i've gotten better enough to start working on code stuff again (i mean plus sitting around doing nothing for like a week was starting to make me stir-crazy) and so far that's mostly been "working on the plant data serialization for hell's half acre", since doing hell game work at this point basically means writing, which is... idk. more mentally difficult, i guess.
hell's half-acre will ideally be very data-backed, for a few reasons: hardcoding anything in java is incredibly exhausting; this makes it easier for helia to add in content herself and have more of a dual workflow; this makes it easier for anybody to mod in content later on; and while some stuff might end up being hardcoded, plants are just gonna be a collection of sprite sheets and .json files in a
for hell game... i mean at this point i've basically given up on writing much more, and i'm just hoping i'll be able to finish up the three half-written scene expansions that are currently partially-written. after that it's messing with the map generator and interface + event trigger stuff, and after THAT it's actually writing a lot of events. like, game content. maybe even some game content that isn't porn! no clue when the next dev poll should go in there, since it's only the final 'game content' one that will fulfill the promise of the poll-before-last where people wanted more rpg stuff.
i keep wanting to do something to make hell game development less glacial, and yet, it still remains pretty icy. idk, i'm not super motivated to work on it as its own thing, i guess. probably should try to get motivated. or like, work on it enough that i finally start getting some structural/narrative traction, which is a thing i've been waiting for since, uh, starting serious work on it. still, slow and steady progress is probably better than burning myself out working on it more, it's just ideally those would not be my only two options.
also i was vaguely considering turning those naked minotaur sprites into a 3d render test game that was basically like. gay monster bathhouse game. not actually sure what aspects of it would be gamelike. who knows if i'll think about that more.
(like the promise of tiled graphics is mutability? it's easy to envision a map just with a few blocks shifted in one direction and with a different tileset. the implicit promise of mutability. and there's this sense of promise in all those open-world survival games, where you're given some open field and it's only by the implicit construction rules of the game mechanics that say to you 'hey, build something out of this'. and there are lots of things i have to say about robinson crusoe and the narrative of conquest, but sometimes it's just like look, i wanna game where you can make this sprawling, relaxing habitat full of splashing water and clouds of steam and softly-glowing lamps and ornate woodwork and attractively-jumbled nature features. and i guess also monster dicks? this is one of those times when i'm conflicted about making everything pornographic, etc)
hell's half-acre will ideally be very data-backed, for a few reasons: hardcoding anything in java is incredibly exhausting; this makes it easier for helia to add in content herself and have more of a dual workflow; this makes it easier for anybody to mod in content later on; and while some stuff might end up being hardcoded, plants are just gonna be a collection of sprite sheets and .json files in a
plants/ directory. a lot of the struggle has been figuring out what data needs to be encoded -- there's a lot of fiddly "which sprites should be displayed at which growth stages" stuff, and as it always is with data stuff a lot of the issue is just figuring out a good representation: what is a clear and concise way of defining plant info, that will hold up now and in the future when there are some weirder plants. so that's a thing.for hell game... i mean at this point i've basically given up on writing much more, and i'm just hoping i'll be able to finish up the three half-written scene expansions that are currently partially-written. after that it's messing with the map generator and interface + event trigger stuff, and after THAT it's actually writing a lot of events. like, game content. maybe even some game content that isn't porn! no clue when the next dev poll should go in there, since it's only the final 'game content' one that will fulfill the promise of the poll-before-last where people wanted more rpg stuff.
i keep wanting to do something to make hell game development less glacial, and yet, it still remains pretty icy. idk, i'm not super motivated to work on it as its own thing, i guess. probably should try to get motivated. or like, work on it enough that i finally start getting some structural/narrative traction, which is a thing i've been waiting for since, uh, starting serious work on it. still, slow and steady progress is probably better than burning myself out working on it more, it's just ideally those would not be my only two options.
also i was vaguely considering turning those naked minotaur sprites into a 3d render test game that was basically like. gay monster bathhouse game. not actually sure what aspects of it would be gamelike. who knows if i'll think about that more.
(like the promise of tiled graphics is mutability? it's easy to envision a map just with a few blocks shifted in one direction and with a different tileset. the implicit promise of mutability. and there's this sense of promise in all those open-world survival games, where you're given some open field and it's only by the implicit construction rules of the game mechanics that say to you 'hey, build something out of this'. and there are lots of things i have to say about robinson crusoe and the narrative of conquest, but sometimes it's just like look, i wanna game where you can make this sprawling, relaxing habitat full of splashing water and clouds of steam and softly-glowing lamps and ornate woodwork and attractively-jumbled nature features. and i guess also monster dicks? this is one of those times when i'm conflicted about making everything pornographic, etc)
