A week of finishing off

The usual-for-marathon-training Monday mile today…

…and then I spent the rest of the day working on my game. Five days to go till the jam deadline! This week’s game creation tasks are mostly related to polishing and playtesting – I’m very nearly finished with my graphics now and looking forward to putting everything together in the next few days.

Planning a similar day tomorrow – I’m hoping to be able to post about one of the side projects I’ve been working on during this jam period too!

Pixel garage take two
My pixel cars from last week are looking a bit better for some colour. I’ve created two sets of graphics for this game jam – a Spectrum-compatible set for the Spectrum +3 version (which are a bit, um, ‘zany’ as I’ve never tried making Spectrum-compatible graphics before!) and another set for the Adventuron/Spectrum Next releases, made with the hept32 palette. Never thought I’d enjoy making graphics this much when I started out last year!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Robyn Miller – ‘Myst Theme’
The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’
Harry Nilsson – ‘One’
The Sisters Of Mercy – ‘Temple Of Love’
Manami Kiyota – ‘Forest Of The Nopon’

Hours in the day

A four-miler in the heat today…

…and then straight into work, as it’s been one of those ‘clients are like buses’ weeks with everybody sending projects at once! I’ve been keeping an eye on my hour-by-hour time management today and making notes, as I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated recently by busywork taking up more time than it deserves. Hoping to be able to streamline things a bit over the next few weeks, as I’ve got a lot of projects to be getting on with and I want them all finished by mid-July so that I can start getting some day-long videogaming sessions in! Might as well make the most of not going anywhere for summer holidays this year 🙂

Looking forward to an evening of graphics creation, and hoping for another earlyish start tomorrow so I can get another good chunk of work done.

Red diary
Geth’s new diary for academic year 2020-21 arrived today. He ordered it early so that we can start planning out CoronaYear 2: The Rescheduling. I LOVE the colour so much that I might be adding a red diary of my own to my Christmas list this year ?

Today’s earworm playlist:

Melanie C and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes – ‘Never Be The Same Again’
Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Daniel Bedingfield – ‘Gotta Get Thru This’

Project addiction

The usual mile today…

…which was fine with me, because I had a lot of things to get on with today!

The day job work is continuing to trickle back in, which is great. I’ve also got lots to do on the text adventure front as mentioned yesterday, and because I’ve obviously not got enough projects on the go at the moment, I decided to start revamping my business website today! This was a planned thing for this summer, because from August I’ll be updating my terms and conditions and putting my prices up for the first time in a few years. However, the website revamp is going to take me a few weeks, I expect, because between the running, work and game creation, I don’t have an awful lot of spare time right now!

I’ve not been at all successful at dragging myself out of bed early in recent weeks, but I really am going to try tomorrow as it’s meant to be quite hot and my four-mile run could end up being a bit miserable if I leave it too late.

Pixel garage
An in-progress scene from my latest game. For games with non-goblin settings, I always end up writing in a ton of cars for some reason, and then massively regretting it when it comes to doing the graphics. Drawing cars is tough!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Duran Duran – ‘Late Bar’

Potential futures

Just a mile today…

…because I did three miles yesterday and am doing another three miles tomorrow in order to achieve various Strava challenges. I was disappointed not to get my planned half marathon length run done at the weekend, but have decided to spend another four weeks building up to it and am feeling a lot more comfortable with my running balance this week as a result.

It kind of feels like nothing is certain at the moment and so I’m sort of planning for a lot of potential futures instead of one definite one. One of the more frivolous of these potential futures involves me and Geth getting an XBOX Series X (the next-generation XBOX, released this Christmas) that will be backwards-compatible with the three previous XBOX models. As such, I have ordered a couple of XBOX One games online despite the fact that we don’t own an XBOX One. Getting in before everyone else does, while they’re still cheap 😀

I managed to get my work, admin and housework done fairly promptly today and so have been working on various game creation-related things for the rest of the day. I’ll be getting back to my non-running exercise tomorrow, but I’m hoping to get a good chunk of work done on the next game in the afternoon as well.

Spectrum-compatible graphic
For the upcoming Adventuron game jam, an optional challenge is to make the game portable to ZX Spectrum. This requires compatible graphics, and so I’ve been playing around with unfamiliar software today!

Today’s earworm playlist:

The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’
Duran Duran – ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
September 87 – ‘Bad Dream Baby’
Robbie Williams – ‘Karma Killer’
Wham! – ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’

Goblin Quest

I have just released Goblin Quest, my latest text adventure game created using the Adventuron system. It’s the first game I’ve finished that wasn’t released as an entry for a game jam.

Goblin Quest
A location in Goblin Quest.

Goblin Quest was my first design for the most recent Adventuron game jam, which focused on treasure hunt style games with limited text. As such, it mostly follows the rules of that jam – other than the intro and endgame, the responses are limited to six words. However, there are some cutscenes with line after line of six-word responses, which probably stretch the rules a bit! It was for this reason that I decided halfway through the treasure hunt jam to go with a different game design, as I didn’t feel that these multi-line exposition sequences were really within the spirit of the jam rules.

I have also added graphics to this game – graphics weren’t allowed in the treasure hunt jam, although I did release an updated graphical version of my jam entry, Goblin Decathlon, after the fact. For Goblin Quest, I used a different style of graphics from my previous games – rather than creating basic pixel art from scratch, I went analogue and drew the graphics with paper and pencil before transferring them to the computer and editing from there. I’ve talked about my graphics creation process in a previous post; while I do find it a challenge due to not being very artistic, it’s become one of the most enjoyable parts of game design for me. I also find that graphics make navigating text adventures a lot easier – I’m prone to getting a bit lost when every room looks like a couple of lines of text.

I’ve been working on Goblin Quest on and off since I finished the graphical version of Goblin Decathlon, and am thrilled that I’ve managed to get it finished and released this weekend – just in time, as there’s a new Adventuron jam starting on Wednesday, and so I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into a brand new project!

You can play Goblin Quest here.

Still pixelating

Another mile this morning, just like the rest of this week…

…which has been really good, actually, as I feel properly rested and ready to go for my half marathon length run on Sunday. I feel that this has been a good plan and will be doing the same once every four weeks (the aim is to stay half marathon fit while I don’t have any races to train for – I am fully expecting all my postponed-to-the-autumn races to be re-postponed to next spring, so I think I’ll probably be doing this programme for some time).

I’ve spent the rest of the day doing my graphics for my text adventure. One more to go this evening, and then I can spend the next couple of days polishing and finalising the game! I’m hoping to have it ready to release by Saturday evening, but we’ll see.

Same again tomorrow… I hope.

realMyst: Masterpiece Edition
Once I’ve got a few hours free to play games again as well as just making them, I will be diving into this new acquisition. Looking forward to seeing how they’ve updated the world I first explored in 1993 🙂

Today’s earworm playlist:

Thought Beings – ‘Shakedown’
Tyler Lyle – ‘Lost And Found’ [The Midnight Remix]
Rebecca Black – ‘Friday’

Absorbing hours

Just a mile again today…

…for the same reason as yesterday, but also because I wanted to get going with my game creation stuff. I’m still working on my graphics and they’re taking aaaaages ’cause I want to get them right! It’s a really relaxing thing to do though.

Same again tomorrow, with a bit of added housework (boring, but needs to be done).

Flower
More flowers from the back garden!

Today’s earworm playlist:

Michael Land – ‘Edward van Helgen’
Duran Duran – ‘What Happens Tomorrow’
Michael Land – ‘Monkey Island Main Theme’
Ollie Wride – ‘Back To Life’

Bit of a blip

Just a mile today…

…which will probably be the case for the next three days too, as I’m trying to have a bit of a rest week before doing a half marathon-length run on Sunday.

So far during lockdown, I’ve not really felt in control of my diet, and I’m starting to worry about it a bit. I am still ‘attending’ Slimming World by paying the reduced lockdown rate, weighing myself on Thursday mornings and texting the result to my consultant, but I’ve not been doing the Zoom groups or anything because I hate teleconferencing (largely due to my hearing difficulties) and the idea makes me really stressed. I have been trying to get in as much exercise as possible, but having less to do in life means I think about and want food more often, and generalised situational anxiety means I sometimes don’t have the energy to cook healthy meals. As such, I’m hovering about a stone above my target weight, and I’m having real difficulty getting it off.

Last night Geth and I ordered takeaway pizza… again. This was justified by having done a lot of exercise and it being a bank holiday and me being out of sorts. However, it made me feel ill all night, and I still feel ill today, and I just don’t want to feel ill and unhealthy like this anymore.

As such, I’ve identified some acceptable lower-calorie options for ‘easy’ meals that I can just bung in the oven when I can’t face cooking. Most of them are not really ‘on plan’ in a Slimming World sense, but will at least allow enough of a calorie deficit that I can hopefully start losing the excess weight again.

Anyway, today has largely involved making graphics for my current game project, which I’m really enjoying. I’ve got extra motivation now to finish and release it by the weekend, because it was announced yesterday that a new Adventuron jam starts on Sunday and so I will want to focus my energies on the game I’m making for that!

Hoping to have time to work on it tomorrow as well.

Pixel graphic
This graphic is black and white for now, but will have some colour soon.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Michael Land – ‘Firing The Cannon’
RingFit Adventure – ‘Battle Theme’
The Midnight – ‘Memories’

Cleaner, cosier, comfier

Just a mile for this morning’s run…

…as I had various other things to do. Looking forward to some longer runs later in the week.

It was a bit of an odd weekend as I was trying to keep myself from feeling too down about the fact that if not for the coronavirus situation, I would have been in London running the marathon. By and large, I managed to distract myself with videogames, and I did a couple of short, fast runs to test out my pace a bit. I also spent most of yesterday trying to solve technical issues, as our SteamLink box was playing up again. I’ve told Geth that we have to keep an eye on it by turning it on every day, which provides lots of excuses for videogaming this week!

I’ve also managed to get a really good clean of the house done. I’d been neglecting it a bit, because I usually base my cleaning schedule around when we’re expecting company… and obviously we’ve not had any recently. However, I’ve spent the last couple of days getting on with it, and the house feels a lot nicer now.

I’ve got a small amount of day job work lined up for this week, which is great, and I’ve got several more housework-type tasks to get on with as well. I also want to finish my graphics for my next adventure game before the end of Camp NaNo on Thursday, so I’ve got plenty things to be getting on with! It’s nice, though, because it provides a bit of structure to the day. I’d obviously love it if I could just sit and play videogames the whole time, but I think I’d probably lose track of days and nights as a result! Oh, for those student summers when I’d regularly be playing until 7am and it didn’t matter…

I’m still getting a good few hours in every evening though, and I find I’ve got time for lots of reading and TV-watching too, so if I ignore the general world situation, life is quite relaxed at the moment!

Tikiboo Run London tights
Yesterday, I wore what should have been my race kit. I’m looking forward to taking these special London-themed Tikiboos out for some longer runs to make sure that they will hold up during the marathon.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Tomohito Nishiura – ‘Froenborg’
Yasunori Mitsuda – ‘Elysium, In The Blue Sky’
Abba – ‘I Have A Dream’

Sleep and sunshine

Just a mile today…

…because I overslept this morning. Nine and a half hours of sleep needed last night, apparently! I had hoped that the mornings getting gradually lighter and sunnier would wake me up earlier, but it’s not happening yet.

I’ve spent the afternoon doing housework, admin and graphics creation, and am looking forward to another evening of gaming – I’ve got a good stack of 3DS games on the go at the moment.

3DS games
Some of the games I have on the go right now (although I should put Miracle Mask back on the shelf because I 100%ed it the other day). I’ve probably got about a year’s worth of games I want to finish on the 3DS before moving on to a Switch Lite, although I may manage it sooner than that depending on how long lockdown lasts (and the extent to which my other gaming consoles and PC capture my attention!).

Today’s earworm playlist:

Revo – ‘The Land Of Radiant Flowers’
Queen – ‘Another One Bites The Dust’
Sting – ‘Englishman In New York’
Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Let The Battles Begin!’