dev diary: it's july already??? (Patreon)

oof, where has the year gone... i've been making so many things but i still feel behind where i wanted to be... i think i always feel like that though, so nothing new there haha

i have week with timber updates this week. but first, COMPLAINTS!!!

the inescapable encroach of AI

i'm sooo frustrated you guys. AI has always made me sad conceptually, and working in software means i run into it constantly... as explained in my post about LLM use in renpy, it's like... there is a small amount i can forgive, because i kind of HAVE to, you can't be entirely pure because there will always be AI in things you didn't even realize... all i can do is try to avoid stuff that makes AI a core part of its branding/process.

for me that means turning off every toggle i can, degoogling, and moving away from programs that got AI-ified, because... i feel like i can't trust them to work properly!!!!!! i can't rely on it!!!!!!!! i'm not updating ren'py past v8.5.2 (from january of this year), i uninstalled phoenix code after their sudden heel turn, and i've been trying to move all my project management stuff out of notion so i don't have to look at it anymore...

notion has actually been bothering me for a while now. they were very early adopters of the AI branding garbage--i used the program before it got like that, and i became very attached to my workflow and making pages/databases in it to stay organized... it held my character wiki before i started moving all of that to my website. i wrote game outlines in there. all the records of contractors i've paid on each project, notes for bugs to fix or things to add in the future, all of that stuff was held in notion so i didn't have to try to hold it all in my brain.

in the past you could email them to turn off AI features for your account, but i noticed at some point they sort of just... put it back in??? if i select any text, there's a button to suggest edits. if i check my settings, theres a whole tab for notion AI. i hate them. please go away. you make me feel such despair for the state of the world. i am writing notes because i want to write them, not because i want AI to take away my voice and turn my words into something meaningless and fake.

i'm going to be very polite and not mention the details here, but one of the games i wrote was being officially presented/advertised using text that i assume must have been generated by chatgpt. i felt such misery and rage when i found out about it, because when i write, my goal is to sincerely communicate human emotion. AI writing is not sincere communication. it is a veil of hollow words that sound like they should fit together to give off a certain vibe. it's thoughtless. i don't want a machine to try to explain why you should play my games, i want a human to sit and think and feel and write from their heart what they believe is good about it. to connect. to share a piece of art. PLEASE!!!!!!! I WOULD'VE WRITTEN SOMETHING FOR YOU MYSELF IF YOU HAD ONLY ASKED!!!!!!!!

...anyway, the text in question was rewritten by a human as soon as i brought it up, so the problem is solved. but it really did feel like a violation and a betrayal. it made me hate AI even more, and i ALREADY hated it!!! it makes me so fucking sad, dude!!!!!! i don't want to be sad, i want to have fun making things...

so i'm having fun with obsidian!!!

obsidian is a popular notion alternative with sort of a unique approach to notetaking--you can connect all the notes you make by tagging or linking topics, and it creates a giant web that you can look at and admire.

i'm not interested in the huge web view thingy. it's not parseable information, it has no use to me. so i thought obsidian wasn't really my thing, but you can install a bunch of plugins and themes for it so i had tried using it for various things just to play around with it and get used to how it works...

i liked that the files were in markdown... i liked that it was stored locally so it loaded super fast (UNLIKE NOTION OMFG). you have to pay to use their sync feature but i simply do not use it and just let everything live on my pc. using notion on my phone always sucked anyway (YOU CAN'T TURN OFF HAPTIC FEEDBACK? OR AM I STUPID?), so i avoided it for the most part. if i want to write notes while laying in bed, i pull up an ellipsus tab instead.

ellipsus can be a little slow to load depending on if your page is cached (and probably how long your doc is), so i was using obsidian to do things like store/sort through asks (by just copypasting them into one note lol), and since the files were markdown i could potentially set up a static site generator and start managing all my posts in obsidian... i'm not quite there yet, but the appeal of that idea is what lured me back into using it more often.

one thing about notion that i liked a lot is that you can organize your pages in columns. i, foolishly, thought that you couldn't do anything like that with obsidian.

I WAS WRONG

CANVAS EXISTS

this is something i put together just yesterday. you can make blank cards and type whatever into them, or drag in notes and it'll display them and if it's too long it'll have a scrollbar and you can move and resize everything so easily and connect stuff with arrows and OMG!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU CANVAS!!!!!!!!

adding colors is a lot more limited in obsidian than i was used to with notion (another thing holding me back from switching sooner), but canvas is a way you CAN actually color stuff outside of themes... i'm ready to build such cute things and organize alllll my stuff so i can find and update it easily...! hehehe

i was hesitant to post a screenshot cuz i'm sure it will change as i figure out the most useful way to arrange everything, but this page and my little project board are the most put-together so i thought i'd share them just so you guys can see what i'm talking about.

i haven't moved everything over yet, but i at least copypasted most of the text from my notion pages for all these. having a kanban style board for which games are waiting on updates was super useful to me in there, so i remade it in obsidian and added emoji to make the cards more readable at a glance. i wish i could color the columns too... maybe i can do some fancy css or look for more community plugins...

ah speaking of which, obsidian itself doesn't seem to advertise itself as an AI thing, but there are plenty of AI-brained people who use it. browsing community plugins you'll see the yucky AI goop dripping all over them, i just try to avoid what i can... because everything's stored locally, obsidian doesn't get any of my data, so they can't use it to train AI like i'm sure notion does. BAH.

whatever, like i said i'm having fun, might post more of what i put together as i get more used to how things work. they have databases but setting them up is a little clunky so far, i'm excited to make things that are useful to me that will make managing everything a lot less mentally taxing...

spoilertime for week with timber

OKAY!

ACTUAL GAMEDEV!

if you played the patron build, i'm about to talk about what's coming next! if you don't want to know anything, RUN AWAY!!!

i spent the last few days blasting on WWT's script. currently i have just finished writing day 2 white wolf route (CRYSTAL!) which meeeeans all of day 2 is finished!!! yippee!!!!!!! ok that's not actually true because there are still a ton of optional scenes i haven't finished yet. but day 2 is MOSTLY done!!!!!

i'm excited because this part is almost all flashbacks that tell crystal and timber's whole backstory together, which turned out to be... so sweet and sad... because you know it doesnt work out for them but they did care about each other... OHH, THE HEARTBREAK.....!

i didn't end up writing a lot about the other wolves in it, but tundra is there! i think focusing on just those three was the right call... no more flashbacks planned for day 3 for crystal, so it might be some of the only tundra stuff...? not sure yet... she will have a more prominent role in year with timber, so hang in there tundra fans... here, have a screenshot!

umm anyway, crystal's route is unlocked at the end of twigs day 3, which i've only just barely started. so it'll be a while before i can make the build still! not too long though i hope... i'm excited for people to see the crystal stuff so i'll see what i can do...!

phew... ok... that's all my thoughts and feelings for now! as always, thanks for reading!