The bulk of this form is a grid showing all the locations the player can ever visit in the game. The idea here is that, for each scene, I’ll write down what areas the player needs to go to, what areas they cannot go to, and any special redressing I need for my sets (like, I might say in this scene, Old Spaceport has been reduced to a pile of rubble).

Even though there’s no maps really, having this abstract list of places I can draw on has already helped me sort out my thoughts about where the characters need to go and how they relate to their environment.

I’ve decided the number of locations I’ll have will be exceptionally limited. I’m hoping that, by re-using these locations, I can save time modeling stuff, and I’ll have a more coherent narrative because you’ll see how these familiar locations change in response to the story.

The rest of the form is a bunch of questions I want to make sure I’m answering for each level. They all take pretty much the same form, pairs of things like ‘what do I want to express here?’ and ‘how am I expressing that through my game mechanics?’.

So here’s an example of a partially filled out form.

That the form looks like something I’ve printed out and filled out by hand is important: I have to believe anything I write here is mutable, and that if I have a random idea I can just jot it down and worry about vetting it later. I have to believe these look like rough notes, and there’s a point at which I have to trick myself into seeing this form that way.

(Though I do like the idea that these are 8.5×11 and I could print them out for reference later on, if I wanted to.)

Anything having to do with a specific playable character is color coded. Robin is blue, Sam is green, Rachel is red. So I can quickly glance at my questions and see what I don’t have filled in, if one color is missing.

Unused locations are scribbled out, and I’ve got some vague arrows showing where the characters will be going on the locations that are used.

I’m sure I’ll be adding locations as I go, and that’s a good thing; hopefully, I’ll be able to just fill out these forms before doing too much modeling or coding, and then I’ll have this nice list of every location I need to model, and a vague sense of how the parts of each location should relate to each other.

And I’m sure I’ll be changing the layout of the form as I go; I might want more questions to answer, or just more space in which to answer them.

So here are a few things I’ve learned lately.

The torso above is functional, the way a hastily constructed computer program is functional. It has the right shape. There’s a neck and body and arms and some definition to the collarbones.

But from an organizational standpoint, it’s a complete mess. Compare that to this torso:

Here, I’ve created a pretty strict grid. The overall shape is basically the same, but it’s easier to tell what’s going on. My mesh doesn’t just need to have a certain shape: it must also communicate to me, the modeler, what that shape is. Like well-named variables and functions, this mesh is self-documenting. I can look at these long, smooth curves on the grid and get a good sense of what those curves represent in three dimensions. I can’t really do that with the first torso; the lines, such as they are, are jumbled and jagged.

Working in this sort of way also makes editing easier. The modeling software I use has built-in tools to select whole lines or circuits on my grid, like the orange lines here:

I can also add detail to my mesh fairly easy. If I decide my character’s sides aren’t smooth enough, I can quickly add a loop cut, shown in purple here:

Loop cutting breaks every square along the loop in half, so I can refine a specific area. And once cut, my mesh is still a nice, neat grid which can be further refined with more loop cuts.

Just imposing a grid on the mesh isn’t enough, though. This face has a simple grid structure:

Trouble is, this grid isn’t structured that logically. I probably wouldn’t want to take a random cross-section of the face and move it, or scale it, or whatever.

If I want to add some detail to the eye sockets, I could add a loop cut, like I did with my torso. But this loop cut wouldn’t just affect the eyes: it would also add lots of unnecessary detail around the temples and back of the head.

So what I need to do here is change the way the grid works, just in one localized area. Like so:

Here, the area around the eyes is its own closed polar grid, while the rest of the face retains the square grid it started with. And now, if I want to add detail to the eye sockets, I can add a circular, eye-shaped cut, like this:

That loop makes sense to me. It represents an area of the model that I think of as one unit. And again, just seeing the polar grid around the eyes helps me understand the geometry of the eyes, more than the previous approach did.

One thing I’m struggling with here is this idea of adding pockets of detail. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to smooth out the contour of the eyelid. Right now, I’d have to add a loop cut like this:

…Which will add extra smoothness around the eye, but will also add unnecessary geometry down the cheeks, and along the neck, and who knows where else. I’m trying to come up with simple, general-purpose strategies for adding detail, like this method of smoothly transitioning from a coarse grid to a finer one.

That might work in some instances, though maybe not the eye specifically. I still have much to learn here.

A stupidly long time ago, I posted these costume ideas for Tinselfly.

And somebody commented how it was funny how all those little people, boy or girl, young or old, kinda looked like me. The long, mouthless faces, the skinny bodies.

I am skinny.

Oh, sure, I’ve gained a slight belly in the last few years, and my mother pokes it whenever she sees me, but I probably still qualify as skinny to most people.

When I sit down to draw or model a a character, I think of myself as a baseline. If the character is described as thin, I’ll try to make them thinner than myself.

And then I wonder why they don’t look quite human.

I am a bad baseline. But just saying that doesn’t give me a tangible sense of what the baseline is. So let’s try to throw some numbers at this.

I’m 5’11″ and barely reach 150 pounds most days. I know BMI is problematic, but that puts me right at ‘normal’ according to the CDC. And by ‘normal’ they mean ‘healthy’. Average for a an American is apparently like 50 pounds heavier than I am.

According to this handy figure drawing book I’ve got, an average male has a hip width/head height ratio between 1.5:1 and 2:1. I’m 1.4:1, below the bottom of that scale. Also, my shoulders are thinner than the book’s average, at around 1.5 heads to the book’s 2.

So I’m not just a bad baseline; I’m a really bad baseline, and I’d still be a really bad baseline if I gained lots of weight, because of the slightness of my frame. I guess I already kinda knew that, but the numbers help cement it. An ‘average’ adult male would have a wider frame than me, by several inches; and they would weigh significantly more. I’m not sure how weight translates to bulkier shapes when drawing, but it’s fair to say my characters should be a lot bulkier if I want them to look like average, ordinary people.

I’m kicking off my more-natural-looking Tinselfly characters thing by not doing my lead. I’ll do a supporting, but playable character named Sam. He’s in the Navy, and will be wearing a uniform like the character on the left here:

This should be well within my abilities to model. Sam will probably have a shaved head, so I don’t have to worry about modeling hair. His uniform is neatly tailored, so I don’t have to worry about drapery or wrinkles. He’s tall and thin, so my current NPC model isn’t too far off from his body.

And he’s pretty.

Why does that matter? Because, from a certain point of view, pretty = less complicated. Smooth. Symmetric. Crisply defined.

Fewer polygons.

* * *

Part of modeling a character is getting to know the character–and I’m already starting to do that, having done nothing more than take the head on my old model and start to make it more natural looking. Which is good, because Sam is mostly defined in terms of being a foil for the lead.

So here’s what I’ve got so far: when I say ‘Sam is pretty’ I don’t mean that pretty is a thing that Sam naturally is. I mean to say that Sam puts work into being pretty; it is something he values. This is part of his character, not part of his appearance.

Sam looks quite dashing in his uniform, and knows it. But it’s not vanity so much as an obsession with neatness, and an aversion to things that are unorganized.

This works out well, because I’d planned on having a level where Sam is exploring the jumbled fragments of a destroyed, floating city, and having Sam try desperately to put part of the city back together in his head could make for interesting gameplay.

* * *

I also like starting with Sam because said exploration level is fairly self contained; I can just dive into it without worrying about how it ties in with other things. It would be a good starter level, and I desperately need one of those.

Or, at least, that’s what she looked like before I gutted everything and tried to write a totally generic system where you could define a character’s body shape and color and multiple, layered clothing items at runtime.

The character generating thing has been going terribly slowly. So I’ve decided to ditch it and just… make characters in Blender. If a zillion-dollar game like Bioshock: Infinite can have copy/pasted extras, so can I.

I also want more naturalistic characters. I mentioned in an earlier post that the skinny, porcelain look was supposed to tie into the themes of the story and that, while I might decide I’m wrong, this seemed to be they way to go.

Well, I’ve decided I was wrong.

I specifically want to call out the fact that this character is a little heavy, a little ambivalent about her appearance, a little ordinary looking. I specifically want an ordinary looking hero; I think we could use more of those.

I also need the human characters to mesh with these house-sized alien characters, who are kinda like… if you took people and scaled them up and added more detail, the way you’d take a chunky ship or prop design from an old sci fi show and added more detail for the new, rebooted movie version.

I don’t have to ditch everything I’ve got — working with my existing model, I should be able to give the character realistic proportions, and real facial features, and the messy, unstyled hair I always imagined the character would have if I met her in real life. When I first made this model, I didn’t have the modeling skills to do that. Now I’m pretty sure I do.

And the big benefit of doing this reworking is, it should be easier for me to think of the character as a real person, if she looks like a real person; and it will be easier to think of the story beats and whatnot. I need to believe the character is real if I’m going to make progress here.

I was excited about this, because it means I can make my character look even more mundane — with a little customization, it’s not too far off from the plain black t-shirts I am wont to wear, every day I can.

I kind of like the feeling of being immersed in this universe, but I don’t want to feel like I’m playing a character. I want the character to be a projection of myself.

And while the character above neither looks that much like myself nor a 25th century spaceship captain, that image is less distracting to me than having me play a boxy male character wearing a futuristic jumpsuit.

* * *

As I prepare to run a one-shot RPG tonight, I’m thinking a bit about why RPGs scare me so much.

I think it comes down to being fuzzy about what is expected of me as a player. I never really looked at the role-playing part as a means to an end before, and thus don’t really know what the end is.

I usually think of it like, if the world doesn’t feel real to me during a role-playing game, I’m not playing the game right; I’m failing to do well at the game; and who wants to play a game they’re guaranteed to lose?

I put a lot of pressure on myself to enjoy the game the way I think the other players enjoy it.

But maybe it’s not about me. Sure, I may never find a tabletop role-playing session an immersive experience; I’m just too obsessed with visuals. But as a player, I might be able to heighten the immersion for other people playing, by being part of the world building that’s going on.

My goal, from that point of view, is not necessarily to think like my character, or to lose myself in my character, but simply to entertain. And that’s something I can kinda get behind.

It’s easy to overcome. I just clear my head of all conscious thought, and accept the slog.

This always works.

And yet, I have trouble remembering to do it.

If I’m having trouble getting motivated, it’s usually not because I hate the slog — that’s just an excuse. It’s because some part of me thinks that whatever I’m about to work on is not worth working on.

Which is to say, some part of me believes that very little of what I’ve been working on lately, is worth working on.

* * *

As long as I’m feeling rambly and introspective, let’s talk about what I think has been my biggest problem lately: context. Some examples of this being an issue:

• During board games, I’ll forget whose turn it is, or what we (in a cooperative game) were trying to accomplish.
• During work meetings, I will be asked a question and will have trouble answering because, while I understood the question, I will have forgotten what we were talking about that led up to the question being asked.
• Reading books, I frequently forget where the characters are and what they’re trying to do.

I like keeping my head empty as much of the time as possible. And while that keeps me calm and focused, it can also lead to issues like the ones above I guess.

As for meetings, my solution lately has been to keep notes during the meeting. I still get to stay in the moment, but if I’m asked a question, I can quickly peek at my notes to see what the context is.

* * *

It occurs to me that my favorite video games can easily be played in a contextless sort of way, and you’re not asked to remember a lot about what you’ve previously done. If I play a level of Alice or Amnesia, I don’t really care what the last level was. I just want to continue from where I left off. Conversely, playing something like Mass Effect or any MMO, I have to remember what skills my character currently has, what I have equipped, and maybe where I was traveling to… and I have trouble keeping track of this stuff and it gets frustrating.

* * *

If I had an RPG-like ‘stat’ for my ability to have fun, it would be like a 1. I turn everything into work. Which is not to say that I turn everything into something stressful; work can be calm too. But calm work is different than fun.

I mentioned earlier that I thought this One Game a Month thing might be good because I might actually relax and just make things I’d find fun to play, rather that trying to change the way people perceive this whole industry.

And I’m still hesitant to do this, because I’m thinking of these games as just benefiting me. And I’m not worth it, I think to myself. The work has to be for someone else to be worthwhile.

But really,that’s not a well-thought-out argument. Yes, the work would be for me, initially. It’s not like there would be anything stopping me from letting others enjoy the finished work after I’m done. The problem here is that I’m only looking at the most immediate, direct beneficiary of the work. It’s kind of short-sighted.

Got one new Scopa card done last night, and revised another.

So here’s a new Jack (though maybe it should be Knight?) of Coins.

Going with the business attire the other coins had, I thought I’d go with a polo shirt here. It’s awfully plain; no pinstripes or layers to add interest. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

I sent this Queen of Coins to the client last month, and he commented that she looked a bit too androgynous.

While I’d prefer not to have exaggerated sexual dimorphism in my stuff, I can kind of see where he’s coming from there.

I was reminded a bit of this children’s RPG that made a point of having dignified, non-sexualized female characters, and people complained that the characters weren’t recognizably female.

A tangent: when I was a kid, I thought girls’ nails naturally grew pointy, and boys’ nails came out square. And I met a girl with square nails, and got very confused.

Yes, there are of course physical differences between genders, but a great many of the things we think of as ‘feminine’, especially with regards to people’s faces, take conscious effort to produce: styled hair, makeup, shaped eyebrows, more saturated colors on glasses and clothing.

I’d love it if we lived in a world with less gender-specific grooming, but we don’t live in that world, so let’s be practical about it: a character who doesn’t follow at least some of these conventions is likely to cause confusion. I get that.

I don’t like it, but I get it.

I’d also love it if we lived in a world where most people didn’t care whether or not another person’s gender was obvious from their grooming, but again, we don’t live in that world.

So I went ahead and lengthened the hair, enlarged the earrings, made the eyebrows arched and the glasses brighter.

But I didn’t add makeup.

Makeup is gross.

But I’ve been enjoying cooking more lately. I realized a few years ago that, when faced with tedious drudgery that’s never ever going to go away, the best thing yo can do for your own sanity is to devote more mental energy to it: to learn to do said tedious drudgery more efficiently, and with more panache that you can be proud of.

So I can manage my time more efficiently now, have more pots going at the same time, pick dishes that have a high work-to-tastiness ratio, and generally have a better time of it than I used to.

The latest part of this process has been trying to work with raw ingredients more. While it’s convenient to work with pre-packaged tortillas, pie crusts, pizza dough, dips or suaces, I suspect, in the end, it will be more convenient to keep a constant supply of flour, butter, cream, eggs and yeast around, most of which I’d have around anyway. In theory, there would be fewer staples to manage, more things I could do with said staples, and less stressing out about, say, having a pre-made pie crust in the freezer if I decide on a whim I want to make quiche.

It will get worse before it gets better though.

Tried my first from-scratch pie crust last night, and it was frustrating and time consuming and didn’t turn out that great. There will be a lot of waste here. I haven’t had to outright pitch too many meals or parts of meals, but it’s certainly happened, and that’s never fun.

Some days you break the hollandaise. Some days the hollandaise breaks you.

If I do this, I have to accept that what I’m doing is not simply incremental learning; it’s making things noticeably worse for myself, so I can eventually make things better. I think I just starting doing this, without really accepting that I should expect this to be fairly frustrating for a while.

But if I can get through this here hump, I think I’ll find cooking just a little more rewarding.

I used to be a freelance web site designer, which I have mixed feelings about. I liked meeting new clients, and building a rapport with them, and whipping up site designs in Illustrator and Photoshop. I liked being able to say I was a freelancer, just like I like being able to say ‘I make software for kids with autism’ now… it feels good to say that. Worthwhile.

But the actual process of turning those ideas into web sites always annoyed me.

So I’ve been thinking about that, and about game development, and how, even though I don’t find the idea of developing games to be particularly noble, I honestly enjoy the most of the tedium of game development. And I’m wondering if I might do well to treat game development like freelancing.

There are web site clients I picked up because I thought I’d love working with the client, and there are clients I picked up because they could help me pay my bills.

With game development, I’m only working on things I love to make. There aren’t any bread & butter, pay-the-bills games.

And maybe there should be.

Working on web sites I didn’t care about on a personal level was a little soul crushing. But I could work on a game that’s more than a little derivative and have lots of fun doing it, if I only let myself do so. I like playing casual games. I like playing cookie-cutter rehashes of old tropes. It’s only an overdeveloped urge to Change the World that has me working exclusively on things I find unique. And as someone who can do all the programming, graphics, and music for a game project on my own, I stand a good chance of making decent games with very little overhead.

Which is not to say that I could just flip a switch and break into the industry by doing this. It just might be worth trying.