Wow, August is down already. This has been the quickest month so far this year. A bit has happened. I had a bit of a health scare early August. That sounds dramatic so I'll explain.
I passed out one night, whacking my forehead on a doorframe which left a neat little cut (now a small scar). What worried us most is that I don't have a history of passing out. Scared the shit out of me if I'm perfectly honest. Really made me think of my family, and then my mind started wandering through the worst possible outcomes which was hard to pull back from. It also left a lingering vertigo which has taken weeks to right, and still isn't completely gone. The event became the catalyst for some lifestyle changes.
I have cut back on processed foods. I've had poor sleep for a long time and so got serious about a proper night's sleep, and this required multiple changes. First, I've dropped stodgy carbs at dinner (think rice, pasta, breads etc) and have cut my dinner portion size back. I now have a strict 10pm bedtime to aid the circadian rhythm, I drink little water at/after dinner to minimise the need to get up during the night, and I have night filters on all electronic devices (including my PC). Yeah, I got pretty serious about it. This is all self-imposed.
What does this mean for the videos? Not a huge amount, really. It does lock out late nights and recording footage after 9pm, but these are easily planned around. Still, I like to make sure you know what the general thrust looks like for transparency.
On the video front, the Abiotic Factor video is currently in production. It'll be a touch over 20 minutes. The reason it took so long to reach this point was over 80 hours of recorded footage while I finished the Early Access content (yep, the game took that long to 'complete'). The script is also twice as large as the regular preview scripts I do, and this was entirely unintentional. There was a lot to say and I wanted to ensure it was all said. Not long until the video drops now.
Blood West is next, and I'm beyond excited to play it! Hyperstrange are working on more balancing updates and I'm almost tempted to hold off until they're done. Almost.
After that I'd like to change things up a little, but we'll see how I feel.
Speak again soon, pardners.
There's no sugar-coating this one. July was a rough month. Between a bunch of personal stuff and a busy IRL work schedule all coming at me at once, July has been a frustrating month, a month to forget. There were times I felt like throwing my hands up and giving up the Youtube gig, it felt that hopeless. Only in the last week have I wiped the plate clean and gotten back on track. They say the victories are won a step at a time, but they never tell you how to feel about the times your feet are moving yet the scenery isn't. This isn't a sob piece, but I need to get it off my chest. I have disabled Patreon payments, temporarily at least, until the Marathon 2 video is out. I swear there was an option to charge per video which is feeling a lot more fair than monthly payments at the moment, but I couldn't find it in the settings. I'll have another look soon.
Amidst the chaos of life, I had to face a hard truth: long form videos aren't as fulfilling as they once were. Am I saying anything new in them? Do they still mean ...
G'day, folks. Work on the Marathon video has begun. The playthrough is finished and the draft script is roughly 2/3 done. It's hard to say how long videos will be anymore. I've sped up my voice-over cadence which has compressed video length by around 1/3 to 1/4 but it's an ongoing refinement to find the right balance. The video won't be as long as the Marathon 1 video but I'm expecting at least an hour runtime. A lot of research goes into the Marathon videos because there's so much information out there and it takes time to review the relevant bits.
I got sick earlier in the month which wiped out a week of productivity. Because I couldn't sleep properly during the nights, I spent any and all free time sleeping that week.
What's Blondie playin'?
I finished Atomfall and its DLC this month. Fun game, though not as open and revolutionary as I was led to believe. More interactivity between characters which revolved around questlines would have been welcome. The System Shock 2 remaster came out recently, and ...
