eiris push

src/diary/entries/210501

@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ may 1, 2021<br>
 <h3>friday, april 9 </h3>
 <ul>
 <li>Utter confusion over Slime Patrol begins. The slime won't move no matter what. I didn't spot the issue that prevented slime move-to-point until the very end of the month, which is frustrating but led to catching and fixing tons of potential issues in movement and related systems. It also got me to clean up the pathfinding debugger and make its output more detailed. </li>
-<li>Of course I end up spending way more time than expected on the final update before my first release version...Can't wait to have something up! Even though it will be really bare bones. Once slime patrol works, movement is refactored, Bingo's tossed back in, and any noticeable issues are ironed out, I'll ship an HTML5 version to embed on my website. </li>
+<li>Of course I end up spending way more time than expected on the final update before my first release version...Can't wait to have something up, even if it will be really bare bones! Once slime patrol works, movement is refactored, Bingo's tossed back in, and any noticeable issues are ironed out, I'll ship an HTML5 version to embed on my website. </li>
 </ul>
 <br>
 <h3>saturday, april 10 </h3>
@@ -131,3 +131,5 @@ may 1, 2021<br>
 <li>It's kind of annoying that the server is in almost a day ahead since it's in a different country. I should change the time zone to match mine sometime. I know it's online, so people in every time zone can read it if they want, but it sure makes predicting articles releases more confusing for me. <br>
 </ul>
 <br>
+Last Updated: June 6, 2021 <br>
+<br>

src/diary/entries/210601

@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ june 1, 2021<br>
 <h3>monday, may 24 </h3>
 <ul>
 <li>My high school economics teacher showed us a Dave Ramsey video on how you can invest a few hundred dollars a month (I think he even called that our "daily Starbucks" lol) into money market funds and soon be able to buy new cars every year with the interest. I must not understand this well. My investment service's money funds all have a 7-day yield between .01% and .03%. You'd need hundreds of thousands if not a million dollars locked away just to get a $20000 car annually. I don't go to Starbucks anyways, but that's a millenium's worth of talls. </li>
-<li>General website maintenance.
+<li>General website maintenance. </li>
 </ul>
 <br>
 <h3>wednesday, may 26 </h3>
@@ -94,5 +94,5 @@ june 1, 2021<br>
 <li>Today, I'll push out my CSS update to go along with tomorrow's article. </li>
 </ul>
 <br>
-Last Updated: May 26, 2021 <br>
+Last Updated: June 6, 2021 <br>
 <br>

src/diary/entries/210610

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+<!--210318,210304-->
+<h1>writing a game design document </h1>
+may 27, 2021<br>
+#gamedesign #gdd #worldbuilding <br>
+<br>
+A game design document (GDD) is a detailed document used to communicate the vision for a videogame. They are used internally by AAA game developers to keep hundreds of people on the same page, but it's worth considering keeping one as a small team or individual. I'll share how I organize mine. <br>
+<br>
+<h2>why keep a GDD if everyone's already on the same page? </h2><br>
+Even small games are complex pieces of software requiring a broad skillset spanning computer science, design, art, music, creative writing, and marketing. The development process can take years, too. A GDD can serve as a single place to collect your thoughts and document the evolution of your design over time. Even as a single person, it's been helpful to give every aspect a little thought as I fill it out. Also, whenever I need to refer back to something, it's a boon to have an organized GDD instead of random notebooks and files. <br>
+<br>
+Of course, writing a GDD isn't developing a game. Barely anyone shares their GDD outside of their team, so unless your team or publisher has extra requirements, they only exist to facilitate game development. If you can't keep the document up-to-date with development or it would never be referenced by anyone, consider alternative forms of documentation. Sometimes a GDD is more effective as a game prototype, a mood board, or merely a thought in your head. If you're keeping scattered notes like I did, though, consider compiling them into a single word document or keeping them all in a binder. <br>
+<br>
+<h2>download the GDD template </h2><br>
+Download my <a href="/download/DesignDocumentTemplate.docx">GDD template</a> and make a copy every time you have a new game idea so you never forget any! Obviously, it's just a template. If some parts aren't suitable for your genre or development process, swap them out for something better. <br>
+<br>
+<h2>worldbuilding bible </h2><br>
+I feel it's easier to keep some parts in a different format from my GDD. For worldbuilding, I use a modified version of <a href="https://ellenbrockediting.com/worldbuilding-bible-template/">Ellen Brock's worldbuilding questionnaire</a>. I keep her headings and delete the detailed bullet prompts for less clutter. In general, I try to write my own prompts so they are closely tailored to my fantasy world. If I don't even know where to begin, though, her prompts are a great starting point. <br>
+<br>
+<center><img src="/static/img/ent/gdd_worldbuilding.png" alt="(image: Ellen Brock's worldbuilding questionnaire.)"></center> <br>
+<br>
+Every nation in my game gets their own copy that's written from their perspective, since different people groups can have different experiences or explanations regarding the same world. <br>
+<br>
+<h2>story + dialog </h2><br>
+The pacing and direction of game narratives are dependent on the player's actions, so the stories are less like monolithic pages of text and more like a series of events strung together. For that reason, I don't keep the story or major events in my GDD. I keep an outline of the story and each scene in individual flowchart documents instead, so I can move the pieces around and connect them freely. <br>
+<br>
+<center>
+<a target="_blank" href="/static/img/ent/gdd_diagram.png">
+    <img src="/static/img/ent/gdd_diagram.png" alt="(image: event diagram with an unnecessary amount of choices)" width="500" height="313">
+</a></center><br>
+<br>
+To make my flowcharts, I open diagramming software like <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Dia">Dia</a> and make a box for the title and one for the goals of the scene. Then, using color coding to separate character dialog, conditional statements, stage directions, and emotes, I write the event box-by-arrow-by-box. <br>
+<br>
+Every time I have an idea for a scene, I scribble it in a flowchart to keep with my GDD. Some of them are dumb, but it's never bad to have a giant pile of potential game events. <br>
+<br>
+<h2>backing up your GDD </h2><br>
+Finally, there's no point to keeping everything together in one place if the hard drive loses them. Try to keep a current copy in about 3 places. I have a GDD folder that contains an individual folder for each game. That way, it's easy to push all my GDDs to git at once. Better safe than sorry! <br>
+<br>
+Last updated May 26, 2021 <br>
+<br>

src/diary/entries/210701

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+<!--210601,210801-->
+<h1>june 2020: </h1>
+july 1, 2021<br>
+#diary <br>
+<br>
+<h3>friday, june 4 </h3>
+<ul>
+<li>I ordered some rayon rib knit for a mock turtleneck, but customer service emailed me saying that it's out of stock. They had tons in stock when I ordered, and there's still 70 yards left today...How is 70 out of stock? ;-; </li>
+<li>I want the setting for Blessfrey to be like the United States but not quite. I was using something along the lines of Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series. The Confederate States is definitely an interesting place to study, but I was just using it as an obvious example of an alternative history setting. Really thinking about it, though, the failed U.S. state that interests me the most is Nickajack. The interior of the Confederacy was speckled with pro-Union enclaves trapped within pro-Sucession states. If a particular secession movement succeeded, north Alabama and parts of Tennessee and Georgia would have become the pro-Union state of Nickajack. The idea of Nickajack has captured my imagination since I was a kid, since it comes up in local politics and rants from grownups every once in a while. The disconnect between north and south Alabama persists to this day. Huntsville is a modern booming Southern city, outpacing the other big Alabama cities Birmingham, Montogomery, and Mobile, but the state refuses to recognize Huntsville as a bigger district. Huntsville also pays a lot of tax money into Alabama, but spending disproportionately favors southern Alabama. Not only that, but there's a distinct cultural disconnect, with northern Alabama's history of technology, connection to Nazi Germany, and general higher levels of education, income, racial diversity, and Democrat voters compared to the largely agricultural south. I'm not even sure how accurate this stuff is, though, since this is my summary of years of angry grownup hearsay, I didn't intentionally follow local politics until high school, and I've never lived long enough in southern Alabama to gain a sense of any significant cultural or political differences. At least my husband went to school in southern Alabama, but I don't have access to much more than his experiences. The idea of resolving the general north-south tension through secession is wacky to me. Alabama's political history has a lot of absurd events and figures, too. The Confederate States are interesting and all, but I think Nickajack is a lot more personal and unusual for use as a story setting. </li>
+<li>When I went online to learn more about Nickajack, the amount of sources was shockingly small compared to how often I've heard it discussed. About the best I could do is find books about it that are luckily available at my local library. I guess I should have checked the library first, since the only times Nickajack's come up in my reading have been while reading local historical journals and newspapers in the library's archives. Makes sense, since I only hear about other secession struggles directly from people who used to live in states with similar tension. (Superior vs. Michigan is one I learned through a Michigan-born classmate in 5th grade.) </li>
+<li>Even if I'm not setting my game immediately into the Confederate States, Nickajack is definitely strongly tied to the Civil War and Confederate States. A modern Confederate setting is just extremely controversial these days, even if it would have probably freed its slaves hundreds of years ago and legally recognized the equality of its citizens regardless of race. (It's not like even the general population of a Civil War-era Confederate setting really supported slavery either, but whatever.) The reality of the Confederacy or my representation of it doesn't really matter, though, since it's been reduced to a conversial symbol, representing either (by the left) racism, slavery, and radical right politics or (by the right) the rejection of the expanding government and progressive policies invading the private lives of citizens. No matter what I do with it, it's going to immediately mean virulent angry things to people. The setting of Nickajack really interests me, especially way more than a vanilla rural South, so I'll probably do it anyway because it's unique, but it's probably going to be controversial if anyone ends up playing my game at all. </li>
+<li>To make it worse, slavery actually is a relatively major theme of my setting, but it's more similar to modern day slavery. We still use slavery in labor to lower the prices of consumer goods, but instead of keeping slavery domestic and regulated, we have exported it. Slavery today's just as bad if not worse than the experience of Southern slavery, but it's out of sight, out of mind. That idea is kind of represented in Blessfrey's setting's exploitation of the hollow earth to support its unsustainable local economy (because the controversial hollow earth theory's in my setting, too, lol). </li>
+<li>Whatever. I checked out some cool library books about local history, though. It'll be fun to intentionally study it instead of generally learn it through osmosis. </li>
+</ul>
+<br>
+<h3>sunday, june 6 </h3>
+<ul>
+<li>I feel like I've been so busy with translating manga, sewing new clothes, and socializing that I haven't worked on Blessfrey enough. I kinda forgot I'm so close to my first demo release. That would be so cool. I worked on refactoring movement and  </li>
+</ul>