Further Summarized Unfunny Jokes

I'll spare you most of the melodrama this time and simply let you know that one of my brothers also died shortly after the game's last release.

This left the family house in which I've lived up until just over a year ago empty in what has been allowed to become just a step short of a slum over time, so I spent several days fishing for important documents and generally undoing decades of life before some squatters inevitably claim the building as their own.

I spent a bunch of weeks with a bit of a broken brain that refused and still resits to do anything productive or even interact or communicate with my fellow humans, so I grabbed all of my remaining paid free days of the year not only for getting as much of the paperwork out of the way, but also taking a direly needed break from everything and everyone and just shut in for a while.

This seems to have done me good and this dumb old thing inside my skull appears to be starting to work more or less as intended, allowing me to become a relatively socially functional human being once again, which is just as well because now I'm all out of safety nets if I were to lose my job.

More importantly for you, I've also tentatively resumed Anamnesis development during the last few days despite my neglect to reflect this on the poor old "Working on..." list, so with this out of the way the next post will probably finally involve Anamnesis development once again.

Unless the family curse continues to run its course that is.

A Series of Unfunny Jokes

If you're familiar with Anamnesis, you probably won't be surprised to learn that death and finality are probably the two things I fear the most. The game revolves around renascents and cycles so that nothing feels like it's going to be the last time it can possibly ever happen. No matter how unlikely, the chance is still there, and that alone is enough to give me the comfort I need to truly relax and enjoy myself when I'm looking for some escapism.

57 days ago my mother walked into the hospital on her own in the highest of spirits to get this long delayed one-and-a-half hour long minor surgery out of the way after enduring months of mild pain in a waiting list, and 53 days of continuous hospitalization and 6 major surgeries later she died a slow, ignominious and agonizing death.

Over the weeks she progressively lost her ability to stand up on her own, several kilograms of vital organs, her voice, her dignity, her hopes to ever see her grandchildren again and her will to fight and live, although the latter only happened when the woman that had never rated a pain over 4 in a 1 to 10 scale had already spent 4 days with a clear 10. The exact details of what this agony entailed will remain unsaid.

At first like everyone else I was naively happy to get to see her after so long, since the hospital was in the same city in which I live now. By the third surgery I was slightly annoyed that I had to eat the entire kilo of quesada I got her as a gift because she wasn't allowed to eat a single day during her stay and the expiry date was drawing close. Also because all of my year's paid days off so far had already been spent accompanying her in the hospital barely getting any sleep or anything of value done.

It was by the fifth surgery that I had to start finding excuses to get some time to cry alone, and by the sixth I was already fearing every ringtone and notification sound from my phone and very glad to have used as many days off as possible with my mother while she was still alive.

All this happened 7 days after the first anniversary of my moving out of the family home, which is incidentally days before the first anniversary of my bunny's death.

I spent the night before the burial in my old room at the family home, the last place to which my increasingly crippled bunny was able drag himself into with no small effort, perhaps expecting to find me there as he usually did but instead finding an empty chair next to which he lied and waited one last time.

Now I was the one probably lying in there one last time not fully being able to remove the silly hope that perhaps the whole last year had been some sort of bad dream and I'd be waking up to see everything back the way it was, walk up to my mother's room, say good morning, and feed my bunny already eagerly standing on two legs as soon as he heard me come out of my room the half cracker he had gotten used to get every morning before I left for work.

All this magical thinking, no matter how embarrassing for an adult to have, seemed to have no effect though. Mom's bed was still empty besides some rather unaffected-looking, cheerfully smiling stuffed toys, and only a laundry basket stood where my bunny used to. At least the basket's mood seemed more neutral.

And even these formerly mutually shared memories along with all the others we had together have already decayed and become irreversibly destroyed in the remnants of the only two living beings with which I interacted in any meaningful way on a daily basis during the past decade, so none of this can ever possibly happen again.

And this is very discomforting and I don't like it.

On Itch.io and Development Goals

It probably looks like I haven't done much value since the last release, but for the most part that only applies to the hours I've spent working on my day job. Also, those spent half-blind and slightly feverish after some bug decided to fly into my eye and die on it.

Perhaps it was this fever that finally made me decide to do the unthinkable and actually share the game with a wider audience after all these years, but whatever the case the result is that there is an Itch.io page for Anamnesis now conveniently linked for you under the header and the downloads section replacing the Dropbox folder.

I intend to keep using this blog just the same while probably only posting about actually game-relevant stuff like releases on Itch.io and I doubt I'll monetize the game. Even if I set a price it'd be optional at most and the mega folder will still be updated and available for you right where it has always been if you rather not even touch that site for some reason.

On the other hand, maybe you also noticed that I removed the Development Goals page. The original intention here was to update it before the Itch.io thingy, but it had deviated so much over the years it was basically unsalvageable at this point without a full rewrite, and just like before I was essentially going to ignore it so I decided to make do without it and just keep working on whatever I feel like the most at the time.

I know this is a bad idea design-wise, but the last thing I need right now is to make the scarce remaining free hours I have left for developing the game boring or unfun.

On Seven Updateless Months

So I'm still alive and so is my intention to continue developing Anamnesis.

It's just that free time has become a precious luxury and human interaction or even public expressions like making a post feel like a chore now so they're basically the last thing I want to do during my meagre free time.

I blame the new job for it. I'm what you might call a mall cop now so I have to deal on a nearly daily basis with such disheartening artefacts of modern first world society as karens, teenagers and mid-level managers. These encounters rarely cost me any health points but boy do they drain my sanity points. Still, it's stable and pays the bills, which is more than can be said about my previous jobs or Anamnesis development so I'm probably stuck with it for the time being.

The main reason for the lack of progress these months is that I'm currently working split shifts from Monday to Saturday with the odd Sunday thrown in for good measure and, as it turns out, this is a great way to kill one's imagination. The relocation and paperwork is mostly out of the way now and poor old bunny is very dead now but I still barely get 2 to 3 hours a day for myself, non-consecutive hours at that, in which I often find myself simply wanting to crawl back into my lair and switch my brain off.

It's not all bad though. If the boss person is to be believed I'll be assigned somewhere else soonish and one week into my first paid vacations I've already made more progress than I did in all these past months together, meaning my imagination isn't completely dead yet.

These dull months also gave me a new perspective on many things and even allowed me to enjoy game content I forgot I wrote. Chuckling at one's own jokes is both strangely sad and amazing at the same time and I consistently get to pat myself on the back when I seem to find an inconsistency that turns out to be explained elsewhere in the game. Sometimes I actually get the feeling near-past me was a smarter individual than I am.

As for the game's development itself, the neglected "Working on..." list has been readjusted to account for 30 player peculiarities rather than 28 in the end because I probably need as much variety of those as possible and a little more wait can't hurt that much anymore. I'm reticent to touch too much code after all these months but some more balancing and tweaking might be in order once I become more familiar with it and make double-sure I'm not breaking anything else.

Once this release is out of the way and until my free time is more concentrated again, whenever that is, I'll probably focus on new content, balance and fixes rather than any new big systems. I've been getting a number of crazy ideas over these months as to what to do next but these are probably too crazy to even talk about yet.

Rest assured however, I'm not smart enough to stop working altogether on Anamnesis.

On Wasted Time

Here's a quick breakdown of my life's current top priorities ordered by importance and the progress I've made on each since the last post:

1.- Not Starving: I quit my previous job for a more stable one in a better company and city. The chance was offered to me 3 days in advance so I had to leave everything behind in a hurry and spend a whole week barely getting any rest and working up a nice homeless person sunburn because an ongoing heat wave, lousy transport connections and the tourist season taking up all affordable lodgings in the area. On the plus side I should be able to stop worrying about job stability for the foreseeable future, which on the other hand might actually not be that long considering the state of the world right now.

2.- Dying Bunny: Now suffering from bedsores and unable to stand up on his own anymore. In good average human fashion, those relatives I had to entrust him to jumped at the chance to do a good deed and save a fellow living being in need for about 2 weeks. At that point they had successfully managed to fool their brains into thinking they are good people and forgot all about it like so many other virtuous causes not directly involving themselves. The last time my neglected rabbit was able to move on his own was apparently to drag himself into my old empty room to lie down and wait next to the chair and desk on which he could usually find me before, so I've been spending a lot of hours a smarter person would have put on the remaining items on the list easing his passing as much as possible whenever I had some spare time and will continue to do so until the time comes.

3.- Recovering a Sense of Meaning in Life by Developing Anamnesis: Essentially no progress.

4.- Clearing Keeping my Videogame Backlog from Growing Longer: Essentially no progress.

5.- Other Miscellaneous Basic Human Needs: You'd be surprised how many things you can make do without.

On Rat Races and Elderly Rabbits

Unfortunately I must report that once again a combination of events knocked Anamnesis several places down on my priority list, propitiating the 2 week long halt in development you might or might not have noticed. Quite predictably, shortly after mentioning how I finally seemed to be getting back on track too.

These events are relatively mild compared to what some of you might be going though with things being the way they are right now in this weird little world we share, but time-consuming nonetheless. Put simply, I've been moving out of town for work once again, this time while simultaneously mired getting some work-related licenses and dealing with a bunch of complicated contractual and legal issues that might or might not result in the whole thing being for nothing. The thing to which I've been losing the most sleep however was whether the relatives to which I'm having to entrust my arthritic 7 year old rabbit in the meantime will be able to give him all the care he's been needing lately, because I'm dumb like that.

Whatever the case, I managed to get to 20 of the roles, personalities and peculiarities for player characters done before the moving around started. I don't know how much free time I'll have during the following months and how much of that free time I'll be able to put to some use so I really can't hazard a guess as to when the rest will get done. If you're really lucky, I might end up jobless and bunnyless within a few weeks, giving me more time for Anamnesis development than I've had in a long while. Otherwise you'll have to wait longer for the release.

Nevertheless, I did manage to find some time to fix a bunch of bugs involving things like empty actions and choices and do some balancing for the next version following a rare instance of people actually playing the game. Since these are piling up along with the previously reported ones, I'll settle for 28 role-thingies rather than 30 in this first iteration to speed things up at least a tiny bit.

On Being Around Once Again

Hey remember that weird old text game we used to talk about here? I think I'm going to go back to develop it some more now that I have the time and I don't even feel like I'm dying anymore.

I might still take a few days to rest, plot the course and remove the dust bunnies and cobwebs from the code, but it's been a while since so much time has gone by without blog updates so I thought dropping a few lines was in order.

The good news, for me at any rate, is that the excruciating leg pain that became even worse whenever I lied down to rest seems to have disappeared at least for the time being, once again allowing me to function like a relatively normal human being and even enjoy life to a certain degree. My modest EMT training paid off once again because the doctor's appointment is still scheduled for February despite me asking for it in October last year, what with the collapsed healthcare system and whatnot. I probably pinched a nerve while exercising or otherwise stress and chronic inflammation finally caught up with me, though I can't completely rule out the involvement of malicious feyfolk in some way.

Another relevant development is that paid work has finally run out for now and I'm back in my hometown. This means that for the time being it's once again illegal for me to stand in the way of strangers at a train station with a pair of handcuffs and a baton on my belt to make them undress in front of everyone else, but then again I was only allowed to have them remove their coats this way. There is however still a chance that I might get called back soon with people getting infected and confined all over the place as they are.

I also went ahead and exchanged some of the money I earned for a new laptop, so next time my moving around shouldn't take as much time off Anamnesis development. Now I find myself in the strange situation of having a laptop several times more powerful than my elderly 10 year old desktop PC. Changes in sleep cycles and sleep deprivation still take quite a toll on my brain cells so I can't guarantee I'll feel like using this device for much more than playing and watching stuff with my brain switched off in future work-heavy months though.

As for something you might actually care about, for actual game development I'll start by fixing a few minor issues brought to my attention during the last month, update to the latest version of the engine and perhaps then add a few new units until I get my rhythm back. Afterwards, I might shelve the territory events related to technological diffusion altogether and go for something entirely different since I've been putting quite some thought into this and there just aren't that many interesting technology-dependent actions to add, especially in wilderness territories with no technology whatsoever in them.

Assorted Tweaks and Other Light News

So I've been using part of my free time to fix and tweak the game as previously mentioned. Mostly this concerns weird wording, events not working as intended and similar stuff, but you'll now also be able to call on bonded renascents for challenges and competitions even when outcast, making them slightly more useful.

Aside from other little things like these, I think I'm going to focus on adding more units when possible since these are relatively simple. I'll try to make most of them low tech units in preparation for another feature I've been meaning to work on for some time but have been putting aside due to the lack of units of this kind, though ultimately I'll just add whatever I think would be more fun at the time.

 

Probably disappointingly however, that's all I have worth saying for now. My work contract has been extended all the way to the end of September for now, which is good because it keeps me from starving longer, but also a little concerning because, paradoxically, I've already lost 8 kg and was at my ideal weight before starting to move around and work here, so we'll see how things develop and how much energy I have left after that.

On the plus side I'm going through The Chronicles of Amber during the dead times as somebody recommended a long time ago and have been enjoying them so far. Can definitively see why they wondered whether it might have been an influence for Anamnesis.

On Labour Markets and Untouched Game Backlogs

So there I was, barely getting to the good part of the one game I was able to finish when the phone rang, 3 days later I was starting work in an unfamiliar city scrambling for a place in which to sleep.

You probably know how this works, you are perfectly free to decline and whatnot, no pressure whatsoever, it's just that we might never call you again to work in the future if you choose to do so.

I won't bore you with the details but long story short, I'm still going to work for at least another month elsewhere and will have little time to develop the game or play many others in the meantime for that matter.

In a way it was fortunate that it happened just days after the release rather than before, I would have hated to leave the counter at 2 or 3 items left for weeks, but I'm still casting longing glances at my largely unscathed game backlogs.

Development will resume once things settle down a bit nonetheless, hopefully soonish. I've got a few notes and observations to go over from playing Anamnesis on the phone now and then and I'll go ahead and add some more content when the time is right.

On Already Announced Things and the Lack of Polls

I recently picked up the pace and so far we have 8 out of 36 lobbies more directly acting on the territories and 6 out of 32 renascents with a couple of new behaviours to show.

For now I'm really enjoying the preliminary tests. This might well be one of those things only I seem to get excited about but I love how much more lively the colonies are now. With the Power Imbalance social context in effect in favour of The House of Alcrhousse for example I could see Alchrousse's banners and statues in all the populated areas, frequent military parades and people arguing for and against secession from the mainland. Unpopulated areas meanwhile were the home of  those unpatriotic enough to be hiding from the secessionist mobs and self-appointed tax collectors.

The new renascent phases are also forcing me to think in new ways about these characters. Maybe I said something like this last time but I really feel like I learn new things about them during this process and I genuinely find myself moved and even surprised by them at times. Sometimes some of my least favourite characters show a very interesting facet of themselves and sometimes my personal picks turn out have a somewhat icky side to them, which is great because that's just how real people work after all. The Lambda Swashbuckler for example started as something of a comic relief and has since been steadily earning my sympathy with almost each new development.

 

If you're the kind to follow those things, you'll soon see the usual Testing and Proofreading item show up on the sidebar as well, but this won't mean the release is anywhere near completion as it did other times. Rather that, considering it's going to be a somewhat heftier task, I'm going to start sooner and space it out further in order to keep it from delaying the release more than necessary.

Considering the average length of the text I've already gotten in and the remaining stuff to do, putting aside the occasional piece of code the whole thing is probably going to add somewhere around 260 standard Open Office pages of text to the game, give or take a couple dozen. The good thing about this is that at least if I fail to get the quality right I can still rely on the quantity when the time comes to pat myself on the back.

Now, the problem with this is that there is a limit to how many posts I can make about having done more of the same thing, so unless a bunch of new tiny features find their way into the game in the following months for me to write about, we'll have to make do with my meagre charms and lore posts in here.

I was considering setting up a number of polls to find out more about how people play the game and what things are the most interesting for the most people during this time. Unfortunately, Blogger seems to have decided at some point to remove the little sidebar polls for some reason and I don't want to send you to some sketchy third party site for them to collect your data or ad you to death, so there goes that plan.

An Argument for Procrastination

Well, that was an awful release.

I enjoyed the fact that a pre-release of a new version of Ren'Py came 4 days after the game's release to fix the false positive in the 32bit executables. In a very real sense things might have been better if I had been lazier, so I think the lesson here is to procrastinate more often. Also to put freshly compiled executables through online virus scans whenever the engine updates.

For the following days or weeks, I'll just dilly dally adding content, which I can easily cut at any point, until the new version of the engine is up. Then I'll make double sure nothing funny is going on this time and upload another release with proper 32bit compatibility.

This will also give me time to perhaps reconsider the way in which I've been approaching development and keep me from disappointing myself again in the future. To be completely honest, I wrote a long, ranting post about this, but then I realized that was just the monkey portion of my brain speaking, so I pressed delete and wrote this quaint little post instead.

On a Changing Engine and Hating Drawing

There was a very scary couple of weeks recently in which the newest version of Ren'Py, the game's engine, temporarily failed to even compile older games, including Anamnesis. Fortunately the newest version recently fixed the issue and my heart finally started beating again.

For some years now, upgrading to each new version of the engine has been like playing Russian roulette, with random outdated parts needing changes or outright stopping to work. I think I never told you about this but in one particular case a few years ago things got so bad the thought even crossed my mind to drop the game for the first time.

Still, the benefits of using a popular, actively developed game engine far outweigh the anxieties. Assuming I would have been able to put anything together on my own to begin with, I doubt it would have had linux and mac compatibility or perhaps even run at all on newer windows machines. The engine's newest version for example allows python 3 compatibility. I have no idea what's that about, but they make a big deal out of it so it's probably important. It also allows 64-bit architecture in games, and that at least I have a vague idea what it means. Something about allowing files larger than 4gb or something?

The point is, I'll always be very grateful at Ren'Py and the people developing and improving it for giving me the chance to focus on the creative stuff while they take care of all the brainy technical parts, freely and for everyone to boot, but a time might eventually come in which the old code of my game won't be compatible anymore. If that happens I'll have to make a choice between continuing using the final compatible engine version while seeing the game become less compatible with contemporary systems, rebuild the whole thing, or just drop it.

 

Also, I hate drawing.

I got a little carried away with the new tittle screen so it's going to take considerably longer than expected. I decided to get it out of the way now that half the new renascents are done and I've been harshly scolding myself for choosing to do so every day ever since. Some days you might not see the "Working on" counter moving but that will probably mean I'm still wrestling with the drawing rather than not doing anything. I should just add more numbers to the resolution switch thingy but then I'd feel like I'm cheating.

I've already poured over 30 hours on it, created 43 layers, and it's still probably not even halfway done, all for a part of the game that will entertain you 10 seconds tops. And that's assuming it doesn't end up being too depressing for you or something and actually ends up detracting from the whole experience.

I'm committed to it now at any rate so it's happening anyway.

On Shiny Underdogs

The new stuff for 18 out of 28 renascents is done, which means just over half of what's already been done is left to do.

I'm focusing exclusively on this now, so there isn't much else to report. It might be just a matter of time before I'm busy again, so I'd really like to have this whole thing at least close to finished by then.

Still, I kind of established this one rule to myself that I'd share a few lines over here every now and then at least vaguely related to the game and its development, so this time, in order to better explain the why of this whole inefficient mood and phases thing, I'm going to share with you one of my most shameful secrets. Something so wrong entire friendships have been destroyed over it, something very few would dare to proclaim online given the social rejection inherent of its utterance.

My favourite Dragon Ball character was Yamcha, and I'll explain myself if you just lower your pitchforks for a second.

Childhood me wasn't a especially bright creature so at first the choice was probably just based on something silly, I honestly don't remember at this point. With today's hindsight however, we all know this was not a great choice for a favourite character, and I eventually found myself grasping at straws in any little filler in the original animated series, which aired here at the time, going all like "See?! He held off for like 3 whole seconds against that bad guy! He helped!"

I remained loyal and held on to my choice even when faced with an increasing pile of disappointments. All these awesome new saiyans kept showing up, each one cooler than the last and  being all the rage among other kids but I was still cheering for Yamcha, which incidentally lets you know that I was far from being a popular kid at school.


Which brings me to the point I wanted to make. Yamcha is just the first among a long list of underdogs I've found myself cheering for as long as I can remember. I believe this one fact more than anything is at the root of the ongoing design choice to always put equal effort on content for all renascents and give them the same chance to show up in any given game cycle, encouraging players to get to know a wider range of them.

I have grown to enjoy the challenge of coming up with such diverse content, but having my childhood's favourite character so badly battered and neglected was a big influence for Anamnesis to shape up the way it did and give all renascents an equal chance to be expressed and bonded despite all the extra work, so that at least my underdogs can get to shine somewhere in someone's game.
 

On Rhinoviruses and Dead Eyed Chuckles

I was especially busy last week and thus unable to add a single word into Anamnesis, but that whole bodyguard and security guard training thingy is over and all I have to do now is wait for at least 3 more months to get the required documents to actually be able to work as any of those things because bureaucracy.

I wish I had something interesting to report, but the most I could do is narrating how I was able to acquire most of the vital skills to properly work as a security guard during practice at a public administration building these days, including pointing guests to the nearest bathroom and being able to cordially chuckle at the same joke about the weather repeated every few minutes by almost each arriving employee. One of them even gave me a nasty cold as a memento.

I could also mention that most of the security guards me and my classmates met during these practices warned us against pursuing a career on the field, which might have been valuable advice had it come at any point other than the very last week of the course. Then again, if you squint your eyes and think positively, there is a non-zero chance for this to be a collective ploy to drive us away as competitors for what might be an amazing and exciting job, so having already wasted so much time and effort, I chose to believe the latter.


Whatever the case, the important thing is, these next 3 months should be relatively quiet and allow me to get some work done on the game, maybe finish up most of the renascent mood thingy and with some luck make a release before things get busy again, though it seems unlikely, because there are other things I've been considering adding with this release as well. Still, I'll probably do some unwinding first while I un-cold myself and catch up with about 25 hours of missed sleep.
 

Discord Server

I've decided to set up a Discord server following the suggestion in the previous post and the fact that, apparently for some time now, at least one person has been unable to post comments in the blog. This seems to be the case for people blocking Blogger's cookies, but it still seemed like a good reason to have more than one communication channel as a fail-safe.

The invite link is right over there in the little horizontal menu at the top, next to the "Development Goals".

I'm still busy and not very familiar with Discord as a whole, so for now you'll probably have to be patient and perhaps even give me a few pointers. It kind of seems like a bad idea to set up a server given my current lack of experience but we've already established in other posts that Anamnesis players are all amazing people so I'm sure you'll help me get started and I won't even have to moderate discussions because you'll be super nice to each other and all.

Assuming I've actually set up the invite link correctly anyway.

Almost 10 Years Old

Anamnesis will soon be 10 years old, and I've increasingly come to realize that the world, the internet, and even gaming as a whole have changed quite a bit during that time. I've got nothing better to report, so I'll just go ahead and ramble on about some of those thoughts now.

I don't remember exactly when Anamnesis started to exist. I had been working on it for more than a year before I decided to create this blog, and several proto-anamneses came before it sometime after I stopped making embarrassing RPG Maker and Adventure Game Studio games. Even these were in turn based on a shallower, teenier version of the game's world. A few of their characters even made it as renascents into Anamnesis. Fortunately, I was old enough by then to get rid of that one really awkward self-insert character for good, so at least you were spared that particular torture.

Perplexingly, in all these years, nobody seems to have to my knowledge tried to make a game quite like what I've been trying to achieve with Anamnesis, even though more games are released every year now than ever. I can barely keep my to-play backlogs and especially wishlists from growing out of control, yet still I can't find a whole lot of games in the same ballpark, which can actually get scary at times. Has nobody else really tried to do this or, more likely, is it just a really bad and doomed idea?

These doubts are compounded by how increasingly little feedback I've been getting from each new release. I'm not personally that close to anybody that could actually read English, nor have even a passing interest in text-based games for that matter, so I've been relying on internet feedback whenever I wanted to prioritize an area to improve in the game. I've always been a little surprised at how little discussion the game usually generates though, neither positive nor negative. To this day I still can't completely rule out the possibility that I've uploaded some old relative's beach trip photos or something instead of the latest release and I'm just witnessing one of those awkward silences nobody dares to break.

This is most likely my fault, as I've done virtually no attempt to promote the game in several years now and human interaction is hard. There is probably some truth to that whole thing about your game not existing if you don't publish it on a storefront and have a social media presence and whatnot, but I still believe that a game truly unique and worth playing would attract attention on its own without having to resort to cheap self-promotion, no matter how many other games get released in the meantime.

On Potential Career Changes

It's time once again to deliver some of those good news for me but bad news for the game. As you probably noticed already, I'm busy once again, at least until March.

This time it's due to a kind of long-term non-starving thing. I've started getting myself trained to be able to work as bodyguard and security guard, you know, those guys everybody hates and we've all killed so easily without any kind of moral implications in so many games? I've already got plenty of experience being yelled at because of other people's stupidity as an EMT so I'm guessing this shouldn't be much harder.

The important thing is, there is a greater and increasing demand for private security, guards don't have to clean nearly as many bodily fluids and excreta as EMTs, and other people with much more stable and profitable jobs than yours won't pressure you to work for free as a volunteer because "it's the right thing to do". The doctor also insists that I'll eventually have to ramp up on immunosuppressants, at which point it'd be a really bad idea to seal myself in an ambulance cabin with one of those newfangled drug-resistant tuberculosis patients, so I was probably in for a career change sooner or later anyway.


Worst case scenario, at least I'll come out with a few more skillpoints on melee and ranged combat. I just hope I don't catch some kind of "Feeling Unduly Important" affliction along the way or something.
 

On Hauling Buckets and Aquifers

One of my fondest, most embarrassing memories of Dwarf Fortress is just getting started with one of my first fortresses a scary number of years ago in a savanna environment and, not knowing any better, deciding to make a water reservoir for the summers by having my dwarves haul buckets of water from ponds before they evaporated. I glanced from time to time to the fastidious process while I struggled to keep the poor little guys alive, growing a little happier with each blue-coloured tile and, in my blissful ignorance, feeling victorious when the reservoir was finally covered in blue "1"s.

That's how it feels making a new territory for Anamnesis.

I recently decided to try adding a new territory to the game, having been years since the last one. I was aware that it was going to be much more laborious than it used to because many of the new features over the years have been based on territories, but I still might have slightly underestimated how much work it really takes. In part because it requires adding a lot of new content, but perhaps in greater part because this content is all over the place, forcing you to change your mind-set every few steps.

One day, you pour in a bucket containing a new aristocrat's events, the next your bucket is a new affliction or a new lover and so on until you start pouring bucketfuls of territory events a few at a time, always carefully checking to make sure it all fits together.

I'll eventually look with satisfaction at the finished territory when it is full of blue "1"s, but I won't be able to shake off the feeling that things could have been made a lot easier if I had just built over an aquifer instead.
 

General Stuff Fixing

There was hardly any feedback after the last release so I've been mostly doing some more thorough testing myself.

I mostly rewrote weird wording and fixed a few typos, but there were also some minor fixes, balancing and quality of life tweaks. Most notably, those interests for which you have a trading license are now underlined in the "Colony" information screen, allowing you to access this data anywhere. You can thank my forgetting whether I had just bought mysticism related goods or militarism ones during a voting affecting them for that.

I'll eventually move on to new content or features. I'm not going to lie however, I haven't been feeling like doing much of anything these past few weeks for a number of mostly unrelated reasons, not just when it comes to the game, but everything as a whole. I'm gradually pulling myself together though, so there's no reason to worry about.
 

Your Average Filler Post

Got nothing noteworthy to say other than the fact that progress goes on slowly, but it's been a while so I guess it'd be nice to drop a few lines.

The new features are not something that will dramatically change the game by themselves but I'm satisfied with them. I played a game with the power imbalance context and got into a feud with the almighty Birdwatchers' Association by refusing to vote for harsh punishments on anybody that removes bird nests from their houses. A smart person would have yielded because at that point a few votes would not have made a difference, but I welcomed the chance to test things out.

The association started promoting a suspiciously high number of alleged birdwatching expeditions around my homebase, gathering information about me and circulating rumours about supposed horrible and weird things I did to those poor little birds. Fortunately, I had previously met a shoe-obsessed aristocrat belonging to the Birdwatchers' Association that owed me big time for giving away the money he needed for a medical treatment, so I met up with him to arrange for him to put up a good word for me within the association and gift them a few nice shoes in my name in order to earn the favours I needed to put an end to the feud.


Meanwhile, Alchrousse insisted on being my very best friend forever and how much we both deserve our own kingdom, so I relunctantly accepted this as a chance to do some more testing and got myself into one of those awkward friendships that only exist because one of the parties doesn't know how to ditch the other one without hurting their feelings.

Felt nice to be on the other side for once though.