This week I burned out a little but also I started a new project! This recap is a bit long.
This week was a bit strange and tiring and we’ll get to that but also I started working on One Room Dungeon++! (placeholder title) Also I changed the look of this blog! I think it looks much better now!
Here are some Pico-8 doodle and a tweetcart!
Code of the tweetcart:
r=rnd::s:: x,y=r(128),r(128) a=atan2(x-64,y-64)-cos(time()/10)+.5 c=pget(x+3*cos(a),y+3*sin(a)) circ(x,y,1,(c+r(1.05))%8+8) goto s
One Room Dungeon is my Ludum Dare #37 entry from last December and it is one of the game I had the most fun making and also one of the games I’m the most happy with. It is a fast low-rez minimalist roguelite about exploring a dungeon while staying in just one room and pushing it around. It gets difficult over time and even I think it’s really fun and you can check it out there!
Back in January, one of my main plans was to make a bigger version of One Room Dungeon in GameMaker after finishing a bunch of other small projects. I did more small projects than I thought I would but here I am and I feel ready to do this! And I’m not gonna be using GameMaker, but Love2D because I like it a lot better and it makes porting the existing code much easier!
So what do I mean bigger? Well, the game currently features three different zones and a total of 8 enemies that you will encounter in a semi-linear fashion in the game. After you beat the three zones, there is a boss room and then it’s late game, the zones are mixed up and it gets really difficult. I want more zones and a lot more enemies. The number of zones is likely to triple and the number of enemies as well probably, with a less linear progression. I also want to make different types of rooms and new types of tiles with fun effects. I want a real boss and a few mini-bosses. I want to review the UI and improve the feel of the game overall. I want to make it content-heavy and I want to make it good.
All this is not going to happen in just one or two weeks. This is a project for a few months. There will be side projects and there will be Pico-8 doodles and articles but this game is going to be the main project for a while.
And it will be a retail product. Hopefully I’ll get it through Steam but also Itch.io, HumbleBundle, GoG and any other store I can find. A mobile version should also be possible without too much more effort. And I’d like to do an early access kind of thing, just on Itch.io and on Patreon, to get regular feedback on the game from people who care.
That’s the idea, I’m pretty excited about it and I think it’s gonna go well!
Now let’s talk about the rest of my week! At the very beginning of the week I made the pottery doodle that you can see at the start of this post. Someone suggested that I make it interactive and make a game out of it and so I spent the next day trying to make a game out of my pottery doodle. And I couldn’t make it fun. I had the game, you could change the shape of the pot and there was an outlined shape that you had to reach but it was just very boring and at the end of the day I dropped it.
That same day I also started playing Orteil‘s new game NeverEnding Legacy (Alpha). It’s a very nice game! Also it takes time in great amount, especially the first time around. And even though it seems still far from being finished, I was compelled to play it again during the week, spending more time playing and not working on stuff. Thing is, I’ve been having this same problem for three weeks with another game: Stardew Valley.
I bought Stardew Valley shortly after releasing Blast Flock and started playing it after the first days of making Gar’s Den. Stardew Valley is one of the most-selling games of 2016 and I expected really good stuff from it. I’ve been nurturing a love-hate relationship with it ever-since. To put it simply, I don’t think the game is great. It’s pretty good but it has a lot of problems, especially in its rhythm (walking is slow, days are fast, time-limited stuff is not fun). But it does have a rewarding feeling of progression that I really can’t get enough of and that will get me back into any game. (the same thing happened with Starbound a few months ago) And so I’ve been playing quite a bit, despite not liking it that much and despite it making me somewhat upset sometimes. And it’s been keeping me from working on my projects as well.
Back to this week now. On Wednesday, I tweeted a modified version of the island doodle and asked for people’s support on the Patreon. Seven new patrons joined the cause and that’s really cool. But also my highest pledging patron lowered their pledge from 100 to 20. Now I was expecting this because I had a brief conversation with them and they had told me that they would lower their pledge eventually. But now it happened and my Patreon earnings dropped considerably. I know this isn’t very original but money is always something that stresses me out and I’m generally awkward about dealing with it. For now, the support (and housing) of my family lets me live well but I really wish I would not need it and this support will go away if I need it too much or for too long.
These issues have been haunting me for most of the week and I’ve been feeling really bad about them. Luckily, this isn’t the first time this happens and I feel like I already got back on my feet. Once I understand what’s happening to me, I’m only one step away from figuring out new plans and get back on my way. Just saying “fuck you burn out, you’re not helping” works for me and that’s great.
So this week I’m gonna be working on One Room Dungeon but I’m also gonna change a few things around, like my logo which should look slightly different in a few days. I’m also going to make new plans for the Patreon and there’s gonna be a post about that over there this week as well. And I’ll play less/none of Stardew Valley. Also I might do something for the 1-bit clicker jam that’s going on right now! And there will be Pico-8 doodles!
Have a great week!
Take care!
TRASEVOL_DOG
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