Happy Halloween! I won't lie, scrounging up a second one of these logs has been something i've been procrastinating but, if you're reading this it means i'm one step closer to making this a habit.

=Quick Updates=
First off on some updates since the last log, I noticed how the txt files look on the website and i'm kinda happy with how they turn out. I might one day convert them into proper HTML files so that I can include pictures and stuff... I think I can already include links but ehh i dont really wanna make people click stuff for things I want to share. Only time will tell.

Oh and also, I apologize for the really ugly and weird formatting of that first log LOL... I write these on Notepad++ and since I wasn't entirely sure how the formatting would turn out, I kinda went wild with the enter key. I'll try to do better on that.

=ThirtyTwo Talk=
Okay now for what i've been up to...
This week I've started taking some online courses on Blender to try and really strengthen my ability with the program. This may come as a surprise to some since thirtytwo's 3D assets were done in the source engine. I guess theres a lot of explaining to do about that which may give you some insight as to why making this game has taken me so dang long.

So, at the beginning of thirtytwo's development, (or atleast, the horror game version of thirtytwo), the game was quite literally planned to be a really really tiny escape room project that I wanted to release for halloween in 2020. This initial pitch became the first room of the game, as I got a rush of inspiration that november and reworked the entire project into a larger, more meaningful story. 
Development was simple back then. I'd simply build up the 3D environments in Half-Life 2's Hammer (a tool that I am already VERY familiar with), screenshot and compress the environments into pre-rendered photos, and then import them into GMS2 as sprites to use. Then, for the segments in the game that included large areas, I'd switch gameplay style into a top-down earthbound style pixel art game.
 
Very quickly the game ran into a couple of glaring issues with this approach.

Firstly, my workflow became very sporadic as I'd have to switch between building maps in Hammer and sketching Pixel art for these 2D sections, all while cobbling together the gameplay systems behind the scenes. Maybe this would be a great approach for someone who has had experience making projects like these, but the amount of learning I had to do about gamemaker and the process of game development was too enormous to learn while tackling all these things at the same time. I made progress, but it was incredibly slow progress. It took about a year to truly accept that this approach wasn't feasable and that I had to switch up my methods.

Secondly, the 2D sections were placed into the design of the game as mostly an after thought. I quite literally just wrote down "come up with interesting stuff here later" and kept on trucking on the 3D puzzle areas of the game. This problem would return much later in development.

So now skipping to fall 2021, already months behind on the stupid initial release date, I began to segment my work better and made LOADS of progress on the game, much of the time since then until now has gone entirely into the programming of the game engine and it's systems, along with a LOT of writing. Seriously, the game design doc is 400+ pages and continues to balloon in details about characters, dialog, and a buncha other stuff. ANYWAYS, the next big change in development came somewhat recently. Unfortunately, I did not make much progress from fall 2022-spring 2023 because of school and personal stuff, which then leaps us into now, where I have once again reworked the approach.

So, through testing and playing builds of the game, it became GLARINGLY obvious that the 2D areas of the game were truly padding. People didn't want to play my game to walk around in 2D environments and click on things to read, much less after being in a heart-pounding first person point and click mode. Looking for both ways to improve the game and to also make the game easier to finish, I decided to entirely CUT out these 2D environment segments from the game. This of course, came with reworked what previously worked as an "overworld" into smaller, but tighter and far more interesting areas. A lot of this design change came from close observation of how Dark Souls 1 does it's hubworld. Originally, the game had a sort of open Hyrule Field style of overworld between the main sections of the game, but reworking it into a small but connected area into the sections of the game makes the game far more engaging (in my opinion), and also means that the development of assets for the game is now strictly 3D except for UI elements. This also results in my workflow being MUCH simpler to handle.

So with this design change also came a need for a more versatile 3D modelling tool that would allow me to reach the quality of the renders I was making with source, all while still being "DOABLE" for one dude. This takes me back to the courses I've been taking on blender. 

Look, I know the donut is helpful and that there are tons of online free to access resources to learn blender, but disciplined class-style lessons are the quickest, and best ways for me to truly learn these tools and make it easier to get the game done. Yes, this does mean that a lot of development time right now is simply going into "R&D", but once I can truly feel fully comfortable with these tools it will only be a hop or two until the game can finally be in people's hands.

==IMPORTANT WORDS=
So yeah, that ended up being surprisingly wordier than I expected, but that's the big design change that will hopefully let me get the game done quicker. I also want to remind everyone that these old source assets have still found a place in the game, and even though the project continues to morph visually, the skeleton of the game and it's gameplay have all been kept. I do not consider a second of ThirtyTwo's development to be wasted time, but I will admit that above being a creative project, it has been an enormous learning experience and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I'm sorry for getting everyone hyped up before I truly knew what I was getting into, but this WILL release one day, and it (hopefully) will have been worth the wait.

Expect another update this next week, where i'll probably talk about some of the writing i've been doing for the game or something.