miris.day

picked up the prototype again

Cracked open the project file for the first time in a week. The coffee was still warm. Ran the build, watched the little pixel cat walk across the title screen for a minute and remembered why we started this. The animation is too fast by maybe two frames — will fix once tea is brewed.

• brew morning tea (genmaicha)
• open project, fight git for ten minutes
• slow down cat walk cycle by 2 frames
• write a sentence of dialogue for the baker NPC
• eat lunch away from the desk — really, this time

side note the cat sprite needs a name. polled the circle — current contenders: Mochi, Pickle, Sir Walks-A-Lot.

tilemap, take three

Spent the whole evening redrawing the village tilemap. The fence corners finally line up, and the well doesn't look like a hat anymore. Small wins. Saved three backup files because the last crash ate two hours of pixel work and I am not making that mistake twice.

• redraw fence tile corners (NE, SE, SW, NW)
• replace the well sprite that looked like a top hat
• make THREE backup files. minimum.
• push to the circle's shared drive before sleeping

// tilemap.js  — quick fix
const FENCE = {
  NE: [3,1], SE: [3,2],
  SW: [4,2], NW: [4,1],
};
// note: well sprite ID was 17, NOT 71.
//   that explains the hat.

mood tired but the kind of tired that feels earned. listened to the same lo-fi album on loop. it's fine.

circle meeting — demo day plans

The five of us gathered at the cafe with the wobbly table. Decided we'll show a 12-minute slice at the local indie showcase in June. Twelve minutes feels short until you try to pace it. The bakery scene stays. The boss fight gets cut. We argued about the boss fight for forty minutes anyway.

• draft 12-minute demo outline
• cut boss fight from showcase build (sob)
• order business cards for the circle
• find a venue with reliable wifi (ongoing)
• decide on a circle mascot — postponed to next week

overheard “if we put the cat on the business cards everyone will assume we make cat games.” — T.

april began with a bug

The save system, untouched for three weeks, has decided today is the day it will not load. Every slot returns an empty object. I checked the calendar twice to confirm this was not a prank. Spent the morning bisecting commits and the afternoon learning that the bug was a single misplaced comma in the JSON parser fallback.

• reproduce save-load failure (took 4 tries)
• git bisect — blame yesterday's commit
• find the missing comma. stare at it.
• add three test cases so this never happens again
• write release notes that don't say "fixed thing"

lesson JSON forgives nothing. write tests for the parts you trust the most.