A full day of updating Flatspace IIk, largely spent working on four new music tracks for the new Golden Age Music Pack. I knew I wanted to add the mysterious Nature Morte music, but wasn't sure about the rest. In the end I added edits of the songs (without words) to Welcome to My Gallery, Cotán, and Tych Brahe. The technical upgrades were fun. I almost feel like making Flatspace 3.
One problem is that the program is so complicated than balancing things is increasingly difficult. Originally I wanted a game that was as deep as a roguelike, but as easy to play as an arcade game. Over the course of development, more and more controls and options were added making it as complex as a roguelike, and as deep, with arcade elements. Well, there are many things I could do to improve the game, many ideas that fill me with joy and zeal, but I'm always crushed by the sadness that my years of working on games were wasted ones and that the money is just too poor to risk it. Taskforce took me 18 months or-so work at the time, plus about two months back in 2020, and yet it's still sold less than 15 copies. Flatspace is more popular, but not quite popular enough to gamble for financial reasons, so my motivations would be artistic. In some ways, my games were training in doing things for artistic reasons.
One thing I would love to do is update my older games and list those on Steam, but again, I need at least $100 per game. This, again, must remain an aspiration.
I've asked for permission to use images for the Cotán painting 'Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber', but the fees are a ridiculously unrealistic £195 for 5-years for use in a video. How many internet videos last 5-years? None. I expect that nobody licences under these terms. Every other museum with a 'Golden Age' painting has allowed the use of the work for free. Even The Mauritshuis, who own the Girl with the Pearl Earring, one of the most famous (and lucrative for the museum) paintings in the world, makes the image free to use in return for a credit; yet the practically unknown Cotán painting of cabbages costs an amount equivalent to about 20-years of streaming royalties.
The image is hardly vital, and I'm at least a good a painter as Cotán. I could probably paint a copy from life and do a better job, but a camera is even cheaper. I hardly need to use the actual image, or indeed any, but it would have been nice to create a video with Cotán's actual vegetables (a phrase few have ever typed!).
Programming is on my mind again. I'll start work on a Radioactive update next. A sale of three games starts tomorrow and I need some sales. Life is a struggle and a battle, as it is for so many.
Onwards!
