marinamakes

[marinamakes]

Working... But Vidya Games Too!

I guess I might just use this as a personal journal place since no one's here, it's chill. Been working hard. And working on games in the background... It's tough. Progress has slowed to a near halt in the past month. It sucks, but no choice.

Working on tutorial level...

Here's this week's GIF...

[marinamakes]

Job def made things harder, idk will keep going until I go crazy/

[marinamakes]

Things Will Start Getting Hard From Here

Firstly, I start a job tomorrow, only... 8-5pm, so I'll have the mornings and evenings to gamedev.

Secondly, the "token count" is increasing. (tokens are PICO-8's way of limiting cart size). I'm worried.

I'm trying really hard with this stuff, and sometimes it feels pointless, idk. I know I'm shouting in the wind here, anyways, yeah. If you see this wish me luck!

[marinamakes]

I feel satisfaction if only momentary. The sea of self-loathing is calm, but I'm still unsettled. I know if I take too long to make this game, I'll never finish it. But, I know if I don't take long enough it won't be good enough.

Anyways, BUZZ WORD. BUZZ WORD. BUZZ WORD.

[marinamakes]

Game Dev Blog October 8th 2023

October 8th 2023-

I have awoken once more. The days go by as blurs of house-chores, dreams, and work. I'm concerned that doing such similar work from day to day is bad for motivation, it reminds me of my latest unfinished project, "Frogs vs. Ghosts". I will no longer speak its name. It cannot be good for me, or development.

This is the GIF I last posted on Twitter on the 5th.

Moving on from all that, recently I've found myself worried about the future. How will this work out? I've understood for some time I'd have to work a day job in the future, but I'm still for some reason worried. No matter what, I need to ensure that I don't stop development, on this game or in general.

Maybe I should start posting this blog to Reddit or Lexaloffle, and update it instead of using this text file? I'll look for a blog site for a little bit before beginning work. I'll ask Twitter. But maybe I should make art so people actually see it?

Finished in 5 minutes! Well, outlining took about 30 seconds too, but yeah, this is sufficient.

Alright, slow day only about an hour of work, but I spent the last hour finding a good blog spot. I've settled on Tumblr. I want this blog to be relatively on the down-low, so this is good. I want my blog to be easy to make, so this is good. And I'm familiar with social-media platforms, so this is great. I guess this will be my first post??

Should I introduce myself?? Idk...' I'm Marina makes and I make games using Pico-8. I founded the "Pico-View" zine, and have released several games. This is to be my secret blog space. If you recognize me from anywhere be sure to shoot me a text! This month I plan to finish a Halloween release and an article or two. Enjoy!

That seems good. Time to get back to work!

While making the bullets, I giggled with excitement as I was having fun. I notice in the process of creating my games I worry a lot over whether they are fun or not. I think I should cast aside such worries, except when using them to enhance game-play.

My last game, "Robuilder" was severely lacking in several aspects, the most apparent to me was the rushed home-menu and meta-game. I'll explain what the game was... It was a falling-block puzzle game where the goal was to connect arrows on blocks, but the falling of the blocks was completely in your control. Essentially it's a building game where you connect arrows. On top this there were four packs of blocks available... As I was saying the most lacking aspect was the home-menu and meta-game. Each 'game' consists of three rounds. This has no rhyme or reason. On top of this the way you change packs of blocks was unintuitive. Here's a gif...

Overall I want to avoid this with this game by implementing a home menu as soon as the first level is being tested. I'm about to head to bed. Here's progress...

Need to add a muzzle flash on the player and ghost. So sleepy... Hope you guys enjoy this blog! If u do then reassure me in dms or replies or something??