DMEmail #14 - Quarantine Edition (tm)
DMEmail v14: Quarantine Edition
Hi there! It’s been a very strange time for everyone, and I hope you’ve all been doing as well as you can be considering there’s a global pandemic going.
I ended up going back to New Jersey at the beginning of March to be with family, and then the whole quarantining thing happened, and it’s been a month and a half since then. Which…it’s already late April??? How did that happen? I’d like to think that I have a fairly steady schedule, what with my job having transitioned to full-remote and all, but time is certainly an illusion right now.
Life Updates
Well, I had a bunch of travel plans for March, which obviously didn’t happen. Beyond that, my life actually didn’t change much; most of my hobbies were computer-related anyway, and I’m kind of a hermit to begin with. But my brain decided ‘oh hey you should have a ton of free time now, right???’ which mostly translated to me starting a bunch of new projects without any regard as to whether I could finish them.
HyperJam
…including entering another game jam.
In the first weekend of April, I participated in HyperJam, a game jam where all the entries were written in HyperCard - a classic Mac OS program that is older than I am (and doesn’t work on any modern computers - I had to write my game in an emulator).
I consider HyperCard sort of like a precursor to Powerpoint: you could draw and write on cards in a stack, and then navigate between cards with the arrow keys or with buttons. And add a little programming for more interactivity. I used it some when I was in middle school, but even back then it was considered an ooold program.
I made a game called Fragments (of the stars), which you can find here. It’s a sort of visual novel, almost like an interactive comic. I also wrote some additional thoughts about the process on my site.
…however, it’s written in HyperCard. Which means you need HyperCard to play it, which requires setting up emulators. So for a lot of people, it’s practically unplayable. Hrm.
I am working on a web-based version, which should be considerably easier to play, but at the time of writing it’s not quite done yet. I’ll send another email when it is, if I remember to.
Martial Arts
Is somehow still happening, despite me being all the way across the country from the martial arts school.
Classes are being held on Zoom, and I’m surprised that they work as well as they do. I feel like I’m doing the motions all wrong and it’s weird not having the instructor in the room to guide me, but at least I’m able to keep up a little exercise.
Fanfiction
I have been reading so much of it. It’s amazing. It’s terrible.
Literally everything else involving community or social life
…has pretty much been put on hold. Which is unfortunate, because I was really hoping to get back into theater this summer.
I have to admit that I’ve been taking the quarantine thing a bit hard; I’m a bit more social than I ever gave myself credit for. I like talking to people, and I’ve ended up in the weird situation where I’m always on messaging apps and video meetings, but I still miss people. And I’m sure that there are people that I should reach out to as well…I still get pretty anxious trying to reach out to people online, which has also slowed down my socializing.
Somehow, I do better with phone calls (or video calls that aren’t work meetings), and I’ve gotten into the habit of randomly calling my friends every now and then (with permission, of course). If this is something that you’d be interested in, please let me know! (I’m bad at replying to email replies, but I do read all of them.)
Upcoming Events
oh dear.
Projects
The quarantine has been really messing with my consistency. Or so I say, even though I probably haven’t been very consistent to begin with.
Desert Angels
is still a game about blowing up trash and maybe some bad memories in a desert scrapyard.
Last time, I said that I was gunning for a demo deadline of May to submit the game to the Seattle Indies Expo. Except now I’m not sure that the Seattle Indies Expo will exist. Hmm.
Progress is still ongoing, but slow. I had a conversation with an environment designer at Unity and got a bunch of good tips, as well as some software recommendations for environment design, and managed to make some nice terrains out of them.
I have no idea if they’re playable, but I’ll keep working on that.
Mechanics have also been coming together; you can pick up stuff, drop them, shoot guns (though the guns shoot the equivalent of bouncy balls right now), and interact with the environment.
There are still a few big pieces that still need to be finished; mainly camera movement and explosions. Oh, and I still need to write the narrative, which is kind of important, and which I’ve kinda been procrastinating on hard…
Arms Race
Last time, I said that this would be a short project. Much to my own frustration, it hasn’t been released yet.
And much to my own confusion, it has somehow turned from a bullet-hell shooter into a stage play. I guess ‘turned’ is not the correct term, because I’m still working on the shooter game too.
Here’s some concept art. I’d show off game screenshots, but I don’t have a build of the game with me right now:
The stage play’s script is written. I haven’t released it yet, I’m still trying to edit it to something I’m happy with.
The game has been totally stalled at the moment with the quarantine. I’ve been working with a friend who’s helping me with audio, and that part’s on hold until the situation normalizes a bit. But since I wrote an entire play and all, at least I have the narrative part done, I guess?
Recital
Recital is the interactive fiction / visual novel engine I’ve been working on for over a year now.
I’ve made games with it. I’ve made websites with it. Heck, I wrote the entire Arms Race stage play in Recital, and then wrote a converter to turn it into stage play format. At this point, I do a lot of my writing in this system, which has become as much a writing system as an interactive fiction engine.
So I’m at the point that I could probably release what I have, and it might be useful to someone. Maybe a lot of someones! You could write a play with it!
But nothing is documented. And I wouldn’t really be comfortable releasing it until I write some of that documentation.
I’ll figure it out, I guess.
Website
I’ve been continuously updating my own website since I rewrote it at the beginning of the year. One of these days (years?) I might automate some things so that my articles on the site get shared out in the emails too, but today’s not that day.
I also open sourced the generator I used to write the site - though it really is a tool that’s written for my use only, so I’m not entirely sure who else would want to use it. I also wrote a documentation site, which is of equally dubious value. But if you’re interested in how I created my website, or want to take the tool for a spin, here is the source and documentation for it.
Other Stuff
Will I ever write an email that’s less than 1000 words…?
I keep saying that I’d send more emails when I release stuff and then promptly forget. Oh well.
I guess I’m obligated to say that I still have a Patreon, which I’m still not sure what to do with: https://www.patreon.com/amorphous
Also, If there’s anything you want to see from me there or otherwise, please let me know. I’m the kind of person to make things even in a vacuum, but if I can make something for someone, that’d make me really happy too.
Doodlin’
Some of you have definitely seen this one because I posted it online already, but I’m really proud of this drawing I did recently.
… I should probably update my instagram again at some point…