Update #132 A Brain of Storms

Greatings!

Those are great greetings! Yep, just minted that expression. Well, probably. Better just claim credit instead of actually checking if the claim is true. As long as I believe my claim is true I'm acting in good faith! That's how it works, right?

Oh, before we go on, if you haven't played the new episode yet, don't worry, there will be no spoilers here!

And so we find ourselves back at that time of the development cycle where I have no new fancy renders to show. Speaking of renders, really gotta get some 4k ones out, gonna be doing that next week, been a long while since the last set. Such is the price of getting the episode out in time for the new year.

For those of you who have had the time to play the new episode, I hope you enjoyed it! If you haven't had the time to play it, I hope you've been enjoying the new year instead!

A big welcome to all new members, and a welcome back to any returning and/or recurring members as well! Been the biggest jump in people yet, which is exciting.

Naturally, about half or so of are only here for the month. It's one of those things that makes you think you're doing something wrong as a dev when it happens for the first time. Nowadays I think of it as people dropping by to leave a tip in support of the game. It's all about perspective!

The snow finally decided to show up, and all at once it seems. Been out shoveling snow twice this year already. My back is not happy about it, and I think there's going to be more snow in the coming days too. Gotta work on my shoveling technique.

I suppose the good part of this all is that I count it as exercise, so I feel free to skip out on my normal routine. Is that actually a good thing? I dunno, but it sure helps motivate me to get out and shovel.

Currently I'm in brainstorming mode for the next episode. It's not quite as much of a blank slate to start with as it used to be, now that I have a more concrete plan of what the future holds. But as always, there are so many things I want to throw in it's a struggle to make it all fit.

Usually I solve a lot of it by combining scenes so that they accomplish more than one of the things that I want at the same time. Adds a nice bit of density, I think.

Here's a zoomed out view of my current brainstorming canvas, zoomed out to the point where no text shows (no spoilerinos). Well, except for that one card that says overall plot. That's just a text file I put there with older notes and plot points so that I don't have to tab around.

All I need now is to add some red threads and faces with x-ed out eyes...

It's real nice being able to move the cards around, makes it a lot easier to fit and match scenes. Although at this point I haven't even decided on scenes, this is more of a "what do I want/need to happen this episode" kind of canvas. So it's mostly arranged by a mix of characters involved and a rough timeline.

Right, before I get too far into this I need to drop a poll as well. Ask which character you guys most would like to see get a spicy scene, all to themselves. Or maybe I'll spice the poll up too, add in scenes with more than one character perhaps. Ho-hum, that could be interesting.

Other than that, for the next week I'd like to finish my brainstorming and begin to write the actual episode. Not sure if that'll happen, depends on how the creative juices flow. But since I have some level of structure already, and quite a few ideas of what I want to happen, a lot of it is going to be just puzzling things together into something coherent.

Anyway, that's all from me today.

Thank you so much for your support, and I wish a calm and happy brain for you this week!