I’ve spent the last few months trying to get back into the swing of things with work, and now that everything is really coming together, it’s time for our annual week of christmas celebrations. It’s going to be very nice, don’t get me wrong, I just really don’t feel like taking a holiday right now.
Work on the narrative framework has progressed rapidly. I’ve finally managed to implement pre-cognition, which allows the game to always know which chunk of text will be displayed next. This is very useful for complicated reasons I’ll get into another time. I’ve also implemented active skillchecks & their dynamic difficulty mofidications, as well as some other neat tech.
All of this progress was kicked off last sunday, when I felt so compelled to work on the framework that I decided to waive my “no work on weekends” rule. I’ve been on a kind of vacation for most of 2024, so this feels okay.
I’ve also made some progress in the narrative & thematic department, where some things I’ve been thinking about for a long time have combined into a rough idea for a story to tell. Nothing is certain yet, but the submission for next year’s AMAZE Festival closes in the end of January, and I feel compelled to use that as a deadline, to try and get something finished.
But since I won’t be able to open my laptop at all next week, I’ve decided to instead start sketching out some of the articles I’ve been meaning to write. There’s some kind of abstract game design philosophy, a text about hierarchies and communication in indie game dev spaces, low-caloric density in writing, as well as some reflections on (online) dating that I’ll try to poke at in the breaks between the eating and socialising.
(I’ve also become really interested in pre- and suffixes. I feel like really getting a good grasp of how more complicated words are constructed will help me a lot in creating alien worlds that still feel familiar. Like: Systemmacy. Or: Mathomancer. Or: Unvoy. Lots of fun stuff here.)
I am notoriously bad at presents in general, but this year I am well on track to actually have something nice for everyone. I’ve been covering lamps and lampshades from ikea with lines of acrylic paint that slowly change their colors as they crawl over the fabric. Everyone (wether they want it, need it, use it or not) will get one of them and finishing all these micro projects has been really fulfilling. There is something very concrete about your appartement slowly filling up with all of these colorful lamps. It feels really good to have progress rendered in such an immediate way. There’s also something deeply satisfying about deconstructing the different ways in which you can put lines of paint onto a lamp.
Looking back, I am kind of surprised that I got so much stuff done, considering that this week was already full of socialising. In the last secen days, I’ve had two dates, to two lunches with colleagues, one afternoon of shopping with my family, one christmas market visit (+ subsequent dinner) with friends and two pre-christmas dinners with my extended family.
During some of those, I’ve consumed alcohol, so I am not really sober anymore. In fact, I’ve sometimes had a sip of beer in the previous weeks as well. It never felt like the kind of alcohol consumption that I am trying to avoid, but I should have been more precise about that. Going forward, I will also probably share a beer with someone here and there. I’m not really worried about alcohol (or about moving the goalposts, it seems ^^).
The main thing is that I have not smoked weed in quite a while now. I always felt really inspired, able to grasp and combine abstract concepts when high, and I am definitely missing that feeling. It’s much harder to feel like what you’re doing is something visionary and important while weed-sober, but at least I am actually doing things now, getting stuff done.
I am looking forward to finishing many things in 2025.