Vilya's Workblog: Personal

In Fred's department, he's been busy making a ton of archery targets! Have a look at these:

Now, thanks to finally being vaccinated and not having had much proper time off this 1½ year or so that we've been dealing with the pandemic, I'm gonna go ahead and treat myself to two weeks off to enjoy life for a little bit! The blog will be back up and running on the 9th of August, so stay tuned for more stuff then :)

Until then, have a nice couple weeks, I will for sure! :)

So as a lot of you may have noticed, our world is currently facing a new kind of illness that is spreading rapidly as we speak. This illness, Covid-19, is now found in every part of Sweden, including the island where we live. The government is keeping us updated daily with the changes they're making and how they rally the fight against it, with big changes is happening fast.

In order to help slow down and limit the spread, a lot of companies are suggesting their employees work from home if they're able. This isn't a recommendation from our government as of yet, though it's been implemented in other countries and a lot of companies make their own recommendations. As of today, we're making that same move ourselves.

We're only a small studio with three people, but because our office is part of an office hotel where a lot of other companies work as well, we've decided to move our work stations home for the time being. While we love our office and the opportunities it gives us to see other people (or just the exercise of walking or cycling to it), we've decided that if through working from home for a bit we can help slow down the spread, it's what we'll do. For the company, this means little change except out discussions will be held over voice or video chats instead of in person. Technically, it's possible for us to work from anywhere with little hassle.

We will need a bit of time today to set up more permanent workstations in our homes, but once it's done things should hopefully be able to continue on as normal for us. We hope that all of you are staying safe and remember to wash your hands! Let's not panic but do what we can to protect those around us who are in risk of being seriously affected by this virus :)

Today my dad's coming to visit, so instead of preparing another blog post I'm gonna take him to a restaurant in town and tell him about our recent work on the game!

Actually, did you know it's largely thanks to my parents that I got into game dev in the first place? It might sound strange, seeing as most parents would be against their children wanting to follow such a strange and uncertain route, and I'm sure my parents have worried about that as well.

But if it hadn't been for especially my mother's love for games I don't think I would have ever felt the same way about them myself. In fact, the very earliest memory I can recall is my mother and older sister playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link next to me! I remember watching them run across the world map and felt such wonder at the world.

Because of their enthusiasm for games, they also made sure we got the SNES when it got to Sweden. I played A Link to the Past without knowing a word of English, and didn't finish it until years later. Total hours spent on my completed file showed over 680! That's a lot of hours playing something when you have no idea what to do or where to go.

As I'm sure you can tell, some of those 680+ hours definitely served to help us make Grindea what it is today. So in a way, I guess I have my parents to thank for that!

This is apparently quite quickly turning into a long text. I apologize for that, and will be back on Monday with your regular Secrets of Grindea WIP fix~

For me - and I guess pretty much everyone else - last year was quite overwhelming. But instead of thinking back on all that, let's look ahead and focus on the positive things.

Next week it's time for us Swedes to celebrate christmas! Yaay!

Teddy is already back at his hometown catching up with friends and family and Fred will leave middle of next week. Starting tomorrow I'll take a bit of time off from blogging (gamedev work tends to go on anyway) to do some holiday celebrations as well.

The blog will be back with the new year, on Monday 2nd!

With my parts of Tai Ming almost being finished, it's time to start looking ahead and think about what's coming next. First up, we're gonna update Arcade Mode, adding the Mt. Bloom and Tai Ming floors (and after that likely spend some time adding bonus things - Housing for example). Once I complete the final things for Tai Ming (the final room + cards) that means I'll be focusing on Arcade Mode backgrounds and a TON of furniture, which will be a lot of fun!

Holiday Greetings from Dante!

After that, it's finally time to start with the next area... I've already completed most of the art for the desert, which is supposed to come after Tai Ming, so for me that means I'll begin playing around with the harbor town that comes after it. Then there's only two temples/dungeons left! I can't believe we've actually come this far, haha. Though it's been 5 years already it feels like we began working on Grindea yesterday. Time flies when you have fun, and working on this game has definitely been a blast from the start!

Definitely looking forward to another year of fun gamedev, and I hope you'll all stay with us through our journey! After all, without you guys there would be no game. So thank you for the support, and I hope you have a happy holiday/merry christmas/just a wonderful time :D

See you next year!!

Since we live on the island where our gamedev education was held, every year there's a couple of fun events for us alumni to attend. Last week was one of them: the Alumni Days!

Finally, after a lot of deliberation, I decided to change the layout of the blog! I've been working on this for a while (stealing an hour here and an hour there), but I never really found a layout that I liked enough, until now.

The old posts might look a bit off, but as new posts (formatted with the layout in mind) appear, hopefully things will start looking alright again soon!

Now, I probably forgot to test a bunch of stuff, so if something is broken somewhere, let me know!

Just a quick note - as you might notice, the usual URL for this blog now points to www.vilyaroo.com instead! Slightly better than blogspot.com/se/de etc, right?

I'm also in the process of updating the design of the blog, so expect a revamp of sorts sometime in the near future. Going for a clean, black & white design that I really like so far - but I still have some things I need to fix before it's ready!

In the meanwhile, here's a pic of cutie Link sleeping until tomorrow's post:

His fur still hasn't grown out since his trials at the animal hospital,
perhaps since it's been so hot here this summer!

Whew! I'm back guys!!!~~

After almost two weeks of absolute crazy, things are calming down a little. I have 500000 scratches on my hands, but at least that's a sign that Link the cat is feeling better (he does NOT want to take his medicine peacefully)! On Monday we're going back to have him checked out to see if he is still responding will to the medicine, but for now he seems stable and active enough, getting a little more energetic every day, so I'm hopeful! :)

I've slowly gone back to working after making sure the apartment is safe for a sick cat (we had to keep the other cat away from him for a while, taking turns keeping them in different parts of the apartments cause they hate each other when one of them is sick - or at least, Dante hates Link when he is, Dante has never been sick himself - lucky bastard (or is it Link that's unlucky?)). Hopefully things should be back to normal from now on, with the regular updates Sunday-Thursday :)

As a first step, here's a little something I made the other day - a stack of barrels:

Remember how I said I'd be going home to visit my parents and then celebrate Teddy's birthday (which is tomorrow, BTW)? Well, fate had other plans for me.

Last Sunday we went to the emergency vet with one of the cats, who had become weak randomly. Since he is only 4 years old and hadn't pooped in a while we assumed it was a some kind of constipation which would be easily solved by the vet - no biggie, right?

Well, instead, he only felt worse and worse, all while the vet had no clue what was happening.

After two days and a ~500 USD bill JUST for travelling between our home and the vet, sometimes multiple times per day (we actually haven't received the actual vet bill yet, so that's gonna be fun), we were actually sent to the capital, to what is likely the best animal hospital in the country. From our island that's a 5 hour trip, 3 of which are on a ferry, with a possibly dying cat. Fun, fun times.

Turns out, at the hospital @ Stockholm, they couldn't tell what was wrong either. They ran more and more tests with the cat in their critical care unit for several days, and apparently he only turned worse and worse. Luckily, Teddy's mother lives in Stockholm so he came with me and we stayed there, waiting for a single phonecall every day where they'd let us know how he was doing.

After x tests, they figured out not only is he severely anemic, which is likely the cause of his miserable state (though they couldn't tell us what caused the anaemia..) he also has early signs of a heart disease (but if all goes well that's not something that will bother him for many years yet). They gave him medicine, but to our dismay nothing seemed to help, again for multiple days.

Yesterday the vet reached a breaking point: either he gets better today from the medicine he's been given, or there's nothing that can be done, and he has to be put down. Well, today we received news he was sliiightly better and could come out of the critical care unit and receive treatment at home for the next two days, with another checkup on Tuesday. Since there's no way we're gonna travel back and forth 5 hours each way between now and Tuesday, we're currently staying at Teddy's mothers place, hoping everything will be fine.

Link (the cat) has only shown slight improvements that need to be much bigger on Tuesday, or we'll still have to put him down since it's incredibly unlikely he'll ever get better if he isn't by then. If it comes to that, at least he got 2 days with people who know and love him, rather than spending his whole last week in the hands of strangers.

So yeah. Currently I'm sitting in Teddy's mother's bed, while she sleeps in the living room, with a terribly sick cat next to me who barely eats. I haven't been near a computer since last Sunday when we first went to the vet with Link, and I honestly don't know when I'll be back to a regular work schedule. It could be anything between a few days to one or two more weeks depending on how things go.

I know that some of you might not understand why I'm doing all this "just" for a cat, but to me the cats are like family members. They're always there for me and it's my responsibility to make sure they feel good and are properly taken care of. Before this is done, I expect the vet bill will be more than 2-3 months worth of salaries. It's a ton of money and a ton of time, but I really love this cat and I seriously pray he will be OK even though I'm not even religious. He's only 4 years old, this is just way too soon :(

So anyway, as you might understand, the blog will be resting for a little while. I'll try to start working again after Tuesday when he's either well enough to come home with us to the island, or he's so bad we had to put him down. BUT, even if I start working then the blog might be down for another week or two. I just want all my non-work attention to be on Link and helping him get well again.

I hope you guys understand, and I'll be back as soon as I can! Without you guys I wouldn't be able to keep a cat at all, much less pay these hefty vet bills. So thank you all for supporting us and know the game is ALWAYS on my mind, I just need to do my best to try and save my best friend right now.

So, last week on Wednesday was Fred's birthday! As true Pixel Ferrets comrades the three of us spent the day together, eating fast-food, having a drink and watching CS:GO over at Fred's place.

I'm really happy to able to work with these guys, and I really wouldn't trade them for anyone else! Like all jobs, sometimes things may feel heavy or like you're getting nowhere, but because of the awesomeness of these guys such bad feelings go away quickly. We're working on our dream game, and we get to do so with good friends. I don't think it can get much better!

Anyway, this post doesn't really have much to do with actual work, but it's Pixel Ferrets behind the scenes - just taking a day off to enjoy each other's company. Cause that's important too! :)

Have you thought about going indie? Do you dream of creating your own games, being your own boss? Do you worry whether or not you're ready, or if it's right for you? While I was working the other day, I was listening to this talk that's available for free over at the GDC Vault (lots of really awesome talks are available there, if you haven't checked it out)!

Not only is Don Daglow absolutely hilarious in this talk (and he should definitely become a voice actor if he isn't one already), he makes a lot of interesting points. Perhaps the most interesting questions he asked was one in the beginning:

If you had all your finances settled, money wasn't a problem and you've already been travelling all around the world - what would you do with your time?

It's a really interesting question because it challenges you to think about what you really want to do with your everyday life. For me, the answer is simple: I'd do exactly what I do today! Being an indie dev in a small team such as this has been a dream so far. I love to draw and to write, and as this job allows me to do both, it's the perfect mix.

I also have to say - having people play the game and share their experiences is absolutely awesome. Seeing the community grow, people becoming friends because of the game, sharing strategies or helping eachother out... It's fantastic. :)

Of course, if my money was unlimited, as the question suggests, I'd probably move to a bigger apartment (or buy a house) and perhaps get another cat and a horse as well... ;)

What about you? What would you do with your everyday life?

I just realized blogging about work and always talking about Secrets of Grindea isn't really something that I like all that much. Actually, I think I've found a new calling...

SO! I'm gonna change this blog into a horseback riding blog!

I might have mentioned it before, but every Thursday I go horseback riding at a local stable. So from now on, this blog will be filled with all things horse! Yay!

Here's one of the horses I rode a lot before, he's called Frost and he's a fjord horse (which is hard to believe because of how white he is, very rare for this breed!) who loves to run as fast as he can:

And here we have Basic, the horse I have been riding more recently:

Basic is a SWB (Swedish Warmblood) which I believe is one of the more common breeds here in Sweden. He's an awesome horse that's very friendly and alert while listening really well to his rider! I definitely hope to be able to spend more time with him in the future :)

That's all for today! See you tomorrow with another awesome horse post~ :)

Instead of showing more random furniture today, I thought I'd talk about how we try to stay healthy and (somewhat) fit despite working in front of the computer all day long.

For the longest time, like the past 10 or so years, I've been horribly lazy. I haven't been working out, thinking that as long as I'm not overweight there's no point, that it will only eat time and make me tired. Now that I'm a bit older, I've started to feel guilty about it, and the fact that I literally work in the living room hasn't exactly helped ;D

So, one thing has led to another, and all of us Pixel Ferrets thought that we could start working out together. Not only does this serve to give us some much needed exercise, it also allows us to hang out a bit outside of work. We decided to go for badminton, and for a few weeks we have started our Monday mornings (well, more like afternoons - we're still geeks who sleep late) by going to a local sports hall!

Here's Fred's brother Robban (left), Teddy (mid) and Fred (right) at the hall yesterday:

Now let me tell you, after a few weeks of this and horseback riding (something I did a lot as a kid and picked up again recently), I've definitely noticed a difference. Not only do I feel happier in general, simply from the fact that I get to go outside more, I also feel like I have more energy and that I'm more efficient at work.

Might be something to think about! If you read this, chances are you're at least a bit like me, possibly spending a lot of time in front of a computer screen and hating the idea of working out. I definitely recommend giving it a go though, if only to try it out. You might be surprised at how good it can feel, once you find something you do enjoy! :)

Welp. I was just thinking to myself the other day: "Man, I haven't been sick in like a couple of years or something! I'm so lucky!"

....Guess what? :(

Yeah. I instantly catch a cold, as if some evil spirit heard what I was thinking and decided to punish me! So here I am, with 0 energy, struggling to focus on anything at all. I was really excited to get back into making portraits, especially after all nice comments you guys left yesterday, but I'm just gonna have to spend a few days in bed hoping this crap blows over ASAP.

Hopefully I'll be back in a couple of days with more posts!

Keep being awesome! ❤

Hello guys!

I'm Vilya, one of the three Pixel Ferrets working on the game Secrets of Grindea. Chances are that if you're reading this, you probably know the game better than you know me!

My main role in the team is to create graphic assets. I do interface design, environment sprites, hats(!), backgrounds, icons - anything. So long as it's not animated, cause that's Fred's department. :)

When we started out three years ago (jeez, time flies by so fast!) I was a total noob, and despite three years 'in the business' not much has changed there, really. I still make really crappy mistakes ...Especially when it comes to following all the unwritten rules behind pixel graphics... But we all gotta start somewhere, and being on this journey and improving my craft has truly been an awesome experience so far!

The reason I'm starting this blog is to share with you some of my work on a more personal level. I will try to update this a couple of times per week with sneak peeks of what I'm currently working on, as well as letting you know what's going on at the office. I'd love to get feedback and hear your thoughts on the game and how we can improve!

(In the future I might post other game-related things here as well, like game recommendations (you gotta stay entertained until we release the game, after all), comments on what's going on in the industry or random links - but the focus for now will be the work I do for Secrets of Grindea.)

Obligatory disclaimer(s): Things posted here will reflect my personal opinions, not those of Pixel Ferrets as a company. As Secrets of Grindea still is in development, everything is subject to change! Also, I'll show a lot of WIPs of stuff that will appear in in the game, so if you plan on playing SoG and want to be surprised by what you see in it, you should probably follow another blog ;)

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