It’s been 31 days.
How’s everyone doing so far? I’ve been doing pretty good. I woke up for no reason at 1am one day and decided to decorate my room with some Halloween-themed fairy lights (a task I have been putting off out of laziness for about a year). Halfway through I realised that I had no batteries to power them on, so I can’t show them to you or enjoy their comforting, neon green glow. Typical. Thankfully I’ve had some good life news and I mostly fixed my bad sleep, so it all balances out.
This month I offer you: COSMO, ART ZONE and GAME ZONE.
This month I have been working on COSMO. In order to shake off Holiday Mode™ I’ve been picking away at the bug list to try and smooth out some of the rough edges I created just before christmas. Unfortunately this means that I don’t have anything particularly interesting to tell you about (unless you’re keen to hear about how quitting to the title screen would occasionally break the jump button) so instead I’m just gonna do a general INTRODUCTION to the project. It’d be good for my brain, I think.
COSMO is my “main” project and it’s been clawing at the insides of my skull for a very long time now. I jokingly mentioned that this project ‘haunted’ me in my previous post, but that’s probably the most accurate description. I think about COSMO and its inhabitants and story a lot. Every day, in fact. I try smaller projects, collaborative projects, experimental projects, but I always end up back here. In the end I decided that I would just keep going. One day this project will be complete, out of sheer stubbornness.
So here’s COSMO! They’re my friend, and your friend perhaps. They’re a queer ghost on a queer adventure, and the player character! They are very cool and nice and my lifelong wish is to one day have a soft toy of them. I want people to learn more about them as their story unfolds, so I’ll keep further details light for now.
As for the game itself, it originally started out as a metroidvania [sounds of screaming] ok ok I get it, I am already aware that it’s a terrible idea, but I’ve done so much work on this project that I can’t turn back now. Over time it’s morphed from a metroidvania into a more linear game anyway, so while the spirit of exploration is still present in my current design, I don’t imagine I’ll be making a sprawling labyrinth of upgrades for players to backtrack through.
this is the first WIP I have of this project. It’s my favourite thing.
At its current stage, I have a lot of systems up and running. Our very good protagonist can run around and explore, there’s combat, inventory, dialogue and cutscenes, collectables…all the key “video game” things. I’m at a point where I can sit down and make a few rooms, edit a tileset, write a scene or add an animation, and the systems are mostly there to handle it. It’s a good feeling. Of course, things are still rough in areas and I still have work to do on a lot of the systems to cover future needs, but I’m so happy with where I am right now.
combat is up and running, even if cosmo is missing some animations
I’ve already started to build the world and sketch out animations, which is very exciting to me. I get a lot of enjoyment out of walking around the greyboxes of a world I’ve been obsessively thinking about for years. But of course, there is still a lot to do. Imposter syndrome had me slacking on the art side of things, so I am aiming to focus on getting more assets and content into the game. After all, I can keep coding forever, but it won’t matter if there’s nothing to actually play…
So what have I been doing this month? Well, like I said earlier, I’ve been doing some bugfixing. Cleaning up minor problems to warm up my code brain after the brief winter break, in which I did nothing. Some of those problems ranged from the aforementioned “title screen breaks the jump button” bug, to things like “the collision on this one platform sometimes decides to not work”.
As for more distant plans…I actually don’t know! The plan has always been to keep moving forward (with healthy working habits!) as I don’t expect to become un-haunted by these ghosts any time soon. The most concrete plan I have is that I am aiming to release a DEMO that would cover the introductory chapters. It feels more in reach than ever, but I’m not going to set a date or promise anything. I’m keeping it casual.
Let me tell you about the things I drew this month. Starting with: my first polished piece of 2021! I sketched this before the holidays and only found the time to finish it up in the new year, so technically it’s a 2020/2021 hybrid. I became obsessed with the idea of using this palette and now that it’s complete I’ve started seeing these colours whenever I close my eyes. This is not a bad thing. Anyway this is my favourite thing I’ve ever drawn and I hope you like looking at it as much as I do. Especially since I practically snapped my wrist in half working on the lineart. Please remember to stretch before you draw.
I sketched a fair bit this month too, which has been nice! I’ll show you the ones I cleaned up a bit. Here’s a preview of a DOOM piece I got hyperfocused on towards the end of the month. I was listening to BFG Division during work and this appeared in my head. It was just supposed to be a fun exercise and then I decided it ruled, so it’s going on the “might polish this up some time” pile. Doomguy will be suited up in the final piece though. Sorry.
it’s casual friday
What else? Here’s a crystal dragon from Spyro, a DMC2 enemy and a Dante (BP Taunt Edition). I don’t know what I want to do with these just yet, but maybe you’ll enjoy seeing them ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I was thinking about what sort of “art goals” I wanted to achieve this year…I definitely want to do ‘Slow September’ again (maybe I’ll continue my DMC Enemy series?), and I think contributing to a ‘zine’ of some kind would be fun. I have no plans for how to achieve the latter, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything that piques my interest!
I bought a bunch of games at christmas to keep me entertained while we’re all still locked inside. The first of which is DEAD BY DAYLIGHT, a fun game about roleplaying as a supernatural death machine as they’re bullied by 4 completely normal human beings with flashlights. It’s also about escaping from a slasher villain I guess, if you decide to play as the survivors.
I am a “killer main” which means I’m the person running around with the knife and the scary music. Supposedly playing as the killer is a more stressful experience, but I find that having no teammates to potentially let down is a huge relief. I did start out playing as a survivor, but my fear of making a bad first impression amongst my fellow humans turned out to be worse than being chased down by a knife-wielding murderer, so here I am, waving around sharp objects and sticking people on hooks instead.
I’m having a lot of fun with this one so if you’re also playing maybe we’ll run into each other. I currently main as PYRAMID HEAD and GHOSTFACE, and occasionally dip into survivor matches as CHERYL or BILL.
I would wear this outfit. Toilet paper tendril haters do not interact.
Next up is INMOST, a game that has flown so far under the radar that it feels like I’m the only person who’s played it. I want you to know that I sat down to play this game and did not stand up until it was over several hours later. Highly recommended!
Here’s the gist; you play as three distinct characters, the girl, the wanderer and the knight, whose experiences intersect and blend together to tell a wonderfully esoteric and melancholic story. I don’t want to spoil anything so that’s about as much as I’ll divulge, but I definitely think this is worth your time. It’s only around 4 hours long after all. (Side note: it does deal with mental illness, loss and depression, if that’s something you’d rather avoid).
I played this back in early January, but I’ve been thinking about it since. The visuals and music are incredible and the atmospheres and moments they create are still fresh in my mind…plus, they let you pet a cat in this game. 10/10.
I wasn’t even going to write about this but I ended up having a lot of fun, so I feel like I owe at least one paragraph to VRChat. Despite working on a couple of short VR experiences, I haven’t actually played any VR games…so I thought I’d do some research. VRChat is free and lets me dress up as cartoon characters so it wasn’t hard to convince me to give it a shot. Well, except for the socialising part. I’m not quite as enthusiastic about that bit.
So far I’ve spent most of my time in private instances, running around and enjoying the view, peace and quiet, exploration, whatever each world brings. I thought the novelty would wear off pretty quickly without a friend to hang out with, but I am still entertained whenever I catch sight of a low-poly skeleton in mirrors as I run past.
On the topic of avatars…I’m well aware of the huge community of people creating custom content for VRChat, it’s pretty much the core of the experience, but I hadn’t realised that it was all done through Unity, nor that they offered their SDK to pretty much the entire userbase. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get back into 3D modelling so I’ll keep this in mind…although it won’t be anytime soon! I am busy.
Anyway, I’m having fun. I’ve been taking lots of photos. Maybe I’ll feel like socialising eventually, but until then I’ll be exploring. Dressed as a skeleton. Or perhaps as a wheelie bin that says “COOL” on it.
hello from sunny VRChat
I caught myself feeling worried about writing this. I was convinced for a brief moment that I didn’t have anything interesting or worthwhile to share after only one month. The good thing is that having this space away from algorithms and numbers has increased my ability to say “I don’t care! I’m having fun”, which is a good brain zone to be in.
Next month, FEBRUARY, will be pretty busy for me I think, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll get to spend on my own projects…but that’s fine! I’ll find something to talk about (curse and blessing of Caspar).
Here’s another MERLIN photo for you…this is from a few years ago, but he is just as bright orange and cute in this photo as he is today.
Caspar 👻
