Eherm, I'm up to stuff

Let me just freeball this whole post, I have no clear idea of what to talk about really, but I thought I'd give you a headsup on what is happening in my life and with my projects. 

First things first, this project is dead. Not the characters, not the story, but the game as at is is dead. It's probably a no shit thing for most of you seeing how I haven't updated it in a year, so it won't really come as a surprise. Why did this fail? Because of management. I'm not that great at scope control, or planning a project, so I really freestyled the game and just hoped it would work out. Spoiler, it didn't. So I have began planning my projects out, creating a roadmap, plan, trello, all of that good stuff. And I have also discovered (after trying to create a game in three days that was a weeks worth of work) that shit takes way longer than you expect. So for the upcoming projects I'll expect them to take double the time I actually think, so if I get it wrong I will be wrong on the right side of the deadline. Now, here is what I've been working on, and what I will be working on.

Music! Music has been a secret passion for me, but I haven't been good enough to feel like it was worth showing to people. But I've been working my way up the leagues and now it is at least somewhat decent. It's still not at a fantastic point, but it is decent enough so it is fun to do. The reason I really got stuck in gamedev is because I feel fulfilled from doing it, I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I'm not really good enough at art yet to feel that way, and that's why I still struggle with it a lot. Anyways, I really enjoy making music now. It's mostly EDM, future bassy stuff and melodic dubstep, but it's a bit all over the place in terms of genre. I have a song up on spotify, but it's pretty dull and I don't like it that much anymore so bleh. I am working on songs I'm way more proud of though, and I'll give a headsup on twitter for you all when new music comes out. Basically, everything that I work on gets thrown to twitter, so if you want to know what I'm up to look there.

Small games all over the place! I did fr33 as a small gamejam for myself, it was supposed to be a one week project but ended up taking two because I wanted to add so much (I'm a feature creep professional thanks for asking), and I was really lazy. It was a lot of fun, but looking back at it the code was a bit of a mess and developing it further would've been quite chaotic. Lesson learned, write good, clean code. It got finished though so I see it as a total win! Himix is probably the next smal game. I began building it after learning Typescript and webdev while working for a smol company here in Sweden. It was built to be played super easily in browser with just a phone, in a way that I could show of my music. It's killed now though, due to me making it way bigger than needed and the codebase being messy. I feel like there is a pattern here. Fuck sake I'm really good at trying to do way to big things with way too little motivation and time. Also if (codebase === "total fucking mess) { pring("It's gonna be pretty hard to finish a bigger project"); }. Yes I did just do that, live with it heeh. Next game: Insector! A super quickly thrown together game with insects battling each other for the ultimate victory. I slapped it together for my cousins, to the point where it worked. But (you guessed it) the codebase was too messy to keep working on, and I had to kill it. But what was in the game was quite fun, you had an insect which you controlled with a joystick on your phone, and then the computer would host the game and everyone would steer themselves on the computer with said phone. Built to support 8 player, so fun for the whole extended family ;). (This is in a very unchronological order now, but fuc it). Another game I worked on is a super small pico8 thingy. (For those out of the loop pico8 is a fantasy game console where you can create a pixelart game without leaving the internal editor. It's super neat actually, and feels very cozy. It's super leightweight as well so you can run it on a potato if you want to). It was a simple shoot 'em up so I could learn how to use pico. I didn't finish it though, because laziness and the game being to big. I wanted to use all the space I could for sprites and stuff, so I just made the scope too damn big to handle. Speaking of pico8, I am trying to convince a game to make a friend (insert braincells here) with me before school starts, just because fun. And I have no idea what it will be but we'll come up with something. That's it for gameprojects though!

I have a minor addiction to pinterest. Nothing more to say. I just like clicking pretty pictures.

NAMECHANGE INCOMING. Hizuvi is a great name. It's cool, it's catchy, and it is hard as hell to pronounce and understand. So Wistpotion is going to be my new alias. I'll be setting up a website and stuff for it, so I can have my own damn custom mail because it's cool. Also website is cool. Anyways, Wistpotion will be my new alias, so prepare for it. As soon as I buy the domain it will be change time. 

Speaking of websites!  I want to try creating superlightweight web animations. Basically they will just be shapes bouncing around, but they will be rad as hell and I'm really looking forward to creating them. Uh yea, I haven't actually made something for it yet, I'm still thinking about how to do it and how much I'm willing to put into it. Because I'm actually planning on taking commissions from artitst and bands if it works out as a cool thing. I need to figure out how I can create tools and so on for it as well, because that shit is pretty important. And I'm trying to cut down on the scope for this, instead of doing the way I usually do and add more and more just because I want to. I'm trying to make this an actual thing, and I will do it. I actually have a pretty good idea on how to do it, it's just a matter of putting in the hours and do it. But this will be something to look forward to, I promise you. 

Project leaf! A VR game about restoring an earthlike asteroid you crash into! Have I even started on it? Nope, but I will soon enough. I am trying to run one project at a time so I don't overwhelm myself, because as you can tell by now, I'm really good at starting a lot of things at the same time. Anyways, I came up with the project while sitting outside and chilling by a fire. I wanted to capture that feeling and put it into a vr experience, because that's would be a super cool way of showing it to people. You are a ball shaped little robot and you move around by grabbing onto the environment and throwing yourself, echo arena and TOSS style hehe. The movement is not really the focus though, the nature and the vibe is what will make the game stick. Just imagine the feeling. You are sitting under looking up into the stars. You hear faint synths playing and the world around you begins to move. When you look around you you see trees and fireflies. Fireflies that you put there, trees that you planted and grew. The asteroid has gone from the flaming hellscape your ship turned it into, but now balance is restored. Are you beginning to get my idea here? This is a project I'll have to keep a super tight scope on as well, because I can easily turn it into a two year thing if I don't control myself. So I'll keep it really short and sweet. Still hasn't started this one. 

Into overload! A co-op horror programming game! After Mark Browning (verb. watching way too much gamemakers toolkit) and peeking at Sebastian Lagues video about coding a coding language I really wanted to combine the panic of don't starve, alien isolation and, of course, phasmophobia, with the logic of programming, and the chaos of doing it in a team. I also want more people to learn programming, and this is a way for me to do that so I'm pretty damn happy with doing it. This kinda came from an idea I had for a roblox game a while ago, but because roblox are poopoos when it comes to implementing any sort of voicechat system the idea died. It was supposed to be a game where four humans play against a monster, that only has hearing. All the five would be players, and would try to avoid the monster while finding a way to kill it and then be able to flee. 

Now, hardware stuff! I bought a bunch of electronic thingies a while ago, to build a midi controller. But I added way too much stuff for a first project, so now I'm working on it again, but with a way smaller goal. Right now (hehe) it is just supposed to be a 4x4 grid with buttons and 4 LEDs on a board, all using midi and an arduino board. I started working on this again today, so wish me the best of luck! 

Anyways I think that is it. I'm figuring out a bunch of stuff about myself as I'm trying to work on all of these at the same time, which is a bit hard. My routines are kinda whack as well which doesn't help, so I'll fix my sleep schedule asap. Anyways that's all! More updates will be coming on twitter, and I will be devlogging here on itch when it's about a gameproject. So things are moving, a bit back and forth, but I'm learning a lot along the way and I'll be showing off things in the near future! Boi boi sleepy sleep!