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October 10 Update (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-10 17:09:14
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Alright, I have overall thoughts to share, but first, some other stuff from this week:

- TLS 0.58.3 is out and nothing seems horribly broken. This is good.

 - Look at the adorable OEA fanart above!

 - If you didn't see, I now have a Discord, and it's fairly active. I hope that everything for this has been set up and it should mostly run on its own.

 - I have a Twitter account, solely because I need it to post some things for collaborators to retweet them. I'm not wild about this, but follow me to make the little number go up.

 - Does anyone know of a way to turn MV animation frames into decent quality loops? I need animations for promotional purposes. One alternative is to just crop video files into GIFs, but people who are more perceptive about this sort of thing should let me know how decent it looks:

Relaxation Thoughts 

With the newest TLS update wrapped up, my schedule has lessened. Since I tried to take care of a lot of other tasks this week, I've opened up a degree of freedom for myself and the question is how to use it.

I've mentioned feeling close to burnout, so the question is how best to recover. People always recommend just doing nothing, but I don't have a binging disposition and I really enjoy creative work. Ideally I'd like to focus on something in a way that's pure inspiration, no obligations or forcing.

This... isn't as easy as I'd like, because inspiration doesn't cooperate. For example, earlier this month I was really inspired for a novel that could potentially be sent to the Big Five agent who solicited me. I suppressed the urge to do anything more than make notes, so ordinarily I'd take this opportunity to write a rough draft.

Unfortunately, I've done a lot of other work since then and the impulse has faded. If I did write it now, I'd have a decent time, but I think that would only take me closer to burnout.  Even if it's still a book worth writing in the end, doing it now would require a lot of energy I don't have.

A bit further back I had inspiration for a random little project that probably wouldn't go anywhere but would be a bit fun. But when I went back to my notes about it, doing much with it felt like working, not relaxing. That might change as I have time to decompress, but since that one isn't really innovating or earning me anything, I definitely wouldn't force it.

Over the past week I had a few random impulses to work on OEA, so I did for occasional bursts. That felt nice, but I won't be able to revise everything for version 0.5.0 via random inspiration. That's one thing I do need to get done before the end of the year, if I want a polished build for the release.

I've again toyed with an old idea that's a sort of deconstruction of dating sims. It has some things I really like about it, and it would be trying to write a romance I don't think I've ever seen done before. But is it really that innovative as a game? Nah, just a fun concept, probably not worth the amount of work it would take to flesh it out.

These thoughts are basically just articulating my current state of mind, so don't feel obligated to reply anything in particular. However, I do have a couple questions:

1) Does anyone know an easy engine for making platformers? Emphasis on easy. If it makes me code my own main menu, that's not going to be relaxing.

2) Anybody know CSS and willing to maybe help me in a week or two? One of the above projects uses it for layout and I don't wanna.

That is all for now. Thank you all again for supporting me as a creator.

Files

Comments

Grim8P

Go to download 0.58.3 and surprise early(?) post! I don't use Twitter but I did follow you for the +1. Holy that art is super adorable! Normally I'd make sure to answer your stated questions but I don't have anything to offer here. I hope you do find a good way to relax. I'm confident you deserve it.

DukeLeto7

So I thought: "I should think about what I would do to relax after a great heroic labor so I can give Sierra a helpful suggestion!" Then I thought: "No, she wouldn't be interested in THAT..." Then I thought: "Well, male strippers and gigolos do exist, and are presumably a lot cheaper if they're not bi..."

Rachnera

I can definitely help with CSS (i.e. writing "display: flex;" a lot: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/) and I also have some experience with Twine in case that's relevant (a total wild guess from the kind of projects you usually work on + the engines that rely on CSS, though honestly so many things use CSS and JS nowadays it could be pretty much anything else). I would be surprised if I was the only one of your patrons with such skills however. Web developers seem to be over-represented in that particular crowd, probably due to being at the intersection of several Vien diagrams.

DukeLeto7

Suppose you're right. Should note that CSS is definitely not my wheelhouse, they specifically had a web designer come in and make my ASP code generated websites purdy back when I was doing it in the good old days.

WaxerRed

Aww, such cute art! Always nice to hear your inner thoughts on workflow. Your ability to always be working on something is always impressive (and a little frightening!) Can't say I can help you on your questions (I didn't know what a CSS was until google!) but I'll wish you luck all the same! Hope you have a stressfree week of easy\fun creative work!

ety

I can almost certainly help with the looping gifs. Cropping videos like that might work passably well for larger assets but the closer to the pixel art realm you get the more you lose from compression and re-compression with algorithms intended for regular video. I've also done web design and development professionally in the past for a while so my css is pretty solid in general. If you need some really simple help on that front I wouldn't mind, but anything too complex and I don't know that I'd have time *right now* to help for free, unfortunately, and someone else would probably be a better bet. I can not stress enough how much I admire your effort, drive, and work ethic. You are insanely prolific and creative and I'm not sure you even realize just how ridiculous it is. I wish I could just give you my programming abilities because I think you'd make some insane games if you had way less restriction with engines and simplicity on that front.

sierralee

Thanks! And yeah, I thought this art was very cute. ^-^ If it's not obvious, Ulfina is wearing Wilhelm's cloak and Qum has Simon's.

sierralee

Appreciate it! I may contact you if this one actually goes forward.

sierralee

Thank you! There will definitely be some time where I'm not working, I just know I'd be happier with something creative to fiddle around with as well.

sierralee

Yeah, compression and recompression is in the category of things I don't fully understand but worry about reducing quality. I have the raw pixel art that needs to be animated, but I don't have a method of putting the frames together outside of the engine. I'm open to any route for this, really. Thanks for the kind words! All of you have given me an amazing career making games, so I hope to use this success to keep building upwards to more ambitious projects. ^-^

Mycroft

Do you consider playing games an option ? It could help you find ideas for futur work with no string attached. I hope that you'll be able to get a few weeks without stress, whatever you chose to do.

ety

Hmm, there are a few options for putting the frames together. I could try and detail out some of them that you might be able to do or what tools you might want to look into, but honestly depending on what you're comfortable with and what you're likely to need longer term (making gifs yourself for that well into the future etc) for now I could also probably just throw together a bunch of high quality gifs for you in like 5-10 minutes myself with the assets. For simple things like that I generally just stitch things together myself with ffmpeg on the command line but I know that's not really a reasonable approach for most people 😅. Is the raw pixel artwork in a spritesheet format or individual frame image files? Photoshop and GIMP are both options but if you're doing more than just one or two gifs they can be really cumbersome. I like pyxel edit a lot for working with pixel artwork and it has some convenient options too especially if you have spritesheet images.

sierralee

I'm afraid that spending more time on promotional stuff is not my idea of a good time, so if you're willing to put some work into it, that would be great. The sprite sheets for the engine look like this: https://mega.nz/file/qosiQAJD#BiK8qyvlOavGliuYk8OFb2eb6k6V8Oiqmm-0SUqru4k I don't care about the final format, I just want looping files I can share on social media. I don't know the exact details of how the engine stitches the sheets into animations, but if you've played the game, presumably you can approximate it. Thanks!

sierralee

I do play games and get ideas from them, just at varying levels depending on how busy I am. I'll be doing more gaming than usual over the coming week, I just don't fill my schedule with them in most cases.

DukeLeto7

Sherlock's more talented brother makes a good suggestion. The last thing I played was the new Actraiser remake, since it appealed to my nostalgia. I enjoyed insofar as it went, but didn't think much of the writing. The moral and ethical questions resolving theodicy via a NON-omnipotent deity that were easier to ignore as a teen are brought into sharper relief by the additional characters, and the "bonus" content felt especially tacked on.

onodera

If the emphasis is on easy, then something like Game Maker Studio is the best option. I was going to suggest Defold as well, but their GUI system is probably not what you want from an easy to use engine

DankPotatoes

Have you tried writing a theater/screenplay? Might be a creative yet casual change of pace. I did it once with a friend of mine, as a casual thing that eventually got realized on a small stage way down the line. Was a great time, if you have good company to do it with :)

Rachnera

Just in case: The previous comment about collaboration had me remember Hanako (from Long Live the Queen's fame) once said (like, four years ago) she was not opposed to the idea... at the condition her coauthor sends her a full script, not just a vague concept (source: https://twitter.com/HanakoGames/status/934749946334646272).

sierralee

You know, I've occasionally thought that I have about one farce in me. Just one, and probably not a great one, but when encountering theater I've often thought it would be fun to do once.

sierralee

I'm not actually sure what you mean here: is this a suggestion to collaborate with them?

Rachnera

Yes and no (though there's definitely some degree of compatibility between the kind of games you both make). Mostly pointing at the fact even some well-known "solo" creators sometimes are on the lookout for a collab' though they don't advertise it too publicly to avoid a flood of "I have a game, well more of a concept actually..."

BleBle

I cannot help you on the css or engines, but I hope you recover. Do what you must and be happy about it.Relax and have fun. I hope next week you are better!

DankPotatoes

Always fun to challenge your mind in new ways, though with your track record, I'm sure it would be great. :) I think me and my buddy benefited from the fact that we had no deadlines and no requirement for return income, as we did it for fun. The line between casual and professional can often blur if you start treating it like just more work instead of as a hobby, so you if you end up pursuing it, I'd recommend a loose grip on the project, as to keep it as a stress-releaser rather than a stress-creator, if that makes sense.