Whoa!!!
What’s that, there???
A NUMBER in the title of the devlog showing how many there have been????
That’s right, baby. We’re counting them now.
PHILOSOPHY
Ok, so… recently I’ve found some delight and value in thinking of different aspects of my life and the world in terms of famous philosophical standpoints. Vuota, of Negative Reverie fame?? Absolutely a pragmatist. Muscles? All about the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics.
Anyway, I’ve been enjoying it a great deal and I gotta tell you, when you’re writing dialogue and you’re wondering what a character would do or say, defining and considering their personal values and modes of thinking really gets you out of a jam. Good stuff lie in that direction, matey.
Also, perhaps this will be of value to you as much as it was to me, but I have recently seen multiple interviews with game devs and directors where they bluntly stated that developing an indie game OFTEN can take upwards of 10 years or more! I’m always feeling kinda down about my speed in developing Negative Reverie, so it takes some of the shame off to be like, “Yeah… okay! Lots of projects take this long!”.
Probably not good if you wanna make a living out of indie dev… but good if you just have some things to say. 🙂
Which reminds me…. I wanted to talk about….
INDIE GAMES
I don’t have anything TOO insightful to say here about like “the state of indie games”, or anything, but I did want to mention that I played (read?) Kazvalech’s mini-visual novel “Void Nemesis – A Night Off” last night.
Anyway, it inspired me a lot because of what it is. It’s a 30 minute “backstory gaiden” to a larger universe they’ve constructed and written that has good characters and good dialogue. It kinda takes me back to being a youngin’ again and looking at deviant art for the first time and thinking, “Wow, so many people have so many stories and worlds in their heads… and I get to peer into them and see what they’re like”. Kazvalech clearly put a lot of time into thinking about lore and characters, so it’s just cool to see a lil mini-project like this made and posted with confidence and passion. Love that.
Importantly, it makes me feel like my stupid little story about aliens and violence might also be enjoyed by freaks like myself one day.
So, if you have any ideas for a lil story or comic or something…. make it!
Also, give Void Nemesis – A Night Off a chance. 🙂
ART
I drew art this week. 🙂
Well, it’s not a lot, but it kinda puts me back in the mood to work on art again. I got so many damn hobbies, but…. surely I can fit in an hour a night to draw…. >:3c
There’s a lot about my art I’m unsatisfied with right now… I lean HARD on references and haven’t really cultivated the understanding needed to be able to just whip out things from imagination. I know references aren’t a crime, but a little more conceptual knowledge would really put me in a better place, I think.
YOU ASKED FOR IT…. NEGATIVE REVERIE
Ok, so it’s only been a few days since the last devlog… since I forgot to do it on Sunday last time, hehe…. BUT, I was able to get quite a bit done. Obviously, making tilemaps and locations is still the main goal, but I got some more camera-tweaking done and had to rework ladders AGAIN. Oh well, every step is a step towards completion.
But my greatest success was….
SWINGS.
Thus far, Negative Reverie has mostly been based on still framed art. Character portraits, stationary backgrounds, enemy posterboard sprites…. but every now and again I get a hankering for a lil bit of PHYSICS or PARTICLES (this is physics, not particles). My infinite gratitude to the Godot PinJoint2D node for making this possible… couldn’t have done it without you!
I also made places like, Vuota’s house, ANOTHER CVS style building and started working on chapter 13’s tilemap!
Chapter 13 takes place underneath an overpass and the inspiration for it was very much the “BridgePoint” section of Highway 17 in Half-life 2. That was my favorite environment in the whole game and I wanted to make a big section of Negative Reverie basically be a love-letter to it.
Let it be known…. I am not an animator. I shudder at having to hand-animate things, but in chapter 13 and onwards… there’s gonna need to be some goopy nasty boys flopping around in different areas, so I’m gonna have to make peace with it and practice, practice, practice.
OK, have some stats:
DONEZO
Ok, that’s it for this week!
Thanks to the work of countless artists putting out the work they care about, I am FULL OF INSPIRATION AND DETERMINATION and am excited to hop to it! Y’all be safe this week and I’ll see youuuuu……
NEXT TIME!
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