Alora Fane

I wasn't able to focus on Atonal Dreams this week, but I did make some maybe interesting progress on this side project, Mentales! Also, I've probably got COVID now.

As I also said last week, my parents went on another of their holidays over the last week or so, and left me to look after the house, adjacent community hall, and dog, which threw off my usual routine. If I tried to sit down and get work done, the dog would start pestering me after about ten minutes to be let out or given attention or something, and the one time I tried ignoring it, it gifted me with a malodorous mound of doggy dung on the floor. Ugh.

It settled down more after the first handful of days, and once my own frustration had worn off, I grew to appreciate the relative freedom I had. Typically my gregarious step-dad invites random people over, often into the kitchen, and due to my various mental issues I prefer to just avoid them entirely, meaning I can't even eat at a reliable time every day. Makes me feel like some overgrown teenager, or a deranged attic monster spoken known only through hushed rumours, but I just don't really want to interrupt a conversation and likely have some awkward exchange with Dave the 60-year-old plumber as I cook pasta in my dressing gown every other day. Would someone not mentally ill just not mind?

I really wish I could just move out, but I worry that if I did I'd end up going completely insane from loneliness, and - more importantly - I can't really afford it at the moment. Seems - based on Reddit browsing - that being stuck at home due to housing costs is hardly rare among millennials, at least.

I spent much longer than I'd like just sitting with the dog in a room other than my bedroom - it felt cruel having it cooped up in here all day - watching youtube videos. One worth mentioning is this one, where a developer I've mentioned on this blog before talked about how much his game (it's called "Will You Snail?") has made after about a week on Steam:

He says the gross is around $70k, but that he'll only end up with about 30% after all the cuts, and he spent like 5 years (?) on it, so it wasn't profitable in the end. Especially since he apparently spent $20k on marketing?? I'll need to look into exactly what that entailed, and whether it was worth it. It sounds like most of his buyers were followers of his YouTube channel rather than people brought to the game by marketing... though, honestly, I don't think the game looks, on the surface, good enough to win over people completely unfamiliar with it.

But would Atonal Dreams? That's something I've been wondering about a lot... though I'll need to look into how to maximise my chances eventually.

I think the duration of the development of that game is maybe the most interesting part, though. Even fairly simple platformer things often take years, especially for a solo dev (which he seems to be, though I suspect he - like many 'solo' devs - paid for some assets like music, but I could be wrong).

My parents are back now, and they brought a lovely gift with them: COVID-19. We're supposed to be keeping to ourselves to prevent the spread of that, not swanning around the world, grumble... I've been concerned since they're in their 60's, and I'll surely catch it too now and I have the cancer stuff which probably makes me more vulnerable, but we've all had two vaccines plus a booster, and so far they seem barely affected by it - as I suspect is usually the case, but that's hardly worthy of news reports - so hopefully none of us will die from this. Ugh.

SPEAKING OF ATONAL DREAMS, as I really should be doing in these weekly updates rather than blathering on about personal stuff, I have literally nothing new to show about that this week, annoyingly! I'm blaming the circumstances, but I suspect I'm just using that as an excuse because of a lot of underlying burnout.

Months ago, I wondered whether to work on a secondary side project - a remake of my old Alora Fane: Creation game/story creation tool thing that I never finished or released, tentatively called Mentales - but didn't really get very far with it before giving up. I got stuck at designing the customisable character models in a way I liked; I tried a couple of variations, but didn't like either. It'd been at the back of my mind ever since, though, as something I'd return to eventually.

And that's what I did this week! I wrote ∞ a long post on my Patreon ∞ a couple of days ago about the early process, but even though I have 82 patrons, it seems like the majority don't even read my posts there? The post only has 7 likes, and includes an unlisted YouTube video which only has 12 views as I write this, several of which are probably from me (if the creator's own views are counted). Still, I feel like I should post at least some stuff there out of appreciation for the people who have decided they like my stuff enough to financially support me!

Because so few people saw it anyway and it's an easy way to show what I've been working on, here's the (unlisted, silent, ~4 min) youtube video of a simple character being created:

As you can see, unlike a lot of character creators (especially in AAA games) where you use sliders to control the scale of specific body parts or facial features, these characters - inspired by things like Lego minifigures, Miis, and Animal Crossing (human) villagers - can have individual parts swapped out and recoloured, and they have pixelated faces which the creator can draw themselves (with 7 possibilities to use for emotes in dialogue scenes).

Since making that video, I got started on building the actual story/level/campaign/'tale'/whatever creator, though I've not done much with it yet:

Theoretically, it shouldn't take all that long to make this into a thing people could play around with, because I only really need to set up some fairly basic, deliberately accessible mechanics, then the main content could be made by players/creators (though I should still include some 'official tales' in a release)... but I genuinely thought I could finish Atonal Dreams in a 6-month period like I did with Memody: Sindrel Song, so...

Either way, I'm only intending to add to it bit-by-bit when the mood takes me, as a side project; my main focus remains Atonal Dreams (though clearly there's some mental fatigue around that that I need to push through or recover from). Hopefully I'll get back to that next week.

Also, a goblin, made with the limited selection of parts I've added currently:

(Also, my new PC's still in a box in the corner of my room, unopened, also due to being so mentally distracted!)

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