Fairly Long And Unguided Post of Projects While Things Are Still A Bit Messed Up

Hello;; Sincerest apologies for the period of silence; I did't even really think about how long its been since I'd last said anything proper here and that's completely on me. But I figure I might as well break that finally and have Something to show from the last few months of me working on various things.

I'll just start with the blunt part as it kind of throws a wrench into Everything I was working on before: I haven't been able and don't really know when ill be able to do VR again while I'm dealing with the chronic panic attacks.

As you can imagine this a more than small issue with making content for vrchat. I can sure try still with desktop mode, but not being able to see the proper scale of stuff and have that direct level of interactivity makes it both much more difficult and much less fun, and to be honest while I've tried i just don't have it in me currently.

Without that I have kind of floundered a bit the last few months, trying to work on stuff and being unsuccessful, or starting like 5 different projects in a month. Just trying to figure out Some kind of hook I can work on in the time being.

Truthfully I knew my VRChat work wouldn't be able to last very long and I probably should have started making plans from the start to shift that work over to something I can do more long term. The Phonodroid avatars were completely a passion project for me, I poured my heart into them, and I just don't know if I'll be able to repeat that for any future avatars in the same way.

That said, I did make a promise to keep up with customization parts and I most certainly owe it to those of you that stuck around in this period of work ability being in shambles, and seeing as it is something I can still do without needing VR I will pick back up where i left off and keep doing those for the foreseeable future. I just don't know if i'll be able to do any other full avatars.

This does put the plans for the Phonotrons in an awkward position seeing as while i'm very interested in working on them to be able to properly test them i'll need a way to test the taur-leg extensively which would be best with full body tracking. I don't want to say I can't do it, but I'll for sure have to postpone it.

I completely understand those that have and will want to cancel their patron pledge in the wake of all this, and if you'd like a refund of your payments from July-September please message me and I will honor it.

But all that aside, here is some of the stuff I have been doing when i can:

Minesweeper But Weird

First up, something I've so far been calling 'Linesweeper' (name subject to change) that I actually started back in june and have worked on and off on since.

Made partly because I was annoyed at an app I downloaded on my phone that promised infinite minesweeper that was just normal minesweeper but it kept restarting when you finished the grid, linesweeper is my take on an infinite game of minesweeper that also works like tetris. The way combos have worked has changed over its development but currently it works like a normal game of minesweeper until that blue vial on the right gradually reaches full. When it does all horizontal lines that you've flagged and cleared of bombs and blocks will get removed from the board and replaced from the bottom, the more lines you've cleared when it fills up and fires off, the larger the combo you get, turning minesweeper into an endless high score challenge.

It's been a fascinating project to work on trying to give it some sense of gradually scaling difficulty, and its probably something i'll be tweaking until the end of time. Just doing a linear slider from easy to hard didnt really feel right, so I've tried to implemented a sort of variable difficulty that responds to how you're doing at any given time. If you're clearing through blocks real quick it will give you a greater challenge, but if you really start to slow down it will ease off a bit to try and keep it interesting so games don't become a slog after a while. Of course, this system in its first implementation was super easy to exploit to get favorable patterns, but I've been trying to cut down on the players ability to do that while keeping the general concept intact.

(ignore the default cursor over the in game one the cursor hiding breaks sometimes on mac os for some reason lol)

Honestly I started this project mostly for myself and it was perfect timing because it got me through the worst periods of the panic when i could just mindlessly play it for hours hhhhhh

It's far along enough that I may put more focus into polishing it up into a proper thing and release it to the public.

Theres some other stuff I've been playing with for it, like attempting some music making of my own. And a variety of background art to cycle through in game.

Clay Neptune Remade

(Renders will be a bit poopy because I'm stuck in bed right now with my laptop)

This is still pretty early and nothing is blocked out, but I've been working on a remake of the clay neptune scene I made over a year ago now (goodness that freaks me out):

(original render)

I liked the concept of the original image, but the execution was a bit rushed at the time and ive learned a Lot more about blender since. Like how the default color management without tweaking creates a dim output, something that will forever annoy me about the original render.

My original plan really was just to go back to the original blender file and touch it up, but unfortunately  the original files seem to have been lost probably in one of the purges onedrive did on my project files a bit ago. I did still have the clay neptune model itself however which made a naturally fitting base to start fresh from.

my main focus with the remake has been on materials and giving everything more depth, and using bevels to round off places that would have been unnaturally sharp/flat in the original render.

Also creatures. Theres creatures i'm placing around in it.

Haunted House Time

Like many of my halloween ideas, I had one too late to actually be able to finish it at all in time for halloween, but I still think it'd be fun to do. For the longest time I've wanted to make a first person pre-rendered point and click adventure game in the style of Myst set in a haunted house type setting.

Unfortunately I don't have any visual stuff im ready to show yet. All of my work on it so far has been boring notes planning out the puzzles and stuff and basic boxing of the house in blender. The notes do have art that looks like this though:

Truly the peak of my career as an artist.

For the final vision I am thinking of going for a Myst-style rendering style as well, with intentionally pretty primitive 90s type visuals hh; it sounds fun to do. (plus i can finish it in a reasonable amount of time that way lol)

Thats all the interesting stuff I have for now that I'm ready to talk about! Thank you for reading