Day 142: Today I had trouble to work. Like it was really harder than usual. And I was angry too. But I had no idea why, and that made me even more angry. I still got two “big” tasks done, so I guess it’s not that bad.

Daily interesting stuff:

• Reddit post, “Should gamdev play bad games?”. As often with reddit, the base post is simple, but the discussion it spawns isn’t.

• Reddit post, “Arg video tutorial are awful”. I like video tutorial to get the big picture and then text material for precise stuff.

• Reddit post, “Is making games viable?”. Maybe. But indies have low chances.

Tasks done:

• The cat we’re keeping (and that’s a real pain in the ass) peed on the bed of my roommate. Ad he was already late, I decided to be nice (for once) and deal with it. So I went to buy some white vinegar and sodium bicarbonate. And then I cleaned the mattress as well as I could. That took some time. Time I wasn’t developing. But I guess that’s life.
  Talked to a friend about suicide, depression, and the importance of seeing a psychiatrist in those cases. It wasn’t directly, but in a group chat. Since he shows signs of depression, I thought it was important to take the time to talk with him. I linked to various videos on the subject. It’s the same videos that completely changed my opinion on those subjects. Ok this might not be related to the project, but I thought this was an important part of my day.

• Implemented something to remind player of the long term goals. One of the important things in the feedback I received on Rogue Cadet, was the incomprehension of the long term goals. So I had to remind it periodically. I also stated it in the intro cutscene. But today, what I did was that I replaced the loading screen. Before, it showed the default inputs buttons. But I think that’s not useful anymore since the rebinding is quick and easy. So instead it shows an icon for each boss to defeat. When a boss is defeated, a big red cross is put on the icon. I’m not super happy with the design of this screen. I tried many things, but I still find it ugly. It’s frustrating to see things that could be great and realize I don’t have the skills to make it happen. I even tried to make a “frame”, but it wasn’t coherent with the rest so I ditched this idea.

• Did a thing when you beat a boss. I wanted a real cutscene. But then again, I have close to zero assets. So instead I opened the loading screen and did a small animation where the red cross (that shows the boss is dead) appears in a fade-in. It’s simple, and I think it’s ok. It wasn’t that easy to do. The loading screen was made to be… a loading screen. So I had trouble adapting it to be easily opened and closed. I think that I found it hard because I had trouble getting focused. It’s true that if you wander through the internet for 5 min every 10 minutes the wok time gets subsequently longer…