spncryn

[spncryn]

Update on status of this site

This is a formal notice that I am discontinuing this Tumblr blog, and have since moved to a dedicated Wordpress platform, located at spncryn.blog. All of the content from here has already been fully migrated over there.

This decision has been informed significantly by my growing frustration over the past year especially with the amount of bloat that comes packaged into the social media side of Tumblr, between all of the advertising and recommended accounts and posts and whatnot. The site has become unusable on one of my computers (my fault to a degree I should fully admit, given how many tabs I have open...) and the app itself is filled with so much excessive content that is not only irrelevant to my intentions, but actively gets in the way of how I use this site.

What finally cemented the decision for me though was the fact that Tumblr seems to have completely deprecated the now-legacy post format and editor in exchange for their Neue Post Format (NPF). I tolerated Tumblr for as long as I did primarily due to how straightforward its API was to use, which allowed me to easily fetch data from my posts and display them externally on my primary site, at spncryn.github.io. However, because the new format has completely changed the structure of posts, it is no longer possible for me to do this the way that I have been doing it for years now. Consequently, I no longer have any reason to continue putting up with the numerous other long-running grievances I've had with this site.

While Wordpress is by no means a perfect solution in its own right, it certainly offers a much leaner experience, and gives me more flexibility and freedom in all of the (few) things that I care about when it comes to these kinds of things, with a much lighter overhead.

As for the fate of this site, this will be the last post I will likely/hopefully ever make here. I will leave it up for posterity's sake for as long as I reasonably can, although I imagine some point Tumblr will automatically shut it down for inactivity, in which case I will not attempt to renew or preserve it further.

For those (likely few) of you who have been following my entries here for some period of time, I offer my appreciation for your company.

For anyone looking for my entries, once and future, I once again refer you to spncryn.blog.

[spncryn]

12082023

Vaguely distracted throughout the day, worked inefficiently. Spent the entire day animating the opening and closing interactions with the field notebook. It's still not done, but I am certain I can finish it by tomorrow.

I'm a bit apprehensive about how I'm going to handle page-turning, if I even want to do that at all. I could do it programmatically with a 3D surface and a shader, which would allow me to authentically preserve the contents of each page with the flipping animation since they'd be rendered directly onto the manipulated surface -- but then that would compromise the quality of the animation, and I'd have to do a lot of coordinate positioning of the hand movement itself, which will be a exercise in abject tedium.

Alternately, I could animate it entirely by hand, with pre-drawn text on the pages that are affected directly by the flip. This involves a lot of sprite work, but it'll guarantee that the hand and page turn animations are synchronised properly. The problem is that it severely limits the amount of dynamic information I can place upon each spread, as the face that will be turned has to be fixed since it'll be pre-drawn in the page turning sprite sheet itself, instead of being rendered mathematically.

That means that, on the starting spread, only the lefthand page can be drawn via code; and for any following spreads that the player can flip to and from, only the righthand page can be drawn.

Actually, this will work well. I can have the collected IDs pinned on the lefthand side, and related notes and thoughts Avery has about them "written" on the right. This could in fact even be a hand-drawn sprite for each page...

It looks like my work is cut out for me for the next few days.

[spncryn]

10082023

Didn't work as much as I'd have liked today. I was overcome by a dim cloud. Most of today's work was custodial, going through all of the flagged code instances and making the necessary adjustments. I don't know how much any of these changes actually matter -- I don't think any of them really do -- but at least now I don't have to look at any more warnings.

I've decided this morning that, unrelated to the previous, I will switch my code editor entirely to a proportional font for my next project. The compulsive need to ensure typographic alignment, even when doing so is outright destructive to legibility, has severely impaired my ability (or perhaps desire) to abide by reasonable standards of consistency throughout this project. I long for the future.

[spncryn]

09082023

Work has been going really well. Not only has the work itself been getting done, but I feel a great sense of fulfillment getting it done, even on days like this, when the actual measurable progress feels so slight. It's the strangest thing; as if suddenly, the long fog that's so thoroughly eclipsed the past two years of my life cleared away with such abruptness that I find myself astonished to even recall it was ever there. I'm so terribly happy that I was there to share in its witness, but I think it's over. No one's coming back, I'm sure of it now, and I can no longer be moved to leave. The city's emptied out, the nights are getting cooler, the summer will soon draw to a close. Things will never be like the way they were again. I have to find my place in all this again, and I think my place is right here. I'm plummeting through my memories. I know I shouldn't have done it but the other day I found myself on the L and by the time it'd passed by 1st I'd already stepped out into the evening, careening, against my better desires, the trees far greener than I remembered and the light warmer, and by the bitter brine waters I sat down and from deep within my lungs I heaved forth what felt like the last of the winter, all winter, pooling across the parkway. It catches up to you, I guess. I don't think people change anymore so much as they just seem to fall apart, unravel, first at the atomic level, and then in whole systems and tectonics. No one seems to take circumstance seriously until it's the only thing they've got left to talk about. I felt it again tonight for the first time in a long time, you know, the real thing, lying there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the night breeze is like right now in Austin. It wasn't fear, or heartache, or longing, or even sadness, really. Just plain loneliness. Ah, man.

[spncryn]

07082023

Uninteresting but necessary work today. Cleaned up the tutorial prompts and some save events to improve the onboarding experience for new players. Work has been coming easier after this weekend. Maybe the sadness is not so bad after all. It feels more familiar to me. I think I've been too distracted these past two years. Maybe this is finally an opportunity to return to where I belong.

[spncryn]

06082023

Tawanda's left New York for good. I guess that's that, then. I know things aren't gonna change much but things will change a lot. He never came back to New Jersey, at the end of it. A profound sadness has come over me over the last few weeks. Too tired to stay awake, possessed by an insatiable hunger. There are days and nights when I miss Ana so terribly that the ache seems to seep into my bones. I've fallen behind the pace of my life.

[spncryn]

04082023

First day back to work, and first entry in over a month. I’m not really sure what to say. I’ve been real tired lately, a full-body fatigue. They’ve got me working on a demo for the October Steam Next Fest. I don’t know, there was some kind of confusion on the timing of when this build would be due. They haven’t updated me on it yet. I don’t know. I don’t really care anymore. I have two weeks left to get it done on my own terms, I don’t care what happens on their end internally: I’m submitting it, come hell or high water. I need the public release at this point. Without it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to recover enough morale to finish this thing. Hell.

[spncryn]

21062023

Didn’t even try today.

[spncryn]

20062023

No work today. Still feeling fucked up, but doing my best to work through it. I spent much of the morning in prayer. I’m not very good at it. Sometimes though it gets me from one moment to the next when nothing else really seems to be working. I spend the rest of the time sleeping, or trying to, anyways. I think I’m in trouble at work. Something about the invoices I submitted the other day. Probably about the rate of progress too. 

The bitter irony of all this is that it all hits just as I was just about feeling like I could start doing things better. I’d finally started feeling a bit better about work, like I could get things done. Started feeling better about Ana, like I could finally let go of some of the more painful, resentful things, and just talk to her, plan things with her, think about her like a normal human being. I enjoyed it. I get it now, what Ada’s talking about. I enjoyed feeling like I could be happy. Fuck. 

Life just seems to fold over me in waves these years. Just as I start to feel better, like I’ve got enough strength to get over the next berm, I just get knocked back down again, over and over, by the same goddamned problems every time.  I feel completely powerless against any of it. I’m not yet suicidal, which I guess is good. But I feel like all my progress has just been wiped, again. And I feel so thoroughly impotent at contesting any of it. Nobody trusts me anymore, it feels like. Can’t convince anyone of anything. I’ve run everybody’s patience down. Nobody believes me anymore. And man, I don’t have too many more words. And man, I don’t have too much more will. 

[spncryn]

19602023

Feeling fucked up again. I’m trying my best to get through it but right now I can’t even get out of bed. God damn this wretched soul of mine.

[spncryn]

17062023

Published the monthly update today. Writing it exhausted me beyond reason, and I was no longer able to work afterwards. I feel like a mild sadness has also settled into me somehow. It feels like some kind of disappointment, or disillusionment, although I don’t know why. It’s 2100 and I can’t think of any reason to stay awake any longer. I don’t think it was a bad day. It just didn’t feel like it was enough.

[spncryn]

16062023

Another good workday. Pushed my first commit of the year, I’m pretty sure.

Set up the link point to the basement in the outpost, so the player can now move between the two in-game. There are a lot of issues with regards to the lighting system though, and the movement animations for Avery are completely broken when she’s in the basement. I don’t know how to solve it right now.

This is one of the biggest issues, I’ve come to learn, about working on things for so long. I’ve almost completely forgotten how I built so much of the early systems in the game. So much of it just seems so convoluted as to appear effectively foreign to me.

I need to focus on producing a whole bunch of assets tomorrow, as well as getting the update written. I’m going to go to sleep early and try to get it all out by the afternoon.

[spncryn]

15062023

Felt better today. Woke up pretty late, but made good progress on the basement. It’s been fully imported into the game itself now and should be ready in terms of decorations by tomorrow. I’ve decided to postpone writing this month’s update until tomorrow, and releasing it on Saturday. I will have to create some visuals for it soon.

[spncryn]

14062023

I was feeling quite well for the majority of the day until, with the light encouragement of a friend, I decided to make a new Hinge profile and see if anything’s changed. Nothing has; and in fact, I believe that my sense of antipathy and revulsion has only further grown in its intensity over the course of the past months. The obscenity of it all has become genuinely unbearable. I was originally planning on working for the rest of the day, but I have felt my mood palpably darken by the minute over the last two hours. I have been thinking about Larry Hall. I have become gripped by the fantasy of violently drowning myself in a shallow trickle of gutter effluvia.

[spncryn]

13062023

The humidity passed overnight. The day was bright and cool. Didn’t get anything done today, either. I felt better though. I’ve gotta start working again. I haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do, either this week, or this month. Frankly, I haven’t accomplished anything the entirety of this year. I almost feel bad about submitting invoices these days.

[spncryn]

12062023

Humid. Wasn’t able to accomplish a single thing I had set out to get done by the end of today.

[spncryn]

06062023

The air was hazy all throughout the day, and the sun was blood orange. I wasn’t able to get anything done today. I’ve been feeling pretty listless and lazy lately. Getting started is the hardest part, and a lot of days I don’t feel like I can overcome that initial barrier for some reason. At least most days these days, I’m in a good mood...

Tomorrow I’m going to get the layout for the basement sketched out, and rewrite the sound design document for Sam.