curse you, frank herbert (Patreon)

remember that time about a week ago where i was like "im gonna just sit down for 12 hours straight and hammer it all out"

so that was naive. 

firstly because i think it might still take 3+ days of that even if i did a full 12 hours and secondly because even with audiobooks and whatnot going i underestimated the amount of pure face-grating tedium contained in this endeavor.  whatever the case i was just a few hours in when i noticed that i wasn't putting in as much care to it as i could have been, so i chose to let that idea go. getting it done quick is not as important as getting it done well.

so i changed my approach.

i am not sure how obvious this has been in the streams and videos i've done but when i start with a map i almost always do the cliff outline first (blocking off sections where the player can't go, building the shape of the area, and then filling it in) before i start adding details to the part of the map the player can move around in. i adapted this approach over time because i found it was more efficient to just focus on one part before mentally shifting gears to another.

i did that with the desert too, as you may have seen on the streams-- it's totally outlined (if not filled in-- i leave that for others so i can focus on things that are not quite so automatic). however i have realized i think i need to do the same for the dunes. the dunes are like, 100% the slow grind here (and not so automatic for me to pass off). so instead of trying to make the whole map look good as i go, like i have been on streams, i'm just going to do ALL the dunes, and then go back and pretty it up. 

i'll continue to put in a couple hours a day on it but even doing that it'll take a while. i'm about halfway done with the dunes right now (the floating triangles help a lot). unfortunately since it's taken so long to get here, it's still going to be a while before i get out of here. after i do the actual beautifying part won't be too bad at all. plus that's more interesting...

so hang tight with me. many of the updates will probably be focused on starlight and DPTG until i finish the dunes, just because that's more interesting to talk about.