Blog Moved!

Yeah, today as promised I finally started working on the games again, I started writing down the story introduction/prologue I came up with the other day.

I will now drop this blogspot, or more specifically move it to here.

As I've been talking about, from now on the blogspot will be reserved for video game related content only; I will not be going off topic as much as before, If you want to read more about life and less about game development, my deviantart journals are where I will dump all that stuff now.

I have acheived my goal and therefore will keep pursuing art alongside game development; in one month I went above and far beyond the level I had planned to reach in art over that amount of time. Give me 2 or 3 years and I might become an actually good artist :3

This is the last entry of this blog, but I will not delete it in case anyone wants to read the archives later.

Delays; Waiting for monday!

Seems it's taking me longer than planned to draw my first serious piece, no wonder though (i'm doing a lot of things for the first time. Background included.)

But as promised, it's time for me to fit this game project back into my schedule, I decided to split my days down a bit more so as to not get burned out on things.

Monday: Art (3h min) Game (1h min)
Tuesday: Game (3h min) Art (1h min)
Wednesday: Read (Book or Ebook) (150 pages min) Game & Art  (1h min each)
Thursday: Art (3h min) Game (1h min)
Friday: Game (3h min) Art (1h min)
Saturday: Make some of those planned youtube videos (3h work or 1 video)
Sunday: Play a new video game you have never played before (1h min) and relax the rest of the day.

This gives me at least 9 hours of game development and 9 hours of art per week.

That's "At least", when I'm done with art on monday I may jump into game development for 4 hours instead of one or keep doing art for the rest of the day after I do that 1h of game development (who knows)

This creates a fairly balanced schedule for me, I'm putting work in at least 4 hours per day except weekends. (Saturday is 3h, and Sunday is technically 1h; playing a new game for 1h each week counts towards the designer job)

Giving me a total of at least 24 hours of work per week. And if I feel I can increase this, I will increase this, but I have a tendency to overtask myself and expect too much, so I'm keeping it low for starters.

But this is just what I'm bound to do, this is my "at least", bare minimum, I will always, every week exceed 24 hours of work related to art and gaming unless something comes up that keeps me out of it for a few days.

Also, bear in mind that when I reach a certain skill level (which will probably take a couple of months) in art, the two will become closely tied together, so Art will essentially tie into game development (concept art and whatnot)

So then, I'm wrapping this art stuff up tomorrow (that's friday) and then I'm taking the chill on the rest of the weekend, I'll make one video, or at least put 3 hours of work into one on saturday (come on it's fun) but I won't put more than 3h into it so I can relax for the rest of the day. I've really been pushing myself over this last month, even if I didn't work as hard as planned, my mind has been resisting all my efforts and I had to fight back with the little willpower I have that isn't already being wasted on something else.

I'll be posting more info on how I'm going to change around and balance my blogs (that is journals in DA and blog posts in here) later on, tomorrow, weekend or monday I'll determine it.

So then, now I'm finally about to start rolling in the game development area again, was this month worth it? we'll find out tomorrow (or should, assuming I finish this piece of mine) if it wasn't worth it, I guess I'll drop art out of my schedule; but I doubt this is going to happen.

Deadline!

Deadline! but it's too early to celebrate, I needed to draw one piece (no pun intended) and actually finish it after all this practice. And seeing as today is kind of busy over here... I may not make it in one day. We shall see (if not today I will finish up tomorrow)

When I've finished this one picture, I will (as promised) get back to working on this project :3 picking up where I left off, but I will probably end up dividing my time pretty evenly between art practicing and working on this game if I succeed enough on the art side. But if I did succeed then like I just said, I am going to mix and match, probably split down the days, monday for art, tuesday for game, wednesday for reading (books), thursday for game and friday for art then saturday for videos and sunday is freedom (on sunday I will play video games and watch movies or anime all day, instead of just one hour, but I am obligated to play a game I haven't before for 1 hour)

But before any of this, workouts.

Oh come on my arm is too cold D: I can't do pullups properly unless I warm it up first god fucking damnit. And i've only got an hour to do this. I tried treating it with hot water as an experiment, but it wasn't enough >_<

Well, fuck pullups, i'm gonna just do te squats then, I can do the pullups when I get home. Also I need some serious cleanup in this blog, I can't keep using it for just everything, I think the DA journal system is more convenient for that. So maybe I can switch this one to full-time game dev related stuffs :3

Squats: 90

I should aim for 90 squats right? I did 80 last right?

If I think 90 will be as fatal as the 80 I did 2 weeks ago I should end it at 80 today as well, but I need to progress past 80. So instead of this thought I should instead think not to go for a whole 100 even if I've got 90. Yup I pulled a questionable 90

And I can taste some blood all right.

Pullups: 15

Nice! I'm on a roll with the pullups now, I did a 15 in 1 go, next time I'll do 20 and then so on :3

Thats it for this entry, but tomorrow expect to see a proper entry for once.

2 Days

2 Days till deadline, I thought I wouldn't post anything here till my exercises tomorrow. But I've actually been thinking about something in relation to Amodos this whole time. Something that's really hard to get down.

I want to create some pretty hardcore dark themes in Amodos, but I've also got a weak spot for stunningly beautiful, and the thing is that the two aren't exactly compatible.

You can see Skyrim, all the people that live there are dark, gloomy, serious types while the world itself is beautiful, there are no "happy go lucky" people, not really, they managed to mix dark and beautiful, but they don't have a lot of bright.

Now in a 3D game it's easier (as it is less noticable) to go from a dark scene to a bright one quite seamlessly, but in a visual novel when backgrounds are represented with images it is a LOT harder.

A rule of thumb is not to throw it all at a time unless the story dictates it (for example like when exiting a cave, but in that case the atmosphere doesn't really change all that much after the cave has been exited, you must have been outside of the cave for a while before you can really say you're out)

Basically you want to transition, between dark and light, between colorful and dull, between serious and happy go lucky, even between death and life. If you want to include both.

Dumping a player from the disturbing remains of a corpse flooded battlefield straighti nto a crowded lively city would have a very strange effect, you cannot dictate what the player feels in that case, one player might have played too much of call of duty and is used to seeing corpse littered battlefields and doesn't bat an eye (hehe although I'll try to think of something to make these types flinch)

Or someone might not play too much video games or movies and thinks its really sad to see all these people dead, now dump them straight into a happy environment; as a writer, you're going to have to know what the player is feeling if you just JUMP from dark to bright all in one shot. You need to be able to justify it and you need to somehow make it feel right to the player, and this is just not as easy as transitioning over time from dark to bright.

If you're dumped from that battlefield into the ever so lively town, it will just feel weird how cheerful all these people are after so many people have died. So you instead walk through the corpse littered battlefield gradually seeing less and less corpses and more and more survivors. Maybe you end up in a conversation with a unit captain or a commander, the general even and he's all gloomy but the battle was won, and the casualties didn't sacrifice themselves in vain. Then from there you maybe take a horse carriage to that lively town, and enjoy a little scenery on the way while thinking about what you've just gone through, then you finally enter through the gates, you're in the outer edges of the town where things aren't so lively, and you may consciously avoid going to the center of town if you so please, but you're now in that lively town, still feeling a bit down perhaps, but it's going to feel a lot more natural than if you'd just fast travel to the center of town from the battlefield.

This is why I hate fast travel systems traditionally. The one and only game that did fast travel right was The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Where you had to go with Stilt Striders or Boats everywhere. You didn't just open up a map and "poof"

You could also get teleportation magic to teleport to specific places. But that was something that was so hard to get that it didn't break the immersion.

So the problem here is that Cestaria is a very beautiful place, but humans are very hideous creatures (don't even try to deny that) however it will depend very much on which human city you're in what you will see, there may be a good mayor or king ruling over one city, but a cruel one in the next, one city may have slaves working their asses off on every corner and another may have slaves living quite comfortably (like in Star Wars; Anakin and his mother didn't have it so bad.)

But the problem, like I said is that Cestaria itself is wonderfully beautiful. How do I transition from a beauty that really livens you up into a city where you'll find shit and filth flowing around the corner of every street and you're seeing slaves being driven with kicks, slaps and whips.

I can do that. I can do this, but up till now my thought process was to try to have one main theme for all npcs, they'd all have a max range of "lively" and no limit to "dark" basically, but I think that is the wrong approach for what I want to do. I want the humans to represent humans, all the good and ugly parts. Humans for example will often be opposed to LGBT. (What I mean here is actually LGBF, F for Futa but I'll use T)

The undeads will be sort of inspired by the formerly oppressed Jews, the stereotype of them anyways, they'll be really nice people, but everyone around them is torturing and killing them or making them work as slaves. They don't care much about LGBT.

The demons will be chaotically unpredictable, one demon may be lively and actually quite nice, the next will probably be wicked, evil and full of deception, and the third might just outright try to kill you or enslave you. They don't give a single fuck about LGBT.

The Garax will be the "orc" of this game so to speak, they're the least civilized but most straightforward race, meaning there's a lot of jungle law there. Theres one boss Garax in each village or town, they all hate what they hate, tolerate what they tolerate, they live by their own rules and tend not to give two shits about others. Everyone kind of fears them, but they're not necessarily evil, just the majority of them is. They tend to not even know what LGBT is. Everything is too simple for them, and Garax living in magdolon will not even have heard about same gender sex. Garax outside of it may have varying opinions of it. But they don't actually think much about relationships at all, they tend to live relatively free from one another.

The Fel'Du are going to be the happy go lucky bunch, most of them are nice, they absolutely love LGBT (so expect a lot of lesbians in Kalhiri, Fel'Du or other races, it's the safest haven for people who like their own gender, heaven for these people even) that's pretty much all there is to them. The rest of their culture is that they're going to be based off either hebrews or egyptians since they live in a desert.

The Faeries are going to be a pretty serious and dark bunch, they don't fool around and can usually fuck you up. They don't care much about LGBT either.

Sikruf are all for L (tentacle race lol) but not so much for G, they don't mind T(F) though. they're pretty similar to humans in many ways, but slightly less evil in general. They're more nice to the other major races but they tend to enslave merfolk.

Shif (Sikruf ancestor race which is nearly extinct) also still live, and I was thinking about converting Sikruf and Shif from squid-race to jellyfish-race :3 I also thought about the design a bit, the shif will hardly be recognizable as a human, they will have a human-like torso and face (the head will actually not be so much human on them) whereas the sikruf willl have a human torso and head, but tentacular legs and arms, similar to mermaids in fairy tales they can convert their legs and arms to human ones when they're on land.

That covers all the major races and a sort of high level personality description for them (I didn't go into various things though like laws, attitude towards slaves, etc. Kalhiri's government will turn anti-slavery in the first game, much thanks to our protagonist.)

But as you can see, these are VERY different cultures I'm aiming for, some fairy tale like level of awesome and ideal, others dark and gloomy like our very own. I need to fit them all together in a world which I want to look beautiful for the most part, but like... Kalhiri is a desert, how beautiful can you make a desert? or the mountains of Jokland? Then there's the matter of Necembel, one side is Tainted and the other is quite literally Dead. Both will be pretty damn dark.

So different landscape tones and atmospheres as well as different atmospheres depending on where you are and who you are talking to.

The really hard part is making some hardcore dark things happen in these lively places like Kalhiri. That is going to prove challenging but after this month of thinking quite a bit about this I feel like I'm coming ever closer to a solution.

It's just that I need to balance things, by this I don't mean balance the player to npcs, I need to balance the story elements and the characters. A lot more complicated than just balancing numbers >_<

Today I also gave armor designs a little thought.

Light Armor: Fabric based + (on more expensive sets) plates where needed
Medium Armor: Chain based or Layered light plate armor (expensive)
Heavy Armor: Plate + Chain (cheaper) or Plate + Layered(more expensive)

There we also have a nice price balance

Light = Cheapest (Fabric based) and (Fabric + Plates) <- these types of sets will be the cheapest types of armor

Medium: Chainmail is slightly more expensive than the cheap light armor, Layered + Chain is expensive

Heavy: Plate + Chain is cheaper than Layered + Chain, Fully Layered Plate armor is the most expensive armor type in the game.

Fabric and Fabric + Plates will be the most mobile armor.

Chainmail + Layered & Chained will be fairly mobile as well but just heavy.

Plate armor (+ chain layer underneath) will offer reduced mobility but a lot of armor for a reasonable price

Full Layered Plate armor will offer much more mobility than just plate armor and the same mount of protection but is heavier and the most expensive type of armor in the game.

Sound about right? I think this is cool. But I need to put some consideration into this, historically chainmail was sometimes more expensive than plate armor, and chainmail also feels heavier since it's weight is all on the shoulders rather than distributed between bodyparts as plate is usually attached to individual bodyparts.

I think I should keep chainmail cheaper, but I may want to keep chain armor as heavy rather than including it as medium. Alternatively I could re-design the chain armor so it doesn't rest all its weight on the shoulders for a balance. I think that may be what I should aim for instead :3

Waiting for the 26th

It's just around the corner! That day, and boy I have been thinking real hard about how I want to proceed after that day comes.

90° Pushups: 70
Knee Tucks: 120

Lets see I did 60 and 120 last time... so...

70 and 140 :3

It was a kind of funky 70, we'll see how much it'll hurt.

Wow the knee tucks were a lot harder than last time, I only made it to 120 again.

Guess thats the non-art related highlights of today, well maybe with the exception of a few family problems.

Cya on the 25th again :3

Waiting for the 26th

5 days, it's not enough time for all the ground I'm aiming to cover in that time (the bean, re-learn the mannequin, learn to draw clothing (i'm not so scared about the clothing part) learn basic shading and learn to color.

I've been progressing slower than I can, for better or worse, but on the 26th I'm thinking I'll start to divide my time somehow.

3 hours per day or more for art (priority one)
2-3 hours per day or more for game development (priority two) the rest is free

Sundays will be video game day where I shall do nothing but play video games. How does that sound?

Well, I'll decide it in 5 days.

But I'm not gonna skip my workouts today!

Headstand: 80s or more
Bridge thing: 70 (Could have done more I think but, this was enough I think it was more than last time)
Crow Stand: 30?

Crow stand is really the challenge of this day, and my wrists hate this day btw.

I'm gonna aim for 30 or 40 seconds.

I think I did 30 but I'm not 100% sure. It takes like 99% of my brain to maintain balance so I can't really count.

Thats it for today I guess

Waiting for the 26th

I'm not progressing as fast as I intended on the art scene, this is not because I can't, its because I get distracted into social networking and whatnot too easily. I need to fix that but I guess I'm partially afraid of doing so because I'd get a lot more Isolated than I already am... (and I already am very isolated)

But, hell day!

Squats: 80
Pullups: 2x10 (like 30 second pause)

I should aim for 90 squats and 30 pullups. Lets see how this goes. I stopped doing regular bar hangs a while ago, the callus still remains because I use the bar weekly for exercises and my skin tolerates it much better now.

I did 5 pullups for warmup, I might wanna revert to wall pullups for warmup while I'm still getting used to this shit.

I did a regular 10 squats for squat warmups.

Now listening to a skyrim/morrowind mashup... I'll do the real pullups. :3

I couldn't do 30 in one set, but I'll try 3x10

I barely pulled 2x10, can I make the 3rd?

No way. Couldn't do one more if my life depended on it.

Now on fitting gory lyric viking metal, I'll do squats. The squats are almost that brutal I must admit.

Just for today I took it easy on the damned squats.. I doubted my ability to reach 90 but I pulled a fairly perfect 80 instead. Last time I did this my muscles quite literally died. They probably needed an extra week to catch up, that's ok. I could also start increasing it in 5s instead of 10s if the same happens again.

Even if I didn't go beyond my limit on the squats this still seems to have packed quite the punch, and in the pullups case I've analyzed it as a joint issue, my joints can't keep up with the muscles (joint recovery hurts even more than muscle recovery too, and joints will ache right after the exercise unlike muscles that will only ache for a while after the exercise then stop aching until a day or two from the exercise.

As I said recently, I changed my deadline from 24th to 26th after taking 2 days rest from art practicing. I've pretty much got down a lot of basics when it comes to drawing human figures, if I go all out I suspect I can surpass a lot of amateurs that have been drawing aimlessly for years (kids usually)

We'll see on the 26th I guess.