kpulv . kyle pulver . xerus

kpulv . kyle pulver . xerus http://kpulv.com A guy that makes games and draws stuff and makes websites sometimes. Pineapple Webzone 1.0 <![CDATA[New URL]]> http://kpulv.com/787/New_URL/ http://kpulv.com/787/New_URL/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

I'm at a new URL now!

The back end system for this blog is ancient. I coded it myself like ten years ago. I don't even think that's an exaggeration. A lot of parts of it have broken as browsers have been updating, and it's not really worth fixing it because the code base is a big mess that can't be salvaged.

So please join me at my new location: isnt.kpulv.cool]]> Thu, 25 Jul 2019 15:21:11 -0700 <![CDATA[What's Up?]]> http://kpulv.com/786/What_s_Up_/ http://kpulv.com/786/What_s_Up_/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

Boy howdy it has been a spell since I've stopped by with an update. You'd figure with treading my ADHD stuff that I'd be on the blog update grind even more, but I think what has actually happened is that I've bumped it off my list of priorities for what I'm doing on a day to day basis.

So before I dive into another full day of various tasks on Super Meat Boy Forever let's do a quick recap of the past chunk of time!

Super Meat Boy Forever

Hey the game has a new trailer and release date announcement! We also announced that we're going to be debuting on the Epic Games Store for our launch on PC. This is pretty exciting and I'm pretty pumped to be part of a movement that hopes to disrupt the power monopoly that Steam currently holds over a lot of developers. It is also exciting slash terrifying to see a light at the end of the tunnel for this project!

Rival Rush

The card game that I worked on for the Super Meat Boy Cinematic Universe got another round of printing, and is now available on The Yetee! Rival Rush was a project we started for a PAX promo and it spiraled out of control and turned into an actual one on one card game. Each player builds a deck of 20 cards and races through a level as a character from Super Meat Boy. This was a ton of fun to make, and it turned out to be a pretty awesome game to play in my humble opinion.

Pretentious Game Ideas

I sat down with my dear friends Jon and Rob to talk about a bunch of game design stuff, but in particular "Finding your Game's Identity." We talk for over an hour about the process of game design and honing in on the core essence of a game including examples from the design processes of both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever.

Handsome Phantom

Tommy and I sat down with the dudes from the Handsome Phantom Podcast and had a lot of fun talking about the recent developments of Super Meat Boy and Rival Rush, as well as what the future holds for Team Meat. This one gets a little bit more wacky than the Pretentious Game Ideas cast. I blame Tommy.

Drawings and Doodles

I've still been sneaking in drawings and doodles whenever I can find the time, but I haven't been posting them anywhere. I guess tumblr ended up turning into a big pile of poop by banning any content they deemed to be inappropriate, and that was where I went for all of my artwork and drawing needs but I guess I should find a different outlet if I want to get back to posting stuff. I could always post more stuff here but I think I'd want to maybe separate out my text posts and my art posts into two different channels and/or websites even. I don't know. For some reason I usually don't like posting a lot of my art stuff and I want to hide it away on some corner of the internet that people can find only if they're looking really hard for it.

Personal Projects

A lot of folk have been asking me what I'm up to for my personal projects outside of pledging my blood to the ranks of Team Meat. For the most part, working on both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever feel very personal to me. There is a lot of me in both of these games, and I think people that have played my games over the years will be able to tell that very easily.

Aside that, I have not continued work on Super Sky Sisters since I've started on Meat Boy. The game just doesn't feel "right." I aim to release it at some point after I'm done with Forever, but I think it will just end up being a free game on itch.io or something like that.

Work on Otter has stopped while I have no time to dedicate to it, but we do have a small discord of people that are using it or interested in it at least. I also migrated the source code to Github so that people could contribute to it easier. I actually don't know why I didn't have it on Github from the beginning. I think I just didn't want to learn how to use it.

In a completely different realm of things, I'm currently playing in a tabletop rpg that has been going on for over three years now, and I also began acting as game master for another campaign. I play Pathfinder 1e, and I'm game master for a Pathfinder 2e/Playtest game. For the 2e/Playtest game, I'm transforming the game a lot with a ton of rules modifications. I'm super interested in developing my own tabletop rpg system that takes a lot of what my particular play group likes and turns it into a new set of rules and content. I realize how wild that sounds, but I think since turning my brain around with my ADHD medication I've discovered how fun it is to design things outside of the video game space. The prospect of pure design has become incredibly fun for me, and I've been learning a lot about systems and math and spreadsheets and so much cool stuff along the way!

I've been digging into this thing called TiddlyWiki which is strangely named but beyond that a really cool brain and information organization software package. For those of you that follow me closely, you might know that I am always on the search for better ways to organize my brain. I gave TiddlyWiki a shot awhile back, but ultimately couldn't figure it out and then tried OneNote. Well, I eventually went back to TiddlyWiki and looked at it through a different lens. I feel like the "Wiki" part in the name is a little deceiving and it made me think that I should just treat it as information storage and organization only, but when I started looking at it as a super hackable programming intensive data driven kinda thing instead it all started to make sense. I might share some of my findings down the road as future posts. At this rate though those posts will be years from now. Whoops.

Playin' Games

I still pretty much only play Rocket League and the occasional platformer that comes across my feed. I did get into Smash Ultimate a little bit. Typically I am very very bad at Smash games, and I do not enjoy them, but there is something about this game that is clicking for me. I've been playing a little bit with some friends and I'm doing a lot better in this Smash than I ever have. Why that is I have yet to find out. I think a lot of habits that I thought were "good" in Smash actually turned out to be bad, and I've spent a lot of brain power trying to dismantle all of those bad habits (like dodge rolling everywhere.) I've been having a lot of fun with Pikachu, Peach, and Pokemon Trainer. The three Ps, apparently.

Looking Ahead

Work continues on Forever until it's done. When that's finished and over with, I'm excited to start on the next project that is probably going to be housed under Team Meat. When I'm not working on Forever, I'm chipping away at my tabletop rpg system, and my homebrew rules for the Pathfinder Playtest.

Probably don't expect the pace of blog posts to improve any time soon. I think the phase of keeping a super active blog is kind of behind me now. I think it was useful back when I needed several things to keep myself on track, but now that I have medications to help my brain this has kind of fallen to the wayside. For more moment to moment updates from me, my Twitter and Instagram are good places to keep an eye on.

Thanks for readin'!]]> Fri, 01 Feb 2019 16:21:48 -0800 <![CDATA[September Life Update]]> http://kpulv.com/785/September_Life_Update/ http://kpulv.com/785/September_Life_Update/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

Hey! It sure has been awhile. Whoops.

A lot has been going on since I last posted! I'll try to touch on a little bit of everything without making this into another six thousand word blog post.

Mental Health Stuff

I'm still keeping on with my medicine and therapy, and it's been going really great. Just as a quick recap, I was diagnosed with ADHD and started taking 10mg of Adderall once a day to counter-act it, and it's been working incredibly well. I feel like I am a whole new person and my brain actually works the way I want it to. I still also take 10mg of Lexapro for anxiety, and sometimes I consider coming off of it, but I think right now this combo is totally perfect for me.

Super Meat Boy Rival Rush

This was one of the big secrets that I was working on! A long while back Tommy and I were talking about what sort of cool thing we could do for Super Meat Boy at PAX West. He mentioned the idea of trading cards, and that seemed really cool, but why not just go the extra mile and make it into a fully fleshed out card game?

Rival Rush quickly became my focus for a few months, and we were able to actually get it all finished and printed for PAX. Then during PAX we actually ended up selling out of our entire stock of it. We didn't expect it at all. Honestly we were questioning if we would sell ten packs of cards. We grossly underestimated the demand for the game, and now we're currently working on a way to get the game reprinted on a larger scale.

This is the first non-video game I've ever successfully developed, and it was a blast. I'll try to dig into it a little more in more specific blog posts in the future. It was a crazy whirlwind of just a few months to go from the initial idea to the actual final product. I feel like I got to finally use a lot of my competitive card game experience to make a really compelling one on one game that I am really proud of.

Super Meat Boy Forever

Work continues on Forever. I'm doing all of the level design of the game, and some of the game design. It's been an absolute blast to work on this game and I'm extremely proud of all of the work that the team has put in so far. It's going to be a massive game and I think everyone is going to really love it. I really enjoy playing it, and I think a lot of the people that are questioning the auto-run direction are going to be pleasantly surprised when they pick it up. I am very particular with the games that I like, and I can honestly say that Forever is a game that I love.

I do have a lot of work ahead of me though, and again it's work that I cannot share publicly! I want to share everything I'm working on, but there are a lot of things in Forever that are best suited for being revealed as people play the game. It's going to be great.

Drawing

I've been spending a lot of time doodling and drawing with my newfound abilities to focus, but I've been totally slipping on posting anything. Sometimes a lot of what I draw feels very samey so I don't feel like posting it, or sometimes I just end up sketching a lot of stuff that feels like throw away stuff not really worth posting up here, but I suppose maybe I should. It's kinda funny how I am totally open about all of these deep personal things like my life and mental health but when it comes to drawing I still feel very cagey and protective. I want to start posting at least a drawing once a week on here again, but again who knows if that will end up happening.

PAX West 2018

This year PAX West was an amazing experience. It was also very tiring. We might have done a little bit of crazy crunch time up until the first day of PAX. Whoops.

For Super Meat Boy Forever we were able to debut one of the boss fights in the game. The boss battles in Forever are going to be one of the defining differences between the original Super Meat Boy and Forever.

We ended up announcing Rival Rush and releasing it the first day of PAX, which some might say is very weird and possibly stupid, but it was fun so whatever. I stayed up all night editing a video to launch with the Rival Rush website, and then ended up sleeping through half of the first day of PAX. Again, whoops.

After that though everything was very smooth. I spent pretty much the entire weekend showing people how to play the card game, and watching people play through levels of Forever.

It's important to note that this was my first conference or convention experience while taking Adderall. I take the instant release version so it only lasts about four to five hours when I take it, so I ended up taking my daily dose at around noon or so, so that it would hopefully last from then until when the expo hall closed.

It actually made a huge difference that I could immediately notice. Usually at conventions I'm really shy and although I don't mind talking to people, I do have a lot of anxiety surrounding it. It feels like my brain is going too fast to keep up with when I interact with people and I end up second or third guessing myself constantly whenever I have even the most basic interactions with people. I noticed that when I was under the effects of my medication though a lot of that social anxiety evaporated. My brain was remaining calm and I felt like I was in control of my thoughts, which made interacting with people much much more pleasant.

I was incredibly nervous about the card game leading up to PAX. For a lot of reasons really. It's the first non-video game project I've ever successfully completed. It's a card game so that means the only way to learn how to play is through having the rules explained to you, or reading the rules and trying to figure it out. It's pretty terrifying to think about. I was afraid that people were going to not understand the game at all, or think that certain parts of it were just terrible, or I thought that there were going to be all of these obvious things that I didn't think of... but none of that happened. People were very resceptive to the game. Almost everyone that tried it was able to pick it up after just a brief explanation. A lot of people said incredibly kind things that honestly made me want to cry!

To top it all off, so many people wanted me to sign their cards! What an incredibly humbling experience. Is humbling the right word there? I don't know. It's a very strange feeling. I signed so many cards that I felt like most of my PAX was spent signing autographs. It's totally surreal. Again I'm just incredibly happy and proud of how everything turned out with Rival Rush, and PAX, and Forever, and all of it. It's just great.

Onward

My priorities are very different now than they were this time last year. Unfortunately, Sky Sisters still is on the wayside. I don't have any time to actively develop it. Along with that, Otter is in a bit of stasis. It's a usable framework, but I wont be adding any features to it for the forseeable future. I wanted to get a new version of it up and running with a new renderer, but that is also something I do not have time for.

Once Super Meat Boy Forever is done and out the door then I'll be able to reevaluate what the future holds for me, but for now I'm keeping my focus on that first and foremost.

That's it for now!]]> Fri, 28 Sep 2018 13:15:37 -0700 <![CDATA[Kyle vs. ADHD]]> http://kpulv.com/784/Kyle_vs__ADHD/ http://kpulv.com/784/Kyle_vs__ADHD/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

This past year I’ve been trying to address some of the issues I’ve been facing with my mental health. Mostly the stuff I’ve been used to dealing with, but some things really hit the fan last summer, and I had to face my issues head on. I’ve been used to dealing with a constant background hum of depression and anxiety, but the anxiety really kicked it up a notch and I quickly found my back up against the wall. I had to take steps to address this because it became very apparent that how I was living was just not sustainable.

This is going to be a long one, so buckle up.

The anxiety was the first thing I tackled. Long story short I opted to go on an SSRI medication. I won’t get into a big amount of detail about what that is or what it does, but I know that it’s a big help for me. In high school I was on Zoloft for a time because I needed help even back then trying to manage my brain. Currently I’m taking the generic version of Lexapro. 10mg a day taken each morning after I wake up. SSRI medications take awhile to become fully operational, but I can really feel the results when they take effect. It’s like the medication allows my rational thoughts to have power over my totally off the wall anxious thoughts. I’ve been on it for about 8 months now, and I plan on sticking with it for the foreseeable future. So far so good.

Along with medication I entered a regular therapy program that lasted for about four months. I had to cut it off when I moved cities, but I’m currently looking into getting back into regular therapy because I do think it is incredibly valuable. My therapist focused on cognitive behavior therapy which seems to be the new hotness amongst the mental health care world. We also focused a lot on mindfulness, and changing my outlook on things. I’ve always struggled with being optimistic because I always felt like I was setting myself up for a bigger fall by hoping for the best. I thought that preparing for the worst, and always thinking about the most negative scenarios was somehow helping me, or defending me from everything. Turns out I don’t think that’s true. Navigating my brain with the help of a professional was great, and I can’t wait to get back to it in the coming weeks.

My anxiety seemed to be pretty well under control, but as I was recovering from a mental breakdown I felt like my depression issues weren’t getting any better. I was a little disappointed because a lot of what I was doing both medication and therapy wise should have been helping in regards to both anxiety and depression, but as my anxiety began to subside all that was left was the heavy weight of depression. After moving to a new city I decided to hit up a new doctor to talk about it, and try to figure out why I was tired all the time.

Some friends of mine have struggled with similar issues and ended up discovering that they did in fact have some sort of issue that needed dealing with. Hypothyroidism, or some sort of nutritional imbalance, or something else along those lines. I went to the doctor with the hopes that I would find some clue as to what could be going on with my mind and body.

The doctor I found was great, and listened to me describe my issues in a lot of detail as best I could. I asked specifically about the issues that my friends dealt with personally. Some things came up like hypothyroidism, low testosterone, iron deficiencies, or other nutritional issues. Some blood work would sort any of those out quickly. We talked some more though and he mentioned the possibility of attention deficit disorder, or ADHD.

It actually didn’t come as a total surprise when he said it, and to be honest I was actually pretty excited that he mentioned it. When I was going to therapy on the regular I did bring up my thoughts on ADHD to two different therapists. With both therapists we talked about it at length but both decided that I didn’t fit the official diagnosis criteria mostly because I did well in school, and I’m able to hold down a job. Both times I felt disappointed in the result of those discussions because it didn’t really feel fair to dismiss it based on that. To be honest doing well in school felt like I was barely making it work, and my relationship with work and jobs has been very bizarre compared to most people’s experience. I’ve worked from home almost my entire life, and have mostly been working either on my own projects or in relatively short lived contract positions. A big reason I pursued a career that allows me to work my own hours from home is because I feel like I would never survive in the 9 to 5 office world.

My doctor went on to tell me that the symptoms of ADHD can look a lot like depression sometimes. It made a lot of sense to me. I talked about how I felt tired constantly, and no amount of caffeine could save me. I was drinking quad shot espressos every morning, and by the afternoon drinking cold brew, and then black tea in the evening, and still barely managing to stay awake. I talked specifically about how I can’t do something like sit and read a book without feeling like I want to explode. Sitting down trying to do work is also a nightmare, even though I’m working on things that I love. I feel like I can’t focus, and when I do focus, it’s on the entirely wrong things.

After talking it out for awhile we went ahead with doing the blood work to test for anything else going on, and he gave me a prescription for a 7 day trial of Adderall. 10mg once a day in the morning to just see how it feels. I was excited and also a little terrified. I mean most of what I’ve heard about Adderall is people taking it to push through school work or crunch at work, or stuff like that. There’s all these articles and now documentaries about how awful it is, so I did a lot of thinking on it.

The blood work results came in, and I looked to be pretty normal. I could use some more vitamin D, but that was about it. So with that out of the way I was ready to try out the medication. Worst case scenario was that if I end up experiencing horrible results from it I can just not take any more of it and be done. I mean even the SSRI I take is full of horror stories on the internet, and it works great for me. I remember when I first started taking it a psychiatrist told me to specifically not google search it. He was right. Trying to absorb all of the horror stories about the medication doesn’t help me at all. I took the Adderall and strapped myself in for whatever was going to happen.

I had no idea what to expect. The doctor did give me a heads up that I might start to feel jittery or a little wired from it. I was expecting it to feel like a big blast of caffeine or something like that. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for going into a freak out from it, as sometimes in the past too much caffeine has given me bad anxiety and sometimes panic attacks.

About 45 minutes later the feeling started to set in. It was nothing what I was expecting it to be. Looking back on it it now it still feels like it’s hard to describe. The best way that I’ve seen it phrased was that it feels like a dense fog is being lifted from your mind. To me it felt like I was entering a totally different reality. I noticed how awake I felt. I was sitting at my computer typing out how I felt to externalize it in case I started to have a freak out, but no freak out came. I felt more awake than I ever had in my entire life. My mind went quiet. I didn’t know how loud it was in there until that moment. The feeling of being pulled in a hundred different directions all at the same time was gone. I could sit at my computer and write out my thoughts and feelings and be content doing so. The feeling of never being satisfied vanished. If this all sounds pretty intense, that’s because it was.

The feeling of never being satisfied was one of the core things I’ve been trying to deal with ever since I can remember. It’s like this constant nagging feeling that no matter what I’m doing some part of my brain is telling me that it’s either not enough, or not the correct thing to be doing. It’s a part of my brain that wants to do everything, and nothing all at the same time. I think as a student I was able to cope with this feeling better, but over time and especially in the past 5 or so years my ability to deal with it eroded almost entirely.

As an example here’s how a typical day would go for me: After spending an hour convincing myself to get out of bed I would try to focus on getting work done, but I would quickly find myself browsing garbage websites that just provided cheap distractions. I would try to set up work blocks of time to find that I could go for only 10 minutes before feeling awful. I would try to take a break and tell myself I’d get back to work, but the breaks would stretch out for the rest of the day. I would go for a walk to get myself out of the house because I felt like I had to go somewhere. I probably would go eat a huge lunch, and even after eating my weight in food I would still feel hungry. I would come back and fall asleep even though I just drank a quad shot espresso, and wake up 3 or 4 hours later feeling like trash. Then I would feel guilty that I wasted the day. Feeling terrible at this point I would fall into whatever distraction I could until finally I would go to sleep only to repeat the same thing the next day.

All of this was driven by a voice in my mind constantly shouting at me, and I was just trying to appease it. Sitting down and doing work felt like torture. The overwhelming sense of dread I would feel when trying to make myself focus for more than five minutes was unbearable. The voice in my mind was just telling me that it was bored and it wanted to do something else. Maybe go outside. Maybe take a nap. Maybe browse the internet. Maybe play a video game. Maybe try to work on a different project. It felt so loud, and out of my control. I would try to hold it off, but it figured out ways to break through my defenses. I would try to listen to it, hoping that it would eventually shut up if I did the right thing, but it never ceased. I never knew it was like to not have this voice in my head until my first dose of the ADHD medication kicked in.

When the medicine kicked in the overwhelming sense of dread vanished. I was able to focus on whatever I chose to focus on, and not feel like I was going to explode. I was able to look at my list of tasks that I had ahead of me, and not instantly feel exhausted. I was able to read things, and understand them, and not feel like I wanted to take a nap afterwards. I even noticed that the movement of my eyes was calmer, and less jumpy. My thoughts slowed down to a comfortable pace instead of feeling like they were constantly spinning out of control and the only way I could escape them was to try to fall asleep. I could actually do focus work blocks for 45 minutes or longer, and the tough part became taking a break. When I did take my breaks I found myself eager to get back to work at the end of them. I’m writing this right now about four hours after taking my daily dose, and the sense of calm that I feel is amazing.

As I continued on with my day after the first dose I noticed some other things that were different. My entire life I had been used to fighting the urge to just crawl back into bed during all hours of the day. That feeling was totally gone. I actually wanted to do things. I wanted to get to work on my projects. I wanted to do a bunch of lingering chores around the apartment. I wanted to go to the grocery store to pick up some things. I looked forward to things instead of dreading everything.

One of the biggest changes I noticed was that my ability to multitask skyrocketed. I had become so used to safeguarding my attention from any distractions. Whenever anyone would send me a message dread and exhaustion would instantly overcome me. It would take all of my mental strength to look at the message, read it, and respond. Not because of the message itself, but because it would interrupt me. I was spending so much energy on trying to focus that when I heard the sound effect from the message I instantly felt shattered and totally wiped out. As I sat at my desk after taking the medication I noticed that these little tiny interruptions had no effect on my mental state anymore. I could easily read, and respond to a message, and immediately jump back to whatever I was doing at full speed.

Recently the condition of ADHD has been less linked to “attention” and more linked to the executive functions of the brain. A major part of ADHD can be “executive dysfunction.” This was a struggle for me constantly. Executive dysfunction means I lack the ability to prioritize tasks in my mind, and I struggle with trying to do anything that isn’t immediately satisfying in the moment. This was something that I noticed change almost immediately as well. Before taking this medication if I saw my phone was at 5% battery then I would just let it sit. Then it would die, and it might be another hour or so before I can muster up the mental energy to plug it in. Yes, even as something as simple as plugging in my phone would feel absolutely impossible even though I knew I wanted, or needed to do it. When I’m under the effects of my medication it’s absolutely effortless for me to notice the same thing, and simply plug in my phone. It’s hard to describe it, but taking this medication lifts impassable barriers in my mind.

I noticed the effects on the work on my projects right away as well. The team I’m working with currently uses a task tracking website to manage the project, and I barely used it. I couldn’t stand it. It always felt so overwhelming, and trying to figure out what was going on, and what tasks were being worked on by who, and all this stuff would just wipe me out instantly. After I took the medication I could easily jump into the task tracker, figure it out, and start contributing to it. I was able to read through things and understand what was going on. Beyond that I was able to take on tasks, and start working on them right away instead of spending 3 or 4 hours trying to hype myself up enough to jump into it.

Something that I became used to when working on projects was constantly having some sort of minor distraction going at all times. For anything that wasn’t related to code I would always have podcasts, videos, twitch streams, movies, or whatever nonsense playing on one of my other monitors. I was constantly just searching for a way to quiet the impulsive part of my mind that was telling me to do something else, so that the rest of me could get some work done. After taking the medication I found that I didn’t even need to do this anymore, and when I actually tried it I found that it was too much. I wanted pure focus, not distractions. Writing this right now I’m actually sitting in complete silence, and it’s fantastic.

Any sudden breaks of my concentration or attention used to be absolutely devastating. I often found if anything came up unexpectedly it would ruin my entire day. I had to plan out my entire day down to the last detail of how much free time I would have to try to focus. Otherwise I would stress out about not having enough time in the day to establish a focus on anything. If I was trying really hard to get work done, and I got a phone call from someone that they’re in a pinch and they need a ride home, I would feel absolutely awful. I would still make the effort to help out my friend, or whatever the situation was, but internally it felt like I was having a complete meltdown. I could barely hold it together sometimes and I would get frustrated and act like a complete jackass to people. I would become quiet and retreat into my own head so that I wouldn’t lash out at anyone. It was awful. After I started the medication things like this have happened multiple times now, and I’m absolutely amazed that it has no effect on my mood anymore. The other night I was in the middle of a pretty long work block and I got a text from someone saying that they needed my help with something right away, and it was easy enough for me to just reply to them and head out the door. I didn’t even give it a second thought. My mood didn’t go down the drain. My mind didn’t melt into a pile of garbage.

It’s important to note that over the past nearly 10 years of my life I’ve been trying to deal with all of these issues that seem to be coming from ADHD and executive dysfunction. I was probably dealing with these issues even further back than that. I’ve always thought that everyone struggled with these same feelings as much as I did, and they were just much better at dealing with it than I was. I always felt like I was lazy or unmotivated compared to everyone else. In college my roommate once jokingly called me “Sleeps All The Time Kyle” because I took so many naps and slept so much every night. I’m starting to think that I had to sleep that much because the amount of focus I needed to do any work in college was totally obliterating me. I was constantly wearing myself out just trying to pay attention in lectures, trying to read and understand the material in the textbooks, and keeping up with mountains of physics homework.

For awhile I was trying out the Pomodoro technique which is a fancy set of rules for doing timed work blocks. I thought that maybe having some sort of fun structure like this would help me develop better focus. I would try to do 25 minutes of work, and then take a 5 minute break, but even that was a struggle for me. I would push through the first 25 minute block, and then the 5 minute break would turn into a 10 minute break. Then 20 minutes. Then suddenly it would be an hour since my last work block and I would feel terrible. I would read about how people successfully do 14 or 16 Pomodoro blocks a day and I would crumble into a pile of hopelessness and despair. How could I be so bad at this? This was work that I wanted to do! I’m literally working in the career of my dreams and I still couldn’t do it.

I would try blocking out all distracting websites from my computer. I wouldn’t go as far as unplugging the internet since I often needed it to look up why my code wasn’t working. This worked for a short time, but then I noticed that the more I blocked out websites I used to communicate with people, the more anxiety and dread would build up. What if I was missing something important? What if I was missing messages from people? Am I missing out on opportunities to promote what I’m working on by blocking out these sites? I would be able to get more work done sometimes, but overall my racing thoughts just would find other ways to destroy my focus by thinking about what distractions it’s missing out on.

Game jams are something that worked for me for a number of years, but even the jams I loved so much couldn't hold my interest for very long. The adrenaline that would surge through my body during a game jam would be enough to convince myself to focus. That’s an underlying secret that I understand now. When my adrenaline overpowered the impulsive part of my mind then I could actually focus. I would lose myself in the frenzy of the jam and just be totally overtaken by the adrenaline making the best game I could in a weekend. Of course now thinking about it this is clearly the “hyper focus” part of ADHD. Game jams had a lot of success for me in turning on the hyper focus part of my mind, but only if everything lined up perfectly. It had to be a good theme, and I had to have a cool idea in mind already, and it had to be a good environment of people that I liked being around. Eventually game jams became predictable, and they wouldn’t give adrenaline anymore, and my brain would be too bored to care. I really wanted to care though, and it was frustrating that I simply couldn’t. Another trick wore out.

When I was growing up I often found that the right music would help me focus. I got really into fast paced action type music because it felt like that really scratched the itch of whatever part of my mind was feeling bored. Psytrance and video game soundtracks were my jam for a long time, and they still are. However this was another trick that become less effective over time. I found myself being bored of music in general over the past few years. Songs wouldn’t bring me into a focus anymore and instead I would think about how predictable the song I was listening to was, and how unsatisfied I was with it. That would spiral into being unsatisfied with everything and not being able to work. Again I would be left frustrated and bored.

I tried so many task trackers and to do lists, and I was convinced that the right one was out there waiting for me to find it. I went through the same cycle with every single one of them that I tried. I would sign up for an account and make a task list, and then it felt like too much effort to keep the task list updated. When I finally did get around to checking on my tasks they would be so stale that I felt awful about it, and the dread I would then associate with the list would guarantee that I never checked it again. I’m actually sitting next to a white board right now that has tasks on it from over four years ago that I never did. I should probably clear it off and start fresh.

Even just trying to keep track of things in a simple notepad file would start to feel too overwhelming, and instead of feeling proud of the things I checked off I felt guilty about all of the things that were still unchecked. Making a list of things to work on often didn’t relieve me at all, and in fact it would make me feel worse. I would look at the list and that impulsive part of my mind would start to convince me that it was too much to work on. I would try to break down tasks into smaller tasks, but even that would exhaust me. I became confused as to how I could possibly break down some of the tasks further. The more tasks I wrote down the more overwhelmed I would become, and I would feel compelled to not do them. The feeling of being pulled in a hundred different directions except for the one I wanted go would exhaust me just by looking at a simple to do list.

In relation to that the whole “don’t break the chain” method is something that gets tossed around a lot. A common phrase of advice in the world of writing is “write every day.” No matter what happens during the day find time to sit down and jam out any amount of words. That sounds great, but to my mind it was always a set up for disaster. I would start off one of these “don’t break the chain” exercises with good intentions. I would be all set to get started on my streak of good habits, and soon my momentum would carry me through, right? It started off well most of the time. Eventually I would run out of steam, and I would miss a day. A missed day would turn into two days. Then three days. Then the guilt of missing so many days in a row would just fill me with disgust. I would see nothing except for my broken streak and feel ashamed and throw the whole thing out. I would chalk it up as another failure, and it would turn into just a downward spiral attack on myself.

External deadlines worked for a good while on me as well, but as I got older the less I encountered them. In school I was able to pull through because even with working on everything at the last possible moment I was somehow smart enough to still get good grades most of the time. Shortly after college I found myself working on projects to submit to various awards and festivals, and I entered online game making competitions where I could find them. I would use these kinds of external deadlines to push myself to work on things, and for awhile it was very effective. Eventually though, going along with the theme of all of these coping mechanisms, it wore off. Signing myself up for any sort of external deadline would make me crumble under the pressure instead of rise to the occasion. I started to dread any sort of deadline, and I would freeze in place. The negative emotions I’d feel from it would just make me flee in any way I could. Again I would be pulled in a hundred different directions except for the one I wanted to go.

For awhile I found that having a nice hot coffee in the morning at the start of my day would be a solid pick me up. Something about the feeling of having the coffee, and the caffeine would feel really satisfying and I would be able to focus for awhile. Eventually the amount of caffeine wasn’t enough, and I would start upping the amount higher and higher. I would throw in energy drinks sometimes to see how effective they would be, and sometimes they were very effective. I eventually hit a point where my body would have no more energy to gain even from a million shots of espresso, and instead of feeling more awake from caffeine I instead would just instantly fall asleep. I tried energy supplements and nootropics as well to practically no effect.

Exercise? Forget it. I never understood how anyone associated exercise with feeling good. I was never able to run more than half of a mile without feeling like I wanted to die. Whenever I heard someone say “every day it gets a little easier” I would want to lose my mind. It never got easier for me, it got harder! All this time I thought I was just physically unable to do it. I thought my endurance was just trash, and there was no hope for me. I’ve come to find out though since starting the Adderall my ability to exercise has increased significantly. The problem wasn’t that I was getting physically tired from the exercise. The problem was that I would become hopelessly bored with whatever exercise I was doing after 5 minutes, and the mental exhaustion would just translate to physical.

I tried going places to work like coffee shops, and once again it was very effective but only for a short while. After a few weeks I would become bored of whatever location I was going to, and instead of working I would just go there and find myself distracted by the internet or the environment. I would start to dread the commute especially if I had to drive, and eventually the feelings of guilt and dread would ruin yet another coping mechanism.

Somewhat related to going to a place to work every day I also tried out streaming my game development on Twitch. This again was exciting for a little while but it turned into dread. I tried to adhere to a strict schedule of when I would go online. I had a cool audience of a few regulars, but eventually instead of looking forward to streaming each day I would instead just absolutely abhor it. I hated opening up all of the programs. I hated the moment I hit that start stream button. The weird thing though is that I still liked it. I liked streaming and I wanted to do it, but that horrible impulsive part of my mind hated it and couldn’t stand being locked into it. It was effective for awhile, but eventually I hated it so much that I gave up on it. It just seemed like the more I tried to lock up the impulsive part of my mind the stronger it would become to break free. It would always win.

I’ve tried different diets across the past 10 years and they’ve had varying effects on my ability to focus. When I got into a really good routine with a diet it would last me for about 30 or 40 days but eventually I would break it and the guilt of breaking it would sink in and destroy me. Similar to the “don’t break the chain” method, the instant I messed up I would sink into a deep depression. Instead of just simply resuming the chain I moved further and further away from it. Whenever I broke a streak I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t face it, and the entire point of the method would backfire on me.

I thought maybe a major problem I was facing was eye fatigue, so I ended up installing f.lux onto all of my computers. That actually has been a huge help, but it wasn’t treating the actual issue. I did notice an improvement since I started using it, but I now notice the difference between what eye fatigue feels like and what total mental fatigue feels like.

Everyone claims that the best help for depression was establishing a good routine. People have it on good authority that routine is the best thing ever, but for my entire life I have absolutely hated routine. I hated anything that was scheduled out in advance too much. School was the absolute worst in this regard, and I despised every morning that I had to wake up for it. I tried so hard to get into routines of things that I actually liked doing, but the repetition of anything made me hate it. I tried going for walks every day because that’s a fun and healthy thing to do, but sure enough after a week of doing that I would feel horrible about each upcoming walk instead of excited. Any kind of routine in my mind was the ultimate enemy. The impulsive part of my brain that is constantly bored of things is already bored of the routine before it even begins. Anything associated with a routine to me just felt like something that could get in the way of anything that I would want to do in the moment.

Maybe I just needed to take a break from game development? I could have been putting too much pressure on myself. I know that releasing Offspring Fling and Snapshot in the same year was pretty brutal, and I definitely pushed myself to the absolute limit at the end of each of those projects, but even still I kept thinking at some point if I did somehow burn myself out or injure myself I should eventually start to recover. I wasn’t though. Every day it felt like my mind was slipping away from me more and more. The ability I had yesterday was higher than that of today’s. I took a long purposeful break from game development and all it did was make me feel more frustrated that I wasted more time.

I could keep going with all of the solutions that I’ve tried but you can probably see that there’s a common theme here. Things would work for a short time, but eventually they would gloriously explode in my face in the worst way possible. If they didn’t explode in my face then they would slowly drift away as their effectiveness reached zero. Every single time a thing didn’t work for me I would take it as more evidence that I was a stupid, lazy, idiot. It constantly felt like I was battling my own mind because I was doing exactly that. I knew I had the capabilities for focusing, and I knew I had the knowledge to do my work, but I just could not figure out how to get myself to do it. The part of me that wanted to do work felt totally separated from the part that was in charge of doing it. I would read life hack after life hack, or productivity tip after productivity tip, and the ones that worked would be exhausting for me to do, and would only work for a short time. I would constantly wonder how everyone else dealt with this, but I’m starting to realize maybe a lot of people actually don’t deal with this after all, or at least not to this degree.

I’m only a few weeks into my treatment for this, so it’s very early to say how overall effective it has been. This could all very well end up on the list of things that I tried and got bored of, but so far it feels vastly different from the rest of the things I’ve mentioned. I’m still taking 10mg of Adderall a day, and that goes along with my 10mg of Lexapro. So far the efficacy of the Adderall hasn’t diminished at all. The dose still kicks in about an hour after I take it and my mind goes quiet, and I’m able to do whatever I want to do. Things that used to feel utterly impossible feel effortless now. Things that used to destroy my concentration no longer effect it in the slightest. I don’t spend the entire day yawning anymore, and I don’t find myself collapsing into my bed at 3:00pm every day ready for a 6 hour nap. Most importantly I feel like I’m no longer battling with my own brain every waking moment of my life.

If you’ve been keeping up with my writings you might have noticed the core issue that I struggle with. Over time I’ve felt like I’m somehow becoming worse at everything I do, instead of becoming better. I’ve felt like I’ve been getting worse at game development especially. Right now though I might have the answer as to why. If this has indeed been ADHD that I’ve been fighting with for my entire life then it makes sense. The erosion of my coping mechanisms means that my ADHD is getting heavier, and harder to deal with. When I was younger I had more ways to effectively trick myself into focusing, and I had more energy to calm down the impulsive part of my brain. Just turning on the right music, or sipping caffeine used to do be enough, but over time nothing seemed to work anymore. With my current medication I feel like the old me in a way. The young me, I mean. I feel like the version of myself that worked on games and other projects without feeling awful. It feels really good.

I find myself thinking a lot about this time I was talking with my dad about my work when I was in college. I was trying to describe the feeling that I would get sometimes where everything in my head would line up, and I would suddenly be in control of everything. This feeling would never last, but whenever it struck I would try to use it as much as I could. This is why my sleep schedule was always so broken. If I felt like I had a clear mind at 1:00am, then you can be absolutely sure that I would stay awake for as long as I could because who knows when that feeling would return. Nothing was more important than that sense of clarity because it would be here one moment, and gone the next. I remember saying to him I wish I could feel like that all the time. I wish I could just take some sort of medicine that would make me feel like I’m in control of my brain like that. What I was describing to him is how I feel now when I take my medication.

Who knows though? Maybe after awhile the medication wont have this effect anymore. Maybe it will. At least for the time that it does work I’m able to enjoy the peace of mind it gives me. Thanks for reading all the way down here. I try to be an open book about this kind of stuff because other people being open about their issues is what helped me discover and navigate my own.

Too long, didn’t read: It turns out that what I thought was depression might actually be ADHD, and so far taking medication for it has turned out incredibly well, and I feel like I actually want to do things again.]]> Fri, 04 May 2018 19:01:26 -0700 <![CDATA[I'm Back, Kinda!]]> http://kpulv.com/783/I_m_Back__Kinda_/ http://kpulv.com/783/I_m_Back__Kinda_/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

Hey!

It seems that I vanished for a good while here. Sorry about that. To make a long story short, I had a bunch of stuff happen in my life that just took priority over my typical update schedule. I had to cut certain aspects of my life to give myself enough time to breathe, and my blog was one of them.

I will probably end up elaborating on a bunch of what happened, but for now just know that I’m doing fine, and things are currently pretty swell. Can’t ask for much more. I moved to Seattle not too long ago and have been settling in pretty well.

As far as work related things go I’m currently working on Super Meat Boy Forever! I think I mentioned this before, but I can’t exactly remember what I was talking about on my blog a year ago. As far as Super Sky Sisters goes, unfortunately right now I have to put that project on the back burner in order for me to fully focus on my role on Meat Boy. I was brought on to Team Meat for Level Design and some Game Design stuff, and it’s been an absolute blast so far. With working on a big project with a team though, I can’t share as much stuff as I usually do with my personal projects. Just know that the project is going really well and it’s a game that I really like to play and work on, which is always the game development dream.

Thanks to everyone that has been so supportive to me since I began my game development career, and to those that helped me even beyond that. The support of family and friends that I have is second to none and I live every day with a deep gratitude that I get to live the life that I live.

As far as future blog posts go probably don’t expect anything as rapid paced as I was posting before. I was thinking of maybe doing some sort of weekly or bi-weekly post schedule in the future with just whatever thoughts were on my mind, game development or otherwise. As far as doodle posts go I still plan on getting back into those, and those should be relatively easy to fall back into.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening!]]> Sun, 22 Apr 2018 13:05:59 -0700 <![CDATA[Break Time]]> http://kpulv.com/782/Break_Time/ http://kpulv.com/782/Break_Time/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

Hey anyone still reading this,

Unfortunately I wont be able to keep up with the pace with my blog posts anymore due to various circumstances in my life right now. I'm still doing stuff behind the scenes, but right now there are a lot of other things I need to focus on and my blog sadly has to take a back seat.

I had a really good streak of posts going, but really I didn't imagine that I could keep it up forever.

I'll be back at some point! Thanks for tuning in.]]> Wed, 19 Jul 2017 16:01:12 -0700 <![CDATA[Doodle Post]]> http://kpulv.com/781/Doodle_Post/ http://kpulv.com/781/Doodle_Post/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

]]> Fri, 30 Jun 2017 15:17:53 -0700 <![CDATA[Doodle Post]]> http://kpulv.com/780/Doodle_Post/ http://kpulv.com/780/Doodle_Post/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

There are a ton of corrections and fixes that I want to make, but this turned out pretty good I think!]]> Thu, 29 Jun 2017 22:48:14 -0700 <![CDATA[Quick Digital Drawing Tutorial]]> http://kpulv.com/779/Quick_Digital_Drawing_Tutorial/ http://kpulv.com/779/Quick_Digital_Drawing_Tutorial/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

Check out this quick digital art tutorial with this doodle yeah! This is a quick run through of my usual techniques that I try to squeeze the best looking image out of the shortest time possible with as little effort as possible because I just want to do a lot of drawings and not focus on one for too long.

Okay so first I'm using Clip Studio which is an amazing piece of software that sometimes you can totally grab for just $20 when it's on sale. I'm drawing on a Wacom Cintiq 22HD.

I always like to show what the final result is first:

Okay! I start with a 30 pixel brush at 100 opacity with a hardness of 60, and a brush density of 80. I make a rough sketch on a layer of 40% opacity. I also usually make the canvas some sort of dull color instead of pure white since I find it way easier to draw, and color on a darker canvas. Also I usually work at double the resolution I plan to export the image as, so all of these images as examples are actually scaled down 50%!

On top of the sketch layer I drop a new layer for the line work. I use a brush that has particles to make it seem like a pencil on paper. With a brush size of 20, hardness 60, particle size 9, particle density 6, and spray deviation of 50 I draw over the sketch on a layer set to 95% opacity.

Now with just a huge old marker type brush with 100 hardness I make a layer where all of the colors are going to go. All of her colors will be clipping layers into this main layer so it's easier to color her in without going outside the lines.

If I'm not feeling lazy I make a new layer for every color, or set of colors. This makes it easy to change colors layer if I need to. By locking a layer's transparent pixels I can easily refill the layer with a new color. Since this is digital art I like to keep the whole image as mutable as I can for as long as possible which can be pretty easy these days. Every color clips into the main red layer.

Now another clipping layer on top of all the colors goes down for the shading. I fill the entire layer with a dark brown or purple color usually, and set the blendmode to hard light. Using a layer mask then I paint black onto the mask which reveals the lit areas. I prefer to fill the canvas with shadow, and then remove it to add light. Shading feels much more natural that way. When I'm painting the light, and also painting transition between colors that arent separated by line work, I switch to another particle brush. This brush has a width of 100, particle size 20, particle density 4, spray deviation of 100, and hardness of 100.

To add a little bit more depth to the lighting I add another layer of shadow. This time a light blue color on a layer set to multiply. I paint in some areas that would be extra dark based on the light source and my totally not trained understanding of light.

Now to add some depth in the other direction: more light! A new layer set to screen lets me add some brighter areas very easily. I simply sample the color that I want to brighten, and then paint it into the screen layer. This results in a pretty good choice for a lighter color. I'm pretty liberal on this layer when it comes to hair since I like to make hair super shiny, but I try to not go crazy with the rest.

You know what really looks cool? Rim lighting for no reason! Using another new layer (also still clipping into the red layer fill layer) set to screen I paint light onto the edge of the character usually opposite of the main light source. I feel like this just makes whatever I'm drawing pop off the background even more. Probably not the best for every occasion, but this is all about looking cool as quickly and lazily as possible. Also I added a new layer just set to normal to add some pure white shine to her eyes and hair. Note that this is above the line art layer so that it actually obscures the lines on her eyes!

Usually after this I'll make it a little bit more fancy using Photoshop for post processing. Clip Studio is also capable, but Photoshop is a little bit better at adjusting colors at the end. For the sake of this example I'll call this done at this point.

Also here's the clip file if you want to check it out!]]> Thu, 29 Jun 2017 22:44:22 -0700 <![CDATA[Doodle Post]]> http://kpulv.com/778/Doodle_Post/ http://kpulv.com/778/Doodle_Post/ pulverk@gmail.com (Kyle Pulver)

If you're curious it's a big ole poster for my Pathfinder group! Here it is before I dive into shading.]]> Wed, 28 Jun 2017 20:33:01 -0700