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

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. after all, i've thought about this game for countless hours and the results of that will show.

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. technologically, 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 there were only so many parts of the code which 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