January Dev Update - 2024

Hello everyone! A new year brings new developments, and my goal to have Sick Ass Combat draws ever closer. I've been doing a lot of refactoring lately, and while there might not be anything to show off visually, I've fixed a number of long-standing bugs and I'm approaching a point with my code base where I'll be ready to start implementing some of the features that make this a Real Video Game: saves, health bars, level transitions, items, and a pause menu that doesn't look like ass.

One of the coolest things about developing an indie game is that it kind of has a symbiotic relationship with my ADHD. When I get fixated on something, I tend to focus on it until I get burned out, but with game development there's almost always something else I can switch my focus to before reaching the point of frustration. For the first half of 2023, that was character modeling and texturing.

You may already know that I went to college for 3D Animation, but what you may not know is that I graduated right at the start of the pandemic, found no success looking for positions in the industry, and mostly just worked retail and food service. When the pandemic hit, my partner's job closed down and he was laid off. I was working two jobs at the and my hours were cut from 50 a week to 15. We lost our apartment, and for a few months, we were homeless and living out of my car.

During the pandemic, the conditions at every job grew extremely hostile. After being threatened and abused by both staff and customers and multiple jobs, I decided to quit and deliver food on my own time. Despite having to drive across the country a few times to keep a roof over our heads, and due only to the kindness of a few people, we had somewhere to stay most nights and eventually managed to get back on our feet.

In an almost comedic act of fate, within a few months of being back in stable housing, someone hit me at a red light and totaled the car that had kept me alive through one of the lowest points in my life, and fled the scene. Being unable to deliver food and knowing I couldn't handle retail again, I decided to buckle down and start trying to finally put my degree to use making 3D art for commissions, and luckily, it worked. I went from having no address and no money in 2020 to being able to work from home doing what I love, in addition to starting work on one of my life dreams thanks to all of you, along with the wonderful friends I've made over the last few years.

One last thing before I end this post -- I'm remaking devlog #2. again. im sorry lol
There's this line from the most recently scrapped script where I try to explain why it's been so long since I've released a devlog:

              "So as I continued developing, I attempted multiple times to make a video *like* devlog #1, but always found that by the time I got to the editing stage, I was already disagreeing with things that I had written only a month or two beforehand, because I had learned better by that point."

Ironically, the reason I'm scrapping it this time is because this EXACT thing happened *AGAIN* while in the editing stage of that very video. So, I'm going to try a new, candid, unscripted approach and give it another shot. You know what they say, 5th time's the charm.

As a show of good faith, here's (almost) the entire script as an attachment. Just so you know I'm not bullshitting.

Thank you, everyone, for believing in me, and in Blood Crisis. I couldn't do it without you.