A release double-week.
Last week there wasn’t a recap because I was still working on the first-person voxel project and I was so upset with myself because of it not being finished yet, so I just focused on that and didn’t do anything else for a few days.
But it’s out now! I’m very happy to say that Lands Of Yocta was finished and released and so was the terribly long write-up that goes with it! Also I had a go at Processing and I forked my Love2D framework to make a wallpaper-making framework!
There was one Pico-8 doodle in these two weeks.
This doodle was inspired by other people’s doodles! (namely Ditto, Mad Mack and Endesga)
Ok, let’s talk about the final week of work on Lands Of Yocta!
The first thing was finishing the gameplay part of the project! So I spent a lot of time making the last missing tiles, then put together the world generation and then make a progression and an ending happen. The ending included some more tech stuff but it wasn’t nearly as complex as basically anything else in the project so far.
Next I started writing the article about the project. The article was going to count as a special Doodle Insights, longer than usual and with a different form. I was aiming for at least double the length of regular Doodle Insights (1000~1600 words) and almost one full week later I had an edited article 5 times the length of regular Doodle Insights (it is 7000 words long). And let me tell you I didn’t dilute the info or anything, I genuinely tried to keep it short and not spend to much text on each element. That article is out now, you should read it!
After finishing the article, I went to polish the game! I added some ambient sfxs and footsteps, I found a title and made a titlescreen, I fixed bugs and polished everything I didn’t like enough.
Then I released both the game and the article! Play the game on the Pico-8 BBS or on Itch.io! Then read the article on this blog!
And I’m really happy with how both the game and the article turned out! The game is fun and I really managed to produce the calm atmosphere I wanted. The article is pretty clear, has fun bits and is overall not-too-boring. But both of them took too much time.
This project got me busy for one entire month. At the start of it I was also working on something else so there was a slow start but still. Don’t get me wrong, one month was the time needed to get this project to where it is, I’m just mad I spent so much time on this one project that may not get me much back. Here’s the list of the things that this project brought me so far: experience with optimization, attention, kind words, a little money. I love these things, they’re all really nice and they bring my mood up, but the one thing I need right now is still missing: more money. More about that further down in this post.
Processing is like a tiny IDE made for coding experimental graphic things. At least that’s how I think of it! I discovered it through the work of Dave (@beesandbombs) on Twitter and his impressive collection of gifs made with (make your guess) Processing.
I have been wanting to try it out for a very long time and now I did it and I will do it again, it was very fun! The Processing script language is somewhat close to C#, which I learned in school, so I wasn’t too lost. (edit: I’m told the language is actually Java) The API is fairly simple and short too, which is definitely a good thing imo.
This is a tiny preview of the first wallpaper that will soon appear on the Patreon as a 1$+ reward!
I’ve been making a wallpaper-making framework on Love2D from the framework I built for BLAST FLOCK and improved since. It takes rendering code with screen size as parameter and uses it to generate wallpapers for 52 different screen resolutions, including desktop and mobile! (I snatched the resolutions off screensiz.es)
And it works really great so far! The biggest resolutions take quite some time to render though and wallpapers are still being generated just as I write this. I have a few wallpaper designs in mind and these will come over the next few weeks probably! The first wallpaper should be available very soon, probably tomorrow!
Ok, time to write about serious stuff! Here’s our premise: the Patreon is doing alright but not alright enough. While it’s true that I’ve been having difficulties releasing things lately, I think there’s also another problem and that’s me not being pushy enough. Asking people for money is still super weird and hard and I feel like it will always be but I think I have to do it if I want to make this work.
Next month I will be paying rent for my new apartment in northern France. I’ll also have to pay food, electricity and internet. Even though my family can help me, I don’t want to depend on them too much (or at all). So I have to make more money. I could take on programming contracts but that would leave me little time to release stuff and take care of the Patreon, so I don’t want to do that. Instead, I want to make the Patreon work.
This week, I’ll be releasing the wallpaper as 1$ reward because it’d be great to have more 1$ pledgers, if only to grow the patron count. I’ll also be making a video with my face on it for the Patreon page. And I will start tweeting about the Patreon more than usual, actually asking people to support me I guess!
By the way, releasing a bigger game is still amongst my 2017 goals and even if it happens only in 2018, it will happen.
That’s it for these two weeks! They were OK!
Next week, the Doodle Insights are getting back to their regular weekly pace! I will also work on Flying Pop-Pop again and maybe finish it! I want to start working on the Pico-8 tracker tool I mentioned in the last week recap! The wallpaper will get released and maybe there’ll be Pico-8 and Processing doodles!
Have a great week!
Take care!
TRASEVOL_DOG
* TRASEVOL_DOG * 
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