Reincarnation

So all this is opinion and my own experience, I mean i dont know everything. I guarantee you there are 10000 other people who know more about making games than I do. So continue with an open mind, and dont neccesarily take the advice given here as truth...

Man, what can I say. Making a game is a complicated thing. I feel alot of us come into making games a bit naive. (I mean what dont we go into naive about? Thats kind of the nature of being.)When we want to make a game we think it will be simple, or well simple enough. Making this game has been one of the most difficult things to do for me, but also the most rewarding. Man i'll tell you, the first year of this games progression was hell. I started the beginning of June in 2017. I knew not a damn thing about making games. I just saw Stardew Valley and was like "That was an amazing game! I want to make my own..." With simplistic gameplay and seemingly simple graphics it seemed like a paradise to make a game. I was right and wrong about this notion. The first year, was just self doubt, criticism, and also battling what I might consider a depression. (The hell if i could figure out why i decided to make a game while going through that, but yet here I am.) I continued through the pain of trying and failing and finally made my first house.



Yep this was it. I was proud to make it!... Then I looked at Stardew Valley's art and man what a mistake. It completely crushed everything i had accomplished. Imagine trying to do something but yet having a voice telling you at every second that you cant do it, or wont be able to be good enough to do it. Its crushing. But there was something that kept me going. Im not exactly sure what. But that something told me that if i failed to make this game and didnt continue working on the game, it wasnt because I wasnt able to make a good game, but rather if i quit it was because I didnt even try. Because (maybe subconsciously) I knew I could do it, that maybe if i kept trying i could make the game. And thats a tough situation to be in. Not only in my real life but, I was placed in a situation where I had to make two choices: 1 Keep living my life the way I was living and continue to suffer, or 2 voluntarily change my life so that maybe it could get better. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either way was suffering. But at least #2 has the chance of betterment. Its not like it was an easy task. Discipline is no easy task. At that point in my life, discipline was not even integrated into me. But, if i didnt learn discipline i'd suffer endlessly. So I had to learn the hard way. So thus began the year of hell. (I mean there are worse things that could have happened than what i experienced, but it was still no walk in the park regardless.) I worked on various things, this was the first character sprite I made:



And this was the first farm map(or atleast part of it):



At the end of that year I still felt dead and passionless about my game. I honestly cant tell you why I kept going. Maybe that "something" i mentioned earlier made me do it. I dont know.

I think i felt dead about it because I was still setting up the game, still doing all the ground work. Which really doesnt allow much creativity or exploration. So i guess it never felt like mine. And thats something important man. If you can identify with your game, If you can look at your game and feel a sense of unity with it, like its a part of you (for me it feels like a light right in the center of my chest, lifting me up, carrying my posture), that can be absolutely deadly to making a good game. When you feel passionate about something you get creative, you get in a trance, and a zone. Its like your actually living you. Like you've finally embodied yourself. So when making your game, make it yours. Put your flare into the game. Its a risky and bold move, but I dont think you have much else of a choice. The alternative is making a game thats literally like every other game. A copy-paste. Alot of good games made with RPG Maker have default assets. What makes them good is they put their own experience and uniqueness of their personality into the game. Preferably you'd be better off making your own art too, even if its a simplistic 3 color sprite of a person. Even that (to me) is better than using the image everyone else has.) So make your game your own. Make it you. And make it speak your truth and your words and your experience.

It was about half a year ago when I really started to enjoy my game.

I believe when I started working on character portraits is when it really started. This is the first portrait.



The characters of Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Worlds Dawn, were really the things that kept me interested in the farming sims. (I think even playing harvest moon as a kid shaped me in a certain way, but thats a different discussion.) I think the portraits and the characters were the absolute first reason I started enjoying my game. And in 6 months (If i remember my timeline correctly) led me to change this:



to this:



This:



To this:



Change my first sprite to my current sprite:



And then I was able to do this:



I went and made all my own art for SRD's Character Creator. Damn, this took a long time to do. But now that i've done it, its done. Like I don't think people realize just what they can do if they tried their best. Im not saying that this one thing I did here was the most amazing thing i could have ever done or what anyone could ever do, who the hell knows what i or others could be capable of. And im not saying its easy. Its not supposed to be easy. Thats where the accomplishment comes from. And the respect as well. Perhaps some will not think this is all that great, but to me, I knew exactly what kind of pain I had to go through to get this done. Dont get me wrong. Im not saying this pain is the equivalent of sawing off your own hand, rather its a different pain. Conditioning yourself to do something, to achieve the goal is surely a pain. Some of you know how hard it is to change your diet to eat healthy, some know whats its like to quit nicotine, some know what its like to put off simple short lived pleasure of the present to get longer lasting happiness in the future. Its not easy. Not at first, atleast. Its truly a pain to discipline yourself. That pain of discipline turns into agony as you are forced to change something or else suffer, then to hopelessness(and perhaps depression), then maybe you feel dead inside, then... maybe you feel something different, after awhile of discipline perhaps you start to feel excited to have your schedule, then you feel like you can't wait to work on your goal again. And just like the person who enjoys eating healthy, you've created a positive loop that feeds itself, just so long you dont sacrifice long term happiness for short term pleasure.

Perhaps even right now, with 2 years progress, my game is still sub-par. But thats not going to stop me, and shouldn't you, either. You and I both have the strength to keep progressing. Just because my game might look bad now, who the hell knows what it will look like in another year(and perhaps another). Just keep going, and see how far you can go. Find out just at what point do you stop, and what is your limit? Because you and I both know that there is always something that we could do to make our situations better, and if we dont make it better, its because we didnt really give it our all to do it. Its hard, its unpleasant to voluntarily change your life.(Maybe im wrong here, but I guarantee you if i am wrong someone will correct me in the comments, and good for them doing so! Maybe then i'll actually learn something useful. So I win either way. Its just goes back to speaking your truth. You have to be true to you, and speak yourself forward. Its better to speak yourself and be wrong then to not speak yourself and continue to be wrong secretly. And even if you're not wrong, lets say you are right and you dont speak your truth, you missed the opportunity to brighten the world and also just became a little more distant from yourself in doing so.... Anyways.. Back to the topic at hand...)


I guess what im saying here is dont stop. Keep going until you find treasure. You have to discipline yourself to get what you want done. (Dont enslave yourself, reward yourself after doing something task heavy.) And once you discipline yourself, you will be absolutely deadly. If you can see a goal, and you have the capacity to control yourself to get yourself to do what you want. Who knows where you could end up in just a few years. If you really set your mind to something and just worked on it for even just an hour a day, you'll go far in a year.

So I guess to all those in hell, you have a chance to acquire the secret golds that lie within it if you keep progressing. And since hell is where the gold is at, it also means that hell is where heaven is at too. So keep going, and just see exactly how far you can take yourself.