poppycock comes from the Dutch pappe kak, meaning 'soft dung' (Patreon)

who am i
what am i doing
why has discord still not made an option setting to not ping people by default in replies
these are the questions i ask myself every morning when i wake up

lately i've been quiet because i've focused more on writing and worldbuilding. i enjoy this a lot. i've spent entirely too much time digging through dictionaries of old slang terms, going down a wikipedia rabbit hole about various types of hats. did you know frollo's hat from hunchbank of notre dame probably looked more like this if it were historically accurate?

imagine waking up, putting that on your head, and then not only choosing to go out in public like that, but also to have your portrait painted. we aren't just snapping selfies out here, it's not snap-click-done. this man, pictured above, donned this hat in particular, out of all the hats in the world, and then presumably paid money to have an artist painstakingly represent it as he sat there for hours with what i can only assume from the above expression was a rapidly dwindling sense of self-confidence.
amazing.

this is all to say that i love my job and i am very grateful to be afforded the chance and trust to get lost in these rabbit holes and come out the other side with promises that it's worth it.

at the same time
deep worldbuilding dives do not make the game !
i make the game ! (??
actually that's a matter of some contention in reborn streams as of late, but let's assume as much)
((team also make game ty team))
but game not made if only focus writing !  
a

lately i feel like i have exactly two moods with development. 

one is this:

ultra hyper super let's go go go go want game want make game game right now let's yes let's go we dev we game we what was i doing oh right yeah go go go

the other is this:

i'm not sure where the middle ground has gone. 

i think what happened was i got into something resembling a healthy work-life balance rhythm of working, and then actualy stopping and actually playing games to relax instead of simply working all the time. but then tactics ogre: reborn (no relation to pokemon reborn...) came out, and i've been playing that, and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh it's not like it's a bad game but gosh is it an aggressively motivating experience because i see this tRPG that Square fucking Enix has re-released for $50 in the year of our lord 2022 and i'm like i can do so much better motherfucker
but i can't do better yet because i have one million assets to make first.
tiles suffocate me.
i have been sitting on a post about tiles and mapping that if i am a good person i should put up tomorrow. i was going to put it up tonight but this is a bitching post now sorry, uggggggggggggh tiles

reborn tiles is a third of this size, with reborn i can just swashshahswhsashshahwashaaa on the side of mapping, quick and dirty the way we like it, but i am not a fast enough artist to comfortably do that in this style yet and the more detail means it may not be feasible and raaaargh it just takes a many forever !

as of the time of this complaining we do have a plan and i am feeling a lot better about future developments! so don't mind me i'm just getting it out of my system. 

a lot of our effort right now is still in setup-mode.
today i spent a while looking at integrating a more robust particle engine because the current one is not very intuitive or flexible.
we've made a few tweaks to the message system to help feel more polished. that'll be another post.
i've had to remember some eventing tricks i got used to for the demo and then set back down for reborn.
we have to answer questions like, how do we show an item?
how do we handle cutscene skip around choices?
how do we handle diagonal passability looking like you walk over corners?
how do we make stairs function better than they did in reborn?
how do we establish a workflow while continually stopping to ask ourselves questions like these at each time anything new happens?

i'm laying this out here so you all have a general idea of my obstacles. i'm actually not at all concerned about our ability to adequately answer these kinds of questions, but i am concerned about the time it takes to do so, and my questionable lack of focus, direction, and comfort within said time. i don't want this game to take ten years to make.
oh, but if that's what it takes, i'll do it.

lately i am as excited to make a better gameplay experience here as i am for the story itself. need both.

look only at whiterun...

am i cracking? maybe. but maybe that's just a necessary part of the hashtag creative process.

im fine. pinky promise. swear on paul clark's life. 

The Cretan king Rhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by the gods, suggesting that they instead swear by the ram, the goose or the plane tree. Socrates favored the "Rhadamanthine" oath "by the dog", with "the dog" often interpreted as referring to the bright "Dog Star", i.e., Sirius

i cant belive radomus made people swear by paul clark

parallax post tomorrow.
tomorrow is a concept.