droqever diary

[droqen]

(Place held)

[droqen]

March 13
Today's game was very instructive, but I'm not proud of it... It isn't a game that I "wanted" badly enough (Agnes Martin).
What I learned
- sound makes a huge difference, but in terms of process it feels like a large extra step of effort/polish
- interactions with npcs and interfaces, still lots to explore there
- style with "head" and "body" as different sprites really increases the amount of work (2x area does that), but stylistically doable and useful

Meta:
- sometimes I don't feel like making an ending. Could be nice to have an automatic ending structure available to me like 31 had?

[droqen]

April 9
Had a conversation with Zack about doing droqever & having a fulltime game design job: he asked if I was worried about them both drawing from the same well, creatively speaking.
I said I wasn't worried, said that making a game every day gave me energy if anything, although I was and am concerned about the possibility of logistically running out of energy or literal time.

However, this remains the easiest thing I've ever done.

[droqen]

April 10
Ezra discord call while walking to Valu Village, Riverdale, headphones

Conversation about structure, narrative structure.
See Instagram image: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5mor5luKHB/?igsh=ZzYxc251bzhtNjc5

Came to the conclusion that I really like the structure of game where I spend some time committing to a route, and then a bunch of time being 'rewarded,' seeing the larger-scale outcome of my actions and choices.

Wouldn't have gotten here without this chat, without Ezra pointing out roguelikes and 'information games.' I have a brand new lens to try out.

[droqen]

April 12
"a vessel for poetry"
I want to read more books...
I like difficult little platformers.
Museums, playground with ladders that you have to climb.
You climb to see the next exhibit.

[droqen]

I've barely started today's game, and I'm lying in bed relaxing, or trying to relax. Maybe I want to write.

[droqen]

April 13
had a dream about basketball.
thinking about systems, small choices within systems, expressive systems with wrong choices that are right sometimes
wrong choices that are right sometimes, and you find yourself understanding when to make those off-the-wall choices

[droqen]

last night i was tiiiired. i thought maybe i was done droqevering.
now i think i need to make a new databug, stop making poems, but it was nice to focus on vibe while it lasted

[droqen]

"interesting decisions," eh?

[droqen]

next id like to make something like the black company, like the game that rips from the black company (battle brothers?) but with more secrets in the recruits, people who carry hidden powers, hidden traumas

maybe that's a little Darkest Dungeon-y, i dunno

my old idea about secret levels of confidence that affect how likely a character's reports for success are true

[droqen]

At the VALU VILLAGE, looking at books. These are written for somebody, for a function, but not for me, not at me.

I like the feeling of engaging with a thing that has a function.

[droqen]

April 14
Wrote a short story (sort of) abt a character's death.
I've been thinking about the end of droqever for a little while.
The practical benefit of d.e. has been me getting in touch with the feeling of doing the work and finishing something each day.

droqever.com proper is not the perfect bound over that entire problem space; what I mean is that there are other things that do not abide by the rules of droqever which a daily creative process must enable, for me.

I came into it with the assumption that I wanted to make a game every day, but that's not true. Godot, I should note, is not a blocker, as much as the necessity of making something public facing ("releasing" a game every day, rather than creating something worth building on top of), and the constraint of it being game-shaped (rather than e.g. an entire story).

However. Both those incorrect constrains contain rough details of correctness.

There was and is something critical about producing something "finished" which I can capture by releasing a game that is hard to capture in other ways.

I must learn these other ways.

[droqen]

April 15
The droqevers... maybe I've been thinking about them wrong.
The thought occurred to me to make "Museum I" today, an expression of a more general pattern of creating projects designed to be built upon—but still, ones with some self-sufficiency.

They should inspire, as much as they functionally enable

[droqen]

Nope :) That's it. They can go to bed now. I find the mobile control scheme which I have imposed upon myself is too limiting: one stick (four directions) and one button is too restrictive a control scheme. Can I put this into a pattern? There are ways to combine inputs, but I feel a distinct need for two types of action: ONE TO SELECT, ONE TO ENACT. This isn't entirely true, because I make a lot, a lot, of platformers . . . a jump button is not exactly a "select" button . . . and yet it also is.

Anyway, I found myself itching to make games where you "pick up" and then either "use" and/or "drop" items. See and and perhaps others. YRKKEY'S PARADISE also has a pick up and drop control scheme -- actually, it does it with only one button as well...

but in a mobile context, I suppose that the jump button does not come across as well as on a keyboard. On a stick, "up to jump" brings a lot of distaste to my mouth.

...

What does it mean? I think I want to make a longer game where I can teach you the basic controls and build on top of that understanding. Every droqever game has to allow you to drop in on it anytime. What would it mean to make a droqever that requires previous knowledge? Maybe I can set up relationships? I'm not sure. Not sure.

[droqen]

It's important, learning these things. The very structure of droqever has two problems, then.

1 - Because of the way they are presented, every one must explain itself as if from scratch. This is sort of exhausting. I need a way to write a 'second page' to the 'first page' that is each game, that is not hamstrung by the link-any-game structure, as much as I wanted it for 31 unmarked games.

2 - There are some motifs that keep coming out. I really like when the player's mode is switched -- when a button performs contextually different actions. Picking up a block, then dropping it . . . depending on the dropped block, that contextual button does something very different. (See Starseed Pilgrim.)