time socializing and meeting new people which has been good overall. Sometimes I’m surprised at how quickly things can go from 0 to 60 or be traveling at a stead 50 before hitting a wall. I’ve started to set more boundaries for my relationships which I think is a good thing. More timelines to reach certain levels in order to protect my kids from getting invested, and more time before I become exclusive. Overall it seems to be doing well for me, and my productivity.

I had a bit of drama with my oldest son this week. He wasn’t to keen on Halloween and dressing up. I suppose he’s getting older now and sees it as a kids holiday. He changes his mind at the end of the week which makes me happy. You try to do the best you can with your kids and I think it is very important for him to socialize with kids his age now.

Capsule Art Finally

Game Update

Worked on some capsule art this week and finally added some to my steam page, but I can’t say that I’m completely happy with it. It’s moving in the right direction though. Still, I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Maybe a few more iterations and I’ll have it fully zeroed in.

I need to start recording some game play to build a trailer for the game too. It’s been far to long since I’ve posted that video on YouTube for the game. So much has changed since then. I think my issue will be cutting it down to the most exciting moments of gameplay.

I spent some time trying to integrate both the backgrounds into my menu system for the game. This might lead to adding some sort of stats that the player can track for their game as well once I get it working right. Once I have that system working I will have a good baseline for Steam Achievements.

Personal Update

I’m finally settling in well with some new instruction at work which has made me feel more comfortable. It was difficult not teaching for so long. I get a lot of energy from it. It became a bit of a void for me. On top of that I had some other relationship havoc to recover from.

I went to see Dune, and the visuals were great but there were a couple of things that left me feeling like there were a couple of missed opportunities. That said it would seem that it might be a two or three movie series. I kind of wish that they had shown the navigators. They also made the emperor into more of an idea than an actual person as they refer to the position a lot but completely eliminated the throne room scene. The battles were a little to dark to understand what was going on as well.

I Must Not Fear

Game Update

I spent some more time on the key art, and it’s good enough for me to go ahead and push it out for early access. I haven’t seen the character duplication bug in quite a while and so my fingers are crossed that is still good. I’m sure that people will find plenty of bugs when I release. As a bonus for making so many version of the art work I was able to make black and white versions of it for the credits screen. It would be nice to have a little more of some sort of animation, who knows maybe in the future we can make that happen.

I need to get back on my steam works account and start creating different versions of the artwork at different resolutions now. I’m also looking at designs I can do for my logo as well. I found a great game dev channel on YouTube that’s being super helpful as I move through the process. The channel title is AuroDev. I highly recommend this guy.

There are some other polish items I need to attend to before release like making the stages a little prettier, and re-balancing spreadsheets as some classes have proven to have stats that are a little high to make them balanced. The system for troop alignment over the course of the game should also be investigated as it only functions on combat. If troops are under leveled they have a chance of gaining positive good alignment and if they are over leveled then they have a chance to lose it. Some tuning could really help us zero in on it.

At the request of my brother I created a new background for the Force Organization screen. It’s a castle instead of the nighttime floating in the sky by the lighthouse one that I’ve used for the past 8 years. It was pretty fun to see how I could switch things up a bit. I might try and add another one soon. Maybe I can put an incentive with it that ties it to how the player runs their squads in game. I showed it to my brother and he liked it then alerted me to a mobile title that he was worried about being to similar to what I was building. I looked at it and was like… nope just a clash of clans clone like most mobile strategy games.

Personal Update

I’ve been dealing with a lot of criticism and personal attacks lately. It’s come from all sides and it’s not completely unwarranted. It definitely has an effect on me. I really needed allies and I’m lucky to have the support that I do from friends and family. I can only imagine that things will get worse after I release the game although they will be related to the game and not me personally.

Thinking about all this, this past week it reminds me of a line from Dune, “I must not fear fear is the mind killer.” Another way to say it would be that it’s important to be free from outcomes. Unfortunately for us as humans that’s easier said than done.

On a less serious note I had an idea this week. Over the past couple of years fans have felt more and more disenfranchised from some of their favorite intellectual properties as they are taken over and told in such a way that makes fans feel like they are being disrespected. An interesting point was brought up recently in that fans don’t have the ability to use a companies intellectual property which is understandable. So I thought to myself, what if a company did allow others to use their intellectual property for their own ends free of charge?

I feel like this could be a good thing and a bad thing. The bad parts are what companies are continually fighting. Companies have law suits when people sell products based on their IP. Sometimes even when things are close they are infringing and that leads to more lawsuits to protect their IP. It’s corporate interests that drive this behavior, and on some levels protecting the companies income to make sure they can pay their workers is an important point.

On the good side of things having an open IP could be a real force multiplier. There are an infinite number of possibilities to explore in any IP, but there is a limited number of ideas that any one person can create. More ideas and pursuits can increase the brand, even if there are some poor products that are produced. It’s kind of like the idea of how religion works in Dungeons and Dragons. The more people that are a part of it, the more powerful it becomes. Taking the religious example further no one is going to get sued for making commercial religious icons even if some are low quality.

Another major point I would bring up is the idea of IP over multiple parallel universes. In my opinion this allows for more creativity without the problem of dealing with cannon between two different creators work. So maybe I have my IP for Six Aspects that’s my universe and cannon and another person has a different cannon it’s fine and they can do what they want with their universe without consequence to mine. The overall net effect is more stories that will hopefully increase the popularity which is more important for mostly unknown IP.

Some interesting ideas for sure. I might create an IP page in the future to set down all the rules for how I want to handle things. Overall I try to be more open when I’m doing things, but maybe that’s a mistake. I guess you could say that’s why I have been putting a disclaimer on all my “World of Six Aspects” blog entries.

The World of Six Aspects

These stories set in the world of Six Aspects are not cannon but might become cannon in the future.

Kyle’s Story Part 2 Love and Logging

It’s been a couple of months since I started working for the Willowdale logging company. I remember a pretty weird thing happening on my first day. I remember seeing this girl and it was weird the world kind of stopped and everything went white. All I could see was her. She was just getting some equipment out of the depot. I shook it off and kept going about my business.

I found her name out later through some of my new friends. Her name is Jel and she started working here after her family fell on hard times. I’m kind of afraid to talk to her, which is rather embarrassing. I think I’ve built her up to much in my mind. I’m not sure what to do with these feelings. I haven’t felt this way before.

About five weeks after I started working there I was paired up with Jel, and it was awkward to say the least. I couldn’t even look her in the eye. She probably thinks I’m a complete loser. I found it hard to speak because she’s so pretty. The worst part was when one of my so called friends came by just to torture me. He asked, “hey Kyle, do you like Jel?” I blushed and stammered out a half hearted, “nooooo”. She didn’t have much of a response to the situation. She just sort of looked at me like a wounded animal.

Why did I have to get paired up with Jel? This is to frustrating to deal with. I need to just focus on my work for a little while. Why am I so bad with women? I wonder what my brother is up to? He’s always been so confident I’m sure he would have a much easier time in this situation. Back to work I suppose.

If You Want Something Done Right...

Game Update

Well we’ve been here before and so I try not to get my hopes up to much but I think that we finally figured out this database issue. We managed to make a change which clears out some buffered memory when swapping from the start screen to the force organization screen. That seems to have fixed the issue… for now.

Having completed that I started to turn towards the capsule art that I had been talking about for so long. I did about 26 iterations on the art for Six Aspects and I spent some time on a logo for Lancer Entertainment as well. I posted the artwork on my social media and didn’t get much response, but I did receive some feedback. It kind of reminded me of when I was trying to get people to work on the art. It can be hard to find people with follow through, even when I’m offering to pay which is kind of crazy to me. That reminds me I still need to start recording video and streaming game play again.

Interestingly,I was asked about the name of my company. It’s the first time I’ve had someone question the name of the company. It’s been quite a while since I came up with it and so I don’t see myself changing it any time soon. Still it was an interesting thought experiment for me.

At some point I have to bear down and make the executive decision. I’m sure I will get plenty of feedback later when people don’t like something. It seems like it’s a lot more popular to be negative about things than it is to be positive. I guess in some ways that’s jut the price you pay by being and artist and going public with something.

Personal Update

I’m a little late on my blog entry this week as I had a lot of family stuff going on this weekend. One of my kids had a birthday, and I had a lot of back logged tasks that I completed on Friday. It’s frustrating when I’m trying to get things done and people aren’t responding. Before I finished my time in the military I had someone tell me that in the civilian markets it can be difficult just to get people to show up for work. I guess I’m experiencing that first hand.

One bright spot is that I have great neighbors. It’s nice to live somewhere where I actually know my neighbors. I haven’t ever experienced that until now. It was interesting as they had a birthday party on Saturday as well.

The World of Six Aspects

These stories set in the world of Six Aspects are not cannon but might become cannon in the future.

The Story of Kyle

As soon as I could I left my home and traveled to the Eastern Continent of the Zeteris empire. I wanted to go somewhere that would be out of the reach of my parents, my brother Marcus, and the empire itself. I want to be free to forge my own destiny under my own strength. I arrived at the city of Willowdale after paying the fare with most of the money I had saved up. I was starting with nothing but I was free.

I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go with my new found freedom. I remember the first day I arrived in town. I just wandered around for a while and looked up at the buildings. I had never seen such large machinery for cutting wood. The workers told me that most of the lumber for the empire is supplied by this small town.

I figure I’ll spend some time here and learn this timber trade. It’s not exactly what I had dreamed of doing, but I need to survive for now. I wonder what my brother and family are doing. Whatever it is I’m sure they don’t miss me. It’s better this way, yeah it’s better.

Two Sides to Care Taking

Game Update

Implemented some more art and did some work on cleaning up stages. Certain stages have artwork that is to sparse to fit with the others. I also tried to put together some skull art for our Lich in the game but I will likely get it contracted as well. Sometimes you get a good artist and it ‘s hard to go back to a lower standard.

That said my woes of finding someone to work on the key art continue as it seems like the person I was communicating with simply doesn’t have the time even to have a quick conversation about it. I’ll have to devote some time to looking for an illustrator that can do the job, or attempt to do it myself.

I spent some time trying to get my recording computer together this week as well. I was missing one of my components, but I think I have a replacement for it and so who knows I might be able to get a new video out to YouTube sometime soon. I should be able to build my own trailer for the game.

Chris is still tackling the database issue with the troops coming back after save processing. I have some new possibilities for what the problem might be however. Some of the functionality from the force organization screen might also be on the start screen which might be causing the issue as we reused some scripts. It would be a good idea to remove anything that’s unnecessary for the start screen instead of being lazy.

Another issue might be the fact that the CSV for the data isn’t opened placed in ram and then closed. Instead it is probably still open. This might cause issues if it’s being written to at different times. It would seem that it would be better practice to open the file, do the operation and then close the file unless we need to save data later. When that happens we should do the same process. In this way the data file should only be open when it’s being written to.

Personal Update

I got a bonsai tree, and I’m taking care of a friends dog for a little while this weekend. It’s afforded me some unplug time as both of those responsibilities need more care than everything else I own or do. I really enjoyed pruning my new bonsai back to create a nice look which shows off its trunk. It was kind of a metaphor for life in a way. We cut away those things that are hindering and leaching energy off to allow the more valuable things to grow. Leaves around the trunk don’t get much sunlight but still require energy to sustain them. By removing them the overall plant should be more healthy.

I had a rough week at work, probably one of the worst in years. It’s difficult when I try to do the right thing, and then it goes unappreciated or worse disrespected. I suppose that’s just how things work when you are in charge of something though. I accept that I could do better and I take the feedback with a grain of salt. I’ll grow and do better in the future. I have no doubt about that.

I started playing a new mobile game which has piqued my interest. I haven’t been this into a game since the time when I was playing Arena of Valor (which has become unplayable due to server issues). This kind of makes me think more and more about the fact that I need to bring Six Aspects to mobile devices. That might be a bit of a difficult thing however.

The new game I’m playing is Dicast. At first glance I figured this would be a typical pay to play mobile game with low substance. I was only half right. It has the typical monetization that we have seen with mobile games however the substance of the game is pretty solid. The best way I can describe it is that it is a PvP 1v1 digital dice board game. Some of the unique features are the manipulation of dice through game play.

It feels like the luck component is close to what you would find in Magic the Gathering. There are definitely games where I have a run of bad luck and there are minimal things I could have done to have fixed the situation. Games are about 10 minutes though and so they seem to have that right. They have skins for the various champions that are the primary focus for monetization, and the game is good enough that I could see myself picking one up in the future sometime.

The drawbacks are the monetization and the loot boxes coupled with the fact that the game drains my phone battery quickly. That said back in my “Dark Patterns” posts from a couple of months back I still have a stance that loot boxes/card packs are OK as they can present a level of excitement when the player receives the item. There isn’t anything quick like getting that mythic card out of a pack that I’ve been looking for. It just needs to be tempered with control as I also believe that loot boxes should not be accessible to children, or if they are allowed to open them an adult should be present and have full knowledge of what it is that is happening.

The World of Six Aspects

These stories set in the world of Six Aspects are not cannon but might become cannon in the future.

Two brothers grew up in the city of Kingsland on the eastern edge of the Zeteris empire. Marcus and Kyle were only a year apart in age which created an awful lot of competition between the two.

“Just because you’re older doesn’t mean I have to listen to you Marcus!” was something Kyle often said to his brother. “Oh yeah? Well then why did dad leave me in charge when he went off to fight in the revolution?” would always be Marcus’s reply.

Their mother Ivette would often say, “if you boys have so much energy why don’t you go and feed the animals?”

“Alright mom…”

“Race you to the fields Marcus!”

“I’ll get there when I get there bro, don’t rush me.”

They grew and grew and eventually their father returned home from the war. He was proud of what he had accomplished as the new Zeteris empire was finally going to unite the nation thanks to his efforts.

“I want to be just like you when I grow up dad!”

“Don’t worry you will be Marcus, you will be. What about you Kyle?”

“Gee I don’t know, I was thinking about going east to become explore the wilds out that way.”

“That’s so irresponsible brother! The empire needs us to make things better again. Why don’t you care about what our father did. It’s disrespectful.”

“I SAID I DON’T WANT TO STAY HERE I WANT TO GO FAR AWAY!”

“OK OK break it up you two! I think that the new empire will need both of you and that might look different.”

Years later the boys left home and they worked towards their dreams. They didn’t always agree on everything but they were brothers. They grew up sleeping 10 feet from one another, but it turns out that fate has a different path for them to tread.

To be continued…