A blog post that is new? What a concept!

There is understandable concern about the state of Lost Echo: Resonance. The amount of concern oscillates over time, sometimes rising to the point that it becomes perceivable even when I'm actively trying to block all external signals.

This external concern then gets internalised, which can then feed back, increasing entropy in the process.

The state of the blog and its lack of new posts are also further inflating the levels of entropy.

So to avoid contributing more than necessary to the heat death of the universe, I will now expend the required energy to produce:

A new blog post.

Previous attempts didn't leave me with a publishable text. After using up considerable amounts of time and energy I ended up exactly where I started. That means the work done was 0 Joules, which sounds stupid to me, but physics is never wrong.

You’re not robbed of riches. The interesting ones were either not developed enough or are no longer relevant.

Starting a newsletter was also considered. A newsletter requires less substance... mass, energy. Less things to waste even when W = 0 Joules.

But I haven't found a newsletter format that feels more than just... spam? I can't remember the last time I read a newsletter I enjoyed or found useful... Maybe in the 90s?

If I can picture a Venn diagram where "newsletter" and "not completely wasting everyone's time" overlap, I might have another go at it.

But in any case, the time is ripe (or rotten... does time rot? I bet it does, it would explain so much) for some Lost Echo: Resonance related reassurances. There’s no time to worry about proper blog, or even thought, structure.

I’ll just let my fingertips freely interpret the electrical signals the chemicals in my brain produce. Then I’ll transfer the resulting data to the internet. Then various volunteers will use their eyes to convert the data back to neuron ions, so we can have an unpredictable variety of emotional responses produced by people I know little or nothing about.

The whole process is so inherently flawed, a natural source of misunderstandings, with so many moving, flimsy pieces of humanity and technology involved, I wonder why we bother with it.

“You can never put it back together like it was”

So here's a list of stuff

• We're still working on Lost Echo: Resonance
• I’ve given the site a small facelift. Added a menu entry for Resonance and switched the homepage to it. No new stuff in there... yet.
• We're still working at Lost Echo: Resonance
• I have minimised all social media / forums / online communities usage to just professional updates. And despite fighting some muscle memory, it has been surprisingly easy. Maybe that will mean more time spent on this blog? I don’t know about “proper” blog posts, but stuff like “Roadmap” were pretty fun.
• We're still working on the Resonance of Lost Echo
• Speaking of "Roadmap" I was actually working on something similar a year ago. My hubris was wanting to up the ante and using Unity for it. Its terrible WebGL implementation quickly sucked all the creativity and fun out of me. "It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools", sure, but I also think it's a poor artist that takes proverbs, adages and aphorisms seriously.

• We're still working on working on Lost Echo: Resonance
• Speaking of Unity, we were planning (yes, it sounds ridiculous to me as well) to use Unity’s HDRP for future things. Those plans are dead now. The things may still happen, but definitely not with Unity. It’s extra hard to make interesting things when you get negative enjoyment out of using your tools.
• We're still working on perfecting Lost Echo: Resonance
• The enjoyment we get from using computers in general has also dropped. Besides the software / OS rot the whole world is experiencing, a string of terrible / faulty laptops, hard drives, GPUs and other hardware (and then dealing with the Greek shops / official resellers) have made us scared of buying anything computer related ever again. A big chunk of the development of Lost Echo: Resonance has been done on hardware from 2012 for that reason.
• We're still working for Lost Echo: Resonance
• I had this realisation recently. When you grow up, the stakes for when you mess up in the system go way up (getting a bad grade vs going to prison), but the reasons you get in trouble remain just as stupid, if not stupider. “A government employee is yelling at you for failing to submit a piece of paper you know nothing about, but that they already had anyway as it was stuck together with another piece of paper you also know nothing about" stopped being amusing the 20th time some variation of it happened to us. Ah, getting old is so much fun.
• We're still working on finding the meaning of Lost Echo: Resonance

And another list of stuff

• “Simple theme, complicated presentation” is something I worry about. I haven’t quite figured out when it becomes an issue. The hope is that the complications are opportunities for emotional resonance. The fear is it will appear I’m just saying something simple in a really complicated way. Maybe as long as people find the themes interesting it doesn’t really matter as much as I think it does?
• We're still working on communicating Lost Echo: Resonance
• It’s also possible that after working on it for so long we have lost all common sense and the game is just a series of nonsense loosely strung together and we’ll get called something stupid like pretentious. Or it is actually so simple that I will get called an idiot for putting out in the world something this basic. (I hope you will notice how there are no possible positive outcomes presented)
• We're still working on interpreting Lost Echo: Resonance
• The intent is that the gameplay, audio, visuals, dialogue and plot (roughly in order of importance) are used to point past the themes, towards the actual thing I want communicated (the “meaning”? “source”? not sure what word I’m looking for), but something about roads paved with intentions something-something and for all I know I might just be told I should have written a book instead, again.
• We're still working with Lost Echo: Resonance
• Actually, if you really think about it, maybe Lost Echo: Resonance should be a signature dish, a scent or a dance move instead. All those sound more respectable than “mobile game made with Unity”.
• We're still working about Lost Echo: Resonance
• These days mobile games are the kind of games that are supposed to scam children out of their parents' money, sell their private data and bombard them with the worst ads, mostly supplied by our friends at Unity. I know mobile developers that don’t like ads and in-apps are a dying breed, and I'm not spiritual, but I feel if we gave in we would lose the “soul” analogue of your choice. Or, at the very least, I would sleep worse than I do now. I guess it's less of a problem if you work at Unity, in which case Riccitiello and the rest of the C-Suite members have already feasted on your soul. At least with the subscription model we are just giving them small portions of ours at a time, for now.
• We're still working on defining Lost Echo: Resonance
• Aaand… I’m done talking about Unity, thank you for indulging me one last time. I promise I will even stop using the word Unity, even when it’s in a completely different context and it’s the appropriate word to use. I will just use “togetherness” instead or something. (It also means if anyone in the comments wants to discuss or, *shudder*, defend “togetherness” I will be deleting those comments, you have been warned)
• We're still listening for the Lost Resonating Echoes.

The hardest part about creating things, is receiving the universe's cruelty, seeing everything get worse, including yourself, and trying to stop that from propagating further.

But I already wrote the happy ending that a lot of people didn't like. The one about rejecting reality and remaining hopeful, refusing to grow up, the one that even though the natural conclusion of the story seemed pessimistic, the author (hey, that's me!) pulls a happy ending out of their ass, because screw sad endings.

Resonance was (is?) about growing up after that. Rejecting reality is nice, but let's face it now. Remaining childish is nice, but let's grow up. The author saving you is nice, but let's try and have some realistic optimism about the future. You know, classic coming of age bullcrap.

The problem is... a lot of time has passed since those intentions. That future is here now. And it kind of sucks. I attempted to quantum entangle with my past self so I can write about optimism again, but that would also cause a significant increase in entropy. But I also don't want to put something out into the world that is just negative. We have too much of that already.

Aiming towards a place that's neither of those, while also being honest, is... interesting.

Frankly, it’s going to be great.

But hey, in case you haven’t heard: We’re still working on Lost Echo: Resonance.