Oh my gosh, I reached the month part of this online blog/diary thing! It's a lot of fun to make a new month section for this thing, it feels like I'm making progress on something. Besides that, I have been working on my game, Snowbound. In my old version of this website, there was a dev blog that showed my progress, and looking back I have actually come a far way. Most mechanics are set in stone as of now, such as carrying the supplies, shooting mechanics, resource collection and such. I have character models, world models, and animations for the enemy, Pilkata. I know your probably bored from reading about this stuff and not getting images (don't worry, they'll arrive soon.) but I have just been working on models, and ones that look decent for the game.
So, what is the story? Well, I won't give the full story because I think that would strip away the semi-vagueness of the story, but here is a brief. You were assigned to bring supplies to Soviet soldiers during WW2, and in the middle of a harsh winter as you are capable enough to do so. Machines have ceased working, soldiers are starving and cold, and you are low on time until you eventually become one of them, too. Your assigned objective is to find a way to reach a crucial base and give all the supplies to it, however you will find moments in the game where you feel compelled to feed the soldiers that are starving in different areas. There is, however, a problem while you traverse through the wilderness, which is that a stray Finnish soldier with the moniker of "Pilkata" with unknown motives.
In the game, what I plan on doing is have Pilkata not just kill you if he knocks your HP down to 0. Rather, Pilkata will do various things such as steal some of your supplies (it makes you move faster, but will result in a different ending), interrogate you, or do a russian roulette with you (this is an idea, essentially he would have a revolver pointed to you, if he doesn't kill you, you can continue.) Of course, a lot of the stuff I am saying may or may not be added, it's just a matter of how I feel with the game.
I may or may not make a real dev blog about the development, but I probably should. Anyways, college is a little better. It still eats away at my time so much which I hate. I just want more free time so I can work on my game, I work better in the morning and most of my classes are morning classes (AND LITERALLY START AT 8:00 IN THE MORNING). Yeah, I'm so glad I got done with high school so I can go to an even more TIME CONSUMING PLACE. Not to mention the amount of stupid meeting and assignments we are given as freshmen for orientation and what not. They are grading me for taking a professor out for coffee, like wtf? I don't need another class that isn't even useful, and tanks my GPA if I don't do it, that is so controlling. Again, I am going to say this again because I truly believe in this; If you don't think you want to go to college, or don't have a reason to, DO NOT GO. This stuff literally kills your creativity and your time. If you don't like what you do, and don't value it over your own creative endeavors, it will be a death sentence for the things you like.
Besides that, I've finally been getting more agency over my life. I got my own car, I've been hanging out with a girl I like more and more, and I am getting closer to completing my game. Even if I don't sell a LOT of copies of my game, I'd just be happy with having it done and have something I can show people and say "look, I made this cool thing, and some people are trying it out!" I really think it is sad that internet users end up just being by-standers, they never create things or try to produce something cool, they end up just being people who watch things. TikTok, for example, it's literally just TV but on ur phone. It is hardly inspiring and is just a huge robot made to engage people. The internet was better when it was in it's infancy, when things werent so globalized, we had small communities, we had an "in" culture. Normal people did their thing, people who are involved on computers and tech did their own thing. We ran their world in the background, and they enjoyed the tech. Now that isn't really there, everyone has a phone and computer, the internet became a TV/Photo & Video dump, YouTube became cable, then TikTok, personal websites are seen as "useless", and there just isn't any innovation in the market. Seriously, when was the last time you have seen anything new and cool, like a video game or something, that made you go "I need to buy that immediately!" It's all remakes, reboots, re-re-re stuff.
I really do think that we lost the internet in 2016. Something happened that just suddenly rotted this place. Memes used to be something that people would laugh about and use for months or even years. Now it's hardly a week. Websites became more corporate, and designs became more bland and flat, losing all of their gradients and skeuomorphism. Windows especially, oh my gosh. I love operating systems, and it pains me to see Windows 11 on computers. It is honestly the worst operating system I have ever used. But compare it to Windows 7, 0 competition. But to get back on track, I do think that bots have destroyed the internet. Views, interactions, likes, etc.. have all been inflated with bots. When you had a video back in 2012 on YouTube with like 1000 views, it was crazy, because it was roughly 1000 real people, real pairs of eyeballs, have actually watched the video, and it was shared with an audience that just came across it, or shared with. 1000 views is hardly even considered a lot, because of the huge amounts of "popular" YouTubers that get hundreds of thousands, millions of views. A majority of those tend to be fake.
Do you ever see someone record themselves talking about something, or just doing random stuff, and share on YouTube? I mean just like a normal person, not a e-celeb, but just a person who has a mid-range camera, and is just talking. It's about him. There isn't some sponsor shill, or trend, but just the person. We don't have that anymore because we are so focus on metrics, it's always doing what people want but not what we want to do.