kbrecordzz company blog (formerly known as "This Is (NOT!) A Car Club - Blog")

251025: last phase of production. then polishing, figuring out what needs to be added, adding those things, and continuing that way.

251023: This weekend is production. Next time I will force out a version 0.99 of the game to the public, to stop procrastination and take accountability, and to see the game in a somewhat finished state to be able to find bigger structural problems in the story and gameplay. Both the game's scope and the main gameplay (money) will be tested, so these two have to be somewhat finished by then.

251020: deadline

251017: Putting together giant list of Things the game Consists of and Things I need to Do.
- Content needs to be produced and refined. After a certain point I can no longer produce and can only refine what I already have, and after that I can do neither of them because the game needs to be done.
- The game's System needs to be stable, to ensure bugfree-ness and general quality. The biggest hurdles are my Incompetence and "Slarvfel" (careless mistakes, like typos and just missing a semicolon in the code or something...).
- And I need to find everything to Do to succeed with this before the Deadline. I'm not short of time, I just need to do the right things in the right time, and maybe also in the right order, before the deadline, to not miss anything. That's what the lists are for.

251015: This Is (NOT!) A Car Club on a 2020 iPhone is like someone who's dying but fights to survive and barely succeeds with it over and over again. the things needed for the game not to crash work, but the rest... yeah.

251011: Programming needs to be done now and then, with spacing in between for reflection and rethinking. It's too complex and unclear to plan beforehand.
I need knowledge of the systems to prevent bugs. I need automated systems to catch even more bugs (Bug Huntington, code analysis to find typos in the code and other casual mistakes). I need outside people to catch bugs I can’t even imagine right now (and an outside tester can also find usability problems). And all automatic testing also needs a manual review by me, to find all the "soft" errors that don't show up as errors in the Javascript console.
watching Girls' Generation music videos on repeat because it reboots my brain

251010: church with 1500s memorabilia with just a simple key as a lock. no alarm or other security. makes me believe in quality and intention more than in security and skepticism. makes me believe in doing something good, caring about things and giving to people instead of using people. and not having any excuses for going against the grain (the grain is bad anyway...)

my old game apparently has more bugs than i thought it had... (but maybe still just 3?)
you can always be more clear about the context, you can never over-explain. treat players as dumb-brains?
other than that, my old game has a great atmosphere and is actually good. it is a world you want to be in. and my game "portal" is easier to access than my Nintendo Switch sitting on a table 1 meter from me.

251009: Learning. Ranking of chapter types in science papers? Exercising. The Earliest Show. Ben Schwarz’ other stuff.

251008: keeping the habit. but having nothing to write

251007: just keeping the habit of writing in here

251006: I need to infuse some extra work into the game project plan, outside of the ”every other weekend” production. Some tasks fall outside of this description but still need to be done. Not technical polish, performance and compatibility, or marketing. But bugtest, creation of new save function and other things needed for it to be PLAYABLE (and maybe some polish of graphics, dialogue & gameplay). But if it becomes to much the whole ”every other weekend” production plan won’t work anymore because it relies on not working too much, but just enough. Right now I think I’ll just write down the tasks that are left to be done, so I remember to do them before 2026. And hope I’ll find the perfect time to do them.

i still trust that small errors will be fixed by themselves as i work on the game. problems in the game that need new systems created, those that aren't just bugs because of wrong coding, need to be planned to be fixed. so that's what i do now...

save function needs to be more complex (but not much more), because this game has more autonomy than the old game

bugtesting needs to be done in new ways (which??) because this game is more complex and varied. and because it has more autonomy, it isn't always played in the same way. i need to test how the game runs at all places if the player has 1000 dollars, and if 5000 dollars, and if 2000000 dollars, etc. and if the player has put in a stock, and how much value has been put in, etc, etc. do this with all values. i think really long bug huntington sessions where all values are tested in all areas and all cuts are needed. then just leave the computer on and see where error happens. i also need to create my own errors for things that shouldn't happen? what should i test?
then, for "soft" game errors, that don't give errors in the Javascript console, it's more tricky. i think i need to first understand the code, then remove unnecessary code, then structure the code correctly. to just know that everything will work. but the game is still too complex to understand fully. and this time i won't limit this complexity, but maybe a little where it's possible. not use multiplication and division on important values, set a min and max limit on important values, and use decided value changes, instead of adding unknown values with unknown values. better way is to always increment with 10 for example.
the hard thing is catching the soft bugs i don't know about. i can't put in my own error messages for these, because i don't know which they are...

251004: project

251003: what does a rasterizer do?
and, the project.

251002: Final Fantasy X. Playstation 2 visual effects & particles.

251001: how does CPU and GPU communicate? let's ask Rodrigo Copetti at https://copetti.org. we all know about CPUs and GPUs and RAM memory, but there are parts in between them that are rarely spoken about and probably differ for every device. everything happening in hardware has a measurable effect on software, but software people never care about hardware...
game studios should fight to keep themselves small, because the bigger any company is the more it acts like a government, and governments shouldn't make art. games are complex, so AAA game studios are a dead end where all focus goes towards perfection and none towards experimentation and personality. the point here is that games will grow TOO complex if you don't stop them.

250929: using my grown-up voice to tell young Youtubers an important lesson

250928: CEO/producer

250927:

250925: experimenting with putting notacarclub on a server with both HTTP and HTTPS. it doesn't have Neocities' CDN functionality so it may be slower, but what's the purpose of performance if not everyone can use it?

250924: einstein.

seems like functions are objects in javascript. function names too...!?

250923: firefox source code. does functions have an unnecessary overhead? how much overhead does the WebGL BufferData function have, which sends vertex data as an array to the GPU (because I know rendering has minimal overhead after the data has arrived to the GPU)?
how do i use fewer function calls without the code getting too long? i suspect this will give all parts of the javascript engine less things to worry about, which means less garbage collection and probably other good things.
since the graphics performance gets better if the vertex data is packed into large arrays, and most of the game is connected to the graphics in some way, more and more stuff should be in large arrays, i suspect this can lead to less garbage collection as well.
shorter variable & function names (minification). calculate your things with the least steps possible. write your own code specific for your own case with no unnecessary stuff. large arrays instead of objects. inlined functions where it doesn't create unnecessary much code (functions that only exist for organization's sake and are only called at one place should be inlined? and also all functions whose code length is shorter or equal to the function name+arguments length? so the only functions that should actually be functions are long functions that get called at more than one place).

undertale 10th anniversary stream.

250921: ping pong table. Polish Flakes. a day at Manago HQ. anime girl QR code.

production phase has gone from mostly coming up with ideas and putting them into the game, to designing and polishing the existing things within the game. i sense it will go back and forth between these two perspectives for a while. but i'm not sure. now it's more about making things fit together, and about not adding stuff that disturbs the order (but also not being afraid of adding and changing things). the game is getting less and less random and more and more cohesive. now it's about thinking more before adding something to make sure the things i add are really good and fit into the game and don't create chaos by affecting the game mechanics randomly and exponentially. and also that they are in the right place at the right time, and that there are empty spaces in between exciting things where nothing is happening as well. you have to listen to Steve Jobs and say NO more than YES at this late stage of production (there will be enough YES:es left anyway).

it's also a challenge to understand the whole of the game when the different parts are becoming more and more detailed, like their own small games within the game. trying to document how everything works could help, but it would take too much time and i need all of my limited time to be put on the actual production and not on the "around-work". one way to not lose the sense of the game as a whole is to keep it small, which i've tried to do, but it will still turn big no matter how you do. games are complex by nature. i guess i'll just trust the process and wait for everything to come together in the end and not worry or analyze too much.

this game will have a smaller world than the last game, and possibly a shorter and less "epic" story, but it's much more detailed and varied in the concepts it uses. especially behind the scenes, in the code. it isn't a well-planned simple computer program like the last game (where i limited the scope of everything and could be confident in its bug-free-ness because only so many parts of the code could interact with each other). this game is a mess made up of all different kinds of things, it embeds websites, it includes a copy of the last game playable on an arcade inside the game's world, it has both linear story and events based on weekday and time of the day, and i'm also putting no time into structuring the code or looking through it so i have no idea what bugs can be in there. it's fun content above everything else (while the last game also valued good-looking & readable code). i'll have to come up with some way to test the game to make sure it's bug-free, but i'll procrastinate this just like i'm procrastinating the actual code cleanup (which is what eventually creates the bugs). maybe just cleaning up the code in the end will find most of the bugs?

250919: ...

250918: inspiration

250916: inspiration

250915: starting thinking of things

250911: programming is too exciting and irritating to do sustainably
building a "business" is interesting but in the end i will always go back to creating
so, taking a pause until next weekend

250910: custom shader for trees (finally)

250908: what makes a place look believable? not the most accurate depiction pixel per pixel. one weird expression of a human face can throw everything off in a second. something objectively unrealistic but with a natural flow and feel to it feels believable to us. something with the sense of depth, lighting and how everything connects and fits together and feels reasonable as a system. no inconsistencies, no too robotically regular motions and repetitions. like, four fish swimming in the same exact motions look unnatural, but just one of them swimming a bit out of sync makes the whole group feel natural. The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time pulled off this feeling with terrain made of polygons without additional details, while "realistic" AAA games from the 2020s (sometimes) don't.

getting rid of documentation. the thing itself is the documentation. don't need to remind me twice. documentation takes time and space, especially in the long run.

need to get rid of all time spent on backup:ing also. it feels useless. i can also just not make mistakes that erase my files. or just not care that much about my future.

250907: in this phase, it’s not important that i do the right thing or am good. The important thing is action at all. Deciding SOMETHING and committing. Then i’ll continue on from there.

Main force that drives the game forward.

250906: went from wandering & pondering period to productive period. Now slowly transitioning into desperate period. Looking forward to ending the game project with the chaos & despair period.

I don’t have time anymore to not take note of my ideas when they appear. I can’t afford to get a good idea next year, after the game is done, if i can get it now instead. I still can’t force ideas, but i shouldn’t suppress them either. Because of deadline.

Thinking about gameplay. It has the risk to affect other parts of the game in a multiplying/exponential way. So it has to be well figured out, and tested in game, and then i have to commit to it. I’ve focused the least on gameplay yet, so that’s where much of the focus has to be from now. I’ll figure something simple but powerful out, hopefully. That’s the only thing that works with so little time left.

250905: edited images. That's all. Will upload new files to game next week. Game might look 1.3% better or something. Enjoy.

250902: spreading the kbrecordzz culture. i want the kbrecordzz logo to be seen together with everything that's good. so people start to wonder "what is that blue-green thing i always see when i am at a good event or visit a good website or watch something good?"

250901: trying to find a way to "scale up" creativity. and since i can't afford to hire anyone, i end up scaling down my own process instead. so i can do what many people in a normal company would do. and it always comes down to just creating good things and making it better, and ignore all other distractions. all the side things like marketing, "scaling up", etc, also get solved if you just create better things. so, i guess i'll just continue doing that...

and the more i think about what having a company or a team means, the more i see the advantages of not having it. it would be cool to be a group of people doing something instead of just me, but it isn't better just because it's cool.

i guess it comes down to the question whether kbrecordzz should be a business, with all its pros and cons, or not.

July - August 2025