Opening My Heart

Hello Everyone!

It's been a little while since I posted last, but I do have an excellent excuse; five weeks ago, I had open heart surgery!

My Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy became significantly worse in March, and after years of talk and medication, it was suddenly time to cut me open and deal with it once and for all.

My Dad dropped me off at 6am on the 29th of March to Harefield hospital. My body hair was unceremoniously shaved off by a nurse, I showered, and was then taken to the operating theatre where the anesthetist sent me off to oblivion.

The operation would involve cutting through my sternum to reach my heart, then cutting away the hypertrophied muscle in my heart that was causing all the chaos, as well as repairing my mitral valve. I believe it lasted around 3 hours.

Simple.

I didn’t really start to regain my senses until three days later. On Tuesday I’d partially woken with a case of Postoperative Delirium, which happens to about 1 in 10 people. I experienced it as a sort of dream or nightmare. I’d been having vivid dreams, which then became indistinguishable from reality, except for a feeling of coldness. As such, when I woke I thought I was still dreaming.

I couldn’t remember that I’d come into the hospital for surgery. I wanted to wake up, and started pulling out the various cables and wires attached to me like I was the lead in an action movie, however I expect I looked more like a fish out of water than Wolverine. It turns out in real life one does not simply get up after having a major surgery. I was having a blood transfusion and pulled out a cable from my arm that resulted in blood going everywhere. I was too weak to get up, though I struggled anyway. It was pretty scary, and in the end the nurses had to sedate me and keep me that way for several days. My lasting impression is a reminder of how fragile our perception of reality can be. Don’t do drugs, kids!

(left: A day after surgery, apparently I managed to take a selfie on Tuesday, thought I have no memory of this. middle: A few days later, no longer completely off my face and coming back to reality. right: Taken just now! I don't look undead anymore!)

After that excitement and a lot of morphine, I started to slowly recover in hospital. I was there for two weeks of boredom, bad food, kind nurses and an overwhelming craving for red grapes. Eventually I was let out and went home, and I spent the rest of April ‘taking it easy’, A.K.A. watching Netflix and playing Persona 5.

I’m feeling stronger every day, and now that May has come around it’s time to resume work on my game. I’m so close to the end now I can taste it! It’s funny how sometimes endings come all at once. My illness & the process of making my game seem to be coming to a climax together.

It might be too soon to congratulate myself, but with the end in sight for Sentenced I've started looking back on the last three years with a sense of some pride.

I taught myself how to make games using online tutorials, self funded it by working in VFX and moved countries three times to make my finances last. I battled with fatigue during that time from a heart disease I didn’t know I had, then had open heart surgery which I'm now recovering from. And I won't even mention my love life, which has been as beautiful as it was disastrous.

So you know what, fuck it. You did good, Sam.

I’m currently looking at late June as the final release date for Sentenced. As you can see from the spreadsheet below, I’m almost done with animating all executions and implementing all of the core features for the game. After those last few boxes are ticked, it’ll be a case of polishing and bug fixes in preparation for release.

The Sentenced Demo has been getting a good reception as well as good feedback, so here’s a reminder that you can play that now on Steam and Itch.io!

I’ll try and get around to another video diary soon, and I’m also open to other suggestions for the kind of content people might want to see here on Patreon.

Many thanks again for all your love and support.

Keep it weird,

Samuel

The Plague Post

What’s up everyone?

It feels as though every company that’s ever obtained my contact details has sent me an email recently entitled ‘our response to the Covid-19 crisis’, acknowledging ‘the strange times we live in’, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon!

Welcome to the ‘Sentenced VR’ ☢️-- C o v i d - 1 9 --☢️ update.

I write this to you from my flat in Battersea, London, where I’m currently under lockdown along with the rest of the world. It’s just me and my flatmate, day after day. My computer is now the center of my life, though this statement was arguably true even before I was confined to quarters.

I’m still working full time from home at Framestore. As a result, I don’t have a huge amount of extra free time, aside from the hour or two I used to spend commuting. But I’m still getting paid, so I know I’m one of the lucky ones. My days consist of working, playing video games, painting miniatures, and cycling around Battersea park, which is beautiful this time of year as the Cherry blossoms bloom with the start of spring. My social life consists of movie dates, phone calls and online roleplaying games.

Since my last post I’ve been diagnosed with a heart condition called HCM (Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy). This involves my heart muscle being thickened in the left ventricle for no apparent reason, allowing less blood to enter the heart and therefore less to be pumped, causing a variety of unfortunate symptoms such as heart failure. As such I’m making extra effort to isolate myself, as I’m at a somewhat increased risk from the virus. I’ve got a big heart, what can I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Game-wise, I’ve spent the last nine months working hard to save up funds for developing Sentenced. I’ve enough now to hire voice actors, but I’m waiting to see how the situation evolves with the pandemic before actually taking the financial plunge. No new films being shot means no new VFX work down the line, so it seems pretty likely that there will be a dry spell with work later in the year. Therefore I need to plan carefully to make sure I have enough saved to see me through potential hard times.

So, like much of the rest of the world I find myself twiddling my thumbs and waiting to see how things turn out. It’s my hope that some good will come from all this, and people will recognise the value of the public institutions and key workers who are keeping our civilization from collapsing right now. I sincerely applaud the NHS, health workers, care workers, service staff, civic employees and others from the bottom of my heart.

Until next time,

Keep it weird (and stay indoors),

Samuel

There and Back Again

I write this from my parent’s house in Buckinghamshire, England. I’m back in the country after almost a year in New Zealand. It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon, my third summer in a row thanks to my hemisphere-hopping antics, and the birds in the garden are tweeting up a storm. Life is good. 

First, allow me to apologise for the extended silence here on the Phantom Magazine blog. When I work in VFX, I have to sign a strict NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), which prevents me from talking about or showing work from anything I’m working on professionally. In addition, I’ve been working for Weta Digital, (The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes), a company with a 50 hour standard work week, which often rises to 60 during crunch time.

Some snaps from NZ

This lead to a situation where I spent the vast majority of my time doing something I can’t legally talk about, which is not a great recipe for social media output. It’s a source of frustration for me, as I love to share the things I’m doing with people, however, in the corporate world of filmmaking, the profit is master and we must obey. It also left me little time to work on my game.

However, all that is changing as of right now! My contract at Weta is up, and I’ve saved up a fat stack o’ cash, hopefully enough to support myself until I finish development on my pride and joy, Sentenced. I’ve already resumed work on the game, and re-assessing some of the work I did last year and bringing it up to standard.

An updated version of the Magistrate. New style!

Heraldry for the Port city of Sentenced.

I’m going to be staying with my parents up until the end of July while I catch up with friends and family in London, after which I’ll be moving back into a place of my own, most likely in Berlin. I’m also currently in the process of applying for German citizenship, so it seems like a good time to go the country and learn the language. Also, I hear that’s where the cool kids are at. Maybe the coolness will rub off on me? Is that how it works?

Anyway, it’s all go go go again on the Phantom Magazine front, so follow me here on the blog and also on Twitter and Instagram for all the regular updates!

Keep it weird,

Sam