Steam Release Incoming!

Game Update

It’s finally happening! We are releasing the game on Steam Early access on Apr 22. I can’t believe this day is finally here! I had some hiccups with getting all my files in order but for the most part it seems to be solid now. My artist also managed to get me some images to fix the Hero and Logo capsule images.

Moving forward I will be focused on building the levels out first and working on the dialogue in the stages. I probably won’t add a lot of new enemy groups to the game right now during testing, but in the future I will probably build out some new squads after a first pass.

I have narrowed the text additions down to adding just a yes/no dialogue option at the end of a text chain which will do things like adjust the reputation, gold, or stats on troops making the choices. It would be nice in the future to do things like check for items (which don’t exist yet), check for specific party members, or recruit enemy troops but that will have to wait.

Focusing on a minimum viable product will be step one and then we will see what we have time to add on after that. I don’t think that any of the add on features that I’ve set aside for now will need something specific in the stages which will help.

Personal Update

Had a rough week. A triumph and some set backs. Still praying through a lot of it. Today especially I’m really focused on my girlfriend as things have come up and it’s become a bit complicated. I suppose that’s just how relationships are sometimes.

The boys are back now and I feel like this time I was pretty productive, almost managing to get all my taxes done which is a good feeling. I have a couple of items to double back on, but overall I’m in what seems to be good shape.

I’m not sure if I’m making headway with the hospital or not as I had a pretty gruff conversation with them this week as well. I spoke with some other people that use the same hospital and they are also having a lot of issues which probably means the problem is widespread. Honestly when it’s this bad I tend to blame the leadership.

New Systems Old Systems

Game Update

Things continue to move forward with the Steam release. Right now the major speed bump are a couple of items that I’m correcting for Steam to get things in line with their requirements. I moved my EULA text which was in the wrong section. I found out that the Library Hero and Library Logo need to work together. Specifically the Library Hero image is a background with the logo being a foreground element that will slide a bit as the background image moves around. I have to make some more modifications to my images to fit the correct pixel requirements.

I am continually looking at what features I want to include in the final version. I have a list of features on the early access part of the Steam Page and I’ve gone back and forth on what to do next. I’ve thought about at least 14 major features that I could add, but I’ve also thought about adding nothing new and just focusing on finishing out the other levels in the game. I think this week I’m going to focus on working on stages. I might even decide to steam some of my development sessions.

I’m looking to release on 22 Apr next month for Steam. I will be submitting my Steam page soon in order to get it reviewed. I was surprised with the turn around time on submission last time. They promise 72 hours and they had it done in 24 hours.

Personal Update

Although Steam has been very responsive in taking care of business I can’t say the same of the medical system that I’ve had to deal with for my autistic son. It’s been five months now and they still haven’t been able to fill out one piece of paper for my insurance. I even printed the insurance document out for them and walked it in. I’ve been noticing a lack of customer service across the board in many areas. I’m not sure if it’s fatigue from world events, or if that’s just the norm for where I live. It’s true what they say that sometimes all you have to do is make something a little more difficult and people will give up.

My kids are away this week with family which gives me a break and I’m hoping that I’ll take more advantage than I have in the past. I’ve found that when the children aren’t around a lot of my habits that are triggered with them aren’t in place. Often I found myself making dinner watching TV and then going to sleep. I’m more aware of it now thanks to the book “Atomic Habits”, but being aware is really only step one.

Last weekend my girlfriend came to visit and we had a relaxing weekend. I’m very hopeful for this relationship. I feel like it’s going in the right direction. I feel like we need to do some work together next, because most of what we have done lately has been the fun parts of the relationship. Things can be different if we are focused on working together on a task. Next month is a major landmark for us as it will be six months which is a very big deal for me. I haven’t had a relationship go longer than six months in a while.

I was at church on Sunday morning and although some people may not understand I felt like God was speaking to me about my video game. The last time He spoke it was about joining the praise and worship team which went well. It was strange to me because it felt like He was saying that I needed to move in the direction of creating a new dialogue system mechanic. I couldn’t stop thinking about it during the service. Maybe it was just because I’ve been more focused on getting my game done. I don’t think I want to say much more about this system accept that I might be calling it a mantel or capsule system. It will raise troops from the players ranks to become the heroes that will interact and build story around.

Next Steps

Game Update

I continue to work on the list of the features I want to have in the game for the final release. It’s easy to succumb to feature creep and think that I want the moon. Sticking to my pillars for development helps a lot here. I’m leaning toward upgrades to the dialogue and trying to figure out some sort of main character creation. I’m still not sure how I want to proceed.

Steam is coming along, I wanted to get my store page up this weekend but I got busy with other things and didn’t get to it. I might try to do something after writing this blog entry. Working night shift kind of killed Saturday morning, and I had other pressing things on my to do list that day. All the main chores for the weekend are completed and so I should have a couple of hours during the daytime to try and get things done.

I’m closer than I have ever been to releasing on Steam now. Once I have the store page up it will take a minimum of two weeks to release and so I will need to look at timelines for steam and other releases to try and time it just right. I also want to have some more content in the final steam build and maybe some steam functionality like achievements working. It’s a lot more complex than every other platform I have put the game on so far that’s for sure. Speaking of which I also put the game up on itch.io.

The aspect system is something I’m continually exploring. I’m looking into giving each troop a buff to a key stat that is in line with their personal aspect. That should be a a pretty simple process. The more I play with the aspect system, the more I start to understand what it is at a core level which informs decisions on how to use it. I started to think about how it would relate to the populations in the cities and the various regions in the game. I also started to think about how the various factions would use aspects to worship the same deity and what kind of arguments this might create to divide the people.

I have thought about not adding any additional features to the game and just building the rest of the levels for it. This might be OK, but I have to think if I don’t change things up now and then the game will get stale. Still it would make completing the game a lot simpler.

Personal Update

Gearing up for the spring break week by coordinating with family to take the boys for that time. There have been some logistical difficulties but I think that I have it mostly figured out. I also get to see my girlfriend that weekend and I’m looking forward to that again. It will be good to take a break from working to just focus on relationships for a while. I should be able to get a lot done that week as well with the boys away.

Still navigating Twitter, and it feels like I’m making some headway but it might be to soon to tell. I took some time to purchase a game called Queenchantment and try it out. It’s in early access and although there is some polishing to be done with it, it does do a good job at being a tower defense game. I like the aesthetic of the game which gives me vibes of the card game Boss Monster. One of the interesting things about the game is the amount of constructs you create which get destroyed very regularly. They need to be rebuilt quickly which isn’t the same as other tower defense games in which often you only need to build something one time.and then upgrade it from there for most of them.

Aftermath and Next Steps

Game Update

Releasing took a lot out of me. I’m glad that I took time off of work and that I happened to have the presidents day weekend to help out with an additional day. I worked all weekend to make sure that everything was lined up for the best release I could provide. Spreadsheets were scrutinized the most during the process. My oldest son helped me a lot with testing which ensured that players could finish part one of the game. I was less active on social media and twitter as I was focused on getting everything ready.

On release day I did get some interest, but it was about what I had expected. Another interesting thing happened when I finally got my authorization to put the game on Steam that morning on the 22nd. I had a real dilemma as I could have released there as well if I rushed it and worked all day. The problem is that the chances of a mistake being made were pretty high. I decided not to do it.

After releasing the game I finally set myself to the task of creating the trailer. It went a lot faster than I thought that it would and I’m very happy with the result. It feels good enough for now, and I think that it shows off the game well. The soundtrack that my musician created helped out a lot too.

This past week, and during testing one thing was bugging me about the game. I had noticed that on the force organization screen the attack numbers weren’t quite reporting correctly. I checked the spreadsheets yesterday and found the issue. It would seem that I was reporting all five rows as the value that was in row 1. Luckily this wouldn’t effect combat, just what the players expectations for attacks might be.

Moving forward I have more stages to build, but before I do that I think that it’s going to be important to build in a system that will be better for dialogue during the stage. I need to start turning more to story and really figure out what this game will be about. There’s a lot of world affairs right now that might subconsciously work their way into the plot-line.

I’m starting to think more and more about how I can create random enemy squads, and possibly even random stages. I do have a way to load random stages on a single stage click, and so that’s a start. Worst case scenario I make a bunch of random stages and find a way to increase their difficulty in some way related to the players actions.

I’m not sure when I will get the game on Steam but I have started the process of adding assets to the page, and writing out the descriptions. I will probably wait at least a month or maybe try to hit the next big Steam indie event.

Personal Update

Things are still going well with my girlfriend, although there were a couple of bumps in the road this week. It’s been four months already since we started talking which is kind of crazy. I should see her again soon when things line up for us. She’s been very supportive which is so important to me.

After releasing my game my attention turned back to my family and I have a renewed fire to try and get some things handled with my boys. They have been slacking in quite a few areas and it’s time to bring the proverbial hammer down. Sometimes I think I’m to hard on them.

The value of twitter still remains to be seen. On the plus side somehow in this past week I gained 100 followers which is pretty crazy. If this keeps up I will pass my old record which was around 1300. A tweet came up in my feed which kind of lends itself what I think it might be though. It feels like most of the people I’m engaging are indie developers that are doing amazing work, but not actual customers. I will say that I’ve had some solid connections, but I don’t think they are my target audience. One good thing is that my hashtage #SixAspects seems to have started to get picked up by twitter now as it auto-fills it for me and now says about 100 tweets, instead of less than 100.

Maybe something will happen on twitter eventually but I’m not sure. I’m considering setting up a bot to do some work on there for me, but I like having an organic account. I only really use it when I’m relaxing watching TV, eating, or walking on my treadmill, etc... Right now it’s the kind of publicity that I can afford, and maybe I can consider more when I get closer to the full release.

I think one of the main things to understand with Twitter, or social media in general is what it does to your brain. It creates the same response that gamblers get. We keep scrolling because we are randomly rewarded. Also I saw a tweet where someone was frustrated with the amount of interaction they were getting. I understand that twitter can hide your tweets also if they don’t like the things you’re saying, just like other social media platforms. It’s a bit disturbing to me the things that these platforms can do to push an agenda. I guess that’s something else I can put in my video game maybe.

In order to keep sanity on social media I’ve taken to doing the following.

• Give 99 and take 1 - this simply means that I do my best to find ways to engage in meaningful ways to add to and not take away from others

• Same team mentality - figure out a way to make things a win win for everyone in the interaction, if I feel my interaction would have low value I don’t do it a good example of this would be how I interact with hashtags like #screenshotsaturday . I only reply with my project if they ask, otherwise I only retweet them.

• Reply as much as possible, when I have something that is of value

• Only use social media when I have nothing better to do, if I have work/chores/human engagement/etc… those things take priority

• Freedom from outcomes - I don’t have expectations for people to reply, follow, retweet, or my posts to have high engagement - I don’t check my metrics often

• Abundance mindset - I feel value inside myself and I abundantly give what I can without expectations, if it isn’t well received that’s no big deal I’m to abundant to worry about someone else’s problems

The final countdown!

Game Update

Working all week and weekend to get the game out the door. My oldest son has been a huge help in doing the testing. It’s the 11th hour and so I’m trying to make sure that everything is as good as it can be. There will be more changes after release but this needs to feel like as complete an experience as I can make it.

We added in new enemy types for the dragons and golems. That extended the time it took to get things going but it was well worth it. They aren’t fully implemented with their animations and spells but that’s ok because they are minimally in the game. I had some wonderful face art for them from my artist and I wanted to make sure people got to see it. The dragons look so cute!

Lot’s of spreadsheet updates primarily to add more squads to the game which in turn means that I have to add them into the stages. I added about fifteen new squads to the game as I noticed that there was a lack of seven person squads, and then after doing some testing with dragons and golems I made some squads specifically focused on them. I’m very happy with the results as the stages now have more enemy variety instead of just ratmen, giant snakes, and the occasional humanoid squad. It adds so much to the game and I can’t wait to add even more in the future.

I also want to allow players the ability to recruit some of the monster type troops into their army. I think we will be building a feature in the future to allow players that by encountering random troops in stages. I’ve already had an idea in which I place no 3D graphics and a single enemy as a wandering monster which can be recruited. I will have to add a button to combat that will spawn for these wandering monsters and allow players to persuade them which will have a chance of failure. I could base it on alignment possibly.

The only thing left to do is a video trailer for the game and get it uploaded to the websites where I will sell it. It will definitely be on GumRoad and possibly some other websites. I’m still having issues with my new EIN as it looks like it wasn’t submitted for the type of business that I need it to be.

Personal Update

Taking time out for my girlfriend off and on this week. I already miss her but I will see her again soon. I’m also carving out time to watch TV with my boys at dinner time. We’ve been watching a lot of “Step by Step”. I like the wholesomeness of these old shows, but it’s also obvious that there is some agenda in the messaging as well. It’s important to actively watch what you take in to your mind. I did a lot less with social media this week. Not much else to say as all my focus is on getting this game out the door.

Finishing touches and Indie marketing

Game Update

Added one final feature this week which is a tracker for the game economy in the stages. It helped me understand where all the money was going a lot better. I just recently did a spreadsheet scrub and will need to do at least one more before I release. When I may need to think about some of the troop costs that are being used.

The economy will need a couple of number tweaks as right now the player is having to play some stages over and over to make enough to pay for their troops. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing though. Stages in which players just sit for even one day are impossible to turn a profit on, but maybe that’s a good thing. There is a small loophole to this strategy anyway.

The best way to make money seems to be defeating enemy troops. Everything else seems somewhat incidental. More testing is needed. Also the experience that troops are gaining might need another look as well. There are times when troops will skip three levels, but the catch up of that hasn’t seemed to detrimental honestly. I like how troops seem to be growing at different rates throughout the game.

It might be interesting to include past mission towns in some sort of passive income for the troops. There’s no way I could have a feature like that built before release however so I will think about it some more. I have thought about having an army graphic that moves around the map and also charges for movement.

Speaking of add on graphics, I noticed a chance for an improvement in our class screen. We need to add some sort of small graphic accent to classes the troops are allowed to change into. There seem to be some issues where I am needlessly clicking around looking for available classes for a troop. Another option might be graying out, or hiding classes that cannot be swapped to.

I got back on twitter last weekend and this past weekend to promote my game. I started using the hashtag #screenshotsaturday. It’s made a lot of difference for engagement! I think this is the most interactions I’ve had on the platform since back when I used to stream and do other. When I post I typically use the technique of “give 99 take 1”, “freedom from outcomes.

I still need to create a trailer for when I eventually get back on steam. I got a letter from them today saying they still cannot find my EIN. I’ll call the controlling authority about it tomorrow to see if it has posted yet. Something tells me it’s still to new.

Personal Update

I sprinted all week to have the game done so that I could spend the weekend focusing on my girlfriend. Last year my Valentines Day was a complete disaster. A car accident I couldn’t look away from although I can’t say that I didn’t see the writing on the wall for. I’m happy to say I was able to put down my game development to focus, and the most I did was post a bit on twitter during down/waiting time.

We celebrated a lot this weekend. Valentines day, my birthday, and the game release. There’s a lot that’s happening all at once. I’m happy that I have that feminine support from her. I feel very blessed in my life right now. I feel so blessed that I noticed that I’m looking for where the next crisis is going to come from.

My boys have finally started to start to normalize. We made some big strides this past week to keep the house more clean, and for the kids to stop raising their voices so much. They haven’t had the time that they usually would have had with me but we still managed to get some TV time in watching old 90s sitcoms. I miss television with some actual focus for a message that’s good for our society. I don’t see much of that in shows produced now.

I’m still keeping up with my treadmill regimen which requires me to get on their once a day. It’s been very good for me. That said I packed so much into this weekend that I’m falling asleep with this blog entry. Looking forward to next week which will be the last one before the final release of the game.

Make It So

Game Update

This week has been difficult as I am pushing toward the 22 Feb early access launch for Six Aspects. Steam has not accepted me yet still, and I have submitted my documents 3 times now. I applied to Humble Bundle, Good Old Games, and the Epic Games Store. I kind of expected it might be more difficult to get on those platforms and don’t know a lot about Good Old Games but it was worth a try I figured.

I received a rejection letter from Good Old Games saying that Six Aspects is to niche and to small in scale. I feel that the scale is fair for now, but I feel that niche is why we are indie developers so that seemed a little silly. Then again there are a lot of things that are in the engine that are mostly hidden from the player that they won’t realize are happening.

I also looked at releasing on Amazon but it was difficult to understand what that would entail and it seemed like they want a monthly fee which I can’t justify if the game isn’t selling. Additionally, there were a bunch of varying cuts that they are going to take out of the product and it wasn’t clear what that was going to be. I can try it if I get a regular revenue stream going on other platforms, but right now I don’t feel like I can justify it, especially as this is early access and will change over time.

Finally after a suggestion from my mentor Chris I tried out Gum Road. It was so easy to set up and it looks like they host digital projects no problems. The only issue I found with the platform is that all the game related sales are for game assets and engines. It does give me the exact capabilities I’m looking for however. I’m able to push new updates as I make them to users that have a login account and have made the purchases already. So for now on Feb 22 “Six Aspects” will be releasing on Gum Road at a minimum unless some of these other platforms pick it up.

I managed to fix a bug on entering stages. Leaders weren’t reading correctly and halting the start of stages. I managed to fix the issue, but I might just put a work around in that will bypass and auto assign leaders instead of displaying an error message which forces players to make the assignments themselves.

I surfaced the cost of the army on the Force Organization screen. I think that creating these balance sheets should help players focus and realize that there is a financial element to the game. While I’m doing that I’m refining the money system in the game. I started to add more information during the stages but found out that enemy squads with dead members were getting counted for gold for the player every time the player entered combat instead of just when they die one time. Still working on fixing this but I have a way forward on it. I am considering removing gold received from enemies during combat but this leads to another issue which is that experience is likely behaving the same way. I think I can fix them both at the same time however.

Renamed the “Toy Box” to the muster area after speaking with my buddy Aron about it. I considered some other names too. I’m glad that I settled on this though. It seems a lot more accessible this way. I also added some more tool tips and extra information for the economy in the game. That turned up some more issues with the combat that I will fix this week.

Personal Update

Looking forward to next weekend with Valentines Day coming up. I have already put everything in place for that. I’ve been focusing on the game so much that it’s pushed out a lot of my personal stuff. There’s not a lot to update here this week.

Distribution

Game Update

Started the task of scrubbing all the spreadsheets that run the objects tied to all the characters. In doing so I discovered some issues with the combat system. Namely, the way that we are handling hit vs agility attacks wasn’t quite right, the numbers weren’t scaling correctly. After fixing that I discovered that damage was being duplicated as the character stat was being over written with the combat ability damage. Both stats get added together before damage is assessed. I’m still going over the spreadsheets to normalize stats for a the troops. It was helpful to plot them all out around the Aspect circle to have some idea where each class would exist in relation to each other. This gave me an idea of what stats should be higher while others are

I found that the critical system also needed a second look. I noticed that two sets of my six skills are linked. I decided to tie critical attacks to hit points. The idea is that as a troop looses health they will become easier to get a critical attacks on. I think this makes a fair amount of sense, and it makes me consider other ideas like reducing the stats with HP, however I feel that might make battles drag out. The current idea with ramping up critical attacks feeds into our design pillar of short stages.

I’m still having issues getting my new Steam Account up and running and have resorted to looking at three other digital platforms. I’ve resolved myself to get this game released in some form or another. I want to have it finalized soon for its 1.0 version. I’ve even considered burning disks or using cheap USB drives for physical distribution. It would seem that putting software on an optical disk isn’t going to work for my needs. I might look into what it will take to create a log in server with digital products that can be downloaded. I expect people will pirate the game but I want to have the ability to take care of legit customers too.

I finalized my artwork last Friday and will get final images on Monday. I’m very happy with the way that it turned out and can’t wait to have it up on a digital store. I’m also planning to see what it will take to create a store in which fans can purchase tee shirts and other items with the artwork on them. I thought it would be cool to get the 6 aspect wheel on a licence plate for the front of my vehicles and possibly create some other advertising materials.

Personal Update

I’ve only made it to chapter 3 in Tony Robbins book “Awaken the Giant Within” and it’s given me a lot of resolve to get the game out on Feb 22. It’s probably why I’ve started to look at so many other ways to get that task accomplished. I am happy that I haven’t become to impetuous to get it done yet however. I might have wasted a lot of money making disks that won’t be useful for people that will want the software. I’m considering going the USB route as that might be better overall. It looks like I shouldn’t need more than 1GB thumb drives if I decide to do that.

I have managed to incorporate my morning work outs with my treadmill and it’s having a good effect on me overall. It’s made things a lot easier to have built up my own gym at the house. There’s a lot less excuses to get the work done. I also like the fact that my treadmill keeps it fresh with the way that it does content. I wish that I could develop software for it, but it’s a closed platform.

I had a small emergency this week as my house keeper was in a car accident with my vehicle and my youngest child. My son and the car are OK but my house keeper is a little worse for wear. I’m hoping that she will be feeling better this week. I’m so lucky to have finally found someone that does a good job with the kids, is reliable, and really goes above and beyond.

It feels like once I resolved to release and really focus on making that happen I have all kinds of distractions that are trying to take me off my path. One of my sons is having more issues at school now and so I’ve had to do a couple of phone calls with his teachers. At one point he had to re accomplish a large school assignment which I had to hold his hand through to get it done.

I started listening to the book “Cashflow Quadrant” which was written by the author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” It’s been interesting to gain more understanding about the different ways people can make money. The break down has been enlightening and I can see how the actions I’m taking with my finances. Reading these books has really made me look at money differently. I’m interested in his board game “Cash Flow” but I’ve resolved myself to reduce and eliminate as much frivolous spending as possible.

Overall there is a lot going on but I need to focus to get this product to market. It’s very true what industry people have said to me, “making the game is the easy part, everything else is the hard part.”

Taking the Steam Out of My Engine

Game Update

I spent the bulk of this week hunting down some of the business side of thing that need to get done. Due to my decision to change my business from Texas to Florida it changed my EIN which created a problem with everything I had in place to this point. I had to get a new bank account, a new EIN, and a new Steam Account. Right now if the game is delayed past the Feb 22 date it will be due to not having a Steam account in place to host the game. I suppose I could always do a release on my website. Maybe I should talk to Humble Bundle about options. I just thought about that while I was writing this.

I also need to get on putting this trailer for the game together as well. I ran into a ton of technical issues when trying to get the footage done, or moved, or edited. It feels like forever since I have had any new footage posted to my YouTube channel. I did manage to set up my Twitch again and I let my son stream Terraria today which seemed to go well. Maybe I’ll take a break and see if I can do a game stream sometime, or ask my oldest to do that to promote the game.

I did everything I could to get the ball rolling on the Steam account. The issue seems to be that they cannot find my new EIN. I have been told that it won’t show up in the system for 30 days. I sent them all the paperwork to show that I am legit but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

I got some of the first concepts from my artist this week, and so I sent a lengthy feedback to her to get some more focus. I’m happy that she has agreed to do the logo for Lancer Entertainment and her first pass on it has been very promising for me. Her artwork for Six Aspects has a lot of good points but ultimately it looked very cyberpunk futuristic and not really medieval. Hoping my feedback will help her zero in on exactly what we are going for. It’s also difficult to get the text to show up at such a small scale which was another noted issue although I liked what she tried to do with the lettering. She stacked “Aspects” over “Six” which created a cool effect that wasn’t readable enough at small scale.

Personal Update

Still finding time on the phone with my girlfriend. We went exclusive recently and will be seeing each other again close to the Valentines Day holiday next month. That’s also really close to when I want to release and so I’d like to have as much done as possible so that I can focus all my attention on her when she visits me here. She’s been very supportive of me.

I carved some time out to go to my church’s “first steps” class tonight and it was very enjoyable. I really feel good about making this place my church home. I felt called to join the praise and worship team and so I have been auditioning and working on some of their music. I bumped into the worship leader today and he will be sending me some more music to work on soon. I let him know it wasn’t any rush due to my video game release. It’s interesting to think about this now as when I started getting serious about game development I distinctly felt that God had told me to work in the children’s ministry and move away from the praise and worship team when I lived in San Antonio. Now it would seem that God wants me to go back to it so many years later now that the project is moving into its first major release phase.

I spoke with a friend in marketing tonight. We are buddies from a self development group we used to be a part of together. It was interesting hearing his perspective on what I am going through right now with this release. One of the big take aways I had from the conversation was when he told me that Jeff Bezos had said, “there are 2 kinds of decisions, ones you can reverse and ones you can’t.” It really struck a chord with me as even after release if there are problems with the game they can be fixed later. That said I have done my best to make sure the product is a cut above the standard “early access” game on Steam. I have said all along that I will be building out the rest of the levels, adding more troops, more spells, more content in general after release. The game is good enough as it has a beginning middle and end, and very few bugs none of which are completely game breaking.

I guess the main thing on my mind right now is getting this trailer done and getting my new Steam account set up to sell the game. Hoping I can get it moving along very soon.

Overcoming Road Blocks

Game Update

Managed to knock a couple of small polish items out this week while I followed up with a lot of the business side of things. It turns out that when you change your business from one state to another it effects pretty much everything. It turns out that as soon as you change your EIN it means you need to start over with the various entities that require it instead of just changing it.

I spoke with my artist and gave some more direction on what I need for the final artwork. Hoping to see that soon before the end of the month. I still have some artwork available if this doesn’t work or if it gets delayed. I might also be getting a new Lancer Entertainment logo as well.

Personal Update

Things are moving along well with my relationship. I was able to meet my girlfriend this weekend which is exciting as I thought it might be some time before things would line up. She’s been very supportive, and I like where things are going. That said I’m doing my best to be careful going forward.

The treadmill has been working out well as I’ve been encouraged to work out for the past week. At one point in time I asked myself the question, “what would happen if I dressed well all the time?” I changed a lot of who I was in order to learn how to be fashionable. I’ve started to ask myself a similar question about working out which is, “what would happen if I used my treadmill every day?”

I noticed that I have started to feel better but haven’t started to lose weight. We have a weight loss pool at work. I suppose I’m trusting the book Atomic Habits which talks about the concept of doing a lot of work and having a break through that will present a lot of results all at once. I kind of want to challenge the notion of necessary rest when working out for gains as well.

Remember, and Boldly Move Forward

Game Update

Building up more footage this week and a minor setback doing so when there were some sound problems with my recording computer. More importantly I found out that although I have a business licence in Florida I have not obtained an EIN yet which I will need to update on Steam as the one I used to have was for the old Texas company. That is my number one priority this week.

I did create a new opening splash screen for the game to replace the old one with the old company name. I was happy to get that done, but I need to buckle down and do a lot of video editing moving forward. My oldest son has been good about putting footage together for me.

I also contacted my artist about the “key art” that we will need for Steam. I have a meeting set up this week and look forward to see what direction she ultimately went in. I might have made a bit of a greedy request to see if she might also whip something up for my company logo as that was on my mind again this past week. I spent some of my break time drawing new graphics and moving away from the night with the long lance to try out a castle idea, which is interesting but probably not as good as the original idea.

Personal Update

Things have progressed and I’m very happy to be in a committed relationship again. I always hope that this will be the one that sticks, but I’m also cautious. It feels better than all the others this time, and so I really see possibilities. I suppose it couldn’t come at a better time as I will need all the support I can get as I push toward the Feb 22 release.

I spent some time this week framing my old Hex the Shards of Fate posters and some super hero posters to hang on all the nails in my house which is kind of a long story. Suffice it to say that I had a lot of someone else’s artwork in my house and then they went up in smoke which was pretty heart breaking. It’s good to see something hanging on all those nails I put in now.

I couldn’t help but think about my time creating videos for a couple years on my YouTube channel for the online card game Hex. It was quite a time in my life as I was working on my bachelors degree, learning game development, trying to hold together a failing marriage, and putting my best foot forward as an instructor. The game is gone now, it will in all probability never be played again due to litigation between a massive juggernaut of a company and a small peon. In a way I suppose you could say that the footage that I have along with all the other people from that community is all that’s left of it. Just a memory on video for people to relive to see what it was like.

I gained a lot from that time. I really explored and I suppose I wasn’t as successful as I had hoped. I’m no stranger to failure, I almost expect it. Still I do try to put my best foot forward. Someone told me once, “let’s not plan to fail” but as I think about that phrase I just don’t think that’s how I can do business. I prefer to know the risks I’m plunging into, and then many times I go in anyway. What’s life without a little bit of risk? I just like to have some idea of what I’m risking, along with the possible outcomes.

Time to move forward, it’s time to release.

Happy New Year! Full steam ahead for Feb 22 Early Access Launch!

Game Update

I’m two days late on releasing my blog entry this week, but at this point it has become such a habit that I need to do it. I guess that’s a good thing as every week it’s a check in for me as much as it is information for anyone that will read this. Today I feel tired, frustrated, and a bit on edge with all my personal stuff that I will talk about later, but I’m happy because I still showed up to “get my reps in” as the book “Atomic Habits” would say.

Primarily focused on getting with my artist to change out the capsule art, but if that falls through we have art in place and can release. I also spent time over break fixing my setup to allow me to record footage which I can edit together to make that holy grail of a trailer for the game which needs to be short and sweet while displaying the best parts of the game.

Speaking of the “best parts” of the game after soliciting another round of beta testers I actually got some amazing feedback from one of them. A lot of it came down to expectations and sensibilities that we were not explaining properly in the game. I didn’t even realize how many times I was taking “the road less traveled” until I looked through his feedback. That said we managed to glean some last minute upgrades that we can put in before the fateful Feb 22 date.

Speaking of that date, I need to swap my EIN on Steam, and talk to my bank to make sure that all my ducks are in a row on the business side of things after moving my licence from Texas to Florida. Kind of a lagging item that needs to be looked at.

Overall I feel confident that if I showed the game to someone right now it’s good enough to pass, and I can release it. I’m just putting as many last minute touches on it as I can before I get it to market while doing what I can to make sure all my ducks are in a row for release.

I’m not sure how much spreadsheet balancing I’ll be able to do before release. It was also noted that I need to take a look at the skill tool tips as they are to verbose and need to be reduced. Less is more.

Personal Update

Sometimes you come back from vacation and everything that was working when you left is suddenly broken. That was exactly the case this week and it has added a lot of stress to me. On the plus side I spent some time with a wonderful woman over some of my time off while working on the game of course. She gave me a lot of support this week which I am very appreciative of.

The things that are broken range from child sickness that’s keeping them from going to school, to car trouble, all the way down to my mouse malfunctioning. That mouse thing was pretty annoying to trouble shoot as it was super suspicious when I couldn’t move windows around my screen by clicking on the header bar. It turns out that it was double and triple clicking on a single click and is simply past its prime.

One of the biggest “game development” wins over the holiday is the fact that I now have a clean and clear office to work in. Often I say that there are a lot of things in “game development” and running a business that aren’t specifically related to the product that are important none the less. I figured that with all the paper I had in my office it hadn’t been important all year and so it wouldn’t be such a big deal to simply toss it into bins instead of going through it to spend the time to figure out what to keep, what to throw away and then to organize it all. It still need to be done eventually, but having a clean office is more important than getting that task done right now.

Things feel like they are in place, I just need to keep working hard and focusing. Over the holidays I picked up a new self development book “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins. He makes some good points in the first chapter about how most of us “dabble” and never really focus. That said I couldn’t help but think about “Atomic Habits” which also presents the idea of creating small habits and working from there. I can see how the two concepts may seem to be at odds with each other, but I can also make sense of them in such a way to know that they can work hand in hand as well. I’m definitely in a place where it would be good to plan out the next 10 to 20 years of my life because it will be here before I know it.

Christmas Fishing

Game Update

Made a new build for the game, and I’m starting to record some various footage to create the trailer. Having some issues with the sound quality however. On the subject of sound, I have a new intro that my musician just got over to me which I think will be a great track to use for the trailer.

I also need to work on re-balancing the spreadsheets. I will have more of an idea on where things need to go after I do some test plays of the game. I already know that the paladins have way to many hit points to keep things interesting. Battles are being extended unnecessarily.

I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked but there is still plenty of time to focus and buckle down. I just need to start working and build solid habits to do this every day, and bit by bit it will get done.

Personal Update

I finally finished cleaning up my office this week. It’s been more than a year since I moved into this house and this is one of the last things that I had to do to get the house cleaned up. I did short cut it a bit kicking the can down the road a bit, but the overall effect is a productivity boon for my office area. I no longer dread sitting in here working in this mess.

I don’t usually talk about church but this week there was a good message on Sunday morning which could apply to a lot of different areas in life. The message was about the passage in scripture in which Christ tells His disciples to cast their nets on the other side of their boat in order to catch fish when they had been fishing all night with no luck. I think this is a good lesson as I will be trying to “catch” some players when I release the game.

Speaking of release dates, I think that I can safely set a release date for the early access again. I am striving to release on 22 Feb 2022. This day is pretty neat as it is the same backwards and forwards. I guess you could call it a number palindrome.

I didn’t spend as much time on working on my game as I would have liked but I did get a couple of upgrades which should return time and give me a boost. First I received my treadmill which has been a great thing to wake up and do as it allows me to walk on different tours around the world and clear my head. The exercise is welcome as often the conditions for walking and running in Florida aren’t great with all the rain.

I also picked up a vacuuming robot for the house, and that had a curious effect. I’m mostly alone in the house for the holiday but having it around makes me feel like something else is in the house. Maybe I’ll get a robot dog eventually to keep my company for times like this.

Looking forward to ringing in the New Year with someone special. I feel very blessed to be able to make friends and date even though I am focused on my stuff. I’m hopeful but cautious as always. I also made a great connection with a local guy which will be great if the game does well as he is in heavily in the wealth generation business which I am starting to look at more seriously after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”

Productivity

Game Update

Started the process of blocking out the game trailer for Steam. It would seem that in the genre of strategy games have three key elements a hook, a mini tutorial, and some various game play elements. Most trailers are between one to two minutes with an average of a minute thirty. Some other nice elements are social proof statements of good reviews from news outlets. It’s likely those won’t be available to me however.

I spent some time cleaning up my office to make it more inviting to work in. I think I might just take a lot of this paper and put it in plastic tubs. Realistically at this point the paper has been sitting around for a full year and I haven’t looked at hardly any of it.

I will need to go through the spreadsheets still as some of the stats aren’t where they need to be. Primarily I know that the knights likely have to many hit points right now. It’s going to be a balancing act to get everything right, but if a character ends up under powered or over powered I’m not to worried as the concept of imperfect perfection takes care of that.

Personal Update

I spent most of the weekend driving to take my boys to be with my ex-wifes family for the Christmas Holiday. With the boys away there will be plenty of time for me to work on my game. The issue is that a lot of my habits are built around the kids. I don’t have a lot of habits to trigger my productivity which means I need to be aware and start habits right away. A habit like coming home and sitting at my desk to look at the game will be a good start.

I got lucky and will have some people to spend the holidays with this year. I feel so blessed to be in the position I’m in. I’m starting to get settled in here with friend groups which is strange as I am still used to my military way of life in which things are much more temporary.

I’m following through to audition for the church praise and worship team. I do that on Wednesday, and so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. I try to be free from outcomes as much as possible, and this case is no different. That said I am spending some time working on music for the audition which is taking some time away from development, but I think the overall effect will be a net gain to give me more focus to get things done.

Liabilities

Game Update

The stage swap is complete but I need to do some testing to see if I missed something. The next step is balancing the spreadsheets and creating a game trailer for steam. I figure that making a trailer will probably take between 10-20 hours to get right. It will probably be the most editing that I’ve ever done. I think the main issue right now is that the office in my house has been a mess for the past year. I’m going to focus on getting it into ship shape to encourage me to get the work done.

We also have a bug that isn’t game breaking but it’s still annoying. I will focus on doing that with my mentor for the next couple of sessions. The issue is that if a leader is set in a squad and then is subsequently moved to the toy box the squad still thinks that a leader is assigned. All the squads need to have leaders assigned in order to start a stage, but when the squads start the stage without a leader it triggers more issues. It’s not game breaking as it doesn’t benefit the player in any way, but it’s still an issue. Hopefully the player would only make that mistake one time. It’s a bug, but I can release with it.

Fixing all the spreadsheets is going to come down to setting the appropriate numbers for the game to keep things feeling good. As an example it’s likely that some of our defensive troops have to much health and defense which goes against our tenant of keeping the stages short. What’s going to be more difficult will be the damage done when multiple factors are increasing it. Most of that isn’t very intuitive, it just sort of happens when the stars align and the player probably won’t know why a troop that does 20 damage is suddenly doing 67 damage.

Personal Update

I started reading the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. It’s been pretty eye opening as I realize that for most of my life I was investing in a lot of “liabilities” instead of “assets”. Luckily I had accidentally been doing some things right which has been helpful overall. I’m hoping that the lessons learned from the book will help when I start selling the game soon. It’s made me want to take some more financial classes to shore up my financial intelligence. I have been worried about government taxation.

I released a couple of jokes on my Facebook, and I had a couple of good responses. The well seems to have run dry for now. I’m not sure if I should push to write even when I’m not inspired or not. The book Atomic Habits says that Jerry Seinfeld would write a joke every day and focus on not breaking the chain. Maybe I’m diverting to much energy to things that aren’t my game development. I might shelve the idea for now and just hit it when I’m inspired. If I’m going to create a chain that I don’t want broken it needs to be focused on working on my game instead.

Waiting to get the audition information for the church praise and worship team. I will be putting my best foot forward as it’s renewed my interest in playing. I’ve done some practicing at home lately, and I had a chance to spend some time with my family and play some music this past week. Maybe it’s finally time to get back into the music scene. The last time I played in a band was about nine years ago. I distinctly remember moving from the band to children’s church as they needed the help, and I wanted to work on learning how to make a game. Maybe in some ways I do this thing where I will put things off until I feel like the timing is right. The problem is that when my timing is right, often the moment has passed. Such is life I suppose.

I’m still dating and socializing but not putting a lot of effort into it. It’s nice to have people that are supportive in my life. It’s still strange to me to live somewhere and not expect to move in 3-4 years. I guess I’m starting to build up friend groups for the coming years.

Sacrifice

Game Update

Started the process of swapping stage one and two. It took some time to swap the two stages on the map, but I managed to get it done. After that I had to go in to each stage to move dialogue around I also ended up making some changes to tighten it up and make it more focused. I worked with my mentor to create a checklist of items that need to be covered for the player to understand how to play the game.

It’s important to make sure that someone can use just the game to understand how to play. It would never be possible to sit next to every person that purchases the game to explain how to play. Even if it did really poorly and sold 1000 copies it wouldn’t be feasible. I still need to finish up with the stage swaps as not all the work is done yet.

Another point of change for the stage swap is ensuring that the difficulty level of the enemies in the stage and the way that they move around. All the enemies are unintelligent and move by way points that are invisible to they player. This makes them rather unintelligent, but it works well enough. You might call this AI that focuses on a pattern. In the stage two of the way points is on the home base which is a threat, but now that stage has become the first one. It would be to intense for the player to have to deal with the enemy invading their base on stage one and so I moved the way point to just in front of the base to make it threatening.

Making sure that the dialogue is focused is pretty important as I don’t want to have unnecessary fluff that doesn’t have meaning in some way. I remember seeing a GDC talk about it. Dialogue should either do world building, or exposition. The first couple stages are more heavy in exposition but the later stages are more focused in world building.

I’m considering adding some more functionality to give us the ability to do enemy dialogue in battle before a combat triggers. We might be able to do this already by attaching a new trigger zone for dialogue that’s larger than the trigger zone for combat. Once the dialogue has been triggered once we can destroy the invisible trigger object which is similar to how we trigger secret zones. Some testing will be necessary to try this out. We might also build in some text that triggers at the end of the stage to give some closure to each mini plot line for the stages.

Personal Update

I think I had a lot of stress from the Thanksgiving Day weekend in which I also did Christmas and on the prior weekend I did a birthday for my oldest. Not having to prepare for another birthday this weekend gave me a bit of a breather but I will need to do one next week. The boys go away for Christmas shortly after that. From there I will need to buckle down and really get to work.

The boys seem to be acting up a little more than usual right now. I think it’s due to having to go away over the holidays. Setting boundaries with my relationships has been a big difficult, but I think that it has already reaped a lot of benefits for my home dynamic. I’m lucky to have found another solid house keeper so quickly.

Moving forward with my application to the church praise and worship team. Meeting people at church and getting plugged in is going well. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to do this if I didn’t feel like God was prompting me to do it. In their documentation for the team it talks about making sacrifices for the team. Beyond the time commitment I will have to make some changes in other areas as well.

There have been a lot of times this past year and even before that in which I would say that God has moved me, and even my family. I wouldn’t have made the changes myself as I was comfortable where I was. Often I find that’s how He works. Growth means pain, and sacrifice. Sometimes it means doing things I didn’t choose myself, not that I don’t like the path I’m on, it’s just interesting how a path that wasn’t even on my radar can suddenly become everything that I am.

For some time I have thought about writing a book, or doing a comedy routine. Something struck me this week and so I’m starting to write down all the things I find funny and post them on my Facebook to see what kind of responses I get. Facebook isn’t really built for this type of engagement I’m finding that my “jokes” which are basically observational stories about my life experiences are probably to long for the average Facebook browser that’s looking for the next dopamine hit. It just goes to remind me about removing all my swipe apps, and how they were having a major negative impact on my mood and time.

Moving forward I just need to stay focused on my goals. I’m still dating and moving slowly. It’s been good to have the ability to socialize with the possibility of something to develop eventually. I feel very blessed right now.

Shifty Characters

Game Update

The polishing process has begun as I fixed a problem with the map camera and the water on the map. We made some changes to the skybox which made the water look black on the map camera. In order to fix the issue we added a blue plane which can only be seen by the map camera and is otherwise invisible to the normal player view.

I still need to do the four items I outlined two weeks ago. I should focus on swapping level one and two. I feel like those will be the most straight forward although a little work intensive to get done. I need to set aside more times during the week to focus on getting the work done. Hopefully I will have less distractions and more focus over the Christmas holiday.

Still looking to release in February and I have a date in mind but there is plenty of work yet to do and so I don’t want to say a specific date yet. I do like the fact that I can have a lot of twos in the date though, so there’s a hint.

Personal Update

I’m reviewing what I wrote about last week and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind this week. I see that I had put down all my dating apps which has been good overall as I just don’t have a lot of time to meet new people right now. I’m starting to think it won’t be until after the game is released that I will be back on them, but then again maybe one of the people I’m currently seeing will become more exclusive before then. It’s been a good decision overall.

I spoke with a good friend about counseling and still ended up with a price that was a bit to high for me. I think that I will pursue something through the VA this week to explore those possibilities. That reminds me that I need to follow up on my sons Autism treatments which have been taking some time to get set up.

Florida truly is the land of a thousand scam artists. It seems like everywhere I turn there’s another one. I’m not sure what it is about this state that attracts so much of that. I wonder if there are some social reforms that could help out. I’m not sure if the government should or shouldn’t be involved as on the one hand a person could say that a person that is foolish with their money will be parted from it. Then again I do believe that government should protect certain people like the elderly and children from such practices. The nice thing is that it has exposed me to a character that has inspired me to write once again. I’m not sure where this will go however.

The World of Six Aspects

These stories set in the world of Six Aspects are not cannon but might become cannon in the future.

Marcus the Virtuous

My brother Kyle left home because he’s selfish. All he thinks about is his future and what he will become. He has no love for what the empire has done to give all of us here a better life in Zelteris. I on the other hand signed up for service on the day I turned 18. Nothing was going to hold me back from my duty to defend the empire whatever the cost.

I left my hometown in Kingsland after enlisting and was sent to Sherman area to begin my on the job training. I primarily worked in Din and there is one incident that stood out to me in particular when I was there.

The population of Din was divided between the merchants at the top of society with much of the wealth and the worker class which often lived in spaces with a lower standard of living. I wouldn’t say that they were scraping by, but their standards were pretty far from the upper echelon of society. Often I would hear about how they felt it was unfair that they worked while the ruling class made money off their labor. Some various worker revolts broke out and I was called in to help suppress them.

This unrest led to some grifters living on the edge between the working class and the merchants. One such person was Mr. Hagerman. This guy was smooth. It took us months of investigation to figure out his exact scheme. We were always one step behind him. The city would often have individuals coming in and out, and Mr. Hagerman knew that he could always find a soft heart among them to sew his seeds of discourse.

He would tell people that a family member died and he needed to get some money so he could go to the funeral. He would even promise to pay double back which was pretty amazing. The targets would hand over the money and when the time came to pay up he would produce another emergency related to his mothers roof. Everyone knew where he lived and it’s a wonder that he did this for so long. The thing is that travelers come and go. He figured they would forget and they didn’t deserve the money if they listened to his lies anyway.

He was a master of telling people about how he needed to take care of his sick family members to solicit good feelings. He was so good at telling lies that he really believed that he was the most virtuous one in the city. No one deserved the money more than he. Often if someone asked for a return on their money he would simply make them feel bad for asking and tell them they would get their money tomorrow.

When we finally figured out all the things this malcontent had done we were too late, unfortunately. He had already left town to go to the next one to peddle his lies there. Is this the grand Empire I serve? A place where we can’t even police a simple grifter to protect our local population? I suppose it could be worse, but I wasn’t ready to deal with this. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference here at all. I’m just a cog in a machine. Someone needs to do something to take charge before something really bad happens. I feel powerless to fight back.

Maybe I should have put a stop to Mr. Hagerman earlier and less people would have been scammed. I had a chance but I didn’t act. I’m the one to blame for this. Sometimes smooth talk and a friendly face hide a dark heart, and I guess I found that out the hard way. I pray to Gods Aspect of Snow to give me clarity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Game Update

Finally secured an artist to work on the capsule art to really push it over the top and make it pop. I’m excited to have that done and I’m doing my best to buckle down and adjust fire into polishing other parts of the game now.

I should probably focus my attention on swapping the first and second stage now. This will take a bit more than just swapping the position they fill on the map. I will also have to re-work the dialogue a bit. That reminds me that I need to fix the water reflection as we made changes to the sky box and it doesn’t look quite right now.

Balancing the spreadsheets is also important as some stats are to far off base like the paladin tree. Often it feels like we aren’t doing enough damage so that troops die quickly enough. I’m not sure if I want to make an assassination skill that takes troops to 1HP or kills them outright. That always felt a little cheesy and counter to the other systems in the game. Maybe upping the critical damage could help a bit here.

Creating a trailer will also be something I should jump on. It’s been so long since I have done any streaming or made/edited video. I guess that was a different era in my life. I do miss it, but I’m not sure I will be able to go back to it.

Personal Update

I’m glad I got rid of all my swipe apps although for a while I was going through withdrawals. I’ve always been a believer in “video game addiction” due to anything that has a random reveal mechanic becoming addictive. To that end I would say social media can also become pretty toxic feeding into that Skinner Box of dopamine hits we all love. I plainly remember my phone being on vibrate upstairs in my bedroom in a house I used to live in. I could hear it vibrating from downstairs because I was so tuned into the feedback. I should probably set “no phone hours”.

I know it’s not Thanksgiving yet, but I should probably say it now as I’m not sure if I will be on time with my blog entry next week or if I might skip it all together. I’m hosting Thanksgiving which should be a good time, but it’s also a fair amount of work. I have come a long way to get here from my tumultuous military retirement in 2020 to now. I am so blessed to be here.

Still spending time with a couple of the girls I met on dating apps to see where it leads me. It’s kind of nice to just calm down and date without feeling like I need to get on an app to see who I’m missing out on. Just enjoy the time dating to see where it goes. Lately our phones have been programming us to always be dissatisfied with “the now” by forcing our thoughts into the future. It’s a bad thing for society in general to have one more thing to take away our sense of being present to the moment.

I had a chance to start working with an elite coach, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about it this past weekend. I talked to a lot of my friends in that field and it really helped to get their insight. Ultimately it came down to the value proposition. I felt that if I did work with this coach the money spent (which is high) would not have been returned for the value I could have received from it to upgrade more things around the house or do a number of other things. It also felt like if I decided to do this it would have been more about my own vanity than wanting to get better. I decided to pass on it for now as I’m simply not ready, nor do I have enough motivation to really follow through with it as the game is becoming such a priority for me to finish and get to early access. I’m also looking to release in February of 2022 but we will see what I can get done between now and the end of December so I can make that decision with as much information as I can.

Less is More Focus

Game Update

Managed to get some capsule art images on the Steam page, but I’m not completely satisfied with them. They’re way to brown. Still it’s a step in the right direction. Art takes a long time to really get right sometimes. Talking to another local artist to see if they can work on taking what I have and tighten it up to really come up with something special for all the work that has been put into the game. How is it that you can sum up all your work over the past 8 years with one image that will entice people to want to know more? It’s a pretty daunting proposition.

I think if I can fulfill everything on Steam I can start thinking about a release date again while polishing everything else in the game. The numbers in the combat definitely need some more balancing to feel correct. I have about 2 weeks over Christmas to really focus and get things done while my kids are away. It will be important not to squander it and feel bad for whatever reason about what I’m doing.

Personal Update

It’s been a heck of a week for me, and I think that I’m emotionally drained at this point. So much so that when I was at church today I think I felt God speaking to me which hasn’t happened in a long time. He told me to uninstall my dating apps, so I did. I have a few girls I’m still talking to and we will see how it goes but I don’t think I’ll be actively meeting new people again until after Christmas at the earliest. I really needed to reduce the things I’m doing in my personal life to focus. And thus less is more.

I think my heart needs a bit of a rest anyway, maybe some counseling again would be good. I talk a lot about being “free from outcomes” when I date, but there are times when that’s just not possible.Some of those past flames won’t ever go away but they had their time and it’s over now. Still it’s important to be ready for a new flame that might not burn in the same way, but will still be special all the same.

I pulled the trigger on a new treadmill for my house which I think is a great thing to increase my health over the long run as it rains here in Florida so much which can ruin running days. Even the option to take a hike after my kids are in bed is appealing to me. I need to make sure to make good use of it. I could have easily have purchased other items like a new table for board games, a new TV, etc… I’m happy to be investing in myself this way.

I had some good talks with my older two sons this week. One in particular with my oldest which was pretty awkward to say the least. I really wonder sometimes what is getting through to them and what isn’t. It’s hard to know for sure. More than anything I feel that being a man that says something and actually follows through on what he says is important. If I didn’t it would invalidate what I say. I do my best to be congruent to the things I do and say but it doesn’t always follow.

Quick Sidetrack

Game Update

Worked on getting the menu screen to show two different backgrounds through a series of menus. In the future this will also include a window for stats that the player can look at. Kind of exciting to see the polish come together for the game.

Due to this I had to take a break from looking at my capsule art this week. Bringing it up and looking at it hasn’t been helping as I feel like it’s 80% there but not quite where I want it to be yet. We got thrown way off when we shrunk it down to see its size in the steam client. Going to check another local artist that I was recommended by a good friend.

Things I need to fix for release after getting the big hurdle that is the key art done are.

• Re-balance spreadsheets

• Check all the sound effects (most have been added already)

• Swap the first and second levels to create a more cohesive first level experience for players

• Create a trailer for the game

There are some other polish items that would be good to get done that are mostly visual and one or two bugs that won’t come up often but I think that those five things (key art included) are the main ones we need to go live. I guess it’s a lot less than I thought it was. I just reshuffled the priorities on my Trello board to properly reflect this too. Who knows maybe I can get an after Christmas early access release going.

Personal Update

I was able to teach again this week, and it’s been a real boon to my self esteem. Not teaching others really takes a lot of energy away from me these days. It’s kind of strange as that’s more of an extrovert thing, and I’m more naturally introverted. I feel that I made really good use of my time this week as I knocked out a lot of items that have been lingering for the past year.

I started working out again in the mornings, and it has been a great addition to my day! Running and lifting each morning before I go into work seems to work really well for me. Later in the day, or the day after I can feel the soreness which is great as I know my body is doing the work to rebuild the muscles I tore down while I worked out. I need to be careful not to push to hard, which feels bad as I was in a lot better condition last year. I suppose atrophy happens to everyone when they neglect something long enough. If you’re not getting 1% stronger every day then you’re probably losing at least that much, maybe even more. I can’t say that I’m happy about my run times right now, but I am happy that I was able to run for the entire time. It can only get better as I “get my reps” in just like it says in Atomic Habits.