Todays Target

My goal for today is to get all of the mechanics finished for Chapter 1 of Souls of Gaia. Once that is finished all I'll have left to do is a few more images and fleshing out the descriptions and dialogue. I have my coffee and a location where I can concentrate for several undistrubed hours. Let's do this!

Edit: Just had a major crash due to overheat. Fortunately I didn't lose anything in the RAGs file and appeared to have only corrupted one photoshop file. I think I need to invest in a laptop fan, but it's hard to find one that fits a wide laptop (I have a full dektop keyboard on my laptop, that's how wide it is).

Edit2: Making decent progress. Most of the mechanics are done. Just working on a tricky bit right now, and then I just have to implement the parts that trigger the end of the chapter. I have to stop for a while to get some other work done, but I should be back on this tonight.

Final Edit: Thanks to a power cut, I won't be finishing all of the mechanics today. I'm going to focus on finishing the remaning images and filling in some of the text tomorrow before I get back to working on RAGs logic again.

Souls of Gaia

I decided to create a new RAGs file to experiment with art styles (ie. overlays) and some new tricks with timers and setting variables in javascript to help get my creative juices flowing while I plan out the rest of Slut Royale. It worked. Sort of.

My creative juices have definitely started to flow. What started as an experiment has turned into 106 images (and counting), several characters, a plot and several methods of completing a single goal. In short, I have a new game on my hands. At the moment I'm calling it Souls of Gaia and I'll be changing this blog to reflect the development of both games. I haven't got anything ready for release just yet, but I will be looking for some beta testers in a few weeks. If you're interested then just let me know in the comments below.

An image from the intro to Souls of Gaia

I'm not sure if I should feel ashamed for losing focus on Slut Royale, or be happy that I've achieved so much in just a couple of weeks. Considering I'm doing all of this just for fun, I think I'll focus on the latter emotions.

Creative writing

I've been experimenting with RAGs logic/javascript, graphical overlays and writing over the past couple of weeks to help the creative juices flow. Of the three parts required to make a game in RAGs (excluding the 'optional' design part), I definitely find writing to be the most difficult part. I don't know what it is, but I've always struggled to write. Whether its creative writing, technical writing or basic communication I always agonise over the choice of my words and end up being very concise, which is the antithesis of descriptive writing!

I've been reading a book on creative writing to try and improve that area. The book talks a lot about identifying themes, character traits and so on which I understand very well. Unfortunately where I fall down is converting the concept into actual prose. I agonise over the sentence structure and word choices, never feeling confident about what I do manage to write down. My perfectionism ends up paralysing me because I have no idea if I'm even close to having something 'good'. I got top grades in English at school, but I'll be damned if I know a single thing about it.