I came to cross-post my dev log. I took one look at my "Your Blog Posts" box, and it looks boring. "DSR Log #x" is literally all there is.

That's kind of a good thing, means I've spent 8 weeks so far logging my progress (Slow as it may be).

So this week, and most likely for the foreseeable future, the log is going up on my site only. There is an RSS feed if anybody uses those, though it's a little hidden (http://64mega.space/rss.xml).

Anyway, latest log is here:

http://64mega.space/dsr-log-8/

Of note, there now exists a Games page, and that contains an itch.io widget; nice and simple :P

And now, a brief intermission!

Other Stuff Going On

I get a bit tired of talking about my projects, or thinking about them… or working on them. Since I'm kind of forcing the last one, I need a break every now and again.

I'm starting to work on my art skills in earnest, getting back into traditional drawing/sketching. I've basically slapped a bunch of printer paper onto a clipboard and am sketching things around my room; I'd show them off, if I had a scanner.

My goal is to basically clean up and refine my technique by year's end; mostly a personal goal, because I'd really like to be able to draw complex and interesting looking scenes for no other purpose than pulling some of the crazy things I dream up on paper.

One of the resources I found for this is CtrlPaint: http://www.ctrlpaint.com/library

This guy's got a few dozen vids up covering digital art, and a section for brushing up on traditional techniques. Pretty handy.

Gaming

I'm officially at the point where I can look at my Steam library and say "That's too many damned games". And that's just my Steam library.

The other day while restructuring my room layout, I counted over 120 retail game discs, all the way back from 1998 (Theme Hospital) up to a couple of weeks ago…

And I literally have several hundred demo discs from magazines.

Ended up throwing most of those away, really a big waste of space.

So basically, I'm starting a "Don't feed the habit" rule. The habit is, of course, that I see a shiny retail box or alluring sale going for "only" X amount, and end up with a hole in my wallet.

… of course, Steam's Summer Sale is looming. I'm probably not going to be able to resist some of those Flash Sales, especially if it's for games I really want to try out.

Well, at least after that I'll remain kinda-in-the-clear. I've basically organized my Steam library into games I need to finish before I start anything new, or buy anything new.

To summarize:

- The Witcher 3. I kind of went completely off track with this and forgot it existed until recently.

- Fallout 4

- Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3 - Because there's stuff I haven't done.

- Mafia 2

- Borderlands 2

- Saints Row the Third

And it's just struck me that these are all massive games. I'll be busy for a while.

… and this isn't even beginning to dig into the library, it's just the "bigger" games that I feel I ought to finish because I was enjoying them (Or finish more in the case of the Souls games and Fallout).

As a side note, I tried LEGO Worlds today. My brother, ever easily swayed by Early Access promises, bought the game during its "Buy one get one free" thing on Steam.

The game holds a lot of potential, especially if they fix its glaring issues, and allow people to build with a full range of LEGO pieces (At the very least vehicle parts and the "Technic" pieces). It's not like they can't pull it off; there's this ancient Windows 95 game called LEGO Creator that allowed for that. I spent many hours building giant flying fortress bombers and stuff like that.

The biggest issue for me has to be the controls. Take Two seem to have no idea how to implement good controls for what is essentially a stylized Minecraft clone.

The camera is always third person - to be fair, they added a first person camera mode to the current Beta patch… to be realistic, the first person controls are so crappy and twitchy, it feels more like you're trying to pilot a plane in GTA 3 than looking at something.

Third person isn't really that great for building; the building mode gives you a bird's eye view of the area in front of you, moves the character out of the way and gives you a brick palette.

From there, you have to (slowly) position your brick using the bumpers of the controller, and only then will it start to snap to existing bricks. Why they don't just have it 'work' like Minecraft, with a simple "look here, place block" method, is beyond me.

And yes, controller. If anybody has played Dark Souls 1 on the keyboard without dsmfix… it feels worse in this game. The controller becomes mildly passable.

On a positive note, I managed to fly a dragon, blow up my brother with said dragon, and get flushed down a toilet.

I really hope that they manage to make this game into something decent. Because it could be so much more fun than any other free-builder if they can get it right.

Well, I guess I'm going to go play a game or something, and try to relax.