April 7-13 (2024): The Start of my Weekly Dev Logs!
At the start of this week, I decided to begin posting weekly "Development Logs" as I felt like this would be the most digestible and fun way to reflect on what I have been able to accomplish each week, with a place to set goals for the next at the end of each entry. This will also give me more agency to work on cleaning up and improving my work portfolios as I continue with my searches for work in my fields of interest. I plan on posting a new entry once every weekend with process photos and videos within the post.
Message for those Reading this in the future: Welcome to the start of my journey! No matter how much I may have improved in my work overtime, I was still the same old awkward dude even in the past.
On Sunday, I had finally finished my State Machine assignment for my Artificial Life in VR course where instead of adding a new state to the established Wander, Forage, Sleep state machine I had made with the help of my Instructor, Brian Wood, I had decided to flesh out the machine by giving it a Cycle of Life spin. Now, instead of the Unity simulation ending at it's Home state, I had designed it so that it will continuously loop for eternity by resetting the Lifeform's Hunger value whenever it sleeps for it to then have it's Sleepiness value reset when it goes into its Wandering state. After a few seconds of mindless wandering, the Lifeform would go on the hunt for Food in it's Foraging state before fulfilling it's Sleepiness once more to sleep at a set Home position in a set 10 second long Home state.
For more information on how the experiment ran alongside more details on how I programmed the Lifeform's intelligence in C#, please watch the short video below!
Message for those Reading this in the future: Welcome to the start of my journey! No matter how much I may have improved in my work overtime, I was still the same old awkward dude even in the past.
On Sunday, I had finally finished my State Machine assignment for my Artificial Life in VR course where instead of adding a new state to the established Wander, Forage, Sleep state machine I had made with the help of my Instructor, Brian Wood, I had decided to flesh out the machine by giving it a Cycle of Life spin. Now, instead of the Unity simulation ending at it's Home state, I had designed it so that it will continuously loop for eternity by resetting the Lifeform's Hunger value whenever it sleeps for it to then have it's Sleepiness value reset when it goes into its Wandering state. After a few seconds of mindless wandering, the Lifeform would go on the hunt for Food in it's Foraging state before fulfilling it's Sleepiness once more to sleep at a set Home position in a set 10 second long Home state.
For more information on how the experiment ran alongside more details on how I programmed the Lifeform's intelligence in C#, please watch the short video below!
Unity Version 2022.3.8f1
The next day, I slowed down my work significantly as the Total Eclipse event was occurring nearby my University. As this was an event that occurs once in a century in the area I was at, I decided to take full advantage of the chance to see it and take photos. Although... In retrospect I should have done more research as my makeshift "station" for taking photos was comical in appearance. (We all have a start somewhere.)
The Total Eclipse was still a fun experience as I was able to see an unique astronomical phenonium right in my backyard. Alongwith my friend, Calvin, we had witnessed the moon cover the sun, while also struggling to figure out how to get the correct settings ready for my DSLR camera to be able to take photos of totality... Which did not end up well for us as right as we got the correct setting ready, the moon had moved exposing my eye to the rays of the sun as I was looking through the camera's viewfinder...
Despite the series of comical errors and the results of not studying and preparing beforehand, I was able to get some great photos with my phone (Left and Middle) alongwith an image of the crescent-stage of the Eclipse that my DSLR was able to capture (Right). Sadly, it was the only "good" photo that I got with my expensive camera... I may have to visit Iceland in 2026 for a second chance to get a photo of an astronomical event.
Despite the series of comical errors and the results of not studying and preparing beforehand, I was able to get some great photos with my phone (Left and Middle) alongwith an image of the crescent-stage of the Eclipse that my DSLR was able to capture (Right). Sadly, it was the only "good" photo that I got with my expensive camera... I may have to visit Iceland in 2026 for a second chance to get a photo of an astronomical event.
On Tuesday, my article covering the current development of the third installment of Final Fantasy VII's remake trilogy following the video talk Square Enix released on their YouTube channel. This article is on uGames.tv!
On Wednesday, my team for Decomposition was visited by our upperclassmen peers for a playtest of our game's current development after our 2nd Milestone. It was a helpful session that had allowed for us to learn more on where we should take our game's direction going into our final year of University, with our deadline being around this time next year. As the game's Producer, Programmer, and Designer I got a lot of helpful advice on keeping our game within scope for a student project while also making it an interesting game for players. As a horror game, we got a great response for our monster and the current Coffin Carrying mechanic that our game has, however we have a lot of work to do to complete our gameplay loop and include as much art and sound as possible to fully break our game out of the "graybox."
If you would like to see our current progression please watch the video below! And for more updates on Decomposition I will soon be making a webpage on my site for more information about our game as well as links to follow us on social media to keep up with our development. We have a lot of work ahead of us before our release next Spring and we plan on sharing our experiences along the way!
On Wednesday, my team for Decomposition was visited by our upperclassmen peers for a playtest of our game's current development after our 2nd Milestone. It was a helpful session that had allowed for us to learn more on where we should take our game's direction going into our final year of University, with our deadline being around this time next year. As the game's Producer, Programmer, and Designer I got a lot of helpful advice on keeping our game within scope for a student project while also making it an interesting game for players. As a horror game, we got a great response for our monster and the current Coffin Carrying mechanic that our game has, however we have a lot of work to do to complete our gameplay loop and include as much art and sound as possible to fully break our game out of the "graybox."
If you would like to see our current progression please watch the video below! And for more updates on Decomposition I will soon be making a webpage on my site for more information about our game as well as links to follow us on social media to keep up with our development. We have a lot of work ahead of us before our release next Spring and we plan on sharing our experiences along the way!
After the playtest, I had onboarded two new Team Members to our game, Brandon, who will be helping us with Programming, and Karl, who will be composing some tracks that we could use in our game. I am excited to see their work while continuing development of our game! At the current moment, I have plans to create more designs for our Lantern mechanics to implement into our game before the semester closes. We have also discussed as a team on what we plan to do for the game over the Summer and we all are planning on working on the game over the Break to continue development on a consistent schedule. We also decided that this Summer would be the best time for us to set up our game's social media presence as well as the best time for me to get our LLC and business up and running to release our game under. (Hopefully the State of Indiana is kind to a newcomer in the business scene...)
On Thursday, my article covering the new deals with Rockstar Game's GTA+ was released on uGames.tv. It was an interesting piece that looked into their current subscription plan alongwith their current event that allows players to play Red Dead Redemption in Grand Theft Auto 5. I had also finished writing a rough draft of the script for the GamePlay video of the game I presented during my trip to Tokyo, II. I had used Twine for the script writing of the draft that I intend to code into Ren'Py for the mockup recording of the Visual Novel.
I had also gone back to working more with the FMOD project for the soon to be released game, Go! Save the Queen! I started this week by reorganizing the events library to reflect on the new list of needed SFX for the game alongwith experimenting further with the projects VCA settings. Throughout this weekend I will be working to complete all of the needed sounds for the game to then focus on implementing them into the Unity project before the game's official release on Steam later next week. Although I have not put in as much work as I had wanted to for the project, I still learned a lot on how to work as a Contractor for a team to create and implement audio into a published game.
For next week I also plan on releasing more articles for my internship at uGames.tv, designing the new Lantern mechanic for Decomposition while leading my team going into our Final Sprint for the Spring Semester, as well as continuing my Final Projects for this Semester to finish things off strong! I also will be having a meeting with the team for an upcoming platforming game, Rainy Daze, that I'll be working on as a Producer and Designer for next Tuesday to set-up our Summer development plan.
Thank you all for reading my first blog entry!
On Thursday, my article covering the new deals with Rockstar Game's GTA+ was released on uGames.tv. It was an interesting piece that looked into their current subscription plan alongwith their current event that allows players to play Red Dead Redemption in Grand Theft Auto 5. I had also finished writing a rough draft of the script for the GamePlay video of the game I presented during my trip to Tokyo, II. I had used Twine for the script writing of the draft that I intend to code into Ren'Py for the mockup recording of the Visual Novel.
I had also gone back to working more with the FMOD project for the soon to be released game, Go! Save the Queen! I started this week by reorganizing the events library to reflect on the new list of needed SFX for the game alongwith experimenting further with the projects VCA settings. Throughout this weekend I will be working to complete all of the needed sounds for the game to then focus on implementing them into the Unity project before the game's official release on Steam later next week. Although I have not put in as much work as I had wanted to for the project, I still learned a lot on how to work as a Contractor for a team to create and implement audio into a published game.
For next week I also plan on releasing more articles for my internship at uGames.tv, designing the new Lantern mechanic for Decomposition while leading my team going into our Final Sprint for the Spring Semester, as well as continuing my Final Projects for this Semester to finish things off strong! I also will be having a meeting with the team for an upcoming platforming game, Rainy Daze, that I'll be working on as a Producer and Designer for next Tuesday to set-up our Summer development plan.
Thank you all for reading my first blog entry!