My latest #dev post was released in Oct 2019. Long time no see, I guess. In this regard, today, we’re going to talk about the 2nd quarter of 2021 and topics related to 2020. So without further ado, just to the point.
THE GREAT 2020 FAILURE //
THE CURSED CONSTELLATIONS
What a nice title. I would like to clarify two main questions right away:
- Is the project in active development? No.
- Is the project abandoned? No.
I’m sorry. I assembled 10 mappers to work with me to create a mapset of 8 different maps. They did a nice job, and I am truly grateful that they agreed to participate in the project. And then, after the mapset completion, there was a lull and no more news about the project. What actually happened? It’s quite a long story.
The project was originally planned as a mapset of collabs without much of a concept. But, as happens with many of my initial ideas, they expand over time. So, after 4 months of development, we had the 10K words script (pretty much lore only), 10+ characters with dialogues to be voiced, and more, more, more.
With the dramatic increase of the script complexity, the project slowly evolved from a little thing into a large-scale heavy product. And the problem has appeared: because of the production rash, I didn't have time to make all the things play well together.
When all the maps were ready, I still didn’t feel the script was complete. And nothing else felt solid either. Everything I came up with seemed like an unbearable burden, and I began to realize that I don’t have enough resources to implement all this right now.
My major projects are, first of all, a matter of inspiration. After that, purposeful work comes. You can think of it as my rule. Unfortunately, in the fierce rush to create something new, I broke this rule and found myself not ready to fulfill all the commitments I had made. This is entirely my fault; I am very sorry for what happened.
What’s now? The project is frozen. I am still improving the script in passive mode. The project, which was meant to be a breather between major releases, has become one itself, and even more so. I can’t afford that now.
If you are a project mapper, you may be wondering if you can use the map you made. Even though the script is heavily modified now, and some episodes may no longer exist, I’m against you going back to those works in any form. I can’t forbid you from doing so, though. So yes, I guess you can (please notify me).
When will I return to active development? I’m definitely not going to give up on the project (and never have) because I love it, but it’s hard for me to say when its time will come. It definitely won’t be before the finale of the Universe of Heroes, which I’m currently working on.
WIP 2021 PROJECTS //
MAP REQUESTS 7 / HEROES CH.III
The 2020 year turned out to be a difficult time for me. I think I’m a little burned out, but I don’t want to admit it. The failure of the Constellations also put heavy pressure on me: I felt shame and a guilty conscience that I had let down those who had placed their hopes or invested their energies to this. Anyway, I’m slowly getting back to normal.
I’m not dead! To be honest, I never felt like I’m dead, ignoring the fact that I haven’t uploaded anything this year. Actually, I made around 20+ maps, but they are all private. You know, when you see a 100+ follower count on your osu! profile page, it kinda puts a little pressure on you because you see this small crowd whose notifications need to be justified. (´ ∀ ` *)
So yeah, I guess I won’t upload a single map if it’s not a “project.” About the upcoming releases, immortal Map Requests is back! I thought I would make everything a little more modest, but it turned out that I have collected even more mappers than the previous time. So I hope that I have not been forgotten yet and we will receive many applications! I’m looking forward to August 7~
Besides that, I’m really going deep with the Universe of Heroes script. I don’t want to make it massive as the Cursed Constellations, but still, it’s pretty heavy now. This will put an end to the project and link the previous chapters with a single plot. I have made ~4 or 9 scenes with dialogues already, and I love how I reworked my old ideas (the original script was made in 2018). I’m thrilled with that ngl.
It should be a huge mapset of 9 maps, where 6 are mine. Given the experience of the Cursed Constellations, the mapping will be done in the latter stages. Also, I plan to leave a little reference to the project in the MR7 video~
ENETWORK //
WEBSITE SYSTEM DEVELOPING
At the end of 2020, my website turned 2 years old, and I thought that was quite a lot! The site has been updated for a long time and has come a long way from v0.90 Beta to v1.69F2. Nice experience! But I want more, so here we go – a new .com domain and ENetwork.
At the beginning of 2021, I introduced ENetwork Beta, which included 3 websites. Six months later, I am continuing to expand the system. Now it includes 8 units.
ENetwork Main
- www.evgerable.com [EBlog]
- ski.evgerable.com [ESkills]
- osu.evgerable.com [EWorks]
- mvn.evgerable.comwip [Meaven & EV.L]
- old.evgerable.com [EWorks Legacy]
ENetwork Auxiliary
- lib.evgerable.com
- req.evgerable.com
- url.evgerable.com
care.evgerable.com
TECHNOLOGY UPDATES //
EVISUALS™ / ESOUND™ / TWOSIS™
For those who still don’t know that I call my skills technologies… I made this paragraph just for you! It’s not about software and so on.
Does everyone have some tricks that help them being productive? Seeing self-improvement as technology development gives me a clear understanding of what I have and what I want to strive for. It is also a great structuring of knowledge.
Many technologies are now merging into “tech giants,” representing the T4 generation. Graphics? EVISUALS. Sound? ESOUND. Things are getting simpler. Some skills retain their names as SoundForge (ESOUND hitsounding sub-tech).
My purpose in developing all of this is still the same: to achieve an extreme level of production quality and flexibility. The goal is unreal, but passion does not require logic.
What about mapping tech? It’s rebranded to TWOSIS. Yeah, it looks like caps lock names are the main feature of T4 techs. Jokes aside, lately, I’ve had more knowledge consolidation than knowledge accumulation. However, I do have one “novelty.”
HOW TO DRAW //
NEW ARTFALL™ TECH
When I had learned all the applied areas of production and was able to make complete videos based on my vision, a problem that had been troubling me since the beginning of my journey became apparent.
My stories weren’t entirely original because they were based on other people’s art. I could take almost any work, but I couldn’t do the most important thing: draw the characters on which all my stories were based.
In a future #specials post, I’ll tell the story of how complicated my relationship with art is, how unique it is for me in terms of my learning methods. It’s a long story of pain and introspection, which is inappropriate for the #dev format. Here’s some work from early 2020, when I first started learning this activity.
It’s very embarrassing! But you have to accept yourself the way you are, even if it’s you from a year ago. In fact, I think I’m starting to really like cringe as an emotion. A year after self-study, I can say that I am not satisfied with my progress, but I am glad to do things that do not cause me as much want-to-die moment as before.
I believe that skills should start stress-testing at an early stage, namely, participating in the production of projects. This is how my improvement will be as fast as possible. Therefore, I release ArTFall Alpha.
With this release, I am also sharing a non-serious project, the ArTFall Universe. It is aimed at “revitalizing” my works and techs. The rebranding of my mapping tech to TWOSIS is related to this.
TWOSIS is based on the sarcastic concept of two sides of my mapping: the young idealistic MilkyWay, who wanted to be unique but ended up mapping a mediocre generic, and the arrogant PrettyAws, who has grown out of diapers, accepted herself as she is and just has fun, sometimes mocking players with her silly mapping ideas. The following pictures represent my approximate level of drawing today.
TWOSIS™ Mapping (Sketchy Colored) Map Requests Chan (Early Sketch)
My future projects will strive to avoid using other people’s artworks. The main goal is to replace any other person’s content with my own as much as possible.
That’s all I wanted to talk about! I apologize if it’s a bit rambling. I’ve had to dig out various pieces of information from a long period of time.
Thanks for your attention, and
see ya at Map Requests 7!
Eugene~
