Diary of Morn #05 | A little Whining (Patreon)

Todays diary entry will be a bit different from the others. Instead of focusing deeply on one topic, I'll touch more briefly on a few different things that I want to get out there, but feel like they wouldn't really warrant an entire dedicated post. But before we get into those, you can check out the current progress in the graphic above. As you can see things are starting to come together. Still not nearly finished, but I'm slowly getting there.A different ApproachOne of the biggest differences in the development between Children of Morn and MIST is the factor of time. MIST I started working on basically two weeks after getting the idea for it. With CoM I had months to plan everything out. Plans that lived rent free in my head without ever being truly "tested", only just now slowly coming together. A lot of my ideas were simply theories and while many of them are turning out like I imagined, others don't.Which isn't unexpected, but it forces me to rethink how I approach the development of the game. With MIST every system I made felt like a "final" solution. I was making decisions to last forever. Of course many got overturned as my skills improved, but I was still not initirally planning to go back and rework or improve, it became a necessity, so I did it. With Children of Morn, I'll have to rethink that approach. Right now, I'm trying to get all the music done, all the sounds and moans recorded, all the environments and the UI perfected, before 0.1 even releases, before anyone even get's their hand on the project. I'm basically trying, like I did in the past, to develop a "final" version 0.1. But that won't work.I'll be developing Children of Morn for years. Literally years. And I'll consider a part of the game done, when the final version 1.0 releases. Not a day earlier. What I'm making right now isn't a finished game, but an early build of it and while I'll aim for as much polish in every release that I can, I also need to accept that I won't be able to finish all the recordings, all the music and all the systems and graphics in time for 0.1. Especially, since I can't really finalize them without any feedback from all of you.So from now on I'll treat the game like the early version that it is and do changes that are necessary to improve the game and stop trying to get things perfect years in advance. Soundeffects will be replaced and added, music will get refined, animations will be polished and the code will get streamlined. What I won't change however, is the plot. I won't make changes that invalidate what has already been played or overturn the story, so that the game can still be very much enjoyed in an episodic format.Stressing OutWhich brings me to my second topic for this post. I'm so fucking stressed right now. I think in the past 4 years of developing games I've never felt as much pressure as I'm doing right now. Pressure to proof that all my theories can be turned into reality and that I did indeed improve and grew as a game developer. Pressure to get things right and especially right on time, as every day I spent developing without a release makes me worried about how that looks to my Patrons. After all, I haven't released anything in months and it'll still take several, additional months before anything can be released.Four weeks ago my right eye started randomly twitching. A couple days later my left eye did the same. A week after I started getting dizzy for no apparent reason and I've had a constant headache the entire time. Now... I don't want anyone to misunderstand why I'm telling you this. I'm not really looking for pity, I'm also not looking for words of encouragement or praise or medical advice. All I want is to share some of my struggles, because I think it is important to talk about them when I want to give a clear picture of how the development is going. Because the development is still going fine. The obvious overworking symptoms are here because I'm failing at pacing myself. Because I'm so deep in my own world, only thinking about the game, that I'm not able to turn off and get a good rest when I need to. Because my current work-life-balance is seriously skewed towards the work side of things.But that is my own problem. I'm literally self-employed. No one is forcing me to do this except for myself and I realize this. Which is why I'm working on getting more chill with the game. Hence why I told you about not trying to perfect the game in one go. I've been trying way too hard to get things right on point and I don't think it'll make the game or my personal life better in the long run. And both are intertwined. After all, as the sole developer of the game, my personal life and the quality of the game are very closely related.Taking my TimeI need to chill out.That's pretty much it. No one is forcing me to go faster and the game is already very much ahead of the schedule because I overworked so many days. So I'm gonna take my time now. I'm gonna relax and take things as they come. I don't plan on purposely going slow, I have too much fun working on the game for that, but I'll try to reduce unneeded stress. Which is honestly the best for the game. Not only does it ensure I stay healthy, it also gives me time to learn things I couldn't pick up with a busier schedule.Just last week I randomly started learning about gesture drawing concepts and realized that they were a huge missing piece in my animation and posing and started going deeper into it and learning about forces and actionlines and whatnot. All resulting in an overnight improvement in my renders.Or like the last few days, where I started looking a bit more into which ral world camera focal lengths people used for which situations to better judge how I should set my focal length in blender for each shot I'm going for.Or new lighting techniques that I'm picking up every day, that I wouldn't have the time to learn if I kept rushing through it all.So, I'm starting to chill. Not because I want to milk everyone for their precious money, but because I simply have to, it makes working on the game a delight and I would miss so much otherwise.See you all in a few weeks with the next diary entry. Next time won't be as depressing, I promise. Now have a great week!