Construction Begins!

Actual date: 6/15/21

Weeeeellllll hellllll...here we go indeed.

I decided to make a tiny project in 2 days.  The timeline wasn't arbitrary, and the genesis of the idea wasn't spontaneous.  It probably seems like it, especially with such a short timeline, but there's a method to my madness.

This project is cathartic.  It's meant to be my emotional outlet, my release, for a few things.  I lost my grandmother in at the end of May, and my newborn son, who was only 4 months old at the time, never got to meet her in person because of COVID restrictions in the various hospitals / nursing homes she spent the last months of her life in.  She was in decent health when he was born, and deteriorated rapidly before I got to introduce them.  

I didn't really get a chance to mourn, and I still don't feel like I have.  It doesn't feel like she's gone.  But I wanted to try and get that out in a medium I know and love, and that's games. 

The other side of this emotional impact is that I'm a new mother!  My baby is 5 months old now, and because of that, my career goals for 2021 have taken an extreme hit.  He was a surprise pregnancy, and I didn't know until I was 7 months pregnant.  I didn't plan on children ever, so before I learned about him, I had a very specific series of moves in mind for my game designer career.  Then, baby!  I've felt so removed and disconnected from my career that I knew I had to do something to get my feet back in, to feel like me again.

Thus, this project was born.  It's something from the heart, maybe the most genuine thing I've attempted to make so far.  But, it's very little, and very small.  And I've already screwed up my 2 day timeline.  I had that in mind because my husband had 2 days off, and babies take a lot of time.  But!  I'm still going to try, so here goes.

These will probably be daily posts as more of a stream of consciousness thing, so now that the intro is aside, let's get to the meat!

GOALS FOR THE DAY

• Base coding done for dialog windows
• Item interaction complete
• Camera movement complete
• Puzzle solving complete

ACTUAL PROGRESS!

As of right now, I've got a really ugly, rudimentary isometric tile set in place.  I've never done an isometric project before and I want to get back into my pixel art skills, so it felt like a fun trial run.  Art can get added in later--first let's figure out how this all works!

Getting back into the swing of things can reveal how rusty you really are.  My tile set isn't great, and it's much more block-oriented that I intend for the final to be.  But it's a start, and it shows me some solid positioning I can work on next.  

11:15 AM: My next goal: get a duplicate tile map running for the boy character.  He's actually the yellow set of tiles, while Grandma is blue.  So I'll have to adjust that a bit in terms of how the iso will look, but we'll get there! 

2:24 PM: Rough dialog system is in now.  Which is great!  We've got movement and dialog.  Now time to set up these interactables.