Biweekly Update - 10-9-2023 (Soldier design, 3D model, status update) (Patreon)

Hey everyone. Sorry this update is even later than usual; I didn't do very well productivity-wise these past few weeks, and I fell into my usual mental trap of trying to avoid facing things when I feel guilty. Still, even if I don't have too much to talk about, I'm still going to write updates to at least keep all of you up to date on what's happening.

So, first things first. Last week, I talked about how I was avoiding streams and working in my living room instead, but that plan didn't really work out. Since I've been doing so poorly with productivity on my own terms, something needs to change ASAP; not doing streams doesn't seem to be working, so I'm going to 180 on that, and instead commit to a specific streaming schedule. Starting tomorrow, we'll be streaming every Sunday/Monday/Tuesday (not including biweekly update Sundays), and probably on Friday as well. I want to aim for 1 pm Alaska time, but I screwed up my sleeping schedule again and I'm not even waking up until around 3 pm, so it's going to take a bit to get myself waking up early enough. Until then, the starting time won't be precise, it'll just be shortly after I wake up - but we'll still be streaming on those specific days, likely between 1-4 pm. I'm just as tired as all of you are of there being little to no CPE progress, and hopefully committing to a more precise stream schedule can help with that.

I myself didn't get a whole lot of work done this week, but there are a few fun things to talk about still. Orexius is working on the Warped Soldier H-scene rework, and while doing that, he decided to update the design of their armor. This is the current wip:

We're still tweaking it a bit, so it might look different once we're finished, but we wanted to make it look a little fancier, since a lot of the earlier character designs are super simplistic due to the fact that I'm not really an artist :p That's a smaller thing, though. More exciting is this:

Don't worry, we're not about to remake Crisis Point in 3D or anything; Orexius has been using a generic 3D model as animation reference/assistance for a while now, so we decided it was time to make an official 3D model of Alicia! I've got a close friend of mine working with us to bring her to life, and we just recently got to the rigging stage, so we can start posing her. It's been really fun to see Alicia come to life in a 3D space, so I wanted to share that with you guys too. Since Crisis Point is a fully 2D game, there's no way for us to use this directly ingame, so after the game is finished, we're thinking about releasing this model to the public for free. That way it can be used for mods in other games, fan animations, 3D printed figurines, or just for fun! It'll be a while until then of course, but I'd love to see what the community could do with it.

Aside from that, there just isn't too much for me to talk about this week. Things are going fairly well in my personal life - I'm still going to therapy, I'm starting to properly exercise more, my diet is still going strong, and I think I mentioned it before, but I started seeing a new psychiatrist, so I'll be getting back on ADHD medication very soon. Hopefully that will help a lot with my productivity. I had some annoying issues with insurance while trying to get the new medication, so it's taking longer than I'd like, but I think the problems are cleared up now and I'm just waiting for the prescription to be filled so I can go pick it up, should happen within the next few days.

In any case, while things are going pretty well objectively, I've still definitely been in a mental funk, and I think a lot of that is because of how little work I've been getting done. Focusing on my health and personal life always seems to come at the cost of my work productivity; I don't know why it's so difficult for me to find a healthy work/life balance, and to just sit down and get shit done, but I'm beyond sick and tired of it, and I'm going to be doing everything I can think of to get over this damn roadblock.

I'm really sorry this keeps happening, but I can't even begin to express how thankful I am that all of you have stuck with me through it. Getting my shit together is taking FAR longer than any of us would like, but I refuse to give up. CPE is just the start of my game development journey, and I'd never forgive myself for giving up on my dream of making games, so regardless of how long it takes, I WILL make this happen. CPE will be finished, and with any luck it will live up to all of your expectations and thensome - it's the least I can do for all the patience and support you've all given me.

Alright, that's it from me for this update. Streams will be starting up again tomorrow, and I hope to see you there! I'm going to do everything in my power to make this the last biweekly update where I don't have much to talk about, I'm just as tired as all of you are of constantly failing to live up to what I know I can do. In the meantime, thank you all for reading, and for continuing to support us through thick and thin. It's taking so much longer than I'd like, but I swear I'll make it up to you all eventually.