It's the weekend, and a lazy, relaxing sort of day, so it's time to get out some Gold Peak sweet tea, settle in at my desk dimly but warmly lit by a pudgy little lamp, and relax by writing another gemlog post on my Raspberry Pi and typewriter style mechanical keyboard with wood paneling and round keys. Days like this make me thankful for my peaceful and comfortable life, and remind me to enjoy it while it lasts.
Per my last post, I did some work trying to make my R-Knight solo play game more interesting. I simplified some aspects of the game mechanics that added a lot of bookkeeping and tried to make the combat mechanics more interesting by turning it into a simple card game (with a Python script to automate the deck handling). The problem is, although it's mechanically sound and succeeds in making battles somewhat more dynamic, it's still fairly dull and I find myself getting bored during playtesting. Not exactly signs of a successful game.
So even after iterating on it a bit, I still haven't managed to make R-Knight work as a fun (non-computerized) solo play game. At this point I think I might give up on R-Knight as currently constituted and move on. But I'm still enamored of the idea of something creative I could post to my capsule on a regular basis (monthly, or possibly biweekly or even weekly depending on its nature), as something more interesting than just random gemlog entries.
That's partly why I haven't worked on VVO in a couple weeks, because a project like that just has so much up-front work before you can share anything. You've got to do tons and tons of programming before you reach even the bare minimum level of functionality to be sharable. Given my time limitations, I'd really like to forge a project where I can put out good-quality, sharable content on a relatively frequent basis without the huge up-front workload.
(Which, as I've articulated a couple times, doesn't mean I'm never getting back to VVO, but I think I might need a lengthy span where I can focus most of my attention on it -- i.e., a long vacation -- to make real progress.)
My next idea along these lines is a simplified version of my VanVan tabletop RPG system adapted for solo play, that I could make solo mini-adventures for. Perhaps I'll spend part of today seeing if I can adapt the mechanics for this kind of use case.
I don't really listen to music in the sense most people mean when they ask if you listen to music. I do listen to music, but no traditional bands or "artists", and candidly I don't get anything out of the kinds of music most people listen to. But what I listen to is basically ambient background music -- predominantly instrumental soundtracks from video games, films, and the like -- the kind of thing you can put on and either daydream to it while you think of stories, or have it playing in the background while you work on writing, programming, or whatever.
I just gave that little preamble as explanation for my fun thing to share: I've found that the Dragon's Crown soundtrack makes for superb high-quality ambient fantasy music for D&D or anything D&D-adjacent, and I'll definitely be adding it to my playlist rotation for "creativity music." If, like me, you get enjoyment out of this kind of music, try giving it a listen:
That's all for now.