The past few months have been a struggle to find time to work on many projects due to how crazy work has been. When I did work on projects, it wasn't anything super big, just a few small mini-projects and then finally some writing for The Nays. This CUPdate post is a bunch of those projects that don't all exactly go together but are what I've been up to when I have the time.
I decided to spend a few hours one night making an HTML website in p5.js. I wanted something quick with a WYSIWYG interface and realized p5.js would be a great place for that. My brother and I were reminiscing on our old projects, which sometimes included making our own HTML websites, coming up with stories about our characters, and making various mixed media mini-projects. We also really wanted a throwback to old websites from 20+ years ago. So I made this little website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript just testing out various fun code and adding effects to the website as I explored the W3 Schools pages. You can view my website, Woobin's Judgment here!
Another little web project I did was updating the Google Scripts that I made for turning Eventure documents into Twine formatting. Previously, it would sometimes freeze halfway through because of the way I had my script set up when I would add more names to the list it was searching for. So I updated it to read a Google Sheets list instead and populate the colors and everything based on that instead.
I build upon my already existing p5.js project where I auto-populate an Eventure Twine template, but made it even more automated with Google Docs, Sheets, and Scripts!
I reused some of the code from the Twine converter but optimized it and cut it down to only add the variables to store the data from a sheet, then added to the page with the HTML text that I use for Twines. This is a lot more automated so I don't have to manually copy passage names anymore and speed up this process even more.
And not necessarily a web project, but The Nays-related, I wrote a few more Eventures, so figured this would be a good place to mention those. My brother and I wrote the Tag World Eventure, adding a lot more to that one that I started awhile ago. We
wrote the beginning together. Then the parts that had just my brother's
characters ended up being a time where I sketched out some rough storyboard
moments while he was writing. It was a fun little way to stay involved
and watch the Eventure be written in real-time. We still have to write the end of the Eventure, but we're making progress on it.
I also drew some sketches for the Fox Competition Eventure while I was planning some story moments. I wrote that Eventure solo in a couple of nights, and decided which of these story moments are actually canon (as some were rough ideas that didn't end up happening).
And then I came back to an old activity that we called "SN World Returns" where I would draw my characters in the style of Shonen Jump manga using panels as a reference. So this is Akuma, Lisha, and Skine.
So it was good to get back into writing The Nays for a few weeks. But it was still difficult to keep that motivation up while I was working extra hours and exhausted at the end of each day. I'm hoping to get back into my personal projects more consistently some time soon though!
So after another break between working on the project, formerly known as The Note Competition/The WING Competition, I got back into it! And we're currently calling it the Linkship Competition. Still another name we're not sure if it's the final, but it's closer!
To start off, I set up the Inky file for the dialogue and then threw together a quick layout for the text box so there would be something in there. This was a quick task I could do to ease back into the project.
We spent our first full development day together on this project, which meant really digging into the mechanics and how this game plays. We started with a lot of brainstorming in our Google Docs and just re-reading everything.
Then we started to figure out the different roles of the characters, using the LINK acronym (Leader, Inventor, Navigator, and Knight). So we made a Google Sheet to figure out the abilities and whether their role would be passive, attacking, etc. This way we could balance and figure out what they all did.
After we had the battles pretty figured out, we went into the actual game project to start building it. I cleared out some of the old parts we weren't going to use and started by programming the mechanic where you hold a button down to make Cipo move forward. He moves backwards if you let go of it. I had this printing to the console first, then got him to move on the screen. We're still using very placeholder art for now as we figure out mechanics and get the MVP in there.
Then my brother was working on some basic HUD and background layouts just so we could get some of the spacing figured out. I added a button mashing mechanic in there for the healing, attacking, and defending in the meantime, since that was pretty similar to what I made with Cipo.
Then I made some cooldown mechanics. A lot of our character abilities involve having cooldown mechanics, so I wanted to work on that. I was going to use plugins, but they seemed more complicated than just using events myself, so I made some basic events for the cooldowns.
Then I implemented that into our Navigator's role. Part of this gameplay is that you infiltrate the enemy's linkship, and open doors, navigate a maze, and destroy parts of their ship. You can only destroy parts of the ship when you have a weapon equipped. And that weapon must be recharged after every use. So I used a lot of events, conditional branches, variables, and cooldowns to get that working overall.
After that, I started to rework some of our battle stats in the Database to reflect our new battle system. So I updated some Common Events and how characters are set up in the Database.
Then I also put some placeholders in for the teammate icons so I could code it to change, depending on who's in your party. I just used existing art I had of the characters for this. I also added the resource spawning into the battle map.
I cleaned up a lot of our Common Events after we had a more clear plan on the battle mechanics. I had some various stats that weren't really being used anymore, so I removed those and streamlined them. I also updated our Actors to the current list of characters we have.
So overall, we really decided we want to start with the basic mechanics and making it fun and functional with basic grayboxing and rough sprites until we do any of the final art. So we revamped our schedule a bit to really focus on these core aspects before diving into some of the art tests we were going to originally start with. But overall, we've made some pretty good progress to get some of the basics working. Next, we're going to work on more of the mechanics in the battles and figure out if we need to adjust anything before getting deep into it.
Back in April 2021, my friends and I decided to start a project where we would meet bi-weekly to talk about our projects and what we were working on... and that became tradition for our CUPdates project. We've been keeping up with it and meeting for 5 years now and made a big milestone to CUPdate 100!
While I usually take these CUPdates to talk about what I'm currently working on, I wanted to turn this into a rapid-fire recap of the past 5 years to reflect on projects I've made and where I'm at today.
My first CUPdate post started with a variety of projects and one of those being that I was getting into video editing more and updating my YouTube page. As a throwback to that, I decided it'd be best to start this out with a video that's ~100 seconds long to summarize the 100 CUPdates.
The first few CUPdates were honestly a mix of jumping around projects since I didn't really have a main project I was working on for the year other than Eventure Twines. Then, I spent about 4 months working on a bigger personal game project, Compass Nays.
For the rest of that first year, I worked on a few smaller projects on the side while working towards my bigger first Eventure Twine. So I created a short Unity project called Frank Hawk.
I also worked on our OC trading card game for a bit, including printing off paper prototypes and testing it.
And the final big project of 2021 was The Gek Eventure Twine. This was the start of my yearly tradition to create at least 1-2 of these. This one was one of the longer ones too!
In 2022, I officially converted all of our Eventures to Google Docs, which is how I pretty much solely view them now. I was drawing a lot more storyboard sketches of Eventure moments as well. I didn't know at the time that this would turn into my yearly projects too.
For the Global Game Jam, we created Prisoners of Time Fabric, which was also the start of fixing up projects after the GGJ ended. I worked on Compass Nays a bit more, but not a whole lot.
I was still hopping between projects like writing The Nays, working on games, and drawing. I wrote a lot of Eventures and worked on The Nays a lot in 2022. I started my monthly digital sketchbook drawings this year also, since I was trying to draw daily at that point. I did this for about a year or so.
I spent a month this year creating Spirits of Combination Village, my game in the IGMC game jam. This was what really spiked my interest in creating a solo game a year.
To end 2022, I created the Cimc Eventure Twine, which was the second one I finished so far (chronologically).
I started 2023 with some goals to draw more because I got Colors Live, so I was drawing on my Switch a bit in the first few months.
I was going through a lot of health issues in 2022-2023 and got 2 surgeries within a year, but I was still creating. I did the GGJ for 2023 while laying down mostly post-surgery, but we ended up making Tag World Roots.
In 2023, I started my yearly tradition of creating a project that I was documenting privately throughout the year because it was a Christmas gift for my brother. So those CUPdates weren't necessarily public until months later. This was when I created my GameBoy game, The Nays Origins.
This was also the first year that I completed 2 Eventure Twines by October. This was likely because my health was much better and I started these projects pretty much at the start of the year. This was really the start of my goals to finish projects yearly!
At this point, my years have started to follow the same formula in terms of yearly recap posts, goals for the year, Global Game Jam that has a few weeks of clean-up afterwards, creating multiple Twines, and creating another solo project. So for 2024, my GGJ project was Biggert City Battle Show.
And then began my yearly project: Nay Saga. This was one of the most ambitious and it turned into 15 devlog posts, so the majority of 2024.
In between, I did two Eventure Twines (The Night Kids and The Gek's Rival), and a very quick solo game jam. But these were all a lot shorter dev times in between Nay Saga, since that was my focus throughout the year.
For 2025, I did GGJ again and made my favorite game we've made so far: World Bub. It was more ambitious, but I really like how this one came out. And with our post-GGJ updates, it turned into a full game.
So after that, I made a mini project in Pixel Game Maker MV using the same assets to learn that software.
I also participated in the RPG Maker Game Jam, where I created #No_Hacks.
And I finished my 2 Eventure Twines earlier this year: The Gek's Favorite Eventure and Complex.Net Eventure.
During those other projects, I was also working on my yearly project, which was another card game: Escape From Tag World. It was mostly in the background until July when I was full-on developing it, but I did technically start it in December of the previous year.
I also took a break for a couple of weekends to work on some mini-games in Unity with my brother on a side project called Nay 50. We made 3 mini-games over 2 weekends, so they were kind of like mini-game jams.
At the end of 2025, I started a variety of game dev projects. This turned into my CUPdates throughout some of the start of 2026 when I was more ready to show the projects, like a creature collection plugin I was working on. I learned how to make RPG Maker plugins and was finally able to create some that I could use for my projects.
Then it led into our big 2026 project: remaking The Note Competition, one of our GGJ projects. So I spent a bit of time just updating and converting the project and that's what I imagine a lot of my CUPdates for the rest of this year will be around.
Aside from that project, we also worked on our most ambitious GGJ project to date: Macca Masquerade. Usually we spend a couple of weekends or a week fixing up our projects, but this involved at least a month after the GGJ before we were ready to share it.
Then after that project, I took a mini-break to work on an OC personality quiz.
And that's the CUPdates so far from 1 - 100! I usually do reflections at the end of each year, but I'm taking this moment to reflect a bit as it's almost halfway through 2026.
The CUPdates project has really helped motivate me to keep working on projects and finish things. I feel the pressure of wanting to present something to my friends each time, so I work hard to have something to show. At the start, it was really any project, but it's evolved into showcasing my larger projects.
Like I mentioned above, 2023 is really when I started to get into a rhythm and have been structuring my years the same way ever since then. While I really like the structure, I will admit, I've maybe started to get a little too ambitious in some areas, and could probably scope back a bit to avoid burnout. I realize that was when I started to do a lot more because my health was improving, but I don't want to go backwards by overdoing it.
So this year is kind of breaking some of the trends. I'll be honest, I'm not working on any secret projects really yet for this year, so I've kind of been taking a step back because of how intense GGJ was this year. And for our big game project, we scoped it out so the goal is to release it in 2027, which gives us more time. We're aiming for a demo this year, but I think that's manageable. If not, we can always change that scope or timeline if we need more time too since it's not super urgent or anything. I figured we can reassess once we get deeper into development, if needed. Until we're fully into development, it's still not clear how long we'll actually need.
Just looking back and reflecting on how many games I made in 2025, I'm starting to really connect the dots on why I should maybe slow down a bit and that it's okay if I need a break. Honestly I've felt a little guilty these past few months because I haven't been working on my projects really and I've mostly been taking a break because I've been tired. But I think it'll be okay as long as I can get this demo out by the fall, like we planned. Or at least figure out the scope of it soon once we officially start development and move past the pre-production phase. Outside of that, I'm really trying to keep it pretty low-key this year.
The past 3 years have had really intensive 1-year-long projects (on top of a bunch of other mini-projects!) so I think it's okay to put those on the back-burner for a bit until I'm ready to come back to something bigger. If anything, I'd like to give myself some space to do mini-projects that aren't as intensive when I need them, and really find ways to reignite my passion again.
I noticed for some of my longer projects that I did start losing motivation towards the end, but with shorter projects I didn't really run into that issue. And then on some of my longer on-going projects like writing The Nays, I don't ever seem to lose motivation, but rather, it unlocks passion within me that makes me fall in love with the project more every time I work on it. As it should be obvious by this point, I realize the longer I go without writing or working on the core story of The Nays, the less motivated in general on projects that I become. I do need to find the time to work on The Nays more so I can get some of that motivation back throughout the years to help keep my motivation going on these projects. It just always feels "lowest priority" because it doesn't have a deadline, but it's really what keeps me going.
I also noticed that whenever I do a mini-project, ranging from 1-2 days or under 30 hours, I don't seem to get burnt out on those projects, especially compared to my 100+ hour projects. So this is something I want to be open to when inspiration hits, so I can experiment and allow myself to work on something outside of bigger projects. This can help keep that motivation going throughout the year. I'm hoping to allow myself to be less rigid than I have been so I can bring the passion back into more projects outside of The Nays.
Generally, I'm realizing that with my schedules over the past few years, it takes about 3 months for the Eventure Twines and about 3-4 months for my yearly project. This means means those months that are solely (or mostly) dedicated to the project without a lot on the side. So the remaining ~4 months can be gap projects or working on The Nays. I also need to remind myself of which times of year are most busy. For example, my work is most hectic every year in April-June, so I really shouldn't expect myself to exert a lot of energy into my personal projects during those months. But instead, those should be my recovery months where I allow myself to just play games or do side projects without pressure on my personal projects if I'm already having a lot of pressure at work during that time. Same with November-December where there's a lot going on for the holidays. I've honestly been struggling with personal projects in May, and connecting the dots again, it's because of that extra stress at work. So I'm slowly allowing myself to take breaks and trying hard to not feel guilty about it.
So anyway, I know this has been a pretty long and reflective post, but it's something I wanted to do to make CUPdate 100 special. Huge shout out to my friends Jinny, Hillary, and Laura for coming along with me for the ride so far in our CUPdates project. They've been really supportive and listened to me rant bi-weekly about my projects, so I'm thankful for that.
I'm happy to continue doing this as long as we can, and looking forward to sharing more big milestones in the years to come!
