Hi everyone! Today I've decided to finally start up a blog on this website...I plan to just write about whatever I feel like on here, which will mainly end up being relevant to Hemotropic Friendship Virus and my other projects anyways. The blog post about the making of The Rabbit That Lives that I mentioned on the front page of this website will be written next, but for now I figured I would do a bit of an introductory blog post. However, if you're not interested in all this stuff, you can just scroll to the bottom for updates on my current creative shenanigans, such as my VN engine.
As mentioned on my About page, my name is Ev, and a huge part of why I'm able to be such a prolific creator like I am is due to my ever-changing state of physical health. Currently, I am physically impaired by POTS, as well as ME/CFS. I have many other diagnoses, but if I were to explain all of that we'd be here forever, so I'm not going to..... The other part of why I'm so prolific is that my ADHD is so severe, and the strength of my hyperfixation transcends my humanity. Also, I have to make things, or I'll explode.
I love any medium that allows me to project the contents of my brain directly into the real world. I do pretty much everything for HFV all by myself because I love wearing all the hats. I have always loved drawing more than anything else, but I have gotten super into coding in recent years because of how I view it as such a powerful creative tool like this. I also have gotten into crochet this year for, yet again, this exact same reason. All three of these mediums allow you to shape anything you want out of almost nothing.
I am also, of course, a "Gamer". I love difficult games. I used to be really into PVP games, particularly MOBAs*, but those take so much effort to play and I just don't care enough anymore. Nowadays, I just play other people's VNs, roguelikes, or sandbox-adjacent sorts of games. My favorite non-VN games/game series are Touhou, Terraria, Pokemon, The Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Stardew Valley, Fields of Mistria, the Papa's Makeria games (Scooperia is my favorite), and Fractal Block World. It can be safely assumed that any potential Touhou references present in my work are intentional. And if they weren't, then they are now.
* "who did you main in league of legends?" zoe..... also I DID play other MOBAs that were NOT league once i realized other ones existed because i HATE how long league matches are. I mainly played Eternal Return and Onmyoji Arena (mobile). In these games I mained Emma and Puppeteer respectively. I still also rarely will go back to play Eternal Return again. I have never gotten above bronze rank in any of these (and i never will!)
I would not be a proper Linux user unless I mentioned that Linux Mint Cinnamon is my OS of choice. I don't really use any complex software for anything (and when I do, I don't make use of any of the complex features) so making the switch from Windows to Linux was very easy for me. I do also still have access to Windows 7, Windows 10, and MacOS, but I quite rarely use any of those over Mint anymore.
Before I end off this post, I will include some creative updates. I am currently working on the Characters page for this website (FINALLY!) At first, it will only feature Adair, Kiva, Rowan, and Ximun, but I plan to add a lot more characters onto it as well once the remake of Occultation ends up releasing. It will also feature references of ALL the outfits that everyone is ever shown in. I am currently working on drawing all of those references. I want to also eventually make a little dress-up game with all of these assets, just for fun.
The Occultation remake will be made in my new visual novel engine that I'm making. Naturally, this means that the engine must first Exist before I can use it. I said in my first post mentioning it on itch that I was coding it in Ruby, and as much as I do love Ruby, i'm gonna switch languages to JavaScript. My goal now has become to prioritize accessibility; basically thinking to myself "i want to potentially be able to almost entirely just make my games on my phone". To accomplish this, I want to prioritize making the engine accessible in browser, as well as prioritizing browser game exports. The GUI element creator will still be made in Ruby, since it relies on RMagick. This part of the engine will probably have to be downloaded to be used.
If everything goes well, then I think that even very large games should be easily playable in browser. You won't need to worry about save files getting lost this way, either. Since the engine will only allow for totally linear games, you'll be able to check the line number you're currently on, and then use that number as a password later to jump ahead to where you were before when coming back to the game. Isn't that neat? However, you will also still be able to export downloadable games for all operating systems, too.
Okay...that's about all I can think of to include in this post for now. If you're interested in seeing new blog posts when they come out from now on, I will always mention when there's a new blog post in the News section of this website's home page. Thanks for reading!