Heya friendos! I’ve been hard at work on my latest game project. Today I want to talk about how that affects me personally. We’ll also touch on some Rumorweaver progress (there are gifs!) and the potential future of New to Narrative.

How Am I Doing?

I’m alright. Last week was one of hyperfocus on work. While I do appreciate the burst in productivity, it usually ends in a dip. It’s almost like a work hangover, in a way. In moments like that, my brain is completely engrossed in whatever I’m working on and leaves little space for anything else in my life. Exercise, getting sun, self-actualization, relationships, and chores all fall by the wayside.

It has only been a week of that, so it doesn’t do any lasting damage but it’s enough to make me feel a little down when the high fades. Interestingly enough, what I call a week of hyperfocus is just full-time work, if I count the hours. In fact, it’s still less than 40 hours total. During that time, my mind was on work and work alone. This just goes to show that my relationship with work has changed dramatically, ever since I started this newsletter.

It also explains why I was self-soothing all the time while I still worked full-time and lived alone. I only did chores when the trash piled up high enough, I had no time for reflection and only played videogames and ate junk food in my spare time. How can one take care of themselves and maintain their relations like that? I couldn’t, that’s for sure.

So, that might be a problem if I ever have to resort to a full-time salary job again, but strengthens my resolve not to. So I decided to start thinking about the future of New to Narrative a little more seriously. No real plans yet, but I might start applying for funding and stuff like that soon-ish.

What Am I Doing?

So, what has all that productivity actually produced? Let me show you some progress I made on Rumorweaver! Apart from an early style test that I’ve shown in this newsletter before, I had not touched anything technical for the project at all. Last week, I started programming to get a playable demo.

The very first day, I started out with this:

A fun problem is that with this specific field of view and angle, the girl looks like she’s walking slower vertically than horizontally. This is not the case, it’s just that the perspective makes it seem that way. I really like this perspective though, so I had to speed up her movement just for the Z-axis. Game development, am I right?

And then here’s what I ended up with at the end of the week:

We’ve got some basic interactions and dialogue. I try to polish up each feature a minimum amount, so that it doesn’t look like just a tech demo. I’ve since also programmed the basic cause and effect that will make for the game’s systemic dimension.

Right now, I’m finishing up the core mechanic: the rumor tree. Once that is done, I just need to do some tooling and then I’ll be ready to start implementing content. I’ll try to have some kind of playable demo (albeit the shortest and most basic version) out in about a month. So keep your eyes peeled!

Why Am I Doing? (this)

I’ve always envisioned a future where I make my own games and can survive off of them. I have no interest in commodifying anything I produce, to be honest. I’d prefer if I could create free resources, educational materials, and games forever. I hope there’s some way to do that, through crowdfunding, creative funds, government grants, charities and the like.

Sadly, I’m not a huge fan of navigating all that, so I think soon I will have to start investing in that. Or someone who does like that. Hit me up if that’s you, I guess? Cheers!