A couple hundred tiny details

With these weeknotes I publicly track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week, the second batch of RIVE recordings came in, meaning our shooting/platforming game can now be played through entirely with voice acting. Which is what we did on Thursday, with Collin and Martijn from Two Tribes, Stefan and Wouter from SonicPicnic, and myself.

It really feels like a polished product now, except for a couple hundred tiny details… which we then all started working on.

As another sign of how far along the game is, we had dinner with the old extended Two Tribes crew, saying goodbye to artist Meinte, whose work on the project is done and who’s starting a new job soon.

What else? I…

• Visited the Creative Industries Fund NL to discuss both the formal justification for the now-completed section of my hybrid writer’s research that they funded, and a new grant application that I want to submit in the fall. It was very helpful. Afterwards I worked through my planning, applying everything I’d learned. I also wrote some prose for Geometry Girl, which was good, although I’m trying to write every day, and haven’t quite succeeded at that.

• Was published by Dropstuff.nl, on Medium: #BigArtRide: a virtual reality bike ride and a European bridge. This essay (I wrote it in Dutch, they translated it to English) had been in the works for a long time and was published to commemmorate the end of their European tour.

• Met up with Antegods’ three leads (Niels on code, Wytze on design, Tom on art), as well as external sound guru Rik at Codeglue in Rotterdam. They demonstrated the most recent build, after which we discussed progress. Relatedly, I edited a new weekly Antegods blog post, this time about code.

• Dropped by Rob and Paul at the Utrecht-based escape room Get out of here again, sorted through my notes and wrote a first draft of the story for their next room.

• Visited Willem-Paul Brinkman at the TU Delft Interactive Intelligence group, and met some of his students, who are working on some interesting psychological work in digital environments, especially VR.

• Had a brainstorm dinner at Sytze Schalk’s house in The Hague, together with a group people involved in his transmedia project De Wentel. I think we came up with some interesting ideas; he’s now left for holiday in Japan and will surely come back with these immature ideas developed into impressive plans.

• Had beers with Pim and Stefan. We talked about games journalism and random other things, but mostly games journalism.

• Worked together with my sister Karlien for a day.

Average step count per day: 10.429
Average staircase count per day: 16
Average sleep per night: 6:47
Average weight: 86,9 kg