A little embarassing, but the mailing list and guestbook do in fact work now. At least, they do as of right now. I felt inclined to test it and... lo and behold.

Neocities be hustl'n for that $5 sub. I get it, I get it. Absolutely fair considering... Well... everything. As a minimum wage earner from the "free world" $5 is a fair price I think.

Still, if you posted something and weren't heard, I apologize. Best laid plans and all that.

It's not finished but it's coming out kinda cute, so I thought I'd sneak this in.

So, I thought I'd wait until Monday, which is usually my decompress day, to post an update. But then I remembered that this isn't social media, and I can post what I want whenever I want. So, Happy Right The Heck Now Day.

This has been a relatively productive week. My only real plan was to get the bones done for the website. The designs had been sitting in Figma pinned to my Notion board for months and it was starting to make me a little crazy. I also got the animated stamp done, some icons, my sketchbook is full of little doodles for the next ones when I have the time - maybe something to work on next week when I'm feeling too put out by my day job to actually do anything meaningful? - so that's a pretty big leap from where I was before.

I also completely refactored the way buffs and debuffs work in the game. Originally I had basically a list of boolean values tracking if certain spells were present and an int value for the timer.

If you know anything about coding you're laughing your butt off right now - QUITE JUSTLY - but hey, it worked, alright? That's what mattered.

Also, I finally got Ostara mostly pinned down. Sort of. Well - Okay truthfully, look I'm ASS at concept art and I pretty much just made the first drawing I did again with extra steps.

I'm torn between the upper and lower left drawings. The tree isn't QUITE working in the lower left picture, but something about it vibes where the rose and the vines do not. I'll think about it. And the staff. And... the veil... I like the veil but I kind of want to be able to see her face. It won't matter in the grand scheme of things at the distance the player will see her on the field but it's more approachable?

She's not pink anymore, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't know. The white and the gold is doing something. Even with the golden circlets and the designs, something about her vibes "I'm just a girl from town" and it's very fitting for her.

I don't really have anyone to bother about this sort of stuff, so I ended up asking Claude what he thought. Claude tells me that she needs to be asymmetrical and she needs an accent color.

You can at least see where I tried and gave up on the accent color. The asymmetrical thing made me laugh, though. Not that it's bad advice - it's actually the 'technically correct advice' - but I think symmetry might actually doing me some favors here. Her design is pretty simple (approachable, maybe) and I think in a world of overstimulated shenanigans maybe that's a good thing. I could maybe give her anklets on only one side, maybe? Hmm.

The real moral of the story is I need to stop being a coward and post where real people can tell me that I'm dumb, but I haven't had great luck with that in the past. I mostly just... get in trouble trying to make friends.

Not me overthinking things again, but I'm still not sure I feel right about her being the main protagonist.

Look, don't get me wrong, I'd be happy playing her, but something I've learned is that not everyone is as flexible or curious as I am.

For the genre this game is in, I kind of think I should be making a boring male hero protagonist who can come to the rescue.

Or I should at least make it a choice.

But that feels wrong for this story.

I guess we'll see. Maybe everyone will hate it. I think the story is solid, though, it's just... a matter of whether or not some form of audience might resonate with her. We'll see.

Right, for next week:

1. New player actions/cards - including Herja's "leap" cards.
2. Build out some test environments with walls so we can work on the light/fog of war mechanics.
3. Add the actual light/fog of war in the game (threat based on light sources is already implemented, go me!)
4. Some Lower Priority Things that are "on the list":
• Create at least 1 "special ability" icon. (probably the cat)
• Design Herja
• Design Hnikud
• Design Steinar
• Create some drawing with the 4 of them together for some promo stuff?
• Add a sketchbook portion of the site? (Or do I want that to be here in the devlog?)

I'll see you next time!

Hello there! Looks like yet another person has been sucked into the idea of reclaiming the edges of the internet for ourselves, hmm?

Truth be told, I bounced right off of social media from the start. Something about the overwhelming public exposure just didn't work for me. It turned what was supposed to be self expression and a creative outlet into a performance and I, quite frankly, have terrible stagefright.

So... welcome to something a little more remeniscent of simpler times, and finally putting the pieces of my life together.