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Weekly Update - Tropey Writing, Burnout (Again)

3 years ago853 words

I've been experiencing severe burnout this week, so I've only done a bit on some dialogue scenes for the intro. I'll probably take a couple of weeks off to recharge and do some other stuff...

My motivation’s been really poor this week… I aim to do five hours of productive, focused work on Atonal Dreams every week day, but this week it’s averaged around three hours a day. Consistency is the most important thing, I’ve seen many devs say - even putting in five minutes a day is better than nothing - which is true of all projects or personal development, but it’s still less than I’d like, so I’m disappointed.

It’s not because I’m being lazy. I try to really push myself because I want the game to be finished, and consciously I enjoy what I'm doing with it, but… I suppose it’s just burnout, again, which often happens to solo devs, from what I’ve seen. Few people could focus on anything for literally years at a time without slumps, especially without being directly paid a salary for it!

When I made MARDEK 3, I think I jumped around between different projects rather than focusing wholly on it until it was done, which is why it took three years... though I wonder if that varying of attention was crucial for getting it finished at all. It's frustrating though how little I remember about working on MARDEK!

It’s also frustrating that I’ve spent weeks working on what are essentially the first ten minutes of this game. It shouldn’t take this long, and I don’t know why it has. I think it’s just so easy - even for me, the one making it - to neglect even thinking about all the many irritating little chores that need doing along the way, which really build up and eat a lot of time.

For example, this week I had to write some dialogue scenes for this intro. “I’ll write a draft in the morning, then finalise and implement it in the evening!”, I thought. “I’ll be done in a day, easy!”

And if all I had to do was write down some words, I would have been done in a day! But making a conversation or scene involves other stuff like making new animations, or code to run certain events properly, like an ally executing an AI skill, or the music (which I also had to write) switching sections when it should.

At least for every one of those extra things I build, I won't have to build it again later on, so later scenes should be quicker to make (plus I'll be more familiar with the characters then so there'll be less time wondering about how to write them).

Bleh. Anyway. I did make a decision about how I could write this dream version of Savitr, at least.



Essentially I tried to follow what TVTropes calls the ∞ Stock Shonen Hero ∞, which that page says started with Goku, and which most generic anime or JRPG protagonists fall into. It includes Sora among the examples, and I'm currently working my way through the second half of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, so I've been using him as a convenient reference.

It's challenging though, writing a character who's supposed to be a distillation of years' worth of absorbed inspirations, in a way that's immediately obvious to someone encountering it for the first time what it's supposed to be referencing. I'm not sure whether it'll be clear enough from what I've written so far - it's not exactly a clownish parody or anything - so I'll likely tweak it as I go on.

I was going to include a video of this whole conversation (about a minute long), but after recording it I feel unsure of some bits, so the screenshot there shows a single quote where he's making reference to the Japanese honorifics thing that often comes up in anime and video game translations and feels awkward since it's not as big of a thing in Western cultures. Collie replies to this with "I did just call you Savitr", since she's not at any point called him "Sir Savitr". Yes. Hilarious, surely, especially completely out of context like this.

I'm getting to the end of this intro section now, but... my parents - who I'm currently living with - are going on holiday for a couple of weeks (lucky them), so I'm going to use this opportunity to take a break myself and focus on some other stuff. ∞ I wrote more about that in a separate personal post. ∞

I saw a thing on one of the indie dev communities I follow saying "taking one week off won't cure the burnout issues!", but... well, hopefully it'll help a bit?? I really don't want to come to resent this project...

What's the longest you've ever focused on a single project for, O reader?