Secret Santa Jam in progress!

I decided to do the Secret Santa Jam, just because I got a digest email from Itchio and thought it sounded cool. You send off a letter and get one in return, from an anonymous someone you are meant to craft a game for, and of course, someone crafts one based on your letter. Mine likes Resident Evil 7 but also mentioned Animal Crossing. They suggested a horror/Christmas story, which turned out to be a fantastic limitation to work with, in terms of storytelling especially. I feel like blogging to take a break from the coding mayhem that's got my mind whirling a bit too much. Mine so far is a bit of a walking simulator with a snapping camera that has defined the game's suspenseful vibe. Well, as suspenseful as pixel art can be. 

My game is mostly a walking sim so far, with some player options that will determine the final outcome. It is pretty obvious right now as my splash art, cheesy vibe and and temporary title spoils who the intruder is. But maybe that is for the best? Maybe it's ok to ham up the 'evil Santa' trope, and tell a story within a game the best you can. Currently, just focusing on dying if you get hit by Santa who roams a certain path. Then, hopefully will aim to have the character do a certain thing in order to defend herself and her wimpy partner.

I went into making this little house dumbly thinking I was be making a RPG, as I admit my terminology vocabulary is fairly limited. Then realised...the snapping camera my friend recommended, forms the core of the game! It is a walking sim mostly. Stuff happens around you, but the person whom I am making this for mentioned survival horror as something they liked, so I am still on-the-fly inventing things that could be programmed in to make for the stories climax. I mean, I kind of know, but it needs to be better.

Story is king. They used to spout that off at Pixar, but Pixar Story Internship didn't teach me that. Jojo's Bizzare Adventure and Berserk that same year did.

I am laughing a lot at my spontaneous use of royalty free music and SFX's recommended to me by people on Discord. Music and sound completely and absolutely can make the medium. I think it wouldn't be anywhere near as funny if I didn't have the capacity to get-in-the-storytelling-zone aka. creative flow state and come up with ideas. Ah, yes. Flow state. What I live for. Life has been painful without acess to flow state, and GML has been one heck of a steep learning curve. Only now I'm capable of understanding 'state machines', something which I was calling all this time  'sequentially getting from one thing to next' lmfao. Being self taught with code has been a long road, but with making this, I got into flow state more. I actually enjoy the challenges a bit more, instead of wanting to break down as past GML attempts have left me. I think this is just because I'm improving, also, because I'm making a simple game with a simple loop, and focusing on storytelling and art/animations once I have the game loop sorted.

I reakon I will get a smile out of my giftee with this. I mean, some things just make you smile. Dorky Christmas things sure make me smile. The game is in a very solid state and I have till 22nd 6:30am GMT, Greenwich time? Hope I don't goof up and miss it.

Blogging is still some form of venting, no matter how positive I attempt to be. This is because my mental health has been in the gutter since losing my art. I don't think it's that hideous a pastime now that I'm mellowed out and not questioning my gender anymore. God I wish I didn't do all that shit. God I just want to feel stable and normal and not get swept away by whims. Game dev is something I have done on and off during the years, in spurts, and usually all my content is broken, rough and ugly. Usually because my code isn't graceful and well thought out, but I think that is changing. 

I am trying to relish my improvements, as a feel like only midyear, I couldn't process so much of the code techniques that I'm FINALLY capable of doing on my own without my dad helping me. So my goal is to make a cute pixel art (mostly) games and learn and improve through my own resources, not getting stumped and crying. It's a language, it' a skill you need to approach a certain way and it's especially not like art, which I suggest to people is all about 'just jumping in and putting down some lines'. Programming is very different. So I have to slow down and plan what I want to happen. Anyways, I've waffled on enough, and am spoiling my game if I post too much. Self-taught-amateur-coder, over and out.