AlternisGetting started
October 20, 2023
I must not burnout. Burnout is the mind-killer. Burnout is the little death that brings total obliteration.
-- Not Dune
Step 1, start experimenting 2 years ago
I failed a my first game jam in February 2021,
where I (unrelated to said failure) forced our designers to write a dialogue format in JSON.
They took to it alright, but had to run it under my code and go through it to discover if they
had forgotten a field. I was under too much of a crunch at the time and there wasn't enough
dialogue to justify writing (or setting up) a simple JSON schema checker.
But the day after the jam ended, I wrote a self-contained webpage that they could have used.
The next weekend, I created a simplified reactflow-based prototype for uploading images, placing script-line nodes that use those character images, and connecting them. It was very bare, but I liked the idea.
In early 2023 I played with compiling chibi-scheme to web assembly using zig, which helped me develop the eventual architecture and (tiny) build scripts I would need.
In mid 2023, I started working on a larger project, which I copy-pasted the prototype reactflow editor into, and refined it. I also set up a backend service and web assembly compilation. Then on September 19th, 2023, I started working on a much smaller project which had some feature, cross-over, so I copy-pasted my refined prototype into a new repository and got to work...
Step 2, don't sleep
September 19th, 2023 I posted in a private discord (I should really start microblogging).
the following weekend, following the outcry at Unity's new pricing, I decided I was going to take a break from my larger project to do this much smaller one.