Project Illumina Production | Month 1

When most folks were celebrating the new year, I was on my desk, excited to finally move out of pre-production and officially begin production on Project Illumina. I've tried my best to make time for the project during pre-production. But with other responsibilities taking my time, I was not able to truly finish everything I wanted to do before I entered production as I promised myself to do as soon as 2021 began. Although, this doesn't necessarily mean I'm not ready. It just means I feel like more time would have done me a great deal of benefit as opposed to what I in fact managed to devote to pre-production tasking. In the end, I'm happy to finally get started on something I've pondered about around 2002 and only managed to get enough skills to execute upon in 2020: make my own game!

The first thing I needed to change was the logo. I know that back in 2002 or 2003, I wanted to call the world, "Alterra". I even made a small scene in RPG Maker and had the project saved as Alterra! I had the original logo created near the end of 2019 or earlier. I remember being in a hotel when I first sketched it on my phone. But then I found myself trying out this game entitled, "Subnautica". At the beginning of this excellent title, you see the name Alterra on a portable device and it showed a logo very similar to the one I made. I promise I did not copy it at all. As a matter of fact, I was both amazed and disappointed when I saw it. I knew I couldn't keep the logo I made. And so here we are with the new one. We're ditching the triangle and going with the diamond. But I have my reasons outside trying to be different. If I was going to make a change, it needed to be a significant or meaningful one. Not simply a change for the sake of having to do it.

In the world I want to build, there will be dæmonic gates scattered across many regions and continents. These triangular gates found in Alterra glow devilishly red, signifying the malevolence and dangers that can be found within, waiting to pour out. That is how it looks from one side. On the other side, the shimmer is blue in color and more peaceful. That is what the dæmons see in the gates from their realm. I thought it would be kinda cool to depict those on the logo. The triangle above is a gate in Alterra, and below is the one found on the other side. I will need to revisit this logo and make improvements in the future. Either to simplify it more, or add more detail. But for now, this is my placeholder logo for Project Illumina and I'm pretty happy with it!

Month 1 of production (January 2021) is ending. Though I am in reality, way ahead of my own self-established sprints, I still can't help but feel like I'm going too slow. I do have other responsibilities along with a day job. And I do my best to make sure I devote some time towards development as much as I can with my available but limited free time. I make sure I don't have 0% days! I understand I'm a solo dev and I did expect the road to be difficult. It was not going to be worth doing if the task to tackle was going to be easy. And it would be a terrible idea to attempt and develop a project way too difficult for my skills as a developer. I knew I had to find balance. It needed to be challenging enough that I learn from it as I go, and I think that so far I can safely say that it is indeed the case. I have not yet hit a wall where I felt like it was impossible to progress. Luckily enough! So far, I have overcome the challenges and learned from the unknowns I have encountered this month. I do see some potential hardships on the horizon though. But I will cross that bridge when I get there. And when I do, I intend to make sure I get to the other side in one piece and a more knowledgeable developer. The epics for the month have not been delivered. Full transparency here. But I think it's only because I focused way too much on coding and sort of kept pushing the art side of things. So, I'm way ahead on target mechanics and features for January. But I'm missing some art that keep me from saying the epics have been delivered. I gotta be strict to myself.

Speaking of coding, things are going well and what I needed to code-in work. But I do recognize that I'm not exactly a programmer and though I am making things work, I'm aware that some of them can be implemented way better. As a matter of fact, I laugh at how I coded some things. But like I said, they work! I can only hope that I'm being mindful enough that in the end, things don't get unmanageable and cause problems. Again, I do my best to try and do things as cleanly and as properly as possible given my knowledge but I'm aware some of what I have coded in are hilarious! (But they work!) I was waiting for a contact in regards to my Adobe subscription. But I think I can get started on art tasking after next week's sprint and hopefully, be done with all art requirements for the epics before the end of the February and have a little something to finally show. For the meantime, the work continues and I hope to be able to report something more substantial by the end of February! Whoever's reading this, thanks for still reading up to this part. I appreciate it.