Devlog: Inching Forward

Short devlog for last week because while there was progress, it was kind of incremental and not particularly showy. And, like in all projects, some of it was just fighting the "one step back" parts of trying to move a thing forward.

I worked on some Blender courses to improve my modeling skills. On the positive side, I found that the first one I started a while back, which was where I learned how to navigate the controls, now seems a little too easy for me. Which means my practice and other learning have been productive.

I also have&#mdash;quite strangely, in fact, for me and people who know me—been enjoying doing 3D modeling far more than I would have predicted. I can lose time in it far easier than when programming. Talking to my partner, I said, "I keep making things but they aren't earning me money. Am I becoming an... artist?" And talking to a friend about wanting to get back to a model I was working on, he said, "You’re becoming visual? An artist??? Welcome to the right side of your brain. Mind the gap."

I'm also adding structure to how I think about worldbuilding. When I worked at Rubicon Games on the Everway TTRPG there was a serious systemic pressure in favor of a more spontaneous, improv-like worldbuilding process, spinning up new worlds ("Spheres") based on a few images or a cool idea, and then adding world elements as the story needed, like encrusting an egg with jewels. But I'm enjoying approaching it from a larger perspective, like thinking about how plate tectonics will influence where the earliest settlements will occur, or adjusting axial tilt of a planet until the seasonal changes are exactly what I'm looking for instead of just saying "The seasons are like this here."

Only tangentially related, I worked on a couple of educational projects outside of the Pompeii rebuild. But this was also where a lot of One Step Back occurred. But at least I have a sense of the direction where the next Two Steps Forward should be aimed.

Speaking of the Pompeii project, I spent some time thinking about how I'd program the NPC "wandering" behavior. I want people not to wander, of course, but to go about their lives. I came up with a basic idea and then, of course, found a somewhat pricey pre-programmed asset that does exactly that thing, so I have to decide if I want to save time or money. I also briefly connected with someone who might be a good collaborator on Pompeii, having come up with some methods to save time on some parts of the project. We still need to chat about what that might look like and see if we're a good match, but it would be nice to not have to do literally everything myself by hand.

And finally, and perhaps most boringly, I found what might be leverage points in solving a couple of bugs in other projects. They were both kind of "I have no idea why it's doing that" kind of bugs, but now I do have an idea of what it might be. More investigation and testing to know for sure, but at least they're no longer annoying little gremlins wreaking havoc in the corner, but something I can actually work on.