Esoteric Update #314 - Beginning My Jobless Arc

I'm not sure what's happening, but I can't upload images. It seems to be a problem with my browser; it might be an issue with the current update. If you want to see the relevant images, they're on Discord. Sorry, there's not much I can do ATM.

Alright, update time after two weeks. There are a few things to discuss. Firstly, I want to address the title of this update: it's ok, nothing bad happened, this was planned, and I'm not in trouble. If you want to know more, look at the bottom of this post.

Let's start with the previous week when I should have made an update but... you know, a moisture wave (hard to call it a heat wave) happened. B.t.w., as I write this, the moisture is nearly 100% again; no, I'm not ok.

So, two weeks ago, I mentioned that I got SVG filters in CSS running and that I'm not sure what to do with them. Since then, I have done some additional experiments with them and discovered that some effects are very useful, mostly domain warps and some more advanced colour/texture-based filtering. These work on the GPU and in real-time, so while they are only equivalent to some of the transformations I wrote, they can be applied on the fly. I've also done some experiments with SVG animations (which can, among others, be used with the CSS filters); there are some things to still work out there, primarily in terms of synchronisation, but I'll get to that eventually. I just have not had time to return to this for now. Overall, I've worked on this over the last two weeks.

I've also mentioned working on a final revision to the prices. There were just some issues with fur prices that, while they required a specific solution, are all done now. I still need to implement this, but the data is ready.

Faker also had a whole arc to it. We downloaded the data, processed it, tested it and... rejected its use. Unfortunately, that's how this sometimes goes. We've decided to pursue a custom solution. We'll talk more about this later.

Last week has been much more busy, mostly because I had a lot to close out at work, but I managed to get a few things done. Apart from some of the work on filters, that is.

Firstly, along with Bear, we started work on a module capable of producing ethnically aware names for NPCs (and also something that would help you name your PC if you wanted to). It's a comprehensive system that might cover features that are (as far as I know) unfound anywhere else. These features range from awareness of regional naming quirks, covering largely ignored ethnic groups, to -nymic and diminutive transformations. The system now includes something close to 50 different European Ethnicities and covers West and Central Europe.

I've also, with some difficulty, begun working on secret names for mages, but I'd like to show more of that when I have it more integrated with the game.

Additionally, we're moving towards starting up a GitHub repo (or series thereof) to make some of the things we've developed available for people to use on their own.

I know this all has been aside to what I should be working on, but the last two weeks have been pretty rough, firstly due to the weather, which has been horrible, and even now makes me feel like I'm dying inside, but also because I have finalised my relationship with my workplace. Not only that, I have completely retired from working for medical reasons. I have fought for a long time to delay this as much as I could, and you might not understand why, but I can't continue anymore. This is why I said the jobless thing is slightly different than what you usually see with posts like this. It's not about how I lost my job and need money; it's about how I conceded to a struggle that lasted for years. I still have some stuff to take care of, and I will be attending therapy pretty intensely over the next three months, but I will also have a lot more time for myself and to work on the game. Which is, and this is very important too, something I want to do.

Anyway, I'll be trying to rest for a bit now. My body aches, and I haven't slept much lately.