Splashing and Slashing

Today has been a rather eventful day. It started on by getting woken by thunder at 3am and then started off a second time by getting up by Taylor Swift at 6am. Both rather fantastic ways to wake up, I have to admit.

After a not particularly eventful gamedev session in the morning we attempted to get to work. Now of course due to the storm last night the underpass on the way to work was completely flooded, which resulted in taking a much longer and more dangerous route, getting slightly disorientated, jumping over a muddy fence and then running across a busy roundabout with rather heavy traffic.

Thank goodness it’s casual Friday and I didn’t ruin my formal clothes. Although I need to say my shoes have seen better days.

 

I have been working a lot on our logo design this week, which is always a good reminder of how I’m not focusing enough on marketing and how “oh jeez, has it really been a month since the last blog post?”. The good news is that logo design and calligraphy are close enough to each other for me to be able to back up my decision to spent 17 pounds on pens todays. Definitely a business expense. Even if 10 out of the 11 pens I bought will be used for my bullet journal as opposed to making a logo.

Another thing that I’ve been working on lately is walking and fighting animations for Miku.

Matt is still working on implementing them bug-free into the engine, but you can still see them outside of the game. Consider this a super duper sneaky sneak peak before you get the normal sneaky sneak peak when Matt finally decides to write a blog post about the combat system he’s been working on. How sneaky.

And talking about Matt… He has promised he’s porting the engine to ubuntu this weekend so I can start using it! This is so exciting I don’t think you realize how long I’ve been waiting for this!

I won’t get to pixel art very much this weekend I’m afraid cause Matt will be using my laptop but that gives me a chance to work on some design-y and story bits that I’ve been meaning to work on. Perfect excuse to grab a piece of paper and just get on with it.

I’m looking forward to it.

I hope your weekend turns out almost as exciting as mine will be. I would say I hope it turns out even more exciting but that’s not very likely. Have I mentioned I’m excited?

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Marta

Exams and a Walking Bush

So, you may or may not have noticed that we have been a little bit irregular with our last couple of posts. This is mainly due to exams being in the way, and it will probably continue to be quite irregular for the rest of the week. However, we have decided to give up on daily blogging and change it to every other day. This is mostly due to the fact that it continuously feels like we don’t have anything interesting to say every single day and as I result I feel like our blog posts have been getting less and less interesting.

This may be due to the fact that we spent the majority of our time revising these days and therefore don’t do anything interesting with our days that we can talk about on here nor work on Miku RPG enough to be able to show some progress every day. At the minute we are lucky when we manage to fit in a whole hour of game development into our days. One hour isn’t enough to make anything interesting.

Today was one of those rare days in which I actually managed to spent a full hour working on Miku RPG, so at least I have a little animation to show you.

I’ve been working on the side animation for the past three days, and I did the back animation this evening. I think it’s looking kind of cute, I’m excited to see it actually implemented inside the game. Hopefully this should happen soon, since Matt is trying to get the engine to the point where I can use (and make an ubuntu version of it so I can actually use it) it before getting separated into different countries. So within the next two weeks and a half. I’m incredibly excited to start experimenting on it and making little test maps to see what still needs to be drawn and added.

But in the mean time, I’ll just keep working on all my pixel art and dreaming of seeing it implemented one day.

Have a wonderful day.

-Marta

Productivity vs. Creativity

Every evening before I go to sleep, I grab my little bullet journal and write down what I’m going to do the next day. And this is absolutely great. It’s a fantastic tool for increasing my productivity, it’s very useful, especially now exams are drawing closer and closer, and it really helps me get stuff done.

Or at least, most of the time.

I’ve been bullet journalling for almost a month now, and I hadn’t realized this until today, but during this time, I haven’t had any creative ideas.

As a part-time game developer, ideas are incredibly important to me. Those little moments of inspiration, when I suddenly see a new design for a monster or NPC in front of me, a little snippet of story or even some new personality traits for my characters, are very valuable to me. And I tend to get these rather often.

But in the past month, I’ve only had one. Which happened today, making me realize how long it’s been since I last had one of these.

Now I’m not going to go around correlating these two thing and say bullet journalling has destroyed my creativity. That’s not true. In fact exams probably haven’t helped either, and I would like to test this whole planning vs creativity theory out when I’m not being completely stressed out by so many other outside factors in my life.

But I do think there might be a slight correlation here, not necessarily between planning and creativity but between over-planning and creativity.

Because every night when I decide what I’m going to do the next day, I first write down all of my revision goals, and then I write down one or two precise bits of pixel art that need doing. Note how I highlighted the need there. This part is important.

So when I’m ready to pixel art the next day, there are two factor’s affecting me.

The first one is that I’m already completely exhausted from exam revision and not really at my best any more. The second, is that I don’t have to decide on what to pixel art. It’s just there on my notebook, I just need to draw that and then I can go to bed.

And yes, this actually saves me a lot of time. You’d be rather shocked, if you knew how much time I used to spent staring at my massive list of all the things that I’m going to have to draw in between now and the release of the game (which, if you are not aware of how lengthy of a process this is, is going to take at least one more year from now).

But this also means that I don’t spent any time thinking about what I’m going to do. And that time is usually when most of my ideas come in. When I decide what I want to draw just like that, in that moment, I go with whatever the hell I feel like. And sometimes it takes me a very long time to figure out what that is. But sometimes (in fact most of the time) that is because what I feel like drawing isn’t actually on the list. It’s a new idea, a new piece of content to add to the game. And this whole process of generating ideas just doesn’t happen if I start doing what I know needs to be done right away.

Saying that, I still think planning is incredibly useful and bullet journalling is amazing and has really helped me go through all of these exams much better. And I’m not planning to stop using it.

It’s very useful to plan out the things that I need to do. But I can’t plan out my ideas. However, what I can do is leave some extra space, some extra time in my day that I haven’t occupied with all the things that I have to do. And yes, sometimes ideas won’t happen during that time and I’ll spent half an hour staring at my screen to then decide to not draw anything at all today. But I’d rather risk a part of my productivity in return for the possibility of creativity.

Anyway, that ended up sounding a bit more serious than I intended it to. I guess what I’m trying to say here is planning is great, just make sure you don’t plan out every second of your day.

So after all that, you might be curious to see my little idea from today, which by the way, happened because I really really really really couldn’t be bothered working on what I had planned to work on today and spent half an hour deciding what to draw instead.

Here you go:

It was initially meant as a monster but it’s super cute so I might keep it as a friendly companion instead. We’ll see.

So, I’m off to bullet journal for tomorrow then. Have a nice day everyone!

-Marta

So many piggies!

This morning I woke up feeling incredibly motivated and excited to work on Miku RPG. Of course, that’s not what I was supposed to be doing today. I was supposed to be doing electronics revision.

For some reason, my brain has decided that uni should be a priority and that I should be doing uni work first and then game development once I’m done with uni work. But sometimes this decision can turn against me. Today, for example, I spent all morning in bed telling myself I’m oh so tired, and then suddenly feeling very awake again at 4pm, the time during which I usually stop uni work and start working on Miku RPG.

I should probably work on that, but I’m not sure whether I can be trusted with any sort of game development before I’ve done my uni work, especially with exams just around the corner. Then again, if I had just decided to take the day off uni work from the start and just worked on game development all day, I could have put in an extra 5 or 6 hours of pixel art and I would have gotten the exact same amount of uni work done.

Yeah, I definitely think I need to start working on my uni-motivation a little bit…

Saying that, in two weeks today I’ll be free to work on our game all day long, with no other sort of obligations, other than the occasional meet up at the beach with my friends.

Today’s pixel art time has been spent mostly on animated our little piggy. I was only really planning on doing the front view animations, but these only took half an hour.

This makes me incredibly happy, since last time I worked on animal animations, it took 3 hours to animate my sheep front views.

I somehow managed to do the side and back view as well, so that’s my pixel art goals for the week done in just one day… This should probably make me start working on my uni goals for the week… Or I could set a new pixel art goal. I should try my best to do both.

So without further ado, here are six little pig animations for you:

We (and by we I mean mostly Matt) also decided to put the pig into the game to test out the new animation code on it and set it as the active player (since there’s no AI code yet, so it can’t walk on it’s own). So now you get to walk on our rather empty test maps and pretend to be a pig! We should rename this game to Pig Simulator 2016! Because everyone wants to experience what it’s like to be a pig with human attributes, like being able to use camp fires and wells!

See you soon!

-Marta

 

P.S.: I just realized I’ve been referring to the situation with not wanting to do uni work as a “problem” which, according to all the how to get motivated articles I’ve been reading as procrastination for actually getting work done, is the last thing I should be doing. So let me rephrase that a little bit for you (or for myself, for that matter): I’m going to seize the opportunity of not having any motivation to increase my potential at being more focused and discipline, since this is going to be an amazing challenge to learn how to stay focused on a task in the future.

Okay, I actually feel like doing uni work now… Can’t believe that actually worked! Let’s see whether it works again tomorrow morning.

Hidden Stories

Today was the first out of our three exams. I initially thought it would be the hardest exam, which it probably was, yet one of the questions was basically primary school algebra with some complicated words around it to make it look difficult. This question was also about Minecraft, which I find very amusing.

I’m not sure how I feel about this exam, but I think it went generally well. Then again, when you are expected to write code on paper without any means to use a compiler to check for errors and debug it, it’s very hard to know.

I decided to take the rest of the day off and work on Miku RPG (despite my next exam being in 1 week). I haven’t really made that much progress, seeing how the exam finished at 2:30 and I had to sort out a couple of household things as well (mainly killing ants, which seems to have stopped being against my morals now that these creatures are trying to invade my kitchen).

There’s a certain feeling that comes with pixel art, a feeling I would define as being rather close to magic. It’s amazing how sometimes something with such a low resolution can look so much better than something with a higher resolution. There’s a feeling of nostalgia behind it, but it’s also due to our own imagination. If we have less detail, our brain seems to have a tendency to fill things in, I have come to realize. And that means that everyone sees pixel art a little bit differently, making every pixellated world feel so much more personal.

But there’s something else to pixel art, that can only be seen by the people creating it (or by the people who look at it very very closely). It’s the factor of story and narrative. With every little pixel piece I draw, my mind has a tendency to wander off to the regions of the pixellated world, where this story can be found. Of course, this feeling is much stronger with some pixel art than with other, and the experience of drawing a bush doesn’t quite compare with the experience of drawing a graveyard.

Saying that, I have been working on a graveyard today. And in the mean time, so much story has happened in my brain, I don’t think I will be able to fit all of it into the game. But that just makes Miku RPG even more personal. I want every pixel to be oozing with story, I want there to be a backstory to every character, every tree, every creature, every stone (okay maybe not every stone). I want to create a wonderful world full of story, and if some of the story manifests itself only in my brain, I think that’s okay. And maybe if this story is happening in my brain, it can happen in the player’s brain too, making it a different experience for everyone. Giving you exactly the story you were dying to hear.

Have a wonderful day.

-Marta

Home-Grown Tomatoes and Pixel-Pigs

8 months ago, I planted a few little tomato seeds into a tiny little pot and hoped for the best. I say pot, really it was some laundry product packaging that I thought looked like the right shape and size.

My plants have had a rough time, I have to say. With the whole not really knowing what I’m doing thing; planting them just before the winter because I don’t want to wait; and spending prolonged periods of time in Spain, sending my plants on long train journeys so Matt can take care of them for me or leaving them behind for the landlord to water if he’s around the area, I’m not surprised I only have two survivors.

And yet, today I’ve been able to enjoy 3 wonderful (although rather small) tomatoes with my dinner, and I have many more waiting to get ripe.

This makes me super happy, seeing as most things I’ve tried planting so far end up dying and by most things I mean everything I’ve planted so far except these two tomato plants.

Considering how I never really stay in one place for too long, I’m not surprised this is the case, but I’m still incredibly happy and proud I managed to do this.

I’d like to say these are the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted, but I think I might be slightly biased here, since it took me so long to grow them (because I planted them in the completely wrong season).

We are moving house again in less than three weeks, and I’m slightly nervous about it. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with my plants. One of them is quite weak at the minute cause it’s gotten way too big, so I’m not sure whether it can survive the move. And after the move, I will be going back to Spain for 3 weeks, and won’t know anyone in my new area to water them for me.

But it’s okay I guess, they’ve already survived for more than I expected them to. I just hope the 17 green tomatoes I have coming up ripen before I have to go back to Spain.

In other news, I’ve been doing some more work on our piggy for Miku RPG today. I’ve fixed some minor things on the front and side views and made a new back view. I’m quite happy with how this is going and I’m looking forward to animating it and setting it loose inside the game.

Have a wonderful day!

-Marta

Magic house and Inefficient Clicking

Today’s game development has been incredibly fast and efficient on my end. I’m still “taking a break” from the witch house building, so I can detach myself from it and then come back and make it better. But of course, witch houses are super exciting, so I couldn’t stop myself from working on the insides of it instead.

The walls and floor are still place-holders I stole from my normal cottage interiors, but I’ve added a nice chimney extension to the wall, now occupied by this over filling cauldron of lime green potion. I am still to decide what this potion will be used for, although I’m very tempted to make it an invisibility mechanic.

I’m also very happy with this shelf full of potion ingredients and the massive dragon heart next to it.

I’ve also been working on some extra secret pixel art! And by extra secret I mean that we will probably show you that in a more programming-sided update tomorrow! (Very exciting new things! You can look forward to that!)

After completing both my uni to do list and my Miku RPG to do list and also my laundry to do list, I somehow managed to have some time (and energy) left over! An amazing feat, I know.

So obviously, with exams just around the corner and an ever piling up of new projects to work on I decided that the best thing to do was to start yet another new project and try teaching myself 3D modelling. Because why not, right?

So far, I’ve been getting familiar with the interface and experimenting around with some of the basic shapes and putting them together.

After about an hour of experimenting, I mentioned to Matt that I wasn’t sure whether I should be learning how to use Blender at this point, since my mouse only has two buttons instead of three, which makes it very hard to use. Turns out, my mouse actually has three buttons, the scrolling thingie counts as a button that you can click on apparently. I’ve been using this mouse for years and I never knew that!

Of course, after having done my “experimenting” without being able to move my perspective at all, I realized that my 3D model only looked like what I wanted it to look like from one perspective. As soon as I moved it in the slightest it turned into some disconnected cylinders floating around in the middle of the air (and by air I mean computer screen, obviously).

It was still fun to do though, and I might try to pick this up properly after exams. It should be a useful skill once we make the step from 2D games to 3D games and I feel like learning this early on should definitely help.

And since 3D games won’t be happening in the next couple of years, I have lots and lots of time.

-Marta