Hey everyone, so last Friday I broke up for the week thinking great I can focus on finally finishing the designs for the new Z.FG UI I started on you know Nixie Tubes, Blood Vials and a backpack with a photo of our protagonist that changes as the player takes damage, like the classic doom days. Well as soon as I got home I got the nixie tubes looking how I wanted in Affinity Designer using ChatGPT to translate a tutorial from using photoshop to affinity which to be honest blew my mind because all I did was send it the url and ask it to translate its methods from PS to AD and it did it perfectly.
So I had to then move it over from the designer program to the game engine, I managed to get the first one into the game and it looked ok I was happy with how it turned out.
After I got the first one created, I needed some food, I ordered a massive take away since I was celebrating getting through the first half of the first quarter of the working period, I ate two slices and felt tired but it was still too early for me so I thought to have a nap and then continue working on the other nixie tubes.
The longest night of my life started.
I felt my body go from freezing to roasting in the matter of seconds, the back of my throat felt like something was pushing trying to get out. A sense of dread filled me, I couldn’t work out which side to lie on, I’d fall asleep and wake up 10 minutes later, some of the time I just lie there with my eyes closed and didn’t fall asleep. Sunday morning, I couldn’t sleep on my right shoulder, the pain was unbearable and my body suddenly said “run”. That was the worst of it and don’t want to be graphic but from after that I didn’t want to eat, I just lay there, I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t feel comfortable lying on my left side, which surprised me since I’m usually lights out on that side. The only way I could lie on my right side was to stick my arm out and grab the window’s handle that made the pain subside but the moment I let go I’d have a few minutes before the pain came rushing back.
As the day progress the pain spread from my shoulder to the back of my neck, my breathing got very difficult but with slow breaths and stretching my arm, it subsided so that’s how it was my Monday was.
Last part of this bit then the fun stuff. So I had woke up yesterday, both my shoulders hurt like hell, it felt like the whole top of my torso was tight and my breathing was very difficult but I heard a knocking at the door so with every ounce of effort I jumped out of the bed and stumbled down the stairs and answered the door, it was the postman, I took the parcel and closed the door, I made my way up the stairs and realised. I was fine, I felt 85% better and thought right, I’m up and about, lets get some supplies since I hadn’t been food shopping and was almost out of things I needed. After a few hours out of the house, I thought yep I’m over the worst of it.
So whilst I was stuck in bed, my PC was never switched off. Even though I couldn’t move, I kept seeing my screen come to life and the Nixie tubes glowing. I was eager to get it done and see the final result. Once I was home I jumped straight on my pc and started to make every one of the nixie tubes which each character is a separate game object linked together which turned out very nicely. So the next part I started to design is the backpack which will be the core of the Game UI, the nixie tubes will appear on the side of the pack, the two vials will appear at the top, the left one will be the Blood Vial i.e. your health, the one on the right varies between two different colours, if you have the lantern, the vial will be yellow, if its the flashlight the vial will have a blue liquid but this will change if you have the upgraded flashlight as the liquid will be purple. Another part of the pack will be a photo of our protagonist which will change as the player takes damage, I had hoped to get this all done by the end of this week, yet hopefully still will but below is the progress we have of the pack and the nixie tubes.
So that’s it for this blog entry, but I can’t forget to mention, since my last blog entry a lot has happened and this I most definitely had to talk about, I have been gradually building a new multimedia platform like PtG as a basis but expanded to indie games, mods, fan made maps and retro games. It is called The Xiled Ones, so far I have made a few videos with more to come and I have some help to make it something I’ve never had before. A team to create the content we want. I can’t wait to show more but please check it out by clicking the logo below.
But till then… Cheerio.