feelings – Freyjland

Life always finds a way…

_{to turn your plans into voidless entities, aka game jam day 4} _{see previous post}

So you’re motivated, you make a Game Design Document, you create your Godot project, and write down ideas and fill the document. You go to bed, and then life just messes up a bit with you.

So suddenly, it’s 3 days later and the game has barely moved forward. At least the good point is that it’s the week-end and some time can be spared to work on it.

This day’s work has scene the creations of quick scenes on Godot to be prototypes for the menus (main menu, options menu) and creation of a small theme for the buttons. I have also been reading a lot of documentation, watched a few explanations around nodes and signals.

It’s not much, but it’s something. I took a picture from Wikimedia commons that I liked and changed a few parameters to make it more shadowy feeling to me. I might change it, but I needed something to move forward.

Tomorrow, I hope to work on the first level and basic core loop.

What does a game jam taste like?

_{Also known as Pirate Software – Game Jam 15 day 1}

According to the page of the jam (and I agree with this definition, otherwise I wouldn’t post it here):

Game Jam is a short event where you and others work together to create a small game. Most Jams have some kind of restriction on theme or style to get you thinking about games in a new way. Game Jams are a great way to test ideas, build on your skills, and meet other awesome creative people.
by Pirate Software

So the game jam’s theme is (as voted through Thor’s twitch chat) Shadows and Alchemy. Because I am not entirely sure I will be having time as I want, I have decided to enter this game jam solo, as I don’t want to block another participant.

As it is a required part of the submission, and a best practice, I made a copy of the model of Game Design Document and started on it so I can work on my ideas. It is a neat document keeping all the important information about the game, allowing to check also the advancement of the project.

The part that will be the toughest is going to be the art because, well, that’s not my strong suit.

So as the first day of the jam, I have worked on my idea and filled as much as I can the GDD document for now, which is to make a small puzzle-ish game where the player controls a character (an alchemist) to go through a level by using items to interact with the map and find the exit.

I will be using Godot¹ as a game engine to make my game. For the art and sound I will see in the next few days if I make them myself or if I look at open-source art.

The aim is to try and write a small post about it every day so I can keep myself accountable.
If you are participating, don’t hesitate to share about it, here in the comments, with friends, everywhere :D, it helps keep you motivated throughout the jam to have interaction with others about it.

_{Also my favourite jam is blackberry and strawberry jam.}

https://godotengine.org/, it’s a free and open-source engine that has neat capacities. ↩︎

Bear builds red Lego animals

_{What happens when Bear has friends over ?}

During a housewarming, one plan with friends was to build together this small set.
There was a lot of fun, food, and talk involved, which means we all forgot about building it.

This sets includes options to build a parrot, a fish and a dragon.

A few days later, a precise inventory of the bricks was made by the Bear. Of course, construction was going to be done carefully to ensure construction quality and optimal results.

First build was the Parrot. It used the least bricks from all the different options, and was very cute at the end.

Second build was the Fish. It had a cute way of using the transparent angled thingy (I am very good with words. Everything is a thingy that does something) to make it look like the fish is making some bubbles in the water.

I decided to keep the best one for last. The dragon used all the bricks (minus the few extra ones always present in a Lego set and looks very very cute. I really enjoyed building it.

As usual with Lego builds, I had fun, and I am very thankful for the gift from my friends. The evening was great, and I have a nice little dragon as souvenir.

What makes a Tuesday more like a Monday?

_{Or how Bear rambles about week days and drives readers insane, maybe…}

*Bear trying to fight off writer’s block.*

In theory, for someone working an office job with regular business hours, a work week could be seen like this:

Monday, as either the “what’s my job again?” day, or the “oh no, everything is breaking everywhere again!” day, since one such person would be coming back from a hopefully nice weekend back into work. Being so far from the weekend (in fact, the furthest of the week) can make it very dreary sometimes. But mostly it can offer a new perspective on past work issues, as one would have been able to disconnect and recharge one’s batteries.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as sort of ‘in the thick of it’ days, where it’s work this, and work that, and when’s the weekend, and so on.
Friday, also known as FriYAY¹, because the weekend is just around the corner, and one anticipates exciting activities, or even just peace from neverending requests. And also, it is the day where it can be perfectly reasonable to delay certain actions to next week because of their possible impacts that could not be mitigated over the weekend.

And yet, despite this sort of common week feel (for the Bear, YMMV, of course) we get sometimes hit by a second Monday. You had a Monday that was of the exhausting variety, with plenty of things to deal with, you try to unwind and spend a nice evening. The next morning has you checking your phone for a possible Groundhog Day ² or something because it’s Monday all over again, disguised as a Tuesday.

*Bear after reading an incantation to solve the second Monday* issue

For those who have been cursed³ for real, this experience can repeat itself throughout the entire week, leaving one feeling both crushed and stretched thinner than Bilbo after holding the Ring for so long.

There is sadly no easy cure for this. The Bear does not recommend trying out spells randomly, as the cure may become a bigger problem. It could especially becoming the type of problem that stares back at you in the void, without it being your lovely black kitty. Of course the difference between your cat and a summoned horror lies in the number of eyes you can count in the dark. We advise not to count them, just in case…

The best course of action is the same as most illnesses:

Be kind to yourself,
Breathe,
Drink water,
Change your socks,
Throw work related problems at colleagues, with a decently crafted excuse (even better if you have a good reason to do so, such as “this is your area of expertise”, “I need your opinion on this”, etc…)
Keep up the hope because, as you all know:

The sun will eventually set on a new week!

Of course, this is all very much my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, as I don’t think you should trust blindly a Bear over the Internet. You can always share your own views on time perception through the comments!

I just learned it’s a somewhat accepted word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Friyay ↩︎
If this movie reference doesn’t speak to you, maybe this TV series one will. If not, there is always this more recent TV series episode. If you still don’t know what I’m getting at, it’s a time loop. Just a loop, not a “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” as some British Alien said, once or twice. ↩︎
For doing something terrible in any life, or angering a witch, a Great Ancient, stepping on a Lego brick, not petting a cat, saying bears are not nice, how could I know the real reason? This is beyond my skillset. ↩︎