I return, bearing improved orthopaedic health!

I'm back!

Here's an "I'm back!" post, there will be a normal stand-up on Sunday. This post has an overview of what I've been up to all this time; some notes about how my hand is doing; and ramblings about... stuff.

There hasn't been a huge amount of progress -- I shut down charging for January specifically so I wouldn't have to stress about that. So...

What I've been up to:

• some refactoring of old code that was getting in my way
• rewrites for what already exists for v.0.12 (more on that later in this post)
• no drawing whatsoever at all
• more work on preproduction of Future Game
• actual reading and stuff so I have more sources to draw/steal from when writing
• reinvesting Patreon money towards Princess Tower development

What I plan to do this week:

• drawing practice (I have literally no idea what my drawing ability is doing at the moment)
• starting on programming, drawing, and writing the h-scene that caps off this update.

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On my orthopaedic health:

The docs said it's time to take the cast off, but I'm still not quite at 0% pain and not even close to 100% mobility.

I was told that full recovery from removing the cast would take 2x the amount of time the cast spent on, but I'm somewhat worried about the level to which I've lost flexibility in the finger attached to the previously-broken metacarpal.

I've talked to the docs about it and we're keeping an eye on how things are progressing.

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On Future Game:

What I've been planning out is kind of... larger than Princess Tower. And that seems like an excessively large project to work on alone, so I've been thinking maybe I'd produce some short-story like stuff before that and use the technical base to jumpstart whatever I have planned. I'm pretty sure I want to start using Godot for future games, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to build my own dialogue system so... there's a lot to do.

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On the reading I've been doing:

Of all the things to do while having limited functionality of my right hand, I ended up having the most fun replaying Disco Elysium. It's my favourite game and I try to steal as much from it as I can. I don't think my writing could ever be *as* good -- but that just means I'll never run out of things to steal. :)

The good side of that is that I had a lot of enthusiasm and inspiration for writing last week, the bad side is that it also meant I reworked a lot of what was going on with v.0.12. I was already quite happy with the things that were supposed to be in focus for the update, but I didn't share that feeling for the connective tissue between them.

The rewrites, I think, were a bit indulgent when I'm trying to focus on churning out more content, but, eh, it's my game, I can indulge a bit when I want. :)

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On the reinvestment of Patreon money into Princess Tower development:

I did the first reinvestment towards actual tools and software (other than paying to have a roof over my head) since launching this page. Despite shutting the patreon off for January, I'd realized by the end of December that I actually have -- 1: somehow lost the pen for my Wacom Intuos3 tablet (I reiterate - I'm an idiot); and 2: saved enough money to buy a better one. Ironically, I'm actually pretty good with money.

The new tablet - an xp-pen Artist 15.6 Pro - is *slightly* larger (8 x 14 inches vs 6 x 8 inches), and has a screen. It's also less tired and broken than my old Intuos3 -- the pen I lost had snapped in half and was held together by tape. I'm left pretty tapped out on funds until Feb, but it seemed extremely wasteful to pay nearly 100€ to replace the Intuos3 pen that hasn't been in production since about 1875 and which I was planning to swap out anyway.

At some point during this month, I'm going to make another, *much* smaller investment -- upgrading from a free dropbox account to the cheapest plan they have.

I'm actually really looking forward to being able to look where I'm drawing (some people do just fine with screenless tablets and have little reason to upgrade, but I never entirely got the hang of it), to having a fully functional pen, and to relaxing a bit when it comes to how large the working filesizes are.

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Anyway, it's good to be back. I'm in high spirits and excited to get my hands on the new tablet (which should arrive at my closest parcel locker in about 2 hours), until Sunday - I hope you have a good rest of the week! :)