If you're wondering where everything in my gallery went, it's now in Scraps. I only deleted one, and it won't be missed. Sorry for any confusion.



In place of what was, I'll be populating it with some 3D character models. Some practice, some commissions. You'll notice that I edited my user profile to include a link to a Google Form where you can commission a character model from me. Most of the info one might need is linked there, in the Terms, so I won't repeat it here. If you're interested, check the link. It's something that I've found I'm relatively decent at, and enjoy doing, so I'm gonna do it. Price can be negotiated to be lower than what the form says.



Now, if you're wondering what happened to Pelted Warfare, well... it's.. still in development. In fact, I kind of had to change the art style of the game for a few reasons, which means all the art I had made until now (models of characters, weapons, UI work, etc) is to be scrapped and replaced. I also started work on a game engine earlier in the year which is going.. surprisingly well. I'll make a proper, playable demo once I have one ready. For too long I spent prioritising game mechanics, physics, animations, visuals, etc. Stuff that could be shown off, yes, and might have brought attention to the project, but was either poorly thought out or didn't work alongside other things and ended up being wasted code. Case in point, oPW.

So far, I've done a rather terrible looking test player model, some decent looking trees, and some pretty good code in terms of emulating Unity's API - game objects, components, rigidbodies, that sort of thing. Ended up having to write my own physics too, since Bullet just wasn't performing well at scale - throw at it 500 dynamic boxes and it's fine, but throw at it 50000 *static* capsules? Nah, that's too much. I'm also making sure the engine runs on Linux with no need for installing dependencies of any sort, which is something I didn't pay any mind to for a good while; I'd go as far as saying I was somewhat hostile towards Linux and its users. Buuut having become one myself last year means my opinion has changed to a more neutral stance. It's a viable platform, even if memory management and page swapping are huge weaknesses of the system from my experience trying to run Insurgency Sandstorm and Arma 3 on Pop.

Now, I'm not a good programmer. In fact, I'd say I'm bad enough to say I can't even call myself one in the first place. I think the fact that the game still isn't finished, and that the code is the main part that takes up development time, goes to show that. Hell, often I find myself doubting if I'm competent enough to do it. Like, obviously I could've turned either of the three versions of the game into smaller games and sold them as part of a series, but would that have been worthwhile?

... probably, actually. It'd give more credence to my capability of completing a project. But now it's too late for that, and for all I know, the polished turds would still come out turds. The best I can do at this point is work on the game design. Not the mechanics, not the gameplay; that's the easy part. But the whole geopolitics system, what I've called 'war dynamics' in the past (and probably still will internally).

Basically... once I have more to show, I'll show it. Until then, I won't. I did post two or three videos of both the engine and a new dynamic music idea I had. The soundtrack for the game is definitely gonna change - those ambient tracks I did some time ago aren't going to be used anymore. Main theme is gonna stay, ending too, and the faction themes are still all perfect. Might license some Red Vox songs for loading screen and death themes depending on how contacting them goes, but that'll only come when I know I've got the money to do so. And to that end, I'll have the whole 3D modelling thing. It's not my dream, but if it funds the dream, then I say it's part of it.

http://panthereye.pagekite.me/ was down for the last month or two, but it's back up now, and will stay that way for the next 6 months before I have to pay again. I had some stuff I needed to buy before paying for it, hence the delay. I am sorry about that.



Development on Pelted Warfare has been going well. I've been doing some reworks lately, mainly in the medical/damage system and vehicles, before moving on from them. Likewise, I've been doing a lot of vehicle related things, which have all taken longer than expected due to certain things in Unity behaving in ways I didn't expect (e.g. RaycastHit.transform points to the collider that was hit's transform only if there isn't a rigidbody attached to one of its parents, in which case it points to that rigidbody's transform).

I've also been doing a lot of things related to how the bullet projectiles work. Mainly, things to make it behave more.. realistically. Prior to last week, armour simply decreased damage taken by a flat rate. Now, however, armour's effectiveness not only depends on how intact it is, but also depends on the calibre of projectile that hit it, and its armour rating. Meaning you can have armour that's impervious to a smaller calibre, like 9mm, but if shot enough and damaged enough, will let any and all damage through. I've also added the ability for projectiles to ricochet, though that's still very work-in-progress.

Medical-wise, I recently added adrenaline as a feature after having a rather thorough conversation on an Arma 3 server about how stupid it is to get shot once in the arm in Arma with the ACE3 mod and fall unconscious despite having gotten shot several times in the head and chest in the past few minutes. So now, in PW, how much damage a character takes is based on how much adrenaline is pumping through his system, and yes, you can take drugs to increase that. Meaning a character that's relaxed will likely go completely limp after being shot once by a 7.62 round, while one that's been in combat for a few minutes now and has gotten shot already will take at least 3 or 4 before actually going down. It's a small thing, but it's the small things that make the biggest differences.

And as for the vehicles, I've been doing work on cookoff, handling, character physics while sitting in them (or lack thereof now, since it wasn't working well enough before), their health, their interaction with water, and lots of other stuff, as well as some bugsquashing (uwu) and much needed optimization (-w-). If you look at the Trello ( https://trello.com/b/qfB6EIXt/alpha.....pelted-warfare ), you'll see that the next few foundational elements to be developed are pretty much all vehicle related. So it's safe to say that by the time I get to AI, the vehicles should be 100% complete, or at least as close to it as they can be without also implementing stuff like fuel stations and whatnot - which will come later down the line.

I also got an acoustic guitar that I've been trying to learn how to play. Failing horribly, but trying. I tried doing some ambient music for the second campaign, but I wasn't digging the style. Definitely gonna vary up the instrumentation in order to make it feel distinct from the first campaign's 10 ambient songs, just not sure what melodies or percussion to go with. Eh, I'll figure it out eventually, I'm sure! I also contacted an Arma playing furry acquaintance to see if he could make a legally distinct remix of the Arma 1 South Island music (and you all know how much I love that song) for PW. Where would it play? Who knows! Maybe credits, maybe the intro movie that the game will definitely have, maybe on an in-game radio! Now, the problem with that is, I offered to pay, but he declined it repeatedly. Which means I can't bug him about it >((( I hate when people insist on not taking my small amount of money and instead doing stuff for free but with no deadline!

Now, I'm always posting about progress updates like this in my Discord server, though not as concise and compressed. Come and hang out! We're a small and diverse community, but we care about one another even when we don't always see eye to eye. Here's a permanent invite link: https://discord.gg/phfazXV - and if that one doesn't work, try the one linked in the website!



As for myself, I've been trying to see if I can get a job in order to afford more stuff like the vehicle wheel asset or the new mice, both of which have been absolute game changers for the project. Nothing's come out of it yet, but hey, maybe it will soon. Been playing Arma 3 again which has given me good insight on things to improve in PW if I truly want to make it stand out from the competition, and I've also met some cool new folks who've been keeping me saner than usual.

Oh, yeah, and I guess I did have a seizure two weeks ago and was hospitalized for almost a whole week. Forgot to mention that. I'm okay now though, so don't worry about it. *gulps down half a bottle of wine* I just need to drink a little less alcohol! Heheheh...



All in all? I think things are going pretty okay. And no, I'm not gonna drop the "journals must end with -ion at the end" shtick. It's my thing now okay shush.

pros·tra·tion
extreme physical weakness or emotional exhaustion.

..

The last few weeks have been the weirdest mix of grueling and rewarding. I was tired, in physical pain, constantly going to sleep extremely late, finding myself growing apathetic towards my friends, and yet, at the same time, more proud and accomplished with my game development work than I'd been for over 2.5 years. I had just come off of the worst period of depression I've had since the year started, thanks to being completely out of a computer, and when I was back to work my mood quickly switched to one of happiness.

But.. it didn't last.

You see, I thought the wave of sadness that had hit me was due to being unable to work. I now know that was just me trying to mask the real reason why, that being Toupei55's failure. My failure. Because I now realise that, had Toupei55 gotten good sales, or at the very least a steady crawl of a few sales, I would've been happy, even without being able to work on Pelted Warfare. And now that happiness I got those weeks ago is vanishing.

Let me walk you through my line of thought: let's have a quick think about a few indie games that were successful. Specifically, 7 Days to Die, Enter the Gungeon, Overgrowth, and Gang Beasts. In my honest opinion, none of these games would have seen any amount of success beyond the first week or so of sales if it hadn't been for the games being covered and played by YouTubers all over. Doubt me? Check Among Us. That game came out ages ago, and it only now is seeing success thanks to streamers and YouTubers playing it. Hell, I didn't know I wanted to play a game like Among Us, until I saw some videos of it and decided to try it out.

Word of mouth is invaluable for indie game development. That much is obvious, but the part that content creators play in it seems to be a ton bigger than I originally thought. It seems that games are successful not based purely on their quality, but their quality paired with how video-able they are. Basically, is the game slow and methodical, with no real moments of unexpected chaos or excitement? Then it's doomed to fail. And I think Toupei55 falls into that definition. Sure - playing the game can be tense. Playing the game with friends or family is great fun. Watching boomers figure the game out and actually play competently is great. But it's not a video-able game. It's not a game that one would enjoy watching, say, Markiplier play.

The problem that that creates is that it limits artistic freedom. It forces me to keep in mind this extra attribute of how video-able it is, because, without that, anything I put out in the future is doomed to have the same fate. And that does frustrate me quite a bit. Because of course I want to make games that are successful, but I want to make games I want to play first and foremost. I don't want to have to scrap ideas or concepts that would be cool in a game because it wouldn't make for good video or stream content. But I have to.

Now, in the case of Pelted Warfare, the main project, the big dog, I'm not too worried about it. The current design of it is very video-able. It's almost entirely based on emergent gameplay, where systems overlap and create interesting situations for the player to deal with rather than the situations being all pre-designed. I mean, look at Minecraft, it's quite possibly the game with the most emergent design in it, and it's also one of the most successful games in the YouTube race. But what if that's not enough? I mean, there have been plenty of games based on emergent design that fell under the radar. What if Pelted Warfare suffers the same fate? What if it flops as hard as Toupei55?

You have to keep in mind as well that Toupei55 took only a month and a half to develop, not counting the extra time I've spent on the new huge content update that'll be coming out in a few days. But Pelted Warfare has taken almost two years to make and still lacks quite a number of core features and systems. For Toupei55 to pay for the time spent making it, it'd only really have to make around 100 or 200 sales (which it only made 6). For Pelted Warfare to pay for the time I've spent on it? It'd need to make over a thousand, at least 3 thousand sales. Think about it: I bought a whole-ass 3000 reais laptop just to work on it, I spent 2 years of constantly using electricity to power said laptop to work on it, not to mention food and other expenses caused by simply being alive.. a lot of resources and time have been poured into Pelted Warfare and it, more than ANYTHING else, has to succeed.

Because if it doesn't succeed, I'm giving up. Not just on game development, but on life itself.

My current fursona is a very odd specimen. Most people just make and kill fursonas at a whim, or for unimportant reasons. But not me. Every time I perceive a drastic difference in my personality, life, or friend group between when I created it and the moment of reflection, I switch fursonas. Every time I undergo a massive trek towards a path not previously in mind. But not this one. And it's not because I haven't changed - I've changed a lot from early-mid last year to now. My personality has changed, I've evolved many skills I never even thought I had, and my friend group has drastically changed. But my life hasn't, not overall.

After around a full hour of reflection while listening to C418's 'Cat' on loop along with other old Minecraft music discs, I've realised why. My fursona started out as an outgoing, better version of myself. It then morphed into a representation of my worst aspects, raw and obvious - a scapegoat for whenever I acted wrongly. Finally, it became this sort of.. mysterious figure that not even I knew. Like when a person changes so much they're unrecognizable. Even the name has changed a ton, from the first name switching from Alfred to Alphard repeatedly, to the surname going from Garrison, to Gargett, to Pawlik. For no reason other than a purely aesthetic one, and now I don't even know what to call him.

But now I think I finally understand him. He's neither the worst of me nor the best of me. He's me. He's just the worst when I'm at my worst, the best when I'm at my best, and saddest when I'm at my saddest. Things ranging from kink-related abilities to semi-immortality come and based on how I'm feeling during that time. I still feel my life is stagnant, that I'm running on a treadmill while everyone else is on open ground. At the same time, I also feel like the clear linear improvement of skills such as drawing and sound design gives me a rush of inspiration unmatched by anything else that overtakes whatever else I even can feel, even grief. And when I look at him, I think what defines him is the simultaneity of two concepts or feelings. And I think they're what define me as well, or at least, my life with him as my fursona.

Acerbic melancholy and naive hopefulness.