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So Tired, But Testing My Games On My iPhone

6 years ago1,693 words

Radiotherapy's almost over, and I'm currently tired and ill. I got a Mac and can test games on my phone now! But I haven't made much progress beyond that due to feeling so lousy. Still, 'not much' progress is not none!

I'm almost at the end of my 30 radiotherapy sessions now. That's a relief... but this is also the point at which the radiation has accumulated to a degree where the symptoms are most severe, and it'll take something like three months at least for them to die down. So that'll be fun. I'm currently extremely tired, in a way similar to depression rather than sleepiness; that is, I feel like I'm 'wide awake' but have no energy, or at least far less than I'd like.

Still, waking up before the crack of dawn and spending three hours travelling to and from the hospital - and of course being strapped into a mask with radiation beams shot into my brain - every day has been really disrupting the schedule I'd like to have. I like waking up and getting straight to work as soon as possible, but I've been unable to because of this. So I'm looking forward to being able to do that more frequently once it's all over.

(Also, it's the season where colds run rampant, and both my parents have one, which I've caught... Cough cough. That's likely adding to the tiredness on top of everything. I dread to think how it'll affect these remaining treatment sessions.)

Anyway, that's the biggest thing at the moment. I've got four more sessions left, then 'freedom' after that. I'm looking forward to it, but it's somewhat scary too. This treatment gives my life structure, and gives me a clear 'excuse' for why I can't move on and do anything else. I feel like once it's ended, I'll have to finish a game as soon as I can to prove to myself if nobody else that I'm on a path, such as it is, rather than being a work-shy couch potato all day or something.

(Interestingly, the doctor told me last week that most people take at least three months off work for this treatment... I've been working throughout, perhaps pushing myself too much, but I wouldn't want it any other way.)

Thankfully, Sindrel Song - which I wrote about in ∞ the previous post ∞ - is coming along nicely... sort of, though I haven't actually made much significant progress since that post due to the treatment and tiredness. Annoying, that. I'm glad some of you showed interest in it though!

I like it a lot, and I'm excited about it, but I also understand that it's more 'art' than 'product' and as such doesn't exactly tick the standard boxes in terms of what The Audience would like to see. I'd like to think that these kinds of things, which explore unfamiliar ground and have hearts poured into them, are more appealing in their way than the digital drugs businessmen build to maximise profits, at least to audiences open to them. Those audiences would necessarily be smaller, but perhaps more passionate because the world they're able to explore speaks to them in a meaningful way.

Or at least that's the hope. I've no idea how it'll play out in reality. Maybe I'll release it and like less than a hundred people will play it, half of them leaving bad reviews. That'd be embarrassing. But all I can really do is keep going and see where it leads me.

I'm trying to be motivated by the delusion that it'll be a success, but I also realise how oversaturated the market is, and how many people out there with far more business savvy than myself pump out dozens of apps without ever making much money from any of them. Maybe it's because they're throwaway 'crapps' and mine is more remarkable though? I tell myself. Plus I made a bit of a name for myself with MARDEK, years ago? Right?? I've no idea what'll happen with it though. I think I personally do need the feeling of having finished and released something though. The internal, psychological benefits of that should be significant... unless of course it just draws a lot of sadists to me. I feel like I'm probably a joke to at least some people already, due to my weirdness, and that being attacked and ridiculed by faceless internet people will be unavoidable if I get into the public eye (again?). I feel like I'll have to mentally prepare myself for that, somehow.

Anyway, I could think and ramble about possible futures all day (and I suppose internally I do), but it won't get me anywhere or change anything. It's best to just try to focus on making this thing for now, as much as I'm able to anyway.



I got a Mac laptop (a Macbook Pro) last week, because apparently you need an Apple computer to publish to Apple devices, even for testing. I have an iPhone, but I'd been unable to actually test anything I'd made on it before. Until now, anyway. I couldn't exactly afford a Macbook and didn't even really want one, but I'm considering it an investment, which I hope will turn out to be worthwhile. (I also had to pay £80 for membership to the Apple Developer Program, just for the privilege of publishing to their amazing devices... Sigh.)

For now, it's exciting just being able to play my game on my own phone for once. (Well, I mean I made Taming Dreams as an Android app a few years ago and played that on my phone... but that feels like so long ago that I can barely remember how it felt. And I don't have an Android device anymore so it probably no longer works.) There are a bunch of issues, largely due to the different screen resolution, so I've been having to iron those out.

It was quite a slog getting to this point though. It's not just a matter of plugging it in and pressing play. I had to learn about the various technical hoops I have to jump through as part of the process, which seem trivial in hindsight but felt really daunting before I knew what to do.

I'm still not sure about the workflow I should be using though. I develop in Unity on my Windows computer, but as far as I'm aware I can't just use the same project file between my PC and Mac. So I have to transfer it between computers, for which I tried using a Google cloud service (I already use Dropbox to back up most of my files, but wouldn't want to connect my Mac to it because it has a tiny amount of memory, and might try to download all the existing stuff and instantly run out). Initially, I just copied the project files to the shared cloud folder... but there were over 2000 small files even for a fresh project, and uploading + downloading them took forever not so much because of the size, but because of the sheer number of times the upload+download process had to start. Compressing all the files into a single .zip made the transfer much quicker, though it still takes several minutes. So I .zip the project folder from my PC in this way, upload it to the cloud, then I go to my Mac, download it from the cloud, unzip it, and open the project... which then says it can't be opened directly and has to be converted to Mac mode, which involves reimporting all the assets for whatever reason, which takes a while. And for reasons I only vaguely understand, some of the animations are messed up by this process, meaning it's not just a simple, clean import. THEN, I also have to specify export settings for iOS devices, spend a while exporting, open the exported project in Xcode, which creates a new Xcode project rather than opening some existing one, in which I have to specify more settings before finally being able to test the game on my phone...

Basically, the whole process takes ages, and involves a whole bunch of steps I feel I shouldn't have to repeat each time. I can't just play it on my phone, notice a little issue, fix it, then immediately test again once it's cleaned up, as I can when testing on my PC. It feels like there should be a far simpler way of doing this, but I don't know what it'd be. If anyone reading this would know how these things typically work, I'd love to hear from you, but failing that, I'll just devote some more time to researching it once the radiotherapy is out of the way.

So yes. I'm making progress with things, but it's not exactly exciting progress at the moment. Every step is an important part of the process, though...



Also, a final thing: I've been having some strange head sensations over the course of radiotherapy, more frequently and intensely recently, which might be due to the treatment or any number of related factors (effects of the surgery, tiredness, etc). Essentially, it feels like I have an 'explosion of dizziness' out of the blue; suddenly and without warning, it feels like the core of my brain 'falls over', and it feels almost like falling unconscious or losing balance... but it only lasts for a second or less. There's the feeling of manually 'saving myself' in the way you might feel if you catch yourself from physically falling over. That feeling that you were going to topple to the ground, but some instinct prevented it, which felt like your doing even though it was quicker than consciousness. Usually it's accompanied (in my case at least) by a lingering surge of heart-pumping adrenaline and wooziness. So this is like that, but out of nowhere and for no reason, while I'm just sitting here. It's... worrying, but I hope it's just a temporary thing and not the beginning of some serious issue...

I'll just try to focus on this game, anyway. And resting.