The Creative Process #17 - Picking up seashells

After almost a year and a half, my project is done. IF Comp 2023 is done and dusted. I spent half of the month wandering, waiting. Busy but also somewhat still.

It reminded me of walking along the beach, hearing the roar and crash of the waves, muddy sand sucking at your feet, and occasionally a little shell or crustacean would catch your eye.

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IF Comp 2023 Post-mortem

In between the last call for votes and the announcement of the winners, there’s a lull in the competition. Some reviewers might quickly dash off the last few and shove them under the door. Other people share their predictions, highlights or gratitude that it’s wrapped up now.

I was determined to have a post-mortem ready for the end of the comp. A post-mortem is a game development term that really caught on, but I feel uncomfortable about. I wasn’t sifting through remains, but celebrating a little journey.

In any case, I wrote a very detailed post-mortem on Hand Me Down for the IF Forum folk. If you’ve been reading these newsletters, there may not be too many surprises. But it was fun and cathartic to bundle it all together. Especially doing a little director’s commentary, pointing out all the connections and details that people might have missed.

Many people loved my story of my daughter’s review of my game. She remains baffled by these “games people”.

The write-up got a great response. I had thought about releasing it before the end of comp, which was a silly idea. But sending it out just after voting closed was ideal.

I feel like my thoughts and plans for the game were better than the game itself, but I get to keep improving the game. I plan to do some improvements over the next few months, when I have time.

The IF Comp Result

After the post-mortem, the only thing to do was wait for the results.

Reading the reviews and swirling the tea cup, I guessed I might hit the middle of the pack of 75. There was an incredible amount of high-quality games, and a huge number of reviews and votes.

Sadly, I was due to be bludgeoned to death by planning butcher’s paper at work at the exact time of the IF Comp results livestream. I did RSVP as a no, and wrote some words for the impeccable Jacqueline Ashwell to say on my behalf if I was so lucky to get to say anything.

To my delight, I got 17th place. The video below is of the livestream and starts at the announcement of my game.

This was way better than I had expected. People who ran data science-y predictions were also way off for me. I beat the system! And my own expectations!

I joked that in 2005 I got 18th place (out of 35). In 2023 I got 17th place (out of 75). At this rate, in 2311 or so, I’ll get the coveted first place. Not quite sure what happens after that though.

I’m super pleased with the result. The 14 reviews I got were fantastic. The anonymous feedback I got from judges was very kind and helpful, even when my game was thwarting their play.

One thing people pointed out to me from the results page where all the anonymous vote histograms are shown: there are two votes for 1 out of 10. Without those, I’d have gotten an average of 7.28 which would have put me in the Top 10. My opinion is that my overwhelming feeling from the comp was generosity and kindness. I have no idea why they voted my game one out of ten, but I am assuming it is legitimate. There existed game-breaking bugs and under some voting rubrics, that earns you the lowest mark. And that’s okay.

I don’t think it’s anything to be worried about. If I got Top 10, I’d be twice as happy, but twice infinity is still infinity. I did like the suggestion that I had made mortal enemies in the community of writers and programmers. Mortal enemies sounds exciting.

Seashells whilst waiting

This month I’ve flitted between a number of things, trying to come to ground on a project. My major outcome has been to confuse the Youtube algorithm as my interests swing wildly.

At the start of the month I joined a very small team on an online puzzle hunt: Huzzle Punt 2023. This was interesting research for my Puzzle University project. Puzzle hunts are typically at a level juuuust beyond my reach. This one was no exception.

We only got a few puzzles out, and I made headway on a few myself. But I lack that puzzle hunt acumen for identifying and exploiting index systems or recursing a problem. This is the ISIS method. I also rub up against the friction of trying to figure out whether the puzzle setter is fair or not.

But like I complained to myself earlier in the month: If I didn’t want to feel frustrated, why did I join a puzzle hunt?

I am continuing my journey of learning Blender’s geometry nodes. They appeal to me as a programmer and fan of procedural generation. Turns out 3d art is still hard.

I spent a while trying to recreate this picture that I made with an ancient version of Midjourney.

Geometry nodes is great for this. Make a few models for the plants, duplicate into a thick field, add some trees in the background, maybe make the sky texture procedurally…

But turns out a thick field of fine plants is a computing-choking amount of geometry, even if they are all instanced. Getting past those limitations means more work and I’m not even sure I can get the effect I want. I love the hazy Bokeh in the field, but my experiments failed to get close to the effect.

My other art project has hit a blocker in trying to get the landscaping working cleanly. I have some misconception or bad idea somewhere, and it’s taking time to root out. I watched countless tutorials and timelapses of other people making things in Blender, but I don’t have the skills yet to create what I want.

My other little endeavour this month was attempting to learn magic tricks. The ring-rubber-band one worked well. Coin or card tricks not so well. I did a good coin vanish on my daughter but she asked me to do it again and I violated the first rule of magic - don’t do the trick again!

I can’t tell if my magic tricks work on my baby boy. Sometimes it’s a matter of attention. Did I vanish a coin, or did a cool bird land outside? Who can tell in this crazy world?

I did a bit of brainstorming on my next main project, which is either Puzzle University or the cyberpunk Ann of the Green Cables. I feel like the former needs a long time gestating to get the right pool of puzzles. The second is fun to just mess about with. I need to read the original novel first though, and my current audiobook of The Diamond Age is taking a literal Age to finish up.

Before I head into the maelstrom of the holiday period, I thought I might share my mate’s new EP. He does chiptunes music and he’s fantastic at it:

Jamatar’s Crystal Vistas

Have a good holiday season. Be kind and creative.