Day 92

It was 3:35 PM on that same Friday, July 15, and while watching a video going into UNABRIDGED detail about Bomberman, I started daydreaming about the panel to write up about for Heather and Tom. It'd give a brief yet juicy look into what those characters are like as people.
4:10 PM, about half an hour of writing 3 different codex pages, and I'm back to taking a break.

One bonus detail for "picking my brain" purposes, I wanted to have some references that anyone could catch onto with enough research (such as the parody of XCOM Chimera Squad)...and I also wanted others that only nerds would get. Some are extremely subtle, like how the probe room was modeled after South Park Season 1 Episode 1, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, owned by Comedy Central (and all the other streaming distributors with their limited licenses of distribution), images shared here are fair use for education purposes (MY education, because I'm learning how to make cute cartoons and how to carry that over into video game format).

Compare with The Way of the Badass, created and owned by me, shared here because I can do what I want with the stuff that I create.

Point is, the reference is intentional, and I don't expect anyone to pick up on this one, unless you are *intimately* familiar with South Park, or you're a NERD, OR you have your own psionic mind-reading superpowers that can be applied across the Internet to target my physical brain. That all aside, you can tell how I put my own touches onto it, with the brain-probing chair, and the TV on the wall in the background which will come in handy narratively once Chapter 3 starts proper and Scarlet gets to do some in-character brain-probing of her own. Trust me, it's gonna be a trip! >:)

(Monday...)
Getting hit with a lot of drowsiness. I think that's a side effect to the mechanisms preventing vertigo. And, that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. It definitely makes the bed feel great. Problem is, it's hard to do anything productive...or even to get out of bed at all, at times. So, like being bed-bound from either vertigo or simply being super tired, both are bed-bound but the difference is that one makes bed pleasant and the other makes all life unbearable. Plus, with thunderstorms popping in and out of existence, I've been turning off my computer to protect it from the one-in-a-million lightning strike.
Point is, I'd be fortunate to merely crawl forward with work on my game.
No luck with the girls, by the way. Believe me, I've tried. There had been a pool party last Saturday, and while I had fun talking to the boys about video games and TV shows, I wish I could say the same about the girls. They were duds, every last one of them. My disappointment was so extreme, it turned into frustration. But, I'm writing this because 1) my mood can affect productivity, and 2) there is no lack of effort on my part with trying to find improved circumstances in this depressing life that's been dealt.

(Tuesday...)
It's just another sunny day in the void! Seeing all this energy, and even when put onto digital paper, it goes...nowhere. It's depressing and lonely. And it's hard to do *anything* when everything feels so futile. All I can do is listen to my music and daydream about the creative visions of the Nuclear Powerpuff wrecking evil idiots with fire and fury like the world has never known. This is no way to get a Wikipedia page, or make Trending on Twitter. And forget about heroism, that can only happen in the video games! (Except there, *everyone* is a hero, and so it stops being special.)

The difference between me and everybody else is that those duds don't care. They're content with merely existing and drifting from birth to death without leaving a mark on the cosmic ledger. I am not satisfied with that outcome.

11:40 AM, I needed another nudge (or two) from a long-distant acquaintance or so, and...guess I'll go get some exercise, stock up on sugary goods, and clear my head to get ready to get back on track (and send a portfolio to another game studio).

So, a job application and some chores later, and
OH MY GOD! It's 4PM! And I'm feeling so drained, like I could hit the bed at any time.

(Wednesday...)
3:20 PM, How the hell am I supposed to EAT?! Everyone is so inescapable, with all their nonstop breaks of quarantine, and polluting every cubic nanometer of the house's air with their COVID breath. If we're being "kind", it's a no-win situation. But if we're being "honest", I'm surrounded by idiots!
Now then, on an empty stomach and a literal day after I was planning on moving again, let's try to get back to business!

At least the Codex is a nice place to start the to-do list.
3:50 PM, about half an hour, and most of that was just double-checking matters or inserting placeholders because it's hard making a flag for a "neutral" faction.

4PM, gotta add conversation variables for when conversations actually happen with the NPCs, which will then unlock their pages in the Codex. This isn't something that can be "cheated", even if it CAN be "debugged". Though that gives me an idea for a future Achievement involving getting all the Codex. That won't be for a while, though.

4:15 PM, giving the computer commands for navigating around a whole new sector of the Codex (and to check for each page being appropriately locked or not) is going to take a whole lot of very tedious checks, so much in fact that it's an actual piece of work in and of itself! Each and every page needs to have some very similar checks for going page to page, and those that come in contact with potentially locked pages need to check for each and every lock if applicable, in order to know where to go next.
Plus, each and every page now needs a check for "If you press 2, then go to Neutral Sector start of Codex." Remember, that was formerly undefined, so this time, it's not as simple as copy-pasting new objects that already have the code. It's about going into each and every pre-existing object, copy-pasting the command line to all those objects.

And that's just step 1, the easy stuff.

Fortunately, part of what makes the sector header in the Codex useful is that each of them are always unlocked, so they can SOMEWHAT contain the needed variable checks. Meaning, you won't need to worry as much about neutral NPC checks if you're flipping through the Weapons section. If you're sufficiently far from those checks, they become not applicable.
Just, neutral comes before bad guys, meaning after good guys, so the neutral header needs to check for good guy pages. That's going to take some switching around, and it's going to be even more challenging later on after the next 6 or so companions are fully implemented. Good news, 1) we're halfway to that goal, and 2) after there, such a hurdle will no longer exist...

"Jay, aren't you forgetting something?"

Forgetting what?

...

CRAP!!! July 2, that's supposed to be the canonical birthday of Amanda, the QUEEN of Badass (and hypothetical wife). God rape me. Half a month, and only now does it come to me. Though admittedly, at the time, I was ALSO busy preparing for the 1 year milestone. So, guess that means I should put her up the priority list.
God, I know people around me are getting more forgetful, and I realized yesterday (Tuesday) that the main reason for this is that there are simply too many things to keep track of, and because of our finite brain capacity (even if impressive and unrivaled compared to all the other dumb animals on planet Earth), when fixating all energies on preparing for future agendas, certain small details WILL INEVITABLY slip through the cracks! But still, COME ON, SELF!

(Sigh)

OK, just let me finish with the Codex first. OK, sweetie? I'll get you into the game ASAP, I promise.

"Pinky swear?"

...

*SIGH*

Yes, Amanda, pinky swear. Cross my heart, hope to die, Semper Bellum, and so forth. And yeah, sorry I'm late, I got wrapped up with...well, just see for yourself in all the previous Dev Diaries with the legion of slogs that reality enjoys throwing. But yeah, crawling pace is better than totally frozen.

(And Amanda starts making a parody of that song "Let it Go" in the background.)
ALSO, at least Amanda's codex page is done, so I don't have to do that (or, worse, worry about any locked variable checks since of course Scarlet knows about her family from the get-go).

Now, as far as designing Amanda in-game, she's supposed to be absolutely adorable. I want a skip to her step, even as she wields THE M117 Swagger, a uniquely ultra-high-powered sniper rifle that uses space shuttle launch techniques for bullets to reach ESCAPE VELOCITY (or, for any Math nerds in the audience, roughly 25,020 miles per hour - Source Cited, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity). The Queen of the Rifles is CANONICALLY KNOWN FOR CONSISTENTLY SEVERING TARGETS' HEADS CLEAN OFF!!!

(This is embarrassing, because the OG comic was made in January 2011, but a typo says it was made in 2010.)

Yep, that's the Queen of the Rifles, alright. Never mind that I can't draw a good prone position without her foot getting contorted. Or the one page back when I was in college and tried using colored pencils and GIMP before I had Adobe Illustrator. There's still a lot of improvement, potentially, though I'm struggling to find the specific path to improvement. But I won't deny it, I was not meant to draw, and that's on full display in this hand life dealt me, where I am specifically expected to stand alone.
(That also reminds me, guess the Swagger needs a codex entry in Weapons. So I was half-right about not needing new Codex for this. And fun note about the Hero Team lore, there was originally intended to be an artificial sentient inside the helmet of the Prototype Hero. It was far too glitchy, prone to crashing and making taunting chimes whenever that would happen, so it was never seen or heard from again. Even in the 2040s, we don't QUITE YET have the tech for a proper "artificial sentient", and if we DID, legislature forbids it for fear of the "robot uprising" or upheaving the "autoism" model with "bot rights" and inevitably bots refusing to unconditionally serve humankind. Now, on the other hand, humans enhanced with machine parts like proper cyborgs, that's perfectly fair game - as seen in the Super Soldiers.)

As for gameplay and game design, we've seen the "Flying Sword Physics" of real-ish guns moving supersonic speed, where they ignore the space between jump points. To properly visualize "Escape Velocity" in such a comparatively *TINY* scale of space, the bullet might as well be practically TELEPORTING! Amanda would pose for shooting, there's gunfire sound, then also bad guy dying sound (especially for weaker fools). The Swagger does not have much "penetration power", definitely not in gameplay, which is part of why it's the QUEEN, not the KING, of the Rifles! The bullet, upon impact, practically liquefies because of such an abrupt shift of kinetic force going from 25,020 miles per hour to 0 miles per hour in a nanosecond. Maybe a physicist can better explain what would happen if such a bullet were to collide with human bone and brain, but until I get improved "hard science", that's the way it will be depicted in-game. (Maybe it's hollow point, so it naturally expands or turns to powder from such extreme forces.)

5:10 PM, OK, looks like I got rudimentary setup for the NPC section. Now, let's try it out!

Close to 2 hours of work grand total, and I am REALLY going to need a lunch break.
Anyway, Super Hobo is skipping over the neutral, and pressing 2 gives a crash. And, oh, there's a typo with referencing the object. Both issues should be addressed now.
5:15 PM, take 2. ACTION.
5:20 PM, third time's the charm. Neutral section is now fully working as intended. But, that's not the end of the day for today. INSTEAD, I am merely taking a LUNCH BREAK!

6 PM, 40 minutes later, and back to work. Got 2 hours on the clock, and that's where we're starting from.

Next is to draw Amanda's idle animation. ALSO canonically fact: Amanda is drawn a whole head shorter than Jay. As I say, she's short and cute. Like, the actual height is 5 foot 3, so not dwarf small, but in your video game's character creator menus, take the height slider ALL THE WAY to the far left (usually that's the shortest possible). THAT is Amanda. And her normal armor color is orange, but it faded to the bronze color it's at now from simple age.

6:30 PM, half an hour of work and we've got a good enough idle animation for Amanda now. So, now, time to get that into the game!
Oh wow! First try, that hip movement is so fluid, it's beautiful! Don't like her blinking that fast, though, but that can be fixed.

6:45 PM, getting better but her eyes look too jiggly. But, I think it's funny enough to record.

7PM...that's good enough. I don't think it's *perfect*, but for rough draft purposes, certainly good enough! 3 hours on the clock.

I guess, next is getting this in-game. A couple lines of code later, and let's test this!
7:05 PM, ran the game a few times over, with each one making SMALL adjustments to Amanda's y position, until I could get it *JUST RIGHT!* Next is her bonus dialogue, because again, playing through with cheats completely changes the story. Amanda isn't supposed to come until near the end of the game. I won't worry about voicing it today; even though everyone seems awake, I just don't feel like trying to play as a woman and a little girl. Plus, Swagger's Codex, around the tail-end a page before Colonel's Rifle. Some extra if-then checks ensue, after the actual creation of the page itself.

7:50 PM, got the Swagger in, so let's test it.

8 PM, 4 hours on the clock, and not only did I get any snags fixed (skipped a step in checking with Violet's gun), but also making sure all the Codex pages have PRECISELY the same size: Width 2201 and Height of 1105. All 32 currently implemented pages are accounted for, and that's including the ones added today (Tom, Heather, Neutral section marker, and Swagger).

I'm going to be honest, I'm losing momentum. And it's gonna take another hour or 2 just to finalize the Dev Diary and to push it out for all to see.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h_kfr_Gur_o2lfU3WUuRLOrrPUGGW4hm/view?usp=sharing

One more thing. The amount of people keeping track of these news articles has returned to its typical handful. It's barely double digits, so the spike of excitement has passed and we're now back to the normal state of disappointment.

Next time, we work on completely implementing Amanda! Gonna have to animate her movement, code in her space shuttle bullets, and the checks for them teleport colliding with bad guys.

This isn't the last we've seen of BUTT PROBES! It's just that Amanda has taken priority!

Semper Bellum!
Jay