Simply put, I'm not going to have enough time to complete my game to the standard I would have liked.
I just haven't had the will to do any work on it, my mind is a mess right now.
I split up with my girlfriend a week and a half ago and it's the most terrible experience I've been through.

She had changed towards me and became much colder and I was just suffering from it so I ended it.
Although it was a little over the top considering it was only like this for a week and I didn't even talk to her about it.
I was just scared of hurting her and it built up until I got stressed out and did the most regretful thing in my life, hurting her more so.

She needed a stable relationship and it was like that for 7 months. We never once fought or fell out over anything and I still went and did this to her.
I'm such a horrible person and she ignored me for three days before talking to me again - at which point I pulled her on Skype and apologized my heart out.
She has forgiven me and we settled on being friends (for now?), anyway it's still empty and lonely.

I've just been walking around the house weeping and going through emotional swings, I don't even know what I want right now.
I haven't got anything to take my mind off her as everything in my life has some attachment to her: Piano, reading, playing the same mmo we both played, even my bloody cat.
Programming was also completely out of the question as I couldn't focus my mind on it.

Now it's been just over a week since then and I'm starting to find programming bearable again but I still refuse to do other hobbies that I mentioned above.
We still talk to one another but it's awkward, I can tell she's deliberately staying distant from me and not opening up. She's scared.

Right now I'm the one chasing her, begging for her to take my back, but that's just me being insensitive thinking that it'll make everything better again.
The fact is, I hurt her, let her down when the pressure was on her and I expected more of her than she was capable of giving at the time.
I'm a horrible, she gave me so much and I threw it in her face.
Of course I've learned from this but I'll need time to apply it otherwise I'll end up hurting her again.

She's afraid of being hurt again - I'm afraid of hurting her again.
So I'll have to let time do it's thing.
I'm going to give her some personal space from now on - I'll remove myself from the world for a week (maybe longer) or so and hopefully then things will be a little better.

Anyway, there's one month left and I won't complete my game in time unless I trim it down A LOT less than I had planned.
So instead of making a polished but seriously short game, I'm going to start again and probably pull some of the code over.
I'm going to go simple on the graphics so I can spend less time on them and put more effort into game play - FF1 style :D

And a little advice to everyone from what I learned: Never make decisions when stressed, come back later and talk about it when you're calm.
It's so easy to break up with someone over MSN without actually thinking about what you're doing - take it from me... -.- (I wouldn't have done this to her face - only if I really did want to break up with her - which I didn't)

I'm an asshole and I don't deserve her, but I'm dealing with my mistakes and learning from them. Maybe things will work out later on? But not until I know I won't hurt her again.

I seem to be pretty good at hurting myself by removing the good things in my life, only I hurt someone else along with it this time and it's never been so painful.

Sorry for the long post, I'm an excessive talker. -.-

I had my last exam on Wednesday and I felt pretty good about it despite staying up the entire night.
It was a maths exam and I have a 'thing' for trigonometry so it may sound sad that I'm saying this, but I enjoyed it.
If it was an English exam then things would have been entirely different, especially when sleep deprived.

So it's around 1 month and a half into the competition and to be honest I've got like a couple of days work in at most.
There's plenty I want to do so it's time to focus on nothing else but this and better yet, I have my motivation back!
Also it's safe to say that I haven't made much progress since my last blog post.
I've implemented some cinematic/timeline scripts for better control (mini-engine), and further expanded on the battle engine.
Currently I'm adding a post-battle screen where it updates all your experience and any loot obtained, etc...

University starts for me in September and I've met some really cool people who are either going to be freshers like me or continuing into the next year.
It's safe to say most of them are nerds but that was to be expected when I signed up for a Computer Science & Japanese degree.
In any case, it feels great that I'm able to get on with them so well. Everyone has the same interests and there's like 3 people (freshers) doing the same course combination as me.

There's a guy in the year above who is the only person currently doing the same course combination at the university and in the whole of England. (The university I'm going to is the only one in the country that supports this course combination)
Apparently there were more people doing it but they all dropped out, thus leaving him all alone.

So while most university students get drunk (or get laid?), I'll be attending anime nights with my fellow kind. :P
I'm looking forward to my 3rd year, I get to spend the entire year studying in Japan as an exchange student and the fees are much cheaper than staying here in England.

I've given myself a goal for this year and it's to earn enough money to get myself to Canada to see my other half.
It's expensive but hopefully I'll start getting in the habit of releasing some games on Google Play for Android and earning a little extra.
I know Java (LibGDX is a great cross-platform library) but I've never actually finished a game that I'm ready to put on the market.
Else I'm stuck saving my pennies from what I get from my student loan, although my university gives me an extra bursary (2000gbp a year) so I'll be saving that too.

If anyone is located within Ontario, near Toronto, then maybe I'll get to see you one day? :D
I'll treat you to a nice cup of tea :)

Today I've been working on the interface for the battle room. The actual mechanics aren't fully programmed yet but I'm getting it done slowly.

I really need to start working on this more often as I'm taking advantage of the "plenty of time" until the compo ends.

Here's what I've got with the battle room. I'm not done with the battle sprites for the players yet and it remains undecided if I'll animate attacks or not. I probably won't though.

Sadly - those enemies have more animations in them than the players do. Even if they do just "bob" up and down. Players are just entirely static right now - apart from a flashing effect on the currently selected character indicating its turn.

My new textbox engine :3 (Fire Emblem style):


I hope the half-character portraits don't seem a little off though. I'm not used to drawing anything beyond a head. lol.

There's only one tileset done so far, judged by what I've included in the screenshots. Even then, it's far from complete.

If anyone has ideas for some hazards in the overworld then throw them at me, aside from fire (which is already included) of course :3

As a plus, here's a script that I've made to reuse a simple sprite for any sized window frame. Which I use in my game for all my frames, such as the textbox above and the battle interface.
Just make a sprite of 32x32 (for example) and separate it into 4 subsections, each being 16x16 (one for each corner).
Example: //drawFrame(sprite,tile width,tile height,frame width,frame height,x ,y)
drawFrame(sprFrame,16,16,250,100,x,y);

Demo Link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23931032/Game%20Maker/Scripts/FrameBase.gm81

Warning: Contains slacking.

I've got exams starting at the end of May and going into June so I haven't been working on this as much as I'd like to be doing so.
Anyway, I know what I pretty much want to do and I'm working on graphics right now.

The game will have a turn based battle system for which I already have an engine for, or rather the remains from a semi-dead project.
(link for the semi-dead project blog: http://dividedworlds.netai.net/blog/ - I stopped working on it to rethink my graphic style.)

Start of a dungeon/castle tileset that I've been working on today. Considering my game's story is sci-fi/futuristic, I dare say a good old middle-aged dungeon tileset will achieve absolutely no purpose whatsoever.


Okay, this tileset is aiming to be some sort of underground/basement/facility thing. I just need to start adding more wall tiles to go around the edges possibly. Then I can start adding in some decoration.


Here's a quick example of the incomplete in-game menu, including some non-finalised (especially the 2nd guy) avatar pictures.


Still I have a lot of work to do, considering the small time frame in which to do this in and my bad habit of procrastinating. At least it beats the time I joined another contest late and tried to make a RPG game in 1 week (instead of the full 2 weeks) with a turned based battle system
This was the result: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/196312-senra ...

Anyway, I'm not worried about anything yet. I'll worry when I have to find music. -.-