Note: This page is a little wonky, but I'm going to make some changes later so it's easier to navigate.

Devlog soon and spook month.

Tuesday, October 1. 2024.

So college has been throwing junk at me to work on for the past week. HOWEVER, I have been able to work on the game and today I made HUGE progress (devlog coming soon). The enemy AI is pretty much done and works as it should, rations have been added as a health healing item, fixed some bugs (but got more to fix.), and that is pretty much it. The enemy AI was a HUGE step forward because I always get apprehensive trying to make complicated AIs or complicated features, but this is going to make playing the game feel much more dynamic which is heavily needed to stand out. Besides that I know this website needs a facelift and I am already brainstorming some ideas, like maybe reformatting the website, to make it more palatable for both myself and other people.

But something a little better; it's finally October! It's one of my favorite months, and one that I have a lot of good memories with, being the month that starts fall (I know, September, but it's been way sunnier than normal so I am exempting it for this year .) That also means a whole lot of pumpkin flavored stuff, lots of pumpkin and harvest decorations, and lots of fall themed everything. Couldn't be any better honestly. The best memories I have during the fall is pumpkin patches and getting to buy the ones you harvest, and taking hikes in the woods when all the weather is grumpy and the trees are becoming gingers. I am looking forward to reading some blog posts of what people do for the fall, and seeing (hopefully) fall themed websites. That would be really cool. I love that about neocities is the fact people can do all of these cool things for their websites and personalize it. You could never with normal social media. Anyways, maybe this is looking too far but Halloween.. I don't know if I'm even going to get a costume for it. I'm probably going to be with my family but I could try going around with my friends with some goofy costume, that'd probably be fun. I already see people with Halloween decorations up and they were done before it was even October. I guess we just want excuses, lol.

Anyways, yeah there wasn't a devlog, I could make one but its super late, I'd have to compile stuff I did and blah blah... okay. I know I shouldn't even treat this like this is for an audience, even if you are reading it (which, thank you) but rather I should treat it more like a diary.

Project-K Devlog 1.

Sunday, September 29. 2024.

So I've been working on my game made with Godot, Project-K. It's essentially a game where you need to bring a sled of supplies up to a stronghold in the midst of a war. Your the only guy who can do it because you know the forest, and it's in the middle of a strong winter. However, there is a dangerous man wandering the forest that will track you down as you try to race up to the stronghold. The catch is you need to decide when to attach or detach the supplies (to run faster), using ammo on the dangerous guy sparingly, and how you will lose/hide from the dangerous man. The story needs work, but I'd say that will be the easier part because I have been working on the actual gameplay.

This game was based off of an older game that I never finished called "Snowbound Machina." It's a game that has you play as an engineer assigned to find old robot parts and build an old forgotten robot, with all it's parts stranded in a snow forest. The game was a bit too ambitious and I never got anywhere with it. However, it did lead the way for me to make a snow-based survival game.

I really liked the visual style of this game and I might go towards this kind of style, but I wanted to try a low-poly stylized style for Project-K.

So far, what I have is a majority of player animations (except when getting hit by bullets or by blunt force), ammo, player health, the sled's functionality, and some swaying tree animations for the trees. Most of the models, except for the gun, are modeled by me. I used Krita for the textures and used an oilpaint filter on them to give them a smoother and more stylized finish. Also, bullets react different depending on what they hit, for example if you hit the enemy it makes fleshy effects, while hitting something static will make sparks.

For things I need to work on for gameplay, I need some of the following:

• Tower/Safezones. (Which will contain Ammo, Rations for health, and a bed roll to skip to day time and to save.)
• Day and night cycles. (When it is night the dangerous man becomes worst.)
• Health bar and death menu when player dies.
• Boss AI for more intelligent sneaking/attacking.
• Intro area setup and tutorial message prompts.

For that last part, I was thinking of having the player begin in a cabin, full of supplies he can start his adventure from, then when he leaves he needs to go through an interactive tutorial area before he steps out into the actual world. (Such as showing how to shoot, crouch, interact with things, attach the sled.) Anyways there are probably some things I forgot or left out, but those are the major things gameplay wise. If I get all of that done, I would pretty much have the complete game apart from the ending and some graphics.

Of course, nothing you see here is final, a lot of the stuff your seeing is just for testing, and is very likely to change. I'm still fine-tuning it so hopefully I will have something I can put out. I don't want too many crazy mechanics, so if it becomes too much I'll just cut stuff so I can put something out.

Bunnies and carrots.

Saturday, September 28. 2024.

If you are actually reading any of these, thank you. I know a lot of them are probably rambles to you, but I want a place where I can say something. I hope your doing okay and something nice happened in your day.

I'm a person that struggles with focus. Not necessarily focus on something I am set on doing, but knowing what I should be doing. An analogy used by someone I knew described my issue pretty well; A bunny will go from one carrot and chew. He will notice another carrot and move over to that one and begin to chew, then continue as he sees another. He never gets to enjoy an entire carrot, and will never be satiated. What I am saying is, I will find something I like, I'll work on it, and at some point I feel like I want to work on something different, and I drop the thing I was previously working on. It's a terrible habit that kills my work flow.

I'm working on a game, and although I know what to do, what I want, and how to do it, and could even get into a work flow, I end up struggling to do consistent work. It's because I want to see a "product", not just the "potential", because I always had the bad feeling of making something, talking about it with people, and I never like how it goes so I just drop it. Then people ask me about it and I have to go "well, I quit doing it." The way I work is I need to feel like what I am doing has an impact, and I like quick good results. Those things are hard to achieve even at high efficiency. Creation takes time. Art making doesn't just take 4 hours and you call it a day, you could take 10 hours, or 20 hours, working on something. We have such a large expectation in social media that art should be made quickly while also looking good. You can't have one without the other unless you specialized yourself to work that way. If you are an artist, of any kind, don't feel ashamed you haven't finished something, that what your making is taking ages. That is natural.

Besides that, I did manage to finish the drawing I previously mentioned, and a couple more actually! I will put them in the Portfolio page soon, but I want to make some other changes like adding month and year tabs to the blog, adding more pizazz to the buttons and interface, and later brainstorm other ideas. I would really like to integrate some kind of chat or guestbook so I can see your guy's feedback or thoughts. But man, I finally have, like, an official OC. I had one that was based off of a birch tree but I'll probably redesign that one. Anyways, you'll see it in my portfolio soon enough.

Retrospects.

Friday, September 26. 2024.

In retrospect, I kind of feel weird making that whole Dark Souls 2 section in my blog. I was pretty sleep deprived last week and college was such a slog for me. I'm better though and I have finally been able to produce more art again and make cool stuff. It's fun to make stuff again!.

It kind of got me looking back, how I have been on the internet for so long. It makes no sense how in arguably 10 years the internet has evolved into a completely new beast, albeit one that feels more sterile. I remember I got access to the internet on my family's computer, I was probably 5 or something. I hardly understood what I was doing at some points, and I actually wasn't too into it initially. Of course, now that has changed. I remember seeing that Space Jam site, the one with all the little planets, in the public library computers. I remember seeing a kid play Survive The Disasters on ROBLOX in I think 2013-14, and toying with old school emojis from the old Yahoo Mail (maybe that's why I like making little emojis for this website now?) Although I did use the internet and get influenced by it, I thankfully wasn't terminally on it. I even almost signed up onto Twitter roughly 2015 or so, but didn't do it because it required a phone number (thank God I never went through.) 2015 was pretty much the year I became integrated with the internet, I made my main ROBLOX account, my Steam account, my personal YouTube channel, and so on. I guess what I am trying to say is.. I cannot believe I am almost at 10 years of being in this place.

ROBLOX became a huge influence on what I do nowadays; Game Design, 3D Modeling, Art, and playing creative games. However, maybe I should also give credit to Minecraft, which I really played around early 2010's on my kindle fire! That thing was cool by the way, I still have the damn thing. It hardly stays up for longer than like 10 minutes, but it has old minecraft, the old browsers and such. Something I noticed, though, is so many of my friends love to play fighting games or FPS games. I never really grew up playing COD or those flash Fighting Games, I always would play some kind of game that involved creation and sometimes strategy.

2020, man I got a lot to say about that. I started to get into art more, though I didn't really try learning the fundamentals and just wanted to go straight to the drawing part of it. I played a lot of video games, like Dishonored, Dead Island, The Forest, DS3, Sekiro, Yakuza 0, GMOD, and MGS5. That hardly scratches the surface but those are the few I can read off my steam list accurately LOL. I kind of feel like so much of my life was wasted away playing those games, but I'm looking back at it now with a different perspective. People really don't get it, and I didn't either, that pre-graduation from school you are exempted from a lot of hardships. "Everyone is different" I get it, but I mean like the moment you are grown up, you have way more leniency to play these games and enjoy them, having excuses to play them and such. Video games are works of art, and although too much can be bad, it's something people would of never imagined back in the day.

As I grew older, I started to like artistic games more. Games like Yume Nikki which, to this day and probably for the rest of my life, will be such an inspiration and influence in my life and the way I perceive video games, how I design them, and how I make art for video games (that is not an exaggeration to the slightest.) But its unfortunately the case people will not play games like these because there is no action, there isn't really a clear "objective" and the game doesn't hold your hand on where to go, what to do, how to get items, etc.. it completely destroys game design..

I'm kind of getting tired writing this, so I'll just cap it off with one of the biggest things that has happened, which was switching the hell out of Windows to Linux, and with good timing too before Windows 11 started getting force fed in updates. I could go onto full blown tirades about how much I dispise Window's business model, how predatory and malicious they are, but of course they exercise symptoms of predation on their users because they are in a market they have control over. People hate windows; everywhere, you will find people from normies to tech gurus talking about how they hate windows. Forced updates, annoying notifications about creating accounts, spyware, vulnerabilities, viruses, huge amounts of data harvesting, questionable business practices, and very famously their anti-competitive measures. You have no idea what kind of relief I received when I switched to Linux Mint (which by the way, don't ever use Ubuntu, Linux Mint is far superior.) No data harvesting, no payments or accounts needed to be made, no spyware, customizable, so so so SO MANY BENEFITS. I can actually use the terminal, I don't need to go on the web to download executables, but rather I can make requests or just use an app manager built in. I have actual control of how my operating system works, what it should do, and how I would like it to act. Too many poor souls miss out on this, but at the same time it keeps us Linux Users safe. This is going to sound mean, but lots of people have no idea how to use technology properly. This isn't supposed to discourage people, but more like to make us Linux users feel all the more cozier. But everyone starts from somewhere, so if you aren't a Linux user, give Linux Mint a try on a secondary computer, get accustomed to it and try it yourself! Be sure to only get it from the official website, and if need be, follow a tutorial so you know your doing the right thing. I have been maining Linux Mint for 3 months and I have never felt happier, more competent, and more safe using a computer since. It genuinely makes you better with computers.

Dark Souls 2 is actually good! Elden Ring is overrated!

Friday, September 20. 2024.

It's been ages since I wrote on her, a month exactly. Things have been getting better for me thankfully, though I hope I don't jinx it. Besides that I have been playing Dark Souls 2 and I never would of thought I would actually enjoy that game. Everyone dunks on it like it's genuinely bad, but I have been enjoying a lot. There are so many places, the atmospheres are so well made, and I don't know almost a thing which makes it exciting. Everyone goes crazy over Elden Ring and blah blah, like yeah it's okay but it isn't amazing. I've finished Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro, and from playing Elden Ring it honestly isn't the "greatest." The open world concept is cool, but I feel like it's doing too much with it and places either become generic or empty, like areas around that swampy/lake area or the edges of the map. It's a stretch but souls games are great at being linear, games like DS2 and DS3 let the map take the player linearly to one last spot, but also allow it to branch off to make it feel open. Not to mention I really feel like the music was weird and lackluster in Elden Ring. The only good stuff is like Godrick the Grafted's theme, Radahn's, and maybe the Godskin Apostle's. All the other music for bosses or fights plays weirdly, or is just bonified ambience. I get it; it's important to change things up and Elden Ring did that especially. However, I really felt like they should of just kept the style of music more akin to DS3 or Bloodborne because it felt powerful, daunting and beautiful. Like Yhorm's theme, Gael's, Armour's, and I could go on. I know it's crazy I'm knit picking over music but it is what really leaves an impression on me and gives me that sense of immersion, because if I am thinking in my head "This music sucks" or "This music is really mediocre", then it's distracting me from being able to enjoy a fight or environment. I probably just need to come back to it again since with a lot of souls games I take a break before coming back and finishing them.

I do like a lot of things about the game, like the locations and items, the new characters and so on. But man, the difficulty curve is rough. "Just get good" I can already hear you say. I get it yeah lol your original dude. But the thing about games like these are you need to be able to play without having to worry about doing an obscure cheesing mechanic or investing into a magic build, you could be able to find your own way without having to change classes. Oh my gosh Margret's (I don't know how his names spelled) second encounter, the one where you meet him up before entering the snowy area, is probably the worst example of this. It's just an onslaught of his magic spells, then attacks. You probably spend 99% of your time in that fight dodging and then healing, the remaining going into actually attacking him. He is relentless in that fight and he either backs up or pivots at lightning speeds to see you. Yeah he is supposed to be a tough boss, but you need very brief moments to attack a boss, otherwise it's pretty much pointless. Also, if you think magic builds are safe, he dodges magic spells, too.

Well despite that, because of all the DS2 gameplay I have been getting distracted. I was making a drawing of my Dark Souls 2 character, a sorcerer, but ended up using the excuse of "I want to find a new outfit to reference and draw off of." So I played for a disgusting amount of time before realizing I wasted so much time. I'll be honest; I feel really bad for doing it but at the same time I genuinely haven't played a videogame in like 3-4 months. I'll get back into drawing.

I might as well put a little sneak peak of the drawing. Even though it's just a bust of the full drawing it should give kind of a good idea of what the drawing will be.

I'm probably going to discontinue that whole hyper-realistic "escritoire" thing and turn this area into a normal blog.

So what else.. well honestly just going into adulthood. It's really weird and scary because every year means more responsibilities and more expectations. If there is anything I am glad about, though, it is that I am out of high school. Going to school is seriously soul crushing. Being able to be out and doing your own things is so refreshing.

Actually getting better to an extent.

Monday, August 19. 2024.

So lately I have been working on my new diary webpage. This one is going to be far more interesting and very interactive. The moment it's out for everyone it won't be complete yet, because I will be adding a lot more stuff. I am sort of tempted to begin adding javascript to it soon since it would give it more depth, but at the same time I don't really like having to use it if it means people may block it or not be able to load it in. Either way there'll be a day where I'll need to use it.

Besides that, I've been making a lot of art. Both for the website but also just for myself. I have been using a lot more different shading techniques and rendering techniques that have seriously given my art a glow up (first time I used that term LOL). I'll be making more to post onto here, but I have learned to take my time and it has honestly been both super nice on me and also allowed me to take my time on art. I have always struggled with taking my time on things in general, but I have been getting much better about it. Slowing down just helps you process things better. It's like eating too fast, too much all in one sitting can make you fatter, or not enjoy the food as much, or make you feel sick.

I'm still practicing choosing my own colors though. I have been studying different color palettes and it has honestly helped me out a lot. I love drab colors but also really fun colors that just pop. Seriously though, values change your art so much, understanding them allows you to experiment with different colors for shading and highlights.

The desk graphic, on the other hand.. it isn't the worst. I am really good at drawing characters, but I need to work on making backgrounds. I was really good with the rendering on the desk, but I feel like the shapes were just really squishy, like they aren't super rigid, and the detailing is too dirty and needs to be simplified. However I just really needed to get something out so I could begin setting stuff up for the new Diary/Blog/Escritoire page. After I get all that sorted out, the Portfolio page and ultimately the Contacts page will be worked on. I'm still thinking on what the Portfolio page will look like but I got time.

I go to college soon. I'll be honest, I am sort of apprehensive about it just because I don't know if I'll meet people who'd like me. I'll be going in pretty much new, and I'm also someone who chooses his friends more selectively. I guess I should be thankful I'm not in High School anymore because that was an absolute slog. Every day felt really tiring, everyone at the school felt distant, nobody was really happy, everyone lacked spirit. The school tried to fix it but they couldn't because people are tired of how school is right now. Seriously, why do we still do this whole "7 hours of sitting in desks learning things you don't care about"? Especially for your teen years, you could be trying jobs or working internships that could teach you skills and things that you like versus what you don't. That is how school should be, a preparation for life by getting experience rather than being peddled by equally miserable teachers. Of course, school districts could care less because it doesn't affect them. But everyone directs hatred towards teachers. Sure, they made the assignments and directed it to you, but it isn't like they are really enjoying going to school earlier than you, grading for hundreds and thousands of students daily and weekly.

And I ranted again.. that's kind of the purpose of this whole diary thing as well, to just dump my thoughts.

French Desks.

Saturday, August 17. 2024.

Lately I have been thinking about updating the look of this page, the escritoire, which is essentially my blog page. An escritoire is literally just a desk but it's specialized for writing. I don't know how I got the idea but I just did. I thought it would of been more interesting than just calling it a blog. I'm thinking of doing something more animated/special, like having each year be filled in a journal.

For this website I was going in pretty blind for my design choices, I just wanted something that I could call "mine." It's an impulsive behavior, if you would even consider it that way, where I felt the need to make something. But sometimes it doesn't feel genuine. The visual design of point and click games, for example, really inspire me. Games like Machinarium give off a sort of "story book" feeling that I feel like a lot of other games can't emulate. Of course, every game gives it's own vibe, but I really like ones that make me feel nostalgic, and I really want something that feels both true to me and others, not creating a facade or what people expect.

None of this really makes sense since I'm just rambling, but I have high expectations that end up always making me feel bad.

Creating this website.

Thursday, August 15. 2024.

Man, I am still not done, but I have come quite a far way from where I was previously. The website looked too bland for it's colors. Of course it still looks nothing like other people's websites, I just need to continue working on it. With this tab, I am super excited because I get to actually put in some more personal stuff, and finally have a legit social media in a sense .

Besides that, it's going to be my first year in college. Super weird. Hopefully I could inspire some new friends to make their own websites, so we can all connect through neocities instead of more modern social media .

It really does feel like we lost something when we transitioned into modern social media. Having a personal website almost feels like things only tech nerds do, and now every normie in existence has their lab grown page that is pretty much the same as everyone else's . I hope, as time moves on, people begin to move towards platforms like neocities or mastodon and begin becoming more creative, rather than spending hours scrolling mindlessly.

But really, whenever you tell people about your website, they normally think it's for some kind of business or side hustle, rather than something personal or fun like a social media page. The thought of making/having your own website sounds too far fetched for peeps nowdays. Not saying all of this out of anger or anything but it's more sad if anything. People don't really have a place on the internet and it feels like the internet became this big tech conglomerate. Which isn't completely true, people have way more influence than they think ! Like always, I'll continue working on this site, and hopefully inspire people to make some of their own, because there isn't anything more fun to see than what other people can make!