Hmm.. Coffee

Wondrous, divine, unrivaled sweet sweet coffee. How I love thee!

It's that time again. Right before the exams. That time where you just can't care about certain things and have to work. I've pulled almost three all-nighters in a row now. Going to bed at 6, waking up at 10 or 11 and continue working. It's exhausting, but it some ways it's pretty nifty too (although seriously bad for your health. I find myself eating kiwi's and red bell-peppers during the day to feel at bit balanced. No cookies, no candy. Oh, I don't like sweet though so I guess that's not a big problem.) I'm at two cups of coffee a day now. I'm being a pretty innocent boy with that.
The first one gets chucked somewhere around 12 or 13. The second one is 10 hours later, at 23. By then I usually have finished dinner two hours before at least, and I know I have to work all night. At around 3 or 4 though begins the really weird stuff. Small black spots and tiny hallucinations kick in. At 5 I always need to watch some video's to keep my eyes from drifting all over the screen. At 6 it's about setting the goals.. "have to finish this and that before I sleep", using sleep as a reward for my work.
It's really a bad, bad thing. It's all part of the process but I want to be done with it.

I underestimated the remaining work that needed to be done on my book. Most books that I used for reference points in size, layout and subject are all extremely small compared to the stunt I'm pulling. I'm so stupid.. How could I possibly think that numbering pages in Photoshop would be done in a jiffy? This is not Word! This is an 84-page book! Checking all the pages, writing the last and new chapters in it is mindbreaking. My teachers aren't too clear about it either. It's taken me a very long time to figure out what the hell they are meaning with 'overall conclusion' on the game, and I'm still unsure, so I'm taking the guess and wrote a 2 page essay reflecting my process as maker and the final game compared to the original two goals I've set myself. I'll be keeping my appendages crossed and hope it's alright. It's pretty damned hard finding an overal conclusion about something that was a creative progress and product. It felt as if I had drawn a tree. Then showed it to them "This is my tree." And they would ask "What is your overall conclusion?" ....What do you say? "It's a tree."? Very confusing. So I wrote down how I came to certain decisions, how I've implemented my goals in my games based on what, and what the setbacks were. Basically now this part is a "I wanted to have multiple people play my game. It needs to work for three kinds. See? Here's part one, here's two, and there is three. Oooh, there they are again. And over there again too. No progress without it." Urgh, I still find it hard to explain.

So, the book originally was a 74-page illustration of a walkthrough, with back up and reasoning, of a newly created, open ended, multi-player based alternate reality game.
I've added:
Index
Introduction to the project
Intro to the book
Intro and short short dictionairy to alternate reality games
... about me (joy..)
Layout explanation for each page
Story Summary before it starts
-entire game sits here-
Flowchart explanation and index
Flowcharts 01 and 02 (You've seen these), Flowchart 03, Flowchart 04
Final conclusion essay
Tools list
Credits
Removed a couple of pages, added these new pages, switched the design around, adjusted the remaining ones and checked for consistency (which.. I'm afraid to say, isn't always that strong), making the total number of pages at 84.
Mind you, this thing is 45 cm in length, and 20 cm high. Thats nearly one meter of book you'll have in front of you when reading, and then 84 pages of it. I'm so worried that my lettering is too small. Or that the colours don't work out. Or that the flowcharts are simply too big for this book (so I'm having a few of that file posterprinted, like a map). Too many things to worry about.. too little time.
I've only got the index to do now. After that I need to take a quick look at what pages are most important and then I'm sending it out to my three teachers who will take my exam. They'll have 5 days to read the designated pages and view the charts. I can't do much better than this.. Time is already running short and the standard I've set myself is so high.. It's very rewarding and depressing at the same time. Like making a giant elaborate glass sculpture, without ever having worked with glass whatsoever at all, and that in about 6 months. I'm proud of where I am though. This project is exactly how I wanted it to be, and it looks great. It's elaborate, it's all thought out, most parts work, and the book exists. Heh, and to think that the previous one who did this in my study made a 22 normal-page text walkthrough about just a sequence of puzzles. Even my midterm exam was more than that.. Still, I'm worried. I'm always worried. Next tuesday we'll know the verdict.

I want to go to Sweden..

I'm going to have a smoke now.