Elissa Harris @expectproblems@cybre.space

#Introduction

I’m Elissa. I like makeup, puns, game development and making dioramas. I do only one of these for a living.

My current game project is Objects in Space, which is in early access. It’s a massive retro subsim-inspired space trading game, and it’s most of what I post about right now, other than selfies or random gender observations.

I work on an iMac, but also own a Pentium 200 running DOS 6.22, two 16-bit consoles, and I worry that’s not even close to enough cool hardware...

Doing maths is not fun.

Why am I coder by trade again?

Not liking maths and yet coding feels like poor career planning.

Today I am an Elf.

Latest update for Objects in Space contains some shiny new in-game ad posters for the Proxima and Enceladus. 😊 Really chuffed with how they turned out.

(All our ship ads are inspired by ads and other material for cars back in the ‘70s, as that’s the aesthetic we wanted.)

Hittin’ a bar with a friend on a school night, day 1/3.

Today rocks. (Har har.)

Ooof today’s hitlist is… not very exciting.

Submenus at the main menu screen. Various options for customising scenarios… etc.

Life goal achieved: drank water funny, and hickuped so hard I cracked my upper back. Satisfying!

Right. Today’s plans… having done the Breakfast and Exercise thing early, I guess I’ll just work through the “to-fix list” unless something more urgent comes along.

Oh, and ‘decals’ come in random forms so when you, say, batch-paint on a bunch of cement it’ll add random aesthetic cracks, etc, which you can see.

But you can clear/customise these, to, for instance, add road lines. Decals have custom rotations, too. It’s all pretty basic, but means even relatively simple maps look more complex than they are really.

Oh, and the UI has basic editing tools built-in. You have to add elements to the config file manually, but once they’re there you can move/resize them and export the results out to the text config file easily, so futzing around with UI isn’t too tough.

Will likely add a more full editing tool for widgets later. Maybe.

UIs, for me, are a nasty well to fall down.

“Oh, I guess I could add [tiny feature]” and soon you have a surprisingly full-featured WM.

The UI took me ages, but it’s pretty solid. Windows are draggable, and snap to each other and to the edges of other elements, so it’s easy to drag windows to one side and make little sidebars, fully customisable.

Top menu fully works too.

Sneak peak of my side-project, complete with terribad coder-art. (My test art is 8x8 pixels per tile, but the engine can cope with more or less whatever you have the RAM and video memory for, I guess.)

My latest work has been on the building renderer - all it “knows” is the tile the building occupies, where doors/windows are and which variants of the tile each uses, and it knows which modular bit to throw in to make it look good.

Same with grass - edges added automatically.

Story of my life, really.

If you know what I’m playing, you are a cool human being.

I think I just hit peak me.

Having previously lamented that my week had been kinda stressful, my friend said, “Well, keep your chin up.”

To which I replied, without missing a beat, “Aw, but I like staring at my cleavage!”

Side-project going well.

Added buildings, including doors and windows, and made the pather honour them. Also, tools to add/remove them.

They don’t save/load yet and don’t actually render beyond debug symbols, but back-end functionality is a great first step.

House groceries arrived.

So I pre-chopped some veggies for my breakfast egg regular thing, and then made a nice tomato & bullhorn pepper sauce for a similar purpose during the week.

This is interesting - Morgan Jaffit talking about the rise of GAAS (Games As A Service) in the west, and how this is likely going to affect future AAA releases - and new store options for indies. (Yessss!) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/326061/Blog_Could_Red_Dead_Redemption_2_and_Fortnite_be_Trojan_Horses.php

Today’s plans: finish a quick but important hotfix (version 0.9.5.1), then pre-prepare a ton of veggies that we just got from the markets…

...then Side Project time, coupled with The Exanse and lasagne with a friend tonight. WOO!