Worst week for the project thus far! May as well just get that out there right away and say it, and I’m not thrilled about that since last week was also pretty bad. Oh well. There’s gonna be bad weeks, and dwelling on it is not going to make them less shitty.
A quick summary of what’s gone wrong:
Rapid weather fluctuations are messing with my mood, leaving me alternately depressed and angry
Computer problems are also messing with my mood (as well as obviously my means of productivity), leaving me depressed and angry.
I’m coming down with a cold or something, I don’t know, but my nose seems to be trying to crawl into itself and I’m super tired, which makes everything harder which makes me depressed and angry.
Tedious programming assignments and strange social interactions leave me… you know what, I’m noticing a trend here. So, yeah. Depressed and angry.
Fortunately, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started getting depressed over my anger and angry about my depression, so maybe that’s turning a corner. Maybe that’s making some fucking lemonade. Maybe that’s a silver goddamn lining. Maybe that’s life opening another stupid piece of shit window. Maybe that’s using the mothafuckin’ character for chaos to mean opportunity. We’ll see. I hope so.
So that’s the bad news. The good news is that even if, due to one thing and another, I’ve found it difficult to get much in the way of concrete work done on the project, this has given me a little bit of time and distance to think about where I’m going with it story-wise. I’d like to talk about that, but it’s a bit tricky sometimes. You see, there are two impulses at work here. On the one hand, I want to share bits of Eve’s storyline and concept with you to get you as excited about the project as I am, but at the same time I don’t want to tip my hand and reduce the impact of a moment by giving you hints about it or, maybe worse, by sharing an undeveloped version of an idea that makes it into the game in a more interesting form. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing, maybe people would find it just as interesting to bridge the connections between my thoughts now and the final result of my efforts, to chart the course my mind and talent took to arrive at it’s destination. Maybe. But I still worry.
This is why most of my hints as to the story of the game take the form of little pieces of art and short fiction, posted here, written from the perspective of one of the characters. These add to the story in much the same organic way as I’m planning on telling the story in the game. Which actually raises the idea that maybe I could devote one of these DevBlogs to discussing how I’m planning on telling the story, rather than the details of the story itself. Perhaps next week.
In the meanwhile, though this week has been lousy, I have come up with some new ideas on how to implement entity interactions in Eve and gained new insight into the personality and history of one its the as-yet unrevealed major characters: Lucifer, the light-bearer, the heroic fool, seed of war, advocate of peace, and blinded by the sun.
Ah, Lucifer, my most favoritest archetype. Looking forward to seeing where you’re going with him. (I’m assuming him-ness here, possibly prematurely.)
Him-ness indeed. The character is about as close to the biblical Lucifer as Eve is to the biblical Eve, so it’s hard to say how true to that archetype he’ll actually be. I’m just kind of trying to extend analogies in an intuitive way to develop these characters, and sometimes even I’m surprised where that takes me.
The best line: I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started getting depressed over my anger and angry about my depression, so maybe that’s turning a corner.