#blogofkylelab

it's literally true

I'm not going to make a habit of writing in-depth about the games I work on among teams of other people…but I did have at least one piece I wanted to write about Rhythm Doctor.

[sees a grizzly bear on TV] "Ohhh...the grizzlerrrr....."

[sees an enemy jumping around in a video game] "Ahh, the jumpler!"

Thanks for the kind words! I ended up putting more love into the Haymakers demo assets than the other thing that was competing for my attention at the time: assignments at art school. Haha.

Being an artist/writer/gamedev is fun! And the best part is that anyone can do it. As long as it's interesting or fulfilling to you in any way, it's worth dabbling in any creative hobby. It's easy to want to compare our writing, drawings, and games to professional products, but we wouldn't do the same thing with a knitted sweater or wooden footstool made by our grandparents. So we shouldn't do the same for creative work either!

Most challenging about...

Writing: Probably getting past the initial writer's block that prevents me from getting into the flow. Harder with fiction than with blogging, but maybe that's because I blog a lot. Another hard part is getting stuck in my own head and my own habits, either re-using certain phrases too often or writing myself into a hole where it only makes sense in my head.

Art: Anatomy, perspective, and inking. I don't have enough of a passion for those things, which makes it harder on myself. Though it's not like color is super easy either. The older I've gotten the more I've noticed how many fumbles I've had with my sense of color.

Gamedev: My reflex answer is "programming/developing" because I have no programming background and no interest in learning any coding language. However...the tools I've used (Twine and RPG Maker) are actually pretty good at keeping things simple. I've been able to adjust my thinking so that I only really think of ideas that would be feasible to do with my skillset. So my second answer would be "combat playtesting" for RPG Maker, I don't know if I have an obsessive-enough personality about combat to fine-tune it without playtesters' feedback.

But the most honest and most important answer for all three is: the skill of finishing a project and publishing it to the public. Too many scrapped drafts on my hard drive.

Most fun about...

Writing: How fast and free it can be! I will never take for granted how fast it is to tap fingers onto a keyboard, compared to the basic actions required for a lot of other crafts. When I'm in the zone, it's really fun.

Art: The ability to evoke feelings and vibes that would otherwise be impossible to convey with words or with logic, and have it resonate with a stranger.

Gamedev: The pride in seeing something work functionally! I would imagine this probably fuels the passion of a lot of programmers and devs. Plus then seeing that set of functionality be interpreted differently by each player.

It's that time of year again. The time of year when RPG Maker is on deep discount.

If you're not a programmer and you have any desire to someday make an RPG, a narrative game, a tactics RPG, a card RPG, a deckbuilder, etc. I highly recommend picking it up.

I just learned someone made an archive site of webcomics that were on SmackJeeves, which is cool.

But bizarrely, the person who put it together gave the comics ratings and little quip reviews?