I just learned that the creator of Dragon Ball (among other things), Akira Toriyama, just died, which is odd timing for me since I've been thinking about that... media franchise - or whatever you'd call it - and anime in general for the past few days... READ MORE
While AI can produce high-quality art quickly, in my experience, art's value comes from the creation process, at least in the sense of personal pride. Also, I've been losing sleep over doubts about the social dice roll I'll be making next week... READ MORE
I’ve actually done a lot of work on Dreamons this week, gasp! Though instead of going into detail about that, here's some rambling about popular creations being most obsessively consumed by the young and impressionable. Also, did you know there's a mobile JRPG made by some of the creators of Chrono Trigger? Plus a brief bit about the loneliness epidemic. READ MORE
I always thought the machines would take over the manual labour jobs first, and that we'd be left with tons of freedom to indulge in purely human pursuits like creativity... Sigh. READ MORE
A second post this week with some thoughts about art I drew a few days ago, and the kind of feedback artists hope for when showing other people the fruits of their hard work. READ MORE
And it bothers me when I hear it in youtube videos but can't find the piece myself because the youtuber didn't care enough about it to mention what it was called! READ MORE
Inspiration is a double-edged sword! Should a seemingly good, new idea be pursued if it'd require some steps back to do so? Or should the current path be doggedly stuck to because that's the only way to reach the end?? READ MORE
I set up my new PC at long last, I'm still working on story decisions - including some fast/dream travel 'flowerbeds' - and it's a shame people aren't more receptive to - or even aware of - my post-MARDEK work! READ MORE
2021's got off to a decent start, productivity-wise! I composed three pieces of music for Atonal Dreams! I've also added an additional album of my old music to the Bandcamp page I set up recently, which is something I intend to make a weekly habit of. READ MORE
Well, we survived 2020 somehow! Or at least some of us did, myself surprisingly included. I've also been quite productive this year, so - as is my tradition - I shall look back on all the stuff I've made here! READ MORE
Most highly creative people struggle with depression to some degree, and I read an article about that which I wanted to mention here. Unrelatedly, maybe I could sell my old, unfinished games on itch.io? Do you know anything about it? READ MORE
After putting it off for years, I finally played an obscure game called UNDERTALE that you've probably never heard of. Here's my 13,000 word dissertation about that experience. I hope I get an A. That is not the grade I would use to describe my personal experience of this game. (I'm assuming everyone and their little annoying dog have already played it and/or are intimately familiar with it, so this is full of spoilers.) READ MORE
I took the last week and a half or so off working on Atonal Dreams, and did a bunch of other creative stuff instead, like modelling a human figure I hope to give dynamic, customisable features to! It's a big improvement over my last attempt at a dynamic 3D model back in 2017. I'm getting back to Atonal Dreams today, though. READ MORE
I took half of last week off development, and intended to get back to it mentally refreshed at the start of this week. I'm definitely not mentally refreshed though! READ MORE
I'm depressed and unmotivated. Again!! However, it's interesting seeing how much actually has changed for the better since another miserable post 3 months ago... READ MORE
Here's some scattered thoughts about finding a daily routine that maximises productivity in the long term, a CBT-based thing I can do to maybe tackle my annoying avoidance issues, being uncertain about when and where to release my old music that I've recently been converting, and a little bit about another game that I've been playing! READ MORE
This week, I went to the brain hospital (I'm not doomed just yet), didn't start playing a new game (but did get back into Beat Sabre a bit), was unpleasantly surprised by some feedback on last week's development post (but I think I understand the psychology of it), and was contacted by a group saying they're giving new life to old Flash games (but I wish I knew more about them)! READ MORE
I'm thinking of writing posts here on a weekly schedule; "Weekly Updates", like I used to do a billion years ago. I'll post two at a time, one personal, one about that week's development progress. Here's this week's personal one, where I wonder whether my too-frequent tiredness is due to my pineal gland being cut out, and whether that'll interfere with my ability to have lucid dreams... There's also a bit about politics, because that's always a good idea! READ MORE
We all play games for different reasons. Some psychologists have attempted to categorise different players based on their preferences, and I think it's worth talking about them - and the personality trait Openness (to Experience) - to explain some of the aversions to the projects I'm trying to make. READ MORE
Comedians, Hollywood films, and young people making memes on the internet all address mental turmoil in their own ways; dancing with one's demons isn't the territory solely of disturbed pariahs. I've been trying to do a similar thing with Sindrel Song, but I'm stuck in the mud of uncertainty because I know that not everyone would eagerly embrace such a thing in the way I might. READ MORE
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... READ MORE
I need to work on Sindrel Song, I need to upload my old games to my websites again, and I have plans for something MARDEK-related as well that I need to find the time to properly focus on. And I'm tired, still. Here's a vague plan for where I'm going from here. READ MORE
Some cathartic venting about fatigue, lack of motivation, mental barriers, Alora Fane, and MARDEK 4. And this thing from Sindrel Song, obviously. READ MORE
So, now that the 2018th year since our Lord Jesus Christ hatched from his egg is gasping out its final breaths, I feel the compulsion to have a look at exactly how I've wasted this period of my life that I'll never get back. I graduated from university (and made it through alive, to my surprise), I had brain surgery for a cancerous tumour (and made it through alive, to my surprise), and I did a bunch of creative stuff but never actually finished or released anything (and made it through alive, to the absolute shock of everyone). That's... something? READ MORE
Here's a video of Zaffre and Cerise talking, showing the kind of format I've been intending to use to tell the Taming Dreams story. I'm so unsure about whether it's worth doing, though... Am I naive? Is this childish? Would it only lead to my destruction even if it did one day work out? READ MORE
Are women oppressed by a patriarchal society, as feminism would have us believe? Or is it women who are privileged and men who are oppressed, as those who've taken the 'red pill' claim? Here's some ramblings about all that which have brought me a kind of peace, as well as a game concept that gender relations have inspired, based around the idea that the two sexes are playing different but overlapping games with dissimilar challenges, rather than one being absolutely more or less fortunate than the other in everything. READ MORE
Based on comments on the previous post and my internal reactions to them, I've decided that I'm going to spend my time working on a sort of interactive story rather than a game! READ MORE
After playing around some more with my Oculus Rift, I'm amazed at the potential VR has to explore the nature of our perceptions... but I also wish I could just give up on the real world and live in a variety of virtual ones instead. READ MORE
I've added two more episodes/conversations/whatever to the Divine Dreams thing I mentioned in the previous post, and would again like to hear what you think! READ MORE
I've been working some more on the project I mentioned in my previous post. I've written the first two scenes, and composed music for them too! I'd be interested to hear what you make of it. READ MORE
As a break from the usual self-pitying melodrama, I'd like to write about the creative project I'm currently working on, which I've been intending to do for ages. READ MORE
We exist to have sex, biologically. Everything else is peripheral. And it's really hard to want to keep going if you feel that physical connection isn't going to be a part of your life experience. For me, anyway. READ MORE
My recent creative work has been driven by an unfulfilled desire for connection... in various forms. I'll use this post to talk about something I've been playing around with recently. And also the thing in this screenshot. READ MORE
I feel the drive to do something creative, and I've been playing around with ideas recently... But the fear of criticism really gets in the way of producing anything, especially since I want to use art as a way of coping with and communicating my psychological struggles, which has hardly been met with eager excitement in the past. READ MORE
Rediscovering things we liked when younger can be a pleasant thing, and it's nice to check back on them and see they're still alive with new content. I've been told by many people that my MARDEK games were a pleasant part of their childhoods, so it's a shame I never finished them. READ MORE
I enjoy creating things, particularly games, though it's been a while since I last did. I'm not sure what to work on now, though I've been using some games I've recently played for inspiration. READ MORE
I'm not dead! Well, not yet, anyway. Though I have wished that I was several times over these past few weeks. Depression isn't a pleasant thing. I've been struggling with that, and my time's been consumed by academic work, but it's Easter now, and I've got three weeks where I should be able to relax a bit more. I want to get back into creative work, but I'm unsure what to do. READ MORE
I haven't updated this thing in a while. I'm not dead. Yet. Though I still often feel as if I'd rather be, or if I already am in some sense. I mourn the apparent death of my once vibrant and fulfilling creativity in particular. A shame about that. Anyway, in the last few weeks I've been depressed - as usual - though I've also had enough tastes of actual happiness to motivate me to seek out paths to a better place. I feel I've also come to some realisations about the root of most of my psychological problems. Now that I've finished the rather draining academic assignments that have been eating up almost all my time recently, I'd like to write about everything here for my own benefit; it does seem to help to get it all out. READ MORE
I was recently wondering whether I had autism, as I feel out of place, think oddly, and struggle socially, but some reading suggests that perhaps that's just because I'm a moody artist. READ MORE
I'm trying to distract myself from my brain by working on games, as that's really all I've known for the past few years. Uncertain of which of my various projects to direct my attention towards, I found myself drawn to one called Cultivate, where you design and look after little humans whose variable appearances are generated purely by code. While I should be adding features in order to make it into a playable game, instead I seem to spend an awful lot of time just looking at the people it randomly generates, thinking a lot about attractiveness and how we stylise our bodies in art. How drastically skewed proportions still register as human, how we're drawn not to realism, but to that which surpasses it... READ MORE
So much of 'success' in life is about being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people... You could have tons of skill or 'talent', but it usually requires the right nurturing environment - and the contributions of other similarly skilled people - in order to be used to create something amazing. But where do you even find people whose skills are on the same level as your own? READ MORE
As I said in my previous post, I'll be very isolated for the next few months... but rather than seeing it as a stretch of soul-sapping emptiness, I'm trying to see it as a gift of time, which I can spend on various things. I'm going to write about a few of those things here. READ MORE
Since the world works in mysterious ways, immediately following my ∞ glimpse into oblivion ∞, I randomly saw ∞ this miniseries thing ∞ that dealt with suicide and depression in a way that brought me to tears. Sources call it a dark comedy, or even a sitcom, but I think that's misleading; it's quite intensely emotional and really quite odd. It gave me ideas about how I could use my own creative work to address the issues that are most resonant to me. READ MORE
I've been really struggling with procrastination recently. Funnily enough, one of the things I've been putting off is a research report I have to write about procrastination. I've started on it now, though, and I've learned some interesting things that I thought I might as well write about here. READ MORE
Firstly, I'd like to say that I've been really impressed by the comments here so far! Well, with a couple of deliberately malicious exceptions, but I'm trying not to think about those. There's a lot of thought, depth, insight and compassion in them, and I'm glad to have attracted the attention of people such as yourselves. I'd like to talk about a tangled mess of things in this post, though I'll try to use subheadings this time! READ MORE
4