Day 95
I believe in trans wrongs. That is part of what compelled me to make this game in the first place. It's an act of defiance against all these mainstream ways of thinking.
Because of this attitude, I think the next one on the chopping block is our "flesh golem", needing a good carving from Scarlet. And yeah, whether it's male, female, or some horrendous failure to be either...that's intentionally open to interpretation. (Of course, my personal interpretation is "horrendous failure".)
I won't go on my "soap box" for too long (a couple paragraphs), but I must put the ideal of "Freedom of Speech" to one of its hottest tests of the present age. (I've done one of those online personality tests, and the label it gave me was "The Debater", so let me attest that its assessment of me is not inaccurate. For relating that to game development, that mindset is reflected in the vibe and spirit, doubly emphasizing the importance of always saying, "Not for Sensitive Audiences" - as such persons can not handle debate without it turning into the "flame war" or other forms of intense emotion they'd rather shy away from, juxtaposed with my hardwired personality dictating to take it head-on instead!) And remember, I'm speaking on opinion, here, so you can agree to disagree so long as you don't censor. No real-world harm is intended; all I'm doing is making a video game and voicing my opinions on some very thorny topics. Nobody is paying me to do any of this, so you know it's all coming straight from the soul.
I am a debater, I am mean-spirited, and I am a sadist. Most importantly, in the deepest part of my soul, I am a fighter. So, know where I'm coming from, and this needs representation just as much as any other minority out there. What makes me different is how I'm so upfront and transparent about my ideals. Not even Princess Scarlet can flex that level of boast. Don't mistake that for evil. Evil is what violates human greatness, deleterious traits that in the eyes of society are, in a very backwards way, deemed desirable. Evil is the stubborn stupidity that clings to certain ideas even after sufficiently absolute proof exists so as to indicate such ideas are best thoroughly slain, buried, and put to rest. Video games like this one do their best work when they don't kill people, but instead kill ideas.
You really don't need a whole month about all the queers, doubly since in my opinion, it's as NSFW as BDSM or any of the carnage Scarlet inflicts in this video game. You don't need to make every fan character of every mainstream franchise into "Trans Rights". You don't need a homo character in every Disney movie. Honestly, I wish the world would simply shut up about it all. I truly don't care. It's that it all feels so *inescapable* that it gets on my nerves. (Unfortunately, the month of June has been arbitrarily picked as the time of year society ramps that up to 11. And this is why we have a Nazi as an anti-hero rather than villain. I'm merely balancing things out.)
You want to know how I feel about all this, just me being myself on the Internet? I feel like the Republican Space Rangers in this particular scene: https://youtu.be/WwCGwDofPeg?t=411 (Commander REALLY knows how I think! OH, BY THE WAY! If you wanted to get that "our president's an alien" reference bit from the very tutorial section of my game, this clip also has that answer covered.)
And if this does end up getting censored, well, now you know WHY I make this game, and WHY the world NEEDS the Kingdom of Badass to stand defiantly.
If it does not...then, my hat's off to those brave enough to distribute my game. Don't think I don't appreciate you, Steam and Google Drive. Because the game "The Way of the Badass" is like "South Park meets Hatred, but instead of hatred it's sadism."
Because the curators never get back to me, groups won't even touch me for so much as disagreeing, and while I'm afraid I'm only talking from experience so I don't have sources to cite, please try to take my word for it when I say that merely rolling your eyes is some kind of social shame, when I feel that shouldn't be.
All that to say, the "Flesh Golem" is satirizing transgender and people suffering from similar gender confusion, the very idea of it. Again, in a real-world context, there's no killing people here, only killing ideas. I admit it's heavy-handed (no pun intended because the "Flesh Golem" is a hulking mass of meat and chemicals), and that's by design...like the making of Starship Troopers (the Movie), only for this game I'm targeting the opposite extreme of the moral spectrum.
"But you said minorities should have representation, just not as inescapable. And now you say you're killing an idea. Whose side are you ON?!" That is very astute, and the short answer is I stand alone. I personally do not have a definitive, end-all answer to the gender confusion question, although I do have my own idea (and it involves reversing the hormonal treatments to patients rather than mutilating genitals: add testosterone for natural boys, add estrogen for natural girls). All I know is, it is a very valid area of concern, and I sincerely do not agree with the direction the mainstream consensus is taking matters (which is very much a "If you're not with us, then you're against us" mindset, reminding me of old-world racism except from that aforementioned "opposite extreme of the moral spectrum" flaunting the ultimate antithesis to "natural beauty"). And because I am no academic authority, my word on the matter feels completely invalidated. I mean, who would you listen to: a licensed psychiatrist or a hobbyist game developer?
Alright, enough "soap box", back to actual game making work!
(Saturday...)
Birthday came and went, and during that time, I got hit by another serious vertigo episode. Even with 2 over-the-counter antihistamines, it leaves me feeling like I don't want to do anything at all, let alone anything seriously productive. Both with and without remedy leave me gravitating to bed, but the only difference is that medicine makes the bed feel *GOOD!* So, the already crawling pace is once again compounded by a sense of "sick leave". During that time, there had been thunderous laughter and a state of asleep blending with awake to create for an odd dreaming experience.
Still better than school, though!
(Plus, I'd love to see the tyrants' faces when they know that, in an alternate timeline if young Jay had such a problem during school, he wouldn't be able to so much as walk. If that'd get me out of school, trust me, I'd take it.)
Elsewhere on the Internet, it feels like if I so much as say I want to do something cool, the primary response is to roast my ego and fault every effort I put forth.
Why is it that the broad world is unable to find value in me and my ambitions?
So, I finished a first draft for a fan fiction novella over the span of a couple days. Between that and sick leave, I think you can excuse me if I take an extended break. By "extended", I mean a couple extra days or so, not a month or 2.
(And, I swear, I'm surrounded by IDIOTS! Why must I always have such BACKWARDS ways of thinking forcefully thrust upon me?!)
(Sunday...)
End of July, and after rolling my eyes about how pop culture uses "the power of friendship" to defeat the evil forces, I thought, "Let's turn that on its head, and make the evil forces try using the power of friendship on Scarlet." Spoilers, Scarlet is too powerful, but that aside, what's important is that this gave me an idea for the Chapter 3 boss fight.
And before you ask, "Are WE the bad guys," it's complicated. Morality is not black and white. It's red and blue. More specifically, like any political argument, this time it truly is all about point of view.
That all aside, I'm still enjoying my break, plus the drowsiness ranges from "perpetually low on energy" to "complete knockout". At least it'd make any sleeping medicine redundant. No wonder I'm hopelessly unemployable! The world wants every human to be an expert and well-oiled machine, and here I am barely able to get out of bed, much less produce consistently throughout a full-time pace.
Good-ish news, I got a vision for some dialogue between Chapters 2 and 3.
Duke: "You know, the Colonel's the real deal."
Scarlet: "What do you mean?"
Duke: "Most rulers are egotistical blowhards, all talk and no action. What makes him different is that he worked for it, and he EARNED it!"
Scarlet: "I want to be like that!"
Duke: "It's a long road ahead of you. But you're doing everything right so far. Just keep doing what you're already doing, and you'll get there."
Scarlet: "Then why settle for Duke? Why aren't YOU King of Badass?"
Duke: "I TRIED! And I failed. You should ask your dad about it sometime. Believe me, I *TRIED!*"
(Monday...)
https://youtu.be/INBulkyYPvk
(August 23, 2022)
https://youtu.be/_fySk0A2jk4
And there's a big hashtag on Twitter that's inspired me to try and get back on track. Problem is, I can only focus on either joining Twitter's rally against bullying, OR work on my game. Like eating or talking, it's one or the other. I can either spread my story there, or work on my video game here!
8:30 PM, it's going to be very hard to focus tonight, but I honestly want to at least try to get back on track.
9:30 PM, and THEN the ONE THING that could truly complicate my focus came to be. Battlegroup, got an update, cleaning the Conquest server and effectively gave me a reason to come back. It's been a VERY LIMITED head-start because of a bug that would make the Shipyard menu go blank and not recognize my fleet, meaning I can't go far beyond the Homeworld (or do more than Step 1), so...until that's fixed, I guess I CAN go back to drawing for my game.
And, I WAS going to do something more involved with another "Glory Kill" for another bad guy, but I realize that would be too intensive given the circumstances of my focus being pulled in various different directions. SO, in a "meeting halfway", I'll get to work on the dialogue to start us off in CHAPTER THREE!
9:35 PM, let's get started drawing.
I think it's a very human struggle: there are SO MANY different things I want to do, but can only focus on ONE at a time, or else I get paralyzed by indecision.
10:20 PM, slightly less than an hour, got a handful of dialogue boxes, and hotfix for Battlegroup, so let's see if that's now working. If so...hoo boy, it's gonna be hard to keep focusing on my game.
10:30 PM, Battlegroup is still broken, so back to work on drawing. Break's over for now...but I will be watching.
11:10 PM, subtract 1 bathroom break or so, and I've got a basic setup for the dialogue between Chapters 2 and 3. Not counting all the character fluff, that can wait...but trust me, I DO want Scarlet to have a chance to chat with Karl and/or Super Hobo before going into the alien's brain.
Though, with that out of the way, next is the TITLE CARD for Chapter 3!
11:20 PM, note for later, I wanted to do a repeating tile background, something super trippy with wavy black and purple, to give the surrealist sense of trying to visibly represent something as abstract as "inside an alien's mind". There will be new enemies, new challenges, and maybe other interesting twists as well. But for now, we're just trying to get started. I mean it's an ALIEN interrogation! How do you interrogate something that doesn't even know English?!
11:45 PM, looks like Battlegroup is a dud for tonight. Good news, the tiles for Chapter 3 are ready. So, time to update the game engine and see about getting these parts and pieces moving in game.
Midnight, Wednesday August 24, I took a little break since the game engine takes a while to load up and refresh itself with each update, particularly since I've got so much stuff packed in. I keep saying, it was intended for minimalistic pixel art, not interactive cartoons in HD. Or maybe that's not the engine's fault, maybe that's a more hardwired limit of computer processing. I don't know, just that whenever it's update time, it's break time.
12:20 AM, small distraction talking about my game with the MAGFest Discord server (surprised I didn't get totally censored when I mentioned it's aiming for the AO rating, the ESRB's "Adult Only" label for maximum intensity), but that aside, the dialogue sprites are imported. Still got a handful more, then gotta create objects for it, so that the computer will have commands to obey with the way the story plays out.
Further down the line, probing the alien could be a very interesting way of showing lore from the ALIENS' perspective! Don't know when or IF I'll do that, but for what-if, I think that'd be cool. This is also a precious chance to see "their side of the story", even if only briefly.
12:30 AM, background tile is set to animate. Still gotta make the rooms for the stuff, and the title page.
1 AM, we're about 3.5 hours in, once you subtract all the breaks and distractions. Not bad, but today's task is only half done (more or less). I want to set up the most basic event chains for starting Chapter 3. Meaning, for today's Dev Diary, there won't be any new voice. BUT, I MIGHT get to show off the Chapter 3 guitar in its intended context.
1:15 AM, and because there's a new variable that checks for this particular conversation, that means I have to add it to all the save & load checks for the buttons and F keys.
1:25 AM, testing time.
It KINDA works, the first dialogue box shows, then conversation ends. Why aren't the others loading? And debug powers to set conversation check to 0 so I can repeatedly play the conversation sequence until it's debugged.
1:40 AM, made a couple behind-the-scenes objects visible for debugging, and now the conversation does not even get started. Now I see why. The variable if check is not pointing to a variable at all, but an object. OOPS!
1:45 AM, everything seems to work now. HUZZAH! So now we can focus on just a FEW TWEAKS, then call it a night. I'm hungry.
Tweak #1: the dialogue boxes are getting thrust off-screen to camera-left, since they're so big. Instead of making them smaller, I'm offsetting them to the right, so we can better appreciate the faces and the words on screen.
1:55 AM, Tweak #2: get the guns and the music functioning inside the alien brain. As weird as it is, Scarlet CAN project her arsenal into the mind of the alien. Trust me, it'll be essential when she has to fight its various subconscious defense mechanisms.
2AM, I'm getting really tired of this, definitely a good part-time day's worth, so let's show the start of Chapter 3! No guitar. A shame.
2:05 AM, oh it's working NOW! No bad guys or anything, so it's gonna be a bit plain. But don't worry, that'll be sometime in future Dev Diaries. For now, it's recording this, then packaging the Dev Diary to send to you!
There's no sound until we get into Chapter 3, and that's OK. No music is intended for this part of the bunker, and the voice lines will be recorded in a future Dev Diary. For now, that's definitely upwards of 4 hours of effort, plenty for a part-time day. But, don't forget, the Dev Diary still counts as "on the clock", so the time does not end until I get the email sent out, AND put the bulletin on Steam. After that, THEN I clock out!
In the future, I want to illustrate and animate Scarlet's actual butt-probing, populate Chapter 3 and tweak its camera, and maybe more of those knife kills on other bad guys (like I had ORIGINALLY intended a month ago, before impulses and world events took my attention).
2:20 AM, in that time, the "reads" of my Steam news chapters are solidly in the double digits, consistently in the 20s on average. Not bad for a nobody.
2:30 AM, the hardest part is focusing on Dev Diary, and pushing aside the temptation to respond to emails until AFTER I'm "off the clock".
Video is on Youtube because I don't think there's anything particularly obscene for this very specific (and very incomplete) segment of the game.
https://youtu.be/7M3CNk-EG2M
As for the OTHER videos, across the board, it's 1 like and 1 or 2 dislikes, even on my recent rants. All that's still par for the depressing course.
I just think it's funny how one moment, I'm all "Let's get back to work", then the next thing I know, "1 month, later..." Yeah, sorry about that, but I've been under crippling sadness over those weeks. Can't promise it'll get better, but all I'll say is that a friendly nudge from YOU goes a long way to helping me stay on track! (OR, alternatively, maybe some scumbag saying mean things or censorship crap that'd ALSO compel me to action just out of defiance, if you want to approach motivation from the opposite direction.) So yeah, the only wrong answer is [no answer].
Semper Bellum!
Jay