Dark Days in Springtime, and What is Next?
I am writing this because I want to change. I’m writing this because I can take a week-long vacation, filled with memories, family, and friends, yet still feel that there is no hope that things are going to be okay.
I haven’t posted because I needed a break. This past week, I found out I didn’t get the job I interviewed for. There was a dream of weekends off work and enough money to continue on with my slightly above average quality of life, and that dream is gone. I know there is still hope of that life, but fuck man. I want out so bad. Working two jobs is absolutely miserable. It would be one thing if I felt like I was thriving, but I’m not. I feel like death. I know that the correct move is to channel the sorrow and pain I feel into movement; to use the anxiety of being a 30-year-old piece of shit at a dead-end job he hates to propel my next steps from behind me, instead of stopping me in my tracks from the front. But that is easier written than accomplished.
So what is next for the project?
Ease.
When I say Ease I mean the path of least resistance. After I finish my course, I’m going to make an insanely simple game using the project so far as a template. The game will have:
A meter that fills as enemies populate a set zone in the level, when the meter is filled, game over.
Use a HUD interface
Possible use of progress bar element
Create a counter of enemies that increases when one finishes climbing the ladder, and decreases on enemy death
Ladders that the enemies climb, and can be knocked down by the player
Need to find a tutorial
Need Climbing animations
Need kicking animations
A basic, -1 -2 -3 combo/attack animation
Edit current attack Montage
Break up Combo animation from mixamo
Timer that starts after the attack function triggers, that players the 2nd part of the montage only if the timer still has time, do the same for the third
Attacks stop enemy attacks
Find a Parry of Block animation
An enemy with a shield that breaks with 1 heavy attack, or 3 small attacks
Find a Shield Block Animation
Create a “Shield” child of the weapon class
give it a shield health int set to three
Add variables to heavy attack and attack called, “shield damage,” for heavy set it to three, for attack, set it to one.
When shield health reaches zero, swap in geometry collection in the weapon location, and destroy it.
Create a Start Menu
Play
Exit
Pause
Save
Load
This is it. I do not want feature creep. I do not want to spend my entire life working on this game. I do know I need at least something in my portfolio.
Nor do I think that I am capable of making anything that could support myself, even as an indie dev. The goal is still to get a job with a legit-ass company who can get me health care and enough on-paper coding experience that I could retire with a job doing IT for whatever locality I end up in. I’m going to quit my second job and make this my second job. Turns out I’m literally not strong enough to have three jobs, and that teaching myself to code isn’t something I’m going to be able to do half-ass. Because before the job, I will ideally have a sense of competence towards a skill that should increase my satisfaction with myself.
The reason I make so many posts talking about my lack of satisfaction with myself is that I want you, the reader, to hopefully be able to see that there are moments of doubt in everyone. In fact, it’s pretty much all doubt, at least for me. That faith in oneself or others is never flawless, despite how glossy or how edited the highlight reels are. If I do make it out of the rat race, then I want people to know that the uncertainty is a part of it. That anyone who claims they never doubted is a fucking liar. Regardless of how successful they are.
