Devlog: More Inching Forward

This is more of an update on my last post than a full fledged devlog because it's just been little bits here and there.

Regarding the idea that what I'm doing is art, I was reading a thesis related to the space where game development and things like theater and literature overlap, I found several references that reinforce the idea that I'm "an artist" when I'm making a game. For example, it referenced C. Thi Nguyen's Agency as Art, and his idea that "...interactive media is a form of art that incorporates agency as a core of its aesthetic." In other words, a game designer or developer who decides what you can or can't do in a game is making an artistic choice. I thought that was interesting.

Referencing the worldbuilding structures I've been exploring, I've found it very rewarding as well. It's also gotten me into a couple of interesting conversations about history. For example, if Hitler had never been born, or had been killed before he started taking in interest in politics, the societal pressures and popular sentiment would still have been there. Would history have played out exactly the same? No, probably not. But might some other person have been the one playing the "spokesperson" for those ideas instead? Maybe so.

In other words, the "Great Man" (or Terrible, in this case) concept of history is attractive because of its simplicity, but likely very inaccurate at representing what would have happened in some other situation. However, there are certainly still individual moments that are turning points. For example, had Vasily Arkhipov been slightly more of a people-pleaser, or simply made a different decision, we very likely would have seen a nuclear World War III in 1962.

And with regard to Pompeii, the project moves forward, but I have only one thing to show. The reason there isn't more is that stuff is going on in the background in a number of ways. I'm not only learning some tools, but I'm also shifting my rationale and purpose for the game in conversation with a collaborator or two, which means reconsidering previous decisions in light of new ideas and making sure everything's aligned to the new goal.

However, I did manage to whip up a little visible feature inspired by Minecraft mod, What Am I Looking At (WAILA). There are still some organizational kinks to work out, but now as the player explores the city, there's a low-impact way of learning about your surroundings. There are so many rows of columns in Pompeii, it'll be useful to have a way to differentiate that this is the enclosure of the Temple of Apollo, and that one's the Temple of Jupiter, and over there is the Building of Eumachia and so forth. It'll help educate about the city, as well as help with wayfinding by reinforcing where particular buildings are located and what they look like no matter what direction you're approaching them from. (Eventually I'll have to texture the buildings so they're not ALL white…this building in particular should be almost garish in its colors.)