Partial Lockdown Day 75 (Monday)
Work
What a day. . . Not a good one, really. Let’s see, I started with my usual Monday house walkthroughs. Nothing big there. Then I went to take care of the credit card machine. It hasn’t been working properly for a few days, had to get the mobile carrier to fix it. Took a little time, but wasn’t too bad.
Then it was on to the government. It wasn’t so bad, until I found out something I was told was wrong. Previously, when I contacted the trade department about renewing our license, they told me they don’t do that on my island anymore. But when I was at inland revenue today, they told me they do.
Of course, I also found out that one of our housekeepers isn’t going to be able to work for the rest of the month. Not only that, but she’ll be unable to attend the training for covid related business. Oh, and the handyman won’t make the training he was scheduled for either! Then one of our owners had questions about his monthly invoice, which I had to answer because well, the roommate isn’t going to put in the effort.
Partial Lockdown Day 76 (Tuesday)
Work
Ugh, an early call about a payment I made yesterday. Paid too much, gotta pick up the check and drop off a new one. I also have that stupid training today, and it’s been nasty, heavy raining all day. I arrived early, the parking lot was packed. The previous class hadn’t let out yet, the rain came on heavy. It was a muddy swamp in the parking lot when it was finally time to go in but luckily the rain has let up.
As I sat down, they had other groups in a video conference, something was said about starting in thirty minutes. Then I sat and waited for much too long. Eventually they announced when they’d be starting, thirty minutes after the advertised time to trick people into being on-time. As was expected, it was a hugely boring waste of time and it even ended late. And, of course, once the presentation was over they called us one at a time to go and get our certificate. . . Which took forever!
Game Development
Notes for later: roll enemies and background images into the tileset, create an industrial tileset, change the starting ground to spawn dynamically based on tileset, add an objective into tileset, make CurrentTileset static for easy access by other scripts (maybe roll that into GameControl or make a new object that does this).
Other games to make: 3D Lemmings/Pikmin crossover game, Sacrifice-like game, Cherry Poppers game.
Alright, so once I was done with that stupid training and got back home I was actually able to make some of the noted changes above. I’ve rolled the enemies and background and platforms and everything into a new object that offers the data up to the other components. I’ve still got more to do to make this all work, but I’m running into other issues that I think I need to fix. Mainly, the attack just doesn’t seem reliable.
Partial Lockdown Day 77 (Wednesday)
Work
I kinda took the day off, although I did a very slight amount of work. It has been another nasty, raining day. No matter the circumstances or what I do I can’t quite get away from work. I had to write a check and do a refund, although I still need to deliver the check.
Cooking
I made pizza dough again. This time I practiced proper kneading technique. I must say that it seemed to make better dough. I’ve also added the recipe to my site! Once again, I’ve used a stock photo for the page until I can take my own picture.
Game Development
I only had a little bit of time to work on the game today. But I got an important thing taken care of, I made the starting segment of ground procedural. Now instead of static ground, it spawns the right ground based on the tileset for the level. Now all that’s left from my notes is to change the background to use the settings from the tileset.
Partial Lockdown Day 78 (Thursday)
Work
Quite the productive day today. I started off with a stop by one of our houses, just to make sure things are in order (as best they can be) for the housekeeper tomorrow. Next, I stopped by NHI/SS to check again for my papers. It took quite a while of waiting while the woman was on the phone with the office on another island but I did finally get an answer. Turns out they long ago prepared my forms but they got lost. So they have to do it all over again . . . Then it was off to the government building to renew trade licenses, it was a smooth process but it did take some time. I just sat and waited while the guy typed away at his computer. I wrote a check and I was done.
Restocking
After a quick stop to drop off another check I hit up the local hardware store and actually found something I was looking for, a basting brush! I was shocked but happy. Then it was on to the grocery store where I picked up a lot more than I was planning. I was lucky enough to find canned pineapple, it’s surprisingly hard to find on this tropical island. But now I have all kinds of goodies for future meals!
Game Development
So far, so good. I’ve now (hopefully) gotten the background setup to work off the tileset too. I say hopefully because I have to create a whole new tileset to test. And that will take a lot of effort. Luckily, my new trackball came in today and it is a godsend! I was suffering so much with that shitty mouse and I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got a proper input device!
I spent a good while (probably too long) creating new images to use for a background. Lots of cutting and pasting to make things work. No idea if it will even look good because I still need to create all kinds of other assets to go along with the new setting.
More Work
Then, at 7pm at night, I had a conference call with the rest of the business owners. Mostly another waste of time, since I’m the one in the thick of things. It’s basically us updating my brother and his wife on what’s going on because they can’t be damned to keep in touch. Meh, could have been worse, but I coulda been doing other things with my time.
Partial Lockdown Day 79 (Friday)
Work
Started extra early today! Was out before I even had my coffee so I could open a villa for the housekeeper. Then, before I could get in the shower, the power went out. So of course the housekeeper called about no water or internet. Ran back over there to find there was nothing I could do. Luckily, the power came back on pretty quick.
Pools
After all that, I had to do my usual Friday pool service. It was surprisingly easy today. I started at the old house, took the trash while I was there. The guests left a little early, although they’re coming back for their food at some point. Next up was my nemesis, which was also in decent shape. I had to give it a thorough vacuuming, but that wasn’t too bad. I then stopped by the easy house, nothing much to do there. Finally, after dropping off the trash, it was on to the new pool which was in superb shape.
Partial Lockdown Day 80 (Saturday)
Work
Another early start today. I had to run out before breakfast to open up a house for some guests. It was just your basic unlock and open. Turned on a few ceiling fans and light. Opened up louvers to allow for air flow.
Accounting
Then after breakfast I did a little bit of accounting. Just entered some checks and expenses. Put in a few refunds and payments. You know, the usual stuff, nothing too special or out of the ordinary.
Gardening
I moved all my plants, they’re not longer on the little porch thing, and instead on another porch. This one is fully under cover, which means less direct sunlight and nearly no rain. I’m hopeful it’ll help with some issues the plants have been experiencing, but it means I’ll have to watch their water levels closer.
Game Development
Took a little time today to jump back into the platformer. I took my existing tileset and copied it. Then I went about replacing sprites with other sprites to create an industrial tileset. With some testing, it works pretty good in having more than one tileset. The main issue now is that the crap I made for the background looks horrible!
Partial Lockdown Day 81 (Sunday)
Game Development
I haven’t been too happy with the way my player controller is working in the game. It isn’t as reliable and responsive as I’d like. Because of that, I decided I need to completely redo the whole thing. As luck would have it, I also came across a video on a better way to deal with animations. Unfortunately, there’s so much to change and fix that I wasn’t able to get it all done in one sitting. I’ll get it done eventually.
I did throw together a quick scene for testing. Duped the existing animation controller and prefab and modified them. Threw it all into the scene and did some testing. It worked surprisingly well, after a little fixing of errors. I’ve got more work to do, but it’s really good so far. When I tried doing something similar to this before I totally broke things and it didn’t work right. But now I’ve got all my physics in FixedUpdate, which is the right way of doing things.
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is a very colorful throwback to two years ago. I’m shocked when I look back at my old photos, some are just so stunning!
Remember to go check out my Gallery for more photo goodness!
