More important than what I've been working on, is what's going on with online store fronts. 

I'm sure everyone knows but over the last couple weeks, we saw both steam and now Itch.IO get hit with pressure from payment processors to remove certain adult content. Even if you're not a fan of the particular subset of content they removed, its important to know that stuff like this is always a baby step, and will lead to MORE stuff getting removed.

More importantly, payment processors should not be dictating what people can legally sell. If you want to create a legitimate business, it shouldn't be controlled or hamstrung by a payment processor. 

This stuff has been getting worse over the years, and its going beyond ridiculous. The normal argument is these particular industries cause charge back and other issues for the credit companies, but in this case, steam and itch take care of their own refunds. Its all about control and its getting tiring.

Besides starting our own payment processor, there's not a ton that can be done besides complaining loudly, and doing it to the right people. (Not Valve or Itch).

The ACLU has a petition going. I'm not sure how much weight that would carry, but maybe it'll get them more heavily involved

https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-what-we-can-watch-read-or-play

https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

and if you're feeling it, you can contact m

astercard directly: This was a larger document but I don't feel comfortable doxxing people, even executives.

It sucks that we're at this point. If you feel like calling or signing, I'd appreciate it, if not, I understand, there's a lot of other stuff going on, and energy is low now a days. 

Otherwise I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

This week has been so freaking hot...

I've been having a really difficult time focusing lately, and its something I'm really stuck on and want to overcome.

I thought maybe I'd try streaming more again.   I think/hope a rigid schedule could  help me stay more focused during the week.

Now it would  be  kinda hard to do, as some of  my content isn't appropriate for twitch, so I'd definitely have to go back and forth between twitch and picarto as needed. (I am hoping to do multi-steam stuff as well, so sometimes  both at once.)

I don't know what times, but I'm gonna shoot for afternoons.  I typically use mondays to do other contract work, but outside of that I'll see how often I can stream.

https://www.twitch.tv/mithos56
https://www.picarto.tv/Mithos56

If anyone knows another really good way to maintain focus, I'd love to hear it!  

Otherwise I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Things are moving along slowly. A lot more slowly than I really want, so I apologize for that. 
I've been making some progress, and during my free time, I've been focusing on the UE5 stuff. 

I really try to not let that development interfere with the regular work that I need to do. 

If you're like how can someone be working on two things at once? Well the answer is in my free time I don't do anything else, except maybe take a walk and a few hours of gaming. The UE5 development stuff is also MOSTLY programming and scripting stuff, and I'm not making a lot of new assets for it.

Related to that I've been working on making enemies AI around combat a little more complicated. I hope that can make things more interesting. As combat is really my biggest weak spot I think, I'm really working on making little adjustments here and there. The end result is hopefully everything is more interesting in the end. I think one of the big weak points is the enemies' AI, and hopefully little adjustments can make them more fun to fight.

I've tried making enemies more aware of your attacks so they can dodge. (Takes a lot of tweaking to keep them from dodging too much)

I've been working on making them much better at choosing an attack based on your range, and location vs them. 

I've been messing with hit armor on the enemies, so they can take damage, but continue with their attacks.

I haven't started yet, but I also want to work on enemies trying to better position themselves around you. 

If you think of something else that might make enemies more fun to fight, please let me know!

I hope everyone has a great week!