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Is This The Course I Should Pursue?

6 years ago3,128 words

Despite constant, irritating fatigue, and woes about my present and my future, I've been slowly working my way through writing dialogue for Sindrel Song...

I'm so tired of being tired... So tired! I don't know how much of what I'll be saying I've already said, since I haven't the energy to read my old posts, and I've tried to write a couple these past couple of weeks (God, it's been that long?), but didn't have the energy to finish and post them.

I would have thought that the fatigue would improve over time, but if anything it seems to be getting worse. Or at least it's been worse since the whole website fiasco a few weeks ago. That - and I suppose spending a day with that friend soon after that - seemed to drain what little energy I had, and since then I've been barely able to do much at all. I'm spending half my days sleeping, and much of the rest trying to do something but without much success. Just lots of staring blankly at my computer and thinking of all the things I should be doing - want to be doing! - but apparently can't.

I suspect there's more to this tiredness than 'just' recovering from brain cancer treatment (though, as I may have hinted at subtly once or twice, that's fairly big as far as things go). Depression, for sure, but it's all so circumstantial. My life's not good at the moment, at all. I have nowhere to go and nobody to see, so my repetitive days consist of moving between my bed and my computer - and occasionally the bathroom or kitchen - and pretty much nothing else. There's nowhere to go, nobody I could see even if I wanted to.

I lived this life for years, feeling that making games was what I'd proven I was good enough at to attract the interest of many people, and back then I felt like it was destroying me, so I went to university to change my course, to meet people and have somewhere to actually go every day. That didn't work out as planned. I'm not sure whether that life was better or worse than this one; they were and are both profoundly frustrating in their own wonderful ways.

And is this my future? I can't get my own place to live until I earn money, and I need to make something to hopefully get that money. And that's far from guaranteed. And what then? Would I just live alone forever and never go out and see anyone, making video games when other humans my age have long outgrown them? Would I be making games when I'm 70? Will I make it to 70 anyway? Do I want to? I didn't even want to make it to 30. And technology changes so fast anyway that the world a decade from now might be vastly different to what we know now. Maybe a standard living wage will become a reality and I'll have less to worry about? Maybe robots will do everything?? Maybe we'll build a divine AI that redefines the universe for us??? I don't know.

So I've got a lot going on inside my head, because so little goes on outside it. There's nothing I can really do about any of this except try to work on games and hope to release something that might actually lead to some kind of forward progress.

It's tough though having a completely free and open schedule, where I can do whatever I want whenever I want (well, limited by what I have available to me, of course). It seems that when that's the case, it's so easy to delay things until later, then tomorrow, then the day after that... It'd be different if I had limited work hours each day during which I had to achieve something, and the rest of the time I'd have free to use or waste as preferred. Or if I had a difference space for working than for not-working. I've been experimenting with timetables, with alarms and reminders, with to-do lists, with moving to my bed for not-work and reserving computer time just for work... but results are scattered. Some days it works well, others it doesn't at all. This has been a challenge for all the many years I've been trying to stumble along this solo development path, and I've 'solved' the puzzle many times but nothing ever sticks. I'll keep trying things, anyway.

I can imagine the suggestion that I get a part-time job or do volunteering. It'd take a while to explain why, but I really don't want to do that, for a bunch of reasons. Not that I could with this fatigue anyway. Meetup groups are another suggestion, but I've tried all that in the past and never got anything good out of it.

I've been going out for walks while listening to audiobooks, but it's challenging due to the physical symptoms I'm still experiencing, and I can't say it does much good. Maybe it's slightly better than nothing, so I'll keep it up, but it's just so boring walking around the same old area by myself... I often wonder how people can spend their entire life in one place just going around the same old routes over and over... Seems so maddening to me, but maybe it'd be different if you'd never known anything else? I've only lived here a handful of years, and I was away at university for most of that time anyway, plus I've moved around a bunch of times in my life, so maybe it's that I'm used to change and I'm not getting it. Or maybe being stuck here in this seaside town full of old people, not moving forward, and being reminded of that every time I go out, is what makes walks feel more draining than beneficial. Either way, SIGH.



It's interesting working on Sindrel Song, because I'm trying to explore a few mental challenges through the characters...

Well, first, it's tedious working on Sindrel Song, for the same reason that working on any project for a long period is. At first, there's this period of excitement and enthusiasm when the game is new, where it's fun to play and I'll work eagerly from early morning to late night doing as much as I can on it, making rapid progress. But having to test the same bits again and again and again and again and again, dozens or hundreds of times, really wears down that passion and motivation, and soon just the idea of opening the project files feels like an enormous chore. I've abandoned way too many things because of this, because I have the 'freedom' to do that without any employers or colleagues pressuring me to reach completion.

I'm not planning to do that with Sindrel Song, and it's too close to being done now anyway so it's not going to happen. But even so, I suppose it's like trying to squeeze out the last little bit of a tube of toothpaste... Or something. I imagine those of you who've made things yourself are familiar with this feeling.

I've been thinking about the project I can make after this is done, which I feel would be more interesting to existing readers - fans of MARDEK, basically - than I know something unusual like Sindrel Song is. I've been wanting to write about it, and hinted about it a while ago, but I've decided I should probably refrain from doing that, otherwise I might end up diverting attention away from this thing rather than getting it out of the way as I should.

I'm trying to do the writing at the moment, which is important to get right, but more difficult than things which have a more objectively 'correct' solution, like bug fixing. It's easier to go down the wrong path with creative things like writing, only to realise far along that path that you should have gone in a different direction. The thought of starting is hard enough, but the thought that you started wrong and have to try again is even worse. Or is it? Generally having at least something and editing it - or even scrapping it entirely, but trimming away many potentials by having explored it, narrowing your choice of direction - is much easier than creating something from scratch. Still, it seems it's so hard to start anyway...

I've written maybe about half of the dialogue and lore text (over the course of about two or three days of work, if I add up the time I actually have been able to work), but I don't know how much of it I want to keep. My mood when reading back over it varies, sometimes 'meh', or 'that's okay', or 'this is terrible and I'll have to do it again aaahhh panic'. I don't think it really matters overly much anyway since it's not why people would be playing the game, and most players would skim through the dialogue with glassy eyes and immediately forget it, but I suppose what I'd like is for it to be interesting enough to discourage that kind of skipping, for it to be actually worth engaging with, especially if unlocking it is a reward for gameplay progress. Plus perfectionism is a constant companion that won't tells me 'good enough' isn't good enough.

I want to include an example of some bit of dialogue that I wrote recently. Each character has six of these bits, unlocked by getting better at their song, and this is one of the ones from Course. Each character talks in a different idiosyncratic way, and Course's quirk is that she /talks like waves, with graceful flow, with rhythm to her words/~, like a poem or lyrical song. I don't care for poetry in general so I don't know the terminology, but I think it's iambic metre, but not pentameter (which is one of the few things I remember from studying Shakespeare millions of years ago). So stressing every other beat. There's no rhyming in this, and the lines don't have consistent lengths like a poem, since it's poem-like, but it's not meant to be one explicitly:



I'm no poet, as I said, so I can imagine ~proper writers~ turning their nose up at my obvious amateurishness, since I must be acting out of unconscious incompetence, the Dunning-Kruger effect, not even knowing what I'm doing wrong. I feel conflicted posting it at all, because I'm quite pleased with how it turned out - though I edit it every time I read it through, so maybe I'll never be completely satisfied - but I just imagine people more well-versed in, well, verse would have something negative to say and I'd just feel embarrassed. (I wonder if they still would despite me saying this.)

I also imagine that the kinds of people who communicate primarily through banter, who exchange 'dank memes', who blow up virtual planets for fun, who grin as they pluck the legs off beetles, who become engorged while kicking homeless orphans in the face, who moan with ecstasy while smashing their puppy's head in using another puppy as a flail, who write obnoxious comments on obscure blogs, who-

...I forget what I was getting at. I've already been imagining those kinds of people (exactly those, realistic and numerous as they are) mocking how macho what I've already shown isn't, and this just seems like yet another aspect they're not exactly likely to eagerly embrace. Oh well. It shouldn't matter, but I suppose I'd love to make something everyone would enjoy, which is why it's disheartening when someone doesn't even if they're not exactly the intended audience.

Writing dialogue for the characters that came before Course felt like a chore, and I can barely even be bothered reviewing what I wrote, though this one was pleasant enough that I've read it back many a time and want to keep doing so. That made me wonder whether I could write everyone's dialogue like this, or whether that might be too gimmicky and annoying. I mean, it's a game about music and songs and rhythm and all that anyway, so it's not like it wouldn't be completely inappropriate? (Hmm, having Remedy's dialogue in this iambic pattern, which resembles a heartbeat, would fit with her heart motif...)

I want to mention a mobile game I randomly played a few months ago, before the surgery I think, which has stuck in my mind for a while due to its idiosyncrasy. It's obviously an indie game, made by one person, who I think did all the coding, graphics, music, and the dialogue. That dialogue notably rhymes all the time, and you can select between two different languages too (English and French, I think), which is doubly impressive! It's called "Milkmaid of the Milky Way" (It's an odd but charming setting, I felt; the kind of thing that could only be a passion project rather than something built by committee), and I only found it when I was aimlessly browsing the app store, and saw it featured one day. I quite liked the constant rhyming in that, but I also felt it was a bit of a strain on suspension of disbelief when everyone talked essentially the same way. I mean there was nothing about the entire experience that was realistic, really, so it's not that kind of issue, but... I don't know. The fact that that game did that and got away with it makes me wonder whether I could too, but also whether I should even try to. HMMM.

Back to what I've already got for this, if you've been keeping up with my posts about the game and have an idea of how sindrels work, it should make sense. If you haven't, then it's probably absolute nonsense.

The sindrels' issues aren't directly based on mine as such, or at least that's not my aim, but I'm drawing on many experiences that I've either directly experienced, or talked to people about, or read about online on sites like Reddit. Course's primary issue is quite alien: sindrels have to die before they can reproduce, their body literally must dissolve to provide the parts needed to build descendants, but since she's chosen eternal life, she can't fulfill that purpose. So now she doesn't know what to do with herself, she's lost.

Obviously I'm not losing sleep over being unable to die and make adult-babies I'll never meet, but it's interesting writing about things like this with what I said at the start of this post in mind. Uncertainty about the path I'm on, worry that by choosing not to have a typical job or romantic relationship, I'll forever feel unfulfilled...

It's not as if writing about it is some magical solution or anything - I think this'll be hanging over me for a long time, maybe forever - but I do think there's some catharsis in it too. Maybe. I suppose the important thing is that I'm doing something, even though I'm taking like ten times longer than it really should take...

(Something interesting is that I seem to be structuring idle verbal thoughts using this iambic metre, since my mind has clearly made some kind of program to do that and it's running overtime. Like how when I played Candy Crush years ago, I started seeing the world in terms of its simple mechanics, started dreaming about it even. That was annoying since I didn't even like that game, but I don't mind my thoughts having more of a flow to them! It's not really reflected in this post though because it takes effort to arrange sentences like that... which is why I wonder whether having all the dialogue in that form would be a bad idea.)



Oh, and finally! I've been meaning to write the dialogue for days, but when it's such an immense struggle that I can't even get myself to start, I try to do at least something related to the game, to make a little bit of progress in a different area if I can. Something I've been meaning to do for a while is to visually remake the levels, such that they're 3D and animated - to a 'trees subtly swaying' degree - but I intended to put that off until after testing started because it's entirely aesthetic and not important for gameplay or the mental engagement with the experience.

BUT that's something I started on, and I have this for Remedy's stage so far:



Compare that to this image of the same level from the previous post:



The latter has the advantage of familiarity when eliciting regard - that is, it feels nicer because of recognition - but I do think there's an improvement. The original was only ever meant to be temporary anyway.

It's more of an experiment than anything, and it's very much subject to change once I start focusing on that aspect of the game properly. Still, I do think it makes the level feel more alive, and now that I've done a draft of one level, doing the rest feels a lot easier than it did before.

This scene feels quite bare, and I'm unsure about the vegetation. I wanted to design a kind of tree that looked alien without looking like a generic 'alien plant', but I feel like these things look like a naive tree prop in a children's play or something. Weird, but that feeling is quite distinct. The painted sky is quick and sloppy too, and there's no foam dividing the sea and beach so I'd like to add that...

It looks more interesting animated, since the sea has a pleasing low poly look as it ~undulates~, and the sand sparkles subtly. I'm aiming for a low poly look in general, not something remotely realistic, which I think should be fine since that's common these days. It's just a matter of practising enough to be able to pull it off alright...



I'll stop writing this for now so then I actually post it... I should be starting testing very soon, but I'd rather plod along with groggy strain than pump out something worse than what I'm capable of just to get it out of the way quickly.

I'm also aware that I need to get around to website things, probably more stuff too (my head's still often foggy, so I'm not even sure what I need to do). Maybe when I can't work on Sindrel Song one day soon, I'll try to do something about that, if I can. Better than staring into space...