Cold, Brilliant Morning

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

It is a cold morning today.

My parents suffered a car accident yesterday. How it happened, I don’t know.

Couldn’t sleep a wink. Way too many things going through my head.

I mean, this is common. Stay the night awake thinking. At least for me, anyway.

Alas, this night had a very tragic reason to happen.

A drunk driver went through the red sign. The car flipped over.  

They’re both fine.

“Son, stay calm”, Dad said.

“We suffered an accident. Your mother had to be immobilized, but she’ll be fine. The car’s destroyed.”

I couldn’t say anything. I just asked myself:

“Is she really alive?”

I began to think how on the morning of the day before yesterday, my mother and I talked about some things we cherished back in our hometown. We moved away from there years ago, but she still spoke about how she longed to be back home.

“Do you remember that splendid city center, dear? We used to wander all around and shop all kinds of things there! And the food… Ah, how I miss those days!”

I didn’t do anything except smile. She loves to talk. I missed those days as well. At that moment I thought about how I loved to see my mother smile.

But then, I suddenly ask:

“Did she suffer major injuries? A skull fracture? Anything?”

“No, but we suffered injuries nonetheless. We’re gonna stay here for the time being,” Dad said.

I stayed silent once again. I had so many questions, but I simply didn’t know what to say.

“Listen, my phone battery is dying, and the charger was in the car. I’ll see if I can charge my phone and keep you informed.,” Dad said.

“All right, dad. God bless you,” I said.

“God bless you, son.”

The phone hung up. This would be the last time he contacted me. That was past 9 PM, I believe.

In the meantime, I decided to pray to the Lord to have mercy on them, and to bring them home.

Alas, after finished praying, my thoughts came rushing through my head.

“What if she dies there? What are you gonna do? What if she gets debilitated? If she dies, what are you gonna say to our family back home? Did you really mean your prayer? This must be God punishing you for your sins! Or even her sins! You should have been more rigorous with yourself! Now you’re gonna be alone! Next time Father calls you, he’s gonna said that she died! You shouldn’t have let them go out today! You could have insisted! SHE WOULD HAVE LISTENED!”

Demons. Demons. Curse them all.

With that, I got a migraine. I still have it as I write this since there are no painkillers. She took them with her.

I decided to play some Metro Exodus to take my mind away from that. I wasn’t able to sleep after all.

Took some screenies from the game as I played. Always loved to do that.

I stopped playing when I saw the sunrise from my window. My mind still reminisces the fact that my parents are in a hospital right now, and I don’t know how they are.

When I look at the sunrise, I remembered something a saint said:

“It is all in the hands of the Lord.”

And that quieted my soul, in a way. Because at the end of the day, it really is. If it’s God’s will that they return fine, they undoubtedly will, so I must put it all in His hands.

Then, my mind went back to that breakfast once again.

“Say, dear, wouldn’t it be amazing if we went back to our hometown just for a visit? It would be great to see our family again, wouldn’t it? See your cousins running all over the place, your uncles trying to stop them, the chatter of a small town. Also, to go to the city center again to do all those things we used to do! Just for a week. What do you think?”, Mom said.

“It would be brilliant, mom. I can’t wait.”

My Mind Went Out Fishing

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

I have been… really tired lately.
More than usual, at least. It never goes away, no matter how much I rest.
And in times like these, I like to imagine myself fishing.
I’ll be honest with you, I have never gone fishing in my life. Not properly, at least.

I don’t really know why this happens. There are times when I’m in the middle of writing a scene or talking with some people and my mind just flows away from my body. Suddenly, I see myself in a boat, fishing in peace. When I’m tired, this kind of event occurs way more often.

I remember when I was a kid I would visit my grandparents and they lived in a house next to a big river. My cousins and I would go there to throw some fishnets and nylon lines with chunks of meat stuck to them so we could catch some fish. We would eventually get some after a few hours.
But I’ve never properly gone fishing, you know. With a fishing rod, a bucket of bait, a dock to sit down to, and some peace.

And… I’ve been wondering why this is the case. I mean, like I said, I’ve never gone fishing in my life and my last “fishing” experience was way back then. For some reason, I’ve some kind of connection with this activity I’ve never properly practiced.

For example, I love fishing games and minigames, and I tend to spend lots of time in them rather than focusing on the main “attraction”, so to say. I played a game called A Short Hike recently (a great indie game, by the way, go play it) and it has a cute fishing minigame in it. Its main character, Chloe, says she’s not a very patient person for this, but I am, and I spent a good few hours on it.

I have tons of patience, so I guess I’m made for fishing.

Great stuff, and easy to get a grip on it.

Another thing that I find attractive in fishing is the fact that you can take it easy and if you have a partner, you can chat with them for hours. I mean, it seems like a great activity for friends or even groups of people to socialize. Something that I don’t really have an opportunity to take part in most of the time.

Or at all.

Anyway, I don’t really have any point to make with this. I just really like fishing, even though I’ve never done it before, and I thought it would be interesting to share a piece of my mind with you guys.

Before it goes out fishing, that is.

This Land of Mine

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In this land of mine
The hyenas do not laugh
The swans do not sing

In this land of mine
My folks do not smile
Don’t seem to mind a thing

In this land of mine
The roaches are big
The hearts are small

In this land of mine
The glasses are always full
Their feelings, so empty

In this land of mine
The stars do not align
Their words, asinine

In this land of mine
Good people go away
While their tender shadows
Don’t have a place to stay

In this cursed, wicked land
Many memories are missed
I live lives that are not mine
I kill people that don’t exist

Jun 16, 2020 – 03:47 AM

The Train

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

Today I’ve had one of the most beautiful dreams of my life. I don’t know if this was the fruit of the medicine I took before going to sleep (got covid recently and I haven’t slept very well this week. Not that I actually get good nights of sleep at all, but, you know, it got way worse) or for other reasons. All I know is it was great.

The dream began on a train, and I was together with some of the elements of my past. The train had a surreal touch since it was the biggest and largest train I’ve ever seen, with lots of rooms, greek columns, aquariums, and statues.

I got to walk around in this train, and while I was strolling around, I got to see various people I knew during my life:

People that I knew once.
People that I had lots in common with.
People that I used to talk in a daily basis.
People that I hate or used to.
Some that are not even alive today.

They were all there. All dancing to songs from the 30s, having good laughs, dining together. They were having the best time of their lives, apparently.

For some reason, this didn’t bother me at all (though I didn’t know I was dreaming).

Then, I got stopped by a classmate from my middle school days. This classmate used to hate my guts back in the day.
The thing is, she was smiling at me. And it wasn’t a social smile either, she was genuinely happy to see me.
She started talking about things that happened in school and how these days were really fun. I didn’t actually enjoy my time in middle school, but I was content in hearing her talking about those things, maybe because I was kinda happy in talking with her after this many years.

After that, we had another classmate of mine join the conversation. We started to talk about our times in school and how it affected us.

They haven’t aged a single day and were still using their school uniforms, even though they were talking about things that happened long ago. I was the only one that looked older.

Then suddenly, I looked out of the window and noticed that the train was heading towards a cliff, and it wasn’t slowing down.

I felt desperate, so I jumped from the window right before the whole train fell into the cliff.
I was just witnessing hundreds of cabins with thousands of people disappearing right before my eyes, and couldn’t do anything about it.

The train was completely inside this massive black hole now, and I looked down the great abyss but couldn’t see nor hear anything. No screams, no machinery, nothing. As if the train never existed at all.

Then, I turned back. I wasn’t on the cliffside anymore.
I was inside what appeared to be a shopping mall.
There weren’t many people inside it, apparently. Christmas music was playing in the speakers, and all the stores were being decorated for the holidays. It was a great and warming sight.

Just so you know, I haven’t left the house in so long, I don’t even remember what is like inside a shopping mall during the holidays. It was a sight I haven’t got in a long time.

One of the stores even had those fake snow machines. I love that kind of stuff since it doesn’t snow where I live.

In front of a store, I could see my parents. They were waiting for me.

“About time you showed up. Where have you been?”, said my mother.

“Oh, I don’t know.”, I said.

They were radiating. Absolutely happy to see me.
And I was happy as well. I even smiled.
We hug each other. All is well.

I woke up.

At first, I was confused, but then, I began to feel extremely comfortable with myself. I haven’t felt this way in years.
I was, dare I say, happy.

Ah, god damn it, soon enough I’ll not even remember I had this dream.
I’ll even wonder if it ever happened at all.
It’s fine. It was wonderful. A good change for a person who usually only has running thoughts and wretched tv static for dreams.

The thing is, I never felt so happy in years. I was in a stage of pure bliss for a couple of minutes.



Now, it’s back to reality.

Real

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

—”I know you’re not really real, but… I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”
—”My god, I feel so bad.”
—”I feel so sad.”
—”So miserable.”
—”I don’t know what to do. I never did.”
—”I’m deaf in one of my ears. I barely even eat. I can’t sleep well. No one can help me.”
—”Sometimes I wish you were real, so I could at least have someone to talk to comfortably.”
—”I don’t have anyone, and you know that.”
—”It’s unbelievable. No one should have to feel like this.”
—”Heh.”
—”HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
—”I’M TALKING TO MYSELF!”
—”YOU DON’T FUCKING EXIST!”
—”YOU NEVER DID!”
—”I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ALONE!”
—”I’M TIRED OF PRETENDING BEING OKAY!”
— “I…”
…
— “I’m not…even alive anymore, am I?”
— “I haven’t been for a while now.”
— “I love you.”
— “You don’t exist, but I love you.”
— “Nothing that I love exists anymore.”
— “I guess you just have to get used to that.”
— “You can get used to everything.”
…
…
…
—”And you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”
—”I don’t know. You’re the only one who knows the answer.”

January 15, 2018 – 03:34 am

Happy Birthday, Raziel.

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

Today marks 365 days since I’ve started developing Project Preta, which all of you know as Raziel.

A year sure flies by. And, to commemorate this, I’ll be telling you some of the things that happen before and during its current development.

Before even thinking about Raziel, I was already considering making a game that was based on some of the things I wrote in the past. One that would be short, bittersweet, tackle on real and mature themes and have simple gameplay (without combat and things that would otherwise deviate the attention from the story). The reason for this was the burning frustration I was having with the flow of development of my other game, Dying Cat (Its details can be spoken of in another post) and for the hard time I was having to endure existence at that period.
Being tired and wanting to work on something else, I simply grabbed a pile of stories I had wrote and began to read all of them, until I stopped at one called “Quarto de Hotel”.

“That’s it. That could be a nice game.” — I thought.

I can’t talk in details about the contents of Quarto de Hotel without pretty much spoiling some parts of the game, but basically, it’s a story about a guy who lives in a cheap and moldy hotel room, works in a library and you get to know about his life before he ended up there, among other things. Pretty simple.

And pretty bad. Being one of the first stories I’ve written, it was filled with grammar errors and inconsistencies. Something that to this day I’ve trouble showing to someone (only a single person besides me have read it). Still, it was a story that I thought could become a good game.

So, with the initial idea on my head, what was left was to name both the project and the game itself.

I decided to name the project “Preta”. A little homage to one of my long deceased black cats. The name “Raziel” came from one of the themes of the short story, which is religion.

At first, I was thinking of using RPG Maker 2003 to make it, since I’ve bought it forever ago with my copy of VX Ace but never actually used it, and I always wanted to give it a try.

The first ever title screen for the game.
The first map made: Avoir’s room.
The first iteration of the Graveyard map.
First iteration of the Church map, with one of the now cut characters, Sister Yavina.
The front of the Library. Left unfinished.

That didn’t go very far, since Steam put RPG Maker 2000 on sale at the time and, on a whim, I decided to buy it and move all production to it instead (and with that, all the two weeks of work I’ve done).

To this day, I don’t know exactly why I did that, but I sure am glad I did.

At first, my intentions with the game were minimal. To be honest, I didn’t even think I would be working on this project for as long as I am today.

Initially, all I was planning was to do was a short adventure game based on the story, and that would be it. No frivolous gameplay, big maps or game length going on hundreds of hours. I didn’t even had the intention of sharing it with anyone else besides my friend Andrew, who was always interested in playing my games since the beginning and is also a person who I share many secrets and memories with (that’s why I ended up dedicated this game entirely to him).

In the end, I made a game page draft on Itch just in case I changed my mind.

After a while, I showed some concepts of the project alongside the game page to my other friend, Victor, who said:

“Holy shit, dude.”

And then proceeded to share the game page link on his Discord server. I kindly ask him to delete it afterwards.

That, somehow, was enough to convince me that there would be some people besides Andrew that would be willing to give this a go, so, a few days later, I finished up the game page and set it live.

I even posted it on my twitter.

Not much longer after that, I decided to share the development of the game on some RPG Maker related Facebook groups and forums, and to my surprise, it grabbed some attention from the public. One of them, Derick Dantas, owner of the Brazilian RPG Maker 2000 preservation website, Maker2K, offered a space on it for my game to be downloaded once the development was completed.

Another welcome attention came from the Condado Braveheart forum, responsible for granting me great feedback and criticism on each devlog posted. I’m really grateful for the wonderful help they still give me to this very day.

From this point on, development began to be a little bit more complex. There were a lot of things I was really dissatisfied with, like the facesets being from online character generators, chipsets being too simplistic and the fact that the game didn’t have anything that remarkable, like a proper menu screen (something that plagues most of RPG Maker 2k/3 games). Although I could try to draw the assets and program the menu from scratch, I saw myself almost in the same situation I was with Dying Cat, and that terrified me. I was in dire need of help.

With some months passing by, I was able to get the help I was needing. First, there was illustrator Caroline Thaynara, who helped me with some illustrations and facesets for the game (she even drew this picture you saw at the title of the post).

A comparison between the generated facesets and the ones Caroline did for the game.


Next was Dr. XGB, a skilled programmer and eventer for RPG Maker 2000 (I told you I didn’t regret it). He helped me with everything related to the engine (at the time, I only knew how to work with VX Ace) and programmed a full custom menu, title screen and some events of the game.

A comparison between the menu I was planning to make myself and the current menu that Dr. XGB programmed.

Then, for the soundtrack, I had the help of Elvis Suhadolnik Bonesso, a multi-instrumentalist musician who made extraordinary music for key points of the game, and also had the pleasure to discuss a lot of the story of the game with.

Last but not least, illustrator and pixel-artist Eduardo Arving also joined the team to make wonderful pixel-art cutscenes.

Wonderful stuff, without a doubt.

They’re not the only ones, though. A lot of people came and went to help with the project, and I’m grateful to every one of them.

A project that, in the beginning, didn’t had a lot to go with.

Now, it even managed to get a spot in the brazilian game magazine, “Make The Game“.

The project’s full page.

Anyway, a lot of things happened and continue happening during the development of this project, and unfortunately, I won’t be able to talk about every single one of them. I can only grab your attention for so long, after all.

I just want to say thank you to all the people who helped and continue to help me with the project, and to all who followed its development since the beginning or just heard about it today.

Thank you for being here and read this. You make my life fulfilling.

Raziel is still in development, but you’ll be able to play it soon enough.

One can hope, at least.

Happy birthday, Raziel.

Clouds

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

“Hey man, how is it going?”

“What?”

“I asked you how things are going.”

“They’re… doing fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem kinda off today.”

“Really? I think I’m doing fine. I guess I’m just… tired.”

“So, have you been working at that project of yours lately?”

“…”

“Dude?”

“What?”

“I asked y—… Nevermind.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”

“I guess so. Maybe I’m sleeping more than usual these days… So…”

“You should see a doctor. This is not right at all.”

“What’s not right?”

“The fact that you’re not thinking properly.”

“I guess I’m just tired.”

“Why did you not call in sick? You seem sick to me.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Yes you do.”

“Oh. I’m just a little tired. That’s all.”

“Okay. I’m going to go back to my desk. You really should go see this. It’s not normal.”

“Sure…”

…

…

…

“Did someone come here?”

June 13, 2017 11:34 PM

I’m on Twitch now!

Carlos DavillaLeave a comment

Hello there. Told you we would see each other again.

I’m here this time to announce that I’m back making streams sporadically on Twitch. The content revolves around achievement-hunting retro games, playing RPG Maker games or just other game that happens to interest me.

So, if you’re into those things, be sure to check out my Twitch channel. You can either click here or on the Twitch icon present in the header menu above.

I hope I’ll see you there.

Carlos