We survived the week. Somehow.

I pretty much hit all my goals except the arena spawners and the drawing. There's a pretty obvious bug where I can't stack status effects yet but we'll get there. Obviously it would be pretty dumb if everything could stack so I want to think through what will stack and what won't. Imagine getting stunlocked by some jerk and his buddies. T_T 0/10. Definitely do not recommend.

I got slightly segued by a small side quest. I'm setting up a private server to hold documents and backup data. I have 1000% experienced losing everything to a goofy drive or file corruption aaaand I'd personally like to yoink all of my bits and bobs and private stuff out of google. I don't think it really changes anything, but I at least feel better about it.

Oh! But look what I found!

This is lowkey brilliant?! I know I said I was going to wait to model anything BUT LOOK AT THAT HAIR.

I've been practicing doing anime models aaaaaand for some reason everyone recommends doing every strand bundle individually?! What. I'm sorry. Ain't nobody got polygons for that. Rude.

I guess when you're just making something shiny and pretty to show off and uh... mmm.... experiment with wiggle bones on, it doesn't matter if it would render like butt in an engine.

Anyway, I'm feeling kinda down and not really up to showing what I've worked on yet. Even though it was a lot of things I guess it just doesn't really feel like there's much to see.

This week's list:

• Stacking Status Effects - Also implement Radiant status and threat?
• Dem arena spawnsers for rando dungeon.
• Light sources.
• Fog of War
• Finish outlining the boys and get the drawing painted up. As is tradition, I drew the stuff I wanted and now I'm slogging through the rest. :D
• Poke around with 3d modeling.

Please take care of yourself out there.

Make sure you log off in time for bed so you can get plenty of rest. I know it's tough, but don't forget to get up and make a real meal so you have something good to eat today. You can still get a huge bag of chicken quarters at the grocery store for a good price - though you might need to check around for prices. It's not quite the same as split breasts, but you can make a really tasty low-effort soup if you can toss that in a pot or slow cooker. Less than $10 and it would feed me for a week. Ah-... I'm not a very large person, though, and if you're male your mileage may vary.

I might be willing to share the recipe if you ask nicely.

I lament very greatly, that I trimmed off the lower half of the drawing. Herja's thighs were ~mwah~.

Goodness Gracious.

Right, I promised weekly updates. Well, I didn't promise you anything necessarily but I did promise myself updates and I kinda fell short on that.

Some of that's habit. The website needs to become a habit and I'm not quite there yet. Some of it's... aaaaahh.... hmm.

So after much thought and deliberation, I decided to throw what I'd been working in the dumpster and start from scratch. I promise I'm not insane, it'll make sense, sort of, maybe.

The project started in Unity, largely because I was following the guidance of some very helpful folks online. I found a couple of tutorials that seemed to align perfectly with what I was doing and I did actually for realsies learn a lot in the proces. Kudos to Code Monkey in particular who introduced me to the logic behind the grid system. But as I was pinning all of these goofy things together I started to think about all of the design choices that I was adopting from those original projects - especially as I started tearing them out.

And then, of course, we're talking about Unity, which sort of poses a kind of liability to the project. Not that I'm expecting to make so much as a cent on this game but it's the principle of the thing! My first copy of a digital art program was Adobe Photoshop on a floppy drive, given to me by a neighbor from his garage. I've been around long enough to know what that looks like.

So, right. I took what I'd been making and started over in Godot. Believe it or not, the process was pretty easy. Godot's gdscript is pretty much just python - and python and I are pretty decent friends. At least, I'm a little more familiar with it than I am some others.

That's what I've been working on the last few weeks. Just... catching up to where I was. Not quite there, but almost!

Grid and movement systems? ✔ Movement pips that reduce as you use them - ✔ but I need to adjust the scaling connected to the agility stat, lol. Health linked up to a healthbar on the UI. ✔.

A mock up of the resource system, cards with abilities that cause damage or other effects ((though I need to implement a healthbar for the monster)), localization setup, initiative system inspired by othercide... ✔ ✔ ✔ and so on.

Wait, what even is this game?

Right. Beneath the Boughs of Yggdrasil will, one day, be a turn-based rpg. Abilities and equipment are acquired through a collectible card system. The general idea is... basically if the first Diablo had a ménage à trois with Magic the Gathering and Fire Emblem. Or Baldur's Gate? I mean... Baldur's Gate kinda plays the way I picture this one playing, but-... look, turn-based anime rpg with animals and collectible cards, right now that's all I can say.

Something I'm adding is the initiative system. I know turns are pretty common but I LOVED how othercide handled this. With the spoopy setup the turns felt truly oppressive. The countdown had this ominous feel that really pressed on you the whole time.

I know that other games have done timers and the like but... I'm not really here to make our lives miserable. I want to give you the chance to think about how you want to solve problems. For some reason it's even more spooky having stuff stare you down.

But we'll see. I'm almost caught up to the actual area spawners and that's when this will go from being a weird bunch of stuff on a chessboard to actual... something? Sort of?

Is it ugly? Yes, absolutely. That's on purpose. My main skills are badly drawn art and halfway passable animation, so I'm trying to hold off on that for as long as possible. After all, I know that stuff is going to take a long arsed time - each model might take me a month, depending, and I'd prefer not to go ham until I know for certain what I'm making is going to be what I need. You and I know that's not a perfect solution - I'll probably have to go back to fix things regardless - but... an effort is made.

Tomorrow's my birthday, so I've taken the day off and that will hopefully give me a little bit of a timeline boost.

So, new project list for this week:

• Finish re-implementing status effects with timers.
• Add status effects to the UI with description/timer popups
• Enlarged card popups with details elaborating on the simplified card buttons.
• Begin working on the Area spawners for the diablo-style world builder.
• Create cards and a few test enemies using the already implemented modular resource system.
• Continue to pick at the goofy AU drawing because it's cute.

Talk to you next time!

A little embarassing, but the mailing list and guestbook do in fact work now. At least, they do as of right now. I felt inclined to test it and... lo and behold.

Neocities be hustl'n for that $5 sub. I get it, I get it. Absolutely fair considering... Well... everything. As a minimum wage earner from the "free world" $5 is a fair price I think.

Still, if you posted something and weren't heard, I apologize. Best laid plans and all that.

It's not finished but it's coming out kinda cute, so I thought I'd sneak this in.

So, I thought I'd wait until Monday, which is usually my decompress day, to post an update. But then I remembered that this isn't social media, and I can post what I want whenever I want. So, Happy Right The Heck Now Day.

This has been a relatively productive week. My only real plan was to get the bones done for the website. The designs had been sitting in Figma pinned to my Notion board for months and it was starting to make me a little crazy. I also got the animated stamp done, some icons, my sketchbook is full of little doodles for the next ones when I have the time - maybe something to work on next week when I'm feeling too put out by my day job to actually do anything meaningful? - so that's a pretty big leap from where I was before.

I also completely refactored the way buffs and debuffs work in the game. Originally I had basically a list of boolean values tracking if certain spells were present and an int value for the timer.

If you know anything about coding you're laughing your butt off right now - QUITE JUSTLY - but hey, it worked, alright? That's what mattered.

Also, I finally got Ostara mostly pinned down. Sort of. Well - Okay truthfully, look I'm ASS at concept art and I pretty much just made the first drawing I did again with extra steps.

I'm torn between the upper and lower left drawings. The tree isn't QUITE working in the lower left picture, but something about it vibes where the rose and the vines do not. I'll think about it. And the staff. And... the veil... I like the veil but I kind of want to be able to see her face. It won't matter in the grand scheme of things at the distance the player will see her on the field but it's more approachable?

She's not pink anymore, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't know. The white and the gold is doing something. Even with the golden circlets and the designs, something about her vibes "I'm just a girl from town" and it's very fitting for her.

Not me overthinking things again, but I'm still not sure I feel right about her being the main protagonist.

Look, don't get me wrong, I'd be happy playing her, but something I've learned is that not everyone is as flexible or curious as I am.

For the genre this game is in, I kind of think I should be making a boring male hero protagonist who can come to the rescue.

Or I should at least make it a choice.

But that feels wrong for this story.

I guess we'll see. Maybe everyone will hate it. I think the story is solid, though, it's just... a matter of whether or not some form of audience might resonate with her. We'll see.

Right, for next week:

1. New player actions/cards - including Herja's "leap" cards.
2. Build out some test environments with walls so we can work on the light/fog of war mechanics.
3. Add the actual light/fog of war in the game (threat based on light sources is already implemented, go me!)
4. Some Lower Priority Things that are "on the list":
• Create at least 1 "special ability" icon. (probably the cat)
• Design Herja
• Design Hnikud
• Design Steinar
• Create some drawing with the 4 of them together for some promo stuff?
• Add a sketchbook portion of the site? (Or do I want that to be here in the devlog?)

I'll see you next time!

Hello there! Looks like yet another person has been sucked into the idea of reclaiming the edges of the internet for ourselves, hmm?

Truth be told, I bounced right off of social media from the start. Something about the overwhelming public exposure just didn't work for me. It turned what was supposed to be self expression and a creative outlet into a performance and I, quite frankly, have terrible stagefright.

So... welcome to something a little more remeniscent of simpler times, and finally putting the pieces of my life together.