Building a Social Media Home for the Business

Today I finally got myself a logo! So I looked all over the place and it was kind of a stressful situation trying to figure out where to go to get a logo. The pricing was sketchy everywhere I went and even higher priced places had issues. So eventually, after having talked about AI with a friend today, I thought to myself, let's just give AI a shot and see what it comes up with.

And behold! 

So I know it would be better to get a human being to do it and all that jazz, but I'm making no money, in face I'm straight up losing money on this. I need every advantage I can get right now. And I just don't have the budget for paying $500 for someone to design this. I think once I start making money I'll consider updating it. But for now this is great and I love it.

Oh I started an instagram page for my business and made my first post today. For some reason I can't post it here. But here's a link to the post itself!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C80Z-ySM97w/

Anyway as far as the game goes - I've got movement, selection, turns, attacking, death, and some really dumb random AI. So yeah pretty friggen good progress. Of course this is nothing right now but I am glad the bones of the game are coming together. I am not sure what strategy I should use to develop this... I could either try to nail down the turn-based combat, get all the details worked out ya know... OR, I could build out the foundations of the entire game and keep things very simple until I've got all that done. Then I can take more time and zoom in to particular parts of the game.

Hmm. I kind of like that second option but we'll see. I'll decide tomorrow.

Peace! And good luck.

A Little Inspiration and Some Work

 Today I didn't do too much. But, I was really really exhausted and MEGA stressed from work so I am just proud of myself for doing what I did today. Work has just been rough the last two weeks. Ya know when you end up just stuck on a bug or a task and it just takes way too long. Frankly it was my mistakes in organization that made it stretch out too much. But anyway yeah the point is it's been stressful.

I made a decision that's pretty important lately: I decided this next game will use third party assets for artwork supplemented by work I do myself. I think frankly it will be faster. Not that I'm not interested in doing artwork myself, I am. I just think it would save time to find what I can that does work well that's already done (same as programming), and do what I have to myself. I might pick up modding or something in the mean time to practice drawing; it would be really cool eventually to do all the art myself. I would like to learn.

Anyway yeah so there's that, and then also I decided I'm going to use medieval England during the period where the Danes / Vikings were invading as inspiration. I just love The Last Kingdom and why not use it as inspiration.

Anyway today I took a stab at setting up the turn-based portion of the game but I realize it's gonna get a little complicated. Not something to work on when I'm three shots deep in alcohol at 9 pm. I think I'll wake up tomorrow and get at it. 

I've been thinking lately, I really need to set hard times to do my work for gamedev. Or maybe I just need to get back to doing as much as I can get myself to do every day... well... the point is I need to get a system going again.

Alright. Later.

My Next Game

I've decided I'm going to make a simple turn-based tactics game next. The reason for this decision is that I really really like turn based tactics games. They're probably my favorite genre. Of course it depends on the day etc, but if I were to name my favorite games of all time, they're turn-based tactics for sure.

Anyway I went through a lot of planning. Here's the one-pager and a little GIF of something I threw together. FYI the timeline for this is between 2 - 3 months.

  

Reflecting and Looking Forward

 It's crazy how stressful things can get. I just made my first steam game and it's releasing soon - I just have to make the damn capsule art etc. I was going to pay some dude to do it, and I believe they could do a better job than me, but frankly I know this game won't make me the $100 or so that I would need to put down for it.

So I'm just gonna do it myself and get it up there.

I'm feeling strangely really relaxed right now. I have just been working really hard on this thing and I got really disappointed with the result. It's basically this unfinished game. There is some things that turned out well, but others that were just seriously bad. Period. No matter what anyone tries to reassure me! 

But the last two or three days I have been refurbishing my office and it gave me time off to think about things. And I realize, man, this was just part of the learning process. Obviously. Like this was never going to make money and I knew that but I secretly hoped it would be somehow a success haha. I guess it's just yet again a humbling experience. 

It's one of those the more you know the more you know that you don't know situations.

Anyway, I'm putting it up, shit I might even just make it free. It was fantastic for learning though that is for sure. I have a much clearer idea of what a process might look like and what needs to go into a game art / sound wise. I also have learned quite a bit about marketing and how to think about game development. I just feel like it was a great experience.

So now I'm looking forward and thinking of what's next. I'm just in the brainstorming period right now. I'm testing other toolsets as well - today I tried out Krita for the artwork. And it was pretty sweet! Nice and easy to use. I like it waaaay more than GIMP. I found GIMP just extremely uncomfortable and confusing. For some reason Krita just works for me. So I think I'll be doing regular line art for my next game instead of pixel art.

I intend to get started messing around with Godot sometime this week. I'm really looking forward to it. It will be great to finally start experimenting with something new after years with Unity. I really have enjoyed Unity but I'd rather not have corporate overlords who can retroactively charge me for stuff ;)

Anyway yeah, I haven't given up. I'm going to keep chugging along. I talked with my Mom today on the phone and she reminded me something - that we are capable of anything as long as we don't give up and put in the work. And Mom you are right. I am not going to give up. 

Here's a little dude I drew up in Krita - it's just the same as the Survive the Squids guys but in a different style.