(November 11th, 2021)
I’d like to provide an update on what I’ve been doing on a regular basis. I’m going to break it down by my scheduled tasks.
First Week:
Text-Based Game Design:
I finished my first draft of my game and have been repeatedly editing it. I seem to always find something to change when I play
through it. I also have dozens of notes about changes I’d like to make - some small some big - that I have been implementing.
I’ve also been writing down a beta test set of questions/form to help when I beta test. I could start testing now, it is in a
functional, feature-complete state, I just imagine it would be wise to implement my edits first so I’m not wasting my testers
time (i.e. they may note something that I already have plans to change).
Physical Document Organization:
I finished scanning all the notebooks I had in queue (roughly twenty notebooks of varying sizes). In this process, I categorized
the scans into folders – Writing, Images, ImagesWithWriting, and Game Ideas. Afterwards, I went through the entire folder of
Writing and transcribed each of the scans into a raw document. Then, I categorized the text in these raw documents into their own
categorized documents (e.g. notes to self, to-do lists, creative writing, etc.). Throughout this process, I didn’t transfer any
notes that seemed of little use, as I have more than enough ideas and need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Next up would be
to go through Images and pull out any drawings that stand out to me and set them aside, categorize the ImagesWithWriting, and go
through my newly categorized Writing documents and review them/pull out useful info. I already categorized the Game Ideas as I went
along.
Computer Programming/Computer Science:
I’m still working on my Unix/Command Line tutorials on YouTube. In the tutorial series, it mentioned this site
(http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/). I took a detour to explore this site and found it be
very valuable. I ended up spending some time reading up a bit about programming at a high level. I read about the fundamentals
of how a computer/the internet works, specifically on a Unix system. I read about how best to find information when stuck on a
programming problem and what sort of mentality/procedures are advised if one likes to tinker with computers (referred to as
“hacking” in this early 2000’s post).
Drawing:
I’ve been doing a lot of drawings of wallpapers, usually video game art, alongside some drawing of the human form and
environment drawings. I have some new ones to add to my portfolio.
Web Design:
I’m still going through my JavaScript course and look forward to trying some it out on the web. I took some time off that,
though, to get my website up using HTML/CSS alone. It went pretty well – there’s more info on it in my dedicated blogpost.
Math:
I’m working through my Calculus review still. I also forayed a bit into linear algebra, as the game development textbook I
was reading through started to mention it.
Second week:
Tabletop Game Design:
I’m still going through my book, Challenges For Game Designers. I’m on a chapter about randomness/chance and, as one of the
exercises, I made a variant of Tic-Tac-Toe with randomness that worked out pretty well. I feel as if I may want to add some of
these games to my portfolio even though they are all just simple prototypes.
Digital File Organization:
This overlaps heavily with my Physical Document Organization, as now that my notebooks are scanned, I have a lot of sorting to do.
3D Graphics:
I recently finished the texturing section of my Udemy Blender course and made a complete scene. They include all textures that I made, using mathematical noise generators and such.
Video Game Development:
Still going through the Godot Docs. I’ve made two more simple games through following the tutorials and have exported a game to
Android. I’m also considering uploading some of the games I made during my Udemy tutorials. I imagine it’d be best to put some
of my own spin onto them – making new levels, mechanics, and/or changing the assets – rather than just uploading a tutorial game.
Research:
Much of this task has spilled into my daily routine, rather than being set aside for one day. I’ve been reading through my
Introduction to Game Development textbook. I’ve also been listening to old GDC audio segments. I’m hoping to go through all of
the ones available on the GDC Vault website and have done all from 1997-2000. It’s really valuable to learn about how things
were done before and there still is valuable perspectives and information that still applies today. Otherwise, I recently found
out about The Game Maker’s Notebook podcast, which is associated with the Academy for Interactive Arts & Sciences. I’ve also
been reading through a classic fantasy story, Phantastes by George MacDonald.