Blog Update 6

Weekly Progress Update

This week was entirely focused on implementing the dialogue plugin called dialogic. I decided that this was a worthwhile endeavor after looking into it because dialogue management can be a very big endeavor. I researched different dialogue plugins for godot and decided that dialogic seemed to fit my needs for this project the best. 

I think I made the right call with implementing the plugin. It has made dialogue management much quicker and better organized. It also has added a level of polish to the dialogue UI that I likely wouldn't have prioritized and implemented otherwise. 

Reflection on Progress

Using dialogic was a bit of a new experience for me. I tend to be a control freak with my work, so I rarely use any kind of plugins for anything. I tend to write all my code myself so I can have absolute control over how everything functions. Sometimes I will even do something like programming my own animation system instead of using the game engine's built-in system, just so I can have complete control.

I feel like using dialogic has helped me loosen up a little in this regard. Using it was a good experience and saved me a lot of time that I could now spend on more involved programming. It helped me realize that sure, I COULD have implemented a dialogue system from scratch, but there are alternatives. I still see myself being a control freak in the future, but now I feel as though I've learned that I don't need to be a control freak over every single aspect. Using frameworks and plug ins for more straightforward mechanics such as dialoge can help me spend more time on more complex mechanics.

Inspiration, Ideas, Readings, Research

• @florencethediva on Instagram

• Pearl- Ti West and Mia Goth

Artist Profile

Ti West is an American film director of various horror films. He found a lot of inspiration from watching the Evil Dead franchise. West is most known for his work on the X series. This trilogy is made up the movies X, Pearl, and Maxxxine. Although I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of the first and final movies in the trilogy, I am a fan of the film Pearl, which was also co-written by the english actress Mia Goth.

The film tells the origin story of the villain from the first movie, Pearl. Pearl is a young woman who lives on a farm with her parents. Her father is paralyzed, and her mother forces pearl to take care of both him and the farm despite her protests and other aspirations. Pearl commits many heinous acts and  is very clearly a villain, but I think the film does still have a lot to say about the tendency society has to force women into caregiving roles. Pearl is an extreme example of a woman snapping after being forced into a caregiving role. I also believe that there is a lot to say about how the aspiration Pearl has is a very explicit one. Quite literally, the two possible paths for this young woman are to become a caregiver or to become an adult star. It is very reflective of the very limited view society has of women.