Monthly Archives: May 2016

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Posted by aabicus on

There’s this weird dichotomy with me where I’m totally down to post in this blog if I have something to show for it. Then its like “its okay I’m not doing all those things I said I’d do, look at this thing I actually did!” It gives me an excuse. For example, today I finished three character sheets for my tutorial quest and am now writing said tutorial quest, so i feel like I can justify not having touched Clickteam Fusion or Unity in over a month.

I’m also worried about my funds. Rent just happened and fucking zapped my savings account. Course, I still haven’t gone and donated blood, or picked up my three weeks paycheck from the University Coop so I guess there is money out there, I just have to go grab it. Amazing concept, that is.

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saw a bag of these delicious fuckers on sale and I didn’t buy them because I gave up candy. That’s going on my list of accomplishments.

Accomplishment is a weird thing. I suspect almost everyone feels like they don’t have enough of this. There’s this tendency to downplay what you’ve already done and only think of what you haven’t. It doesn’t count that I’ve survived financially for 3 years since leaving college, what matters is how broke I am at the moment. Don’t count all the completed projects, 339 published articles and the fact that I’m a nude model who only recently found myself weighing the correct amount on the scale; what matters is my stomach could be flatter and I don’t have any books published. It’s a vicious cycle and the best way I know to keep ahold of it is just remember that we’re all in the same boat. I have a lot to feel proud of, and I’m making progress towards even more. Being alone is nothing to be ashamed of when it was a tactical choice.

Hell, I think I deserve something of a gold star when it comes to tactical choices. Not many people have saved their own life twice by 25. I’m only sitting here typing on this computer right now because I’ve managed to drop my cost of living down to almost nothing, letting me scrape by on oddjobs and nude modeling. I should visit the doctor more, though, especially because my healthcare runs out December 8th.

On the other hand, mindless backpatting doesn’t do anyone any favors. I should install photoshop and start learning it, maybe take drawing lessons. I’m missing some fundamental understanding that bridges the gap between “empty canvas” and “now you’ve got a drawing”, there’s just so many other things to do I’m not completely clueless at.

Shift in Focus

Posted by aabicus on

We’re doing a shift in focus. Namely, from a blog that doesn’t get posts, to one that does.

I’m starting a “once a day” blog post requirement. Literally doesn’t matter if I did nothing of value, if I was a lazy lagomorph with nothing of value to report for the last 24 hours, than that’s what I’m going to report.

That being said, I did damn good yesterday. Applied to 6 jobs, all of which are writing and so actually in my field of study. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest choice to focus for so long on video game jobs due to  my Literature degree, but I was hoping to roguish good looks and charm would carry me through. They did repeatedly get me to the second-stage of interviews, so I can’t fault them.

Today’s big job is to write this quest for Legends of Equestria. I haven’t worked for them for months, but they need someone to write a big tutorial quest and I guess my starship was the only one in the quadrant. Plowing through updated literature so I know what I’m actually doing, and holy god do their modern writers have it easy. Back when I wrote the two dozen quests I did, my only available mechanics were “speak to stationary NPCs” and “add or remove items from inventory”, and now they can spawn mobs, walk NPCs around, initiate combat with unique NPCs, spawn items in the world…basically the shit a real MMO gets. This tutorial is going to break the fucking bank, I hope their gigabytes are prepared.

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Posted by aabicus on

For some reason I feel more like using this blog as an actual blog, where I discuss things I’m thinking about. God knows why, maybe its the fact that my nonexistent audience can’t actually lose interest and unfollow. I can’t believe I’ve been regularly referencing and acknowledging you nonexistent readers since 2012.

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty dejected by Blizzard saying no. I thought I had that one in the bag, it’s a customer service position to work for Overwatch, which would be a fucking dream come true for a cartoony FPS fan like me. I also thought the interview went great. I’ve been debating focusing exclusively on Blizzard because I know a workable if niche job-getting strategy is to just hound one company until it hires you simply out of name recognition. But with Lyft abandoning Austin, it has suddenly become difficult for me to even reach Blizzard. My roommate is working the current gig so had I landed it I’d have carpooled with him.

I’m so unbelievably jealous of my roommate. He has zero game development projects under his belt, he has never worked in the industry, and this was his first time applying for a gaming job. So of course he gets it (Overwatch! He gets Overwatch!!!), and my four years of experience gets me the door. It’s pretty clear I was considered overqualified, and its far from the first time. I appear to be in that sweet spot where I’m not qualified enough to hire for a decent game dev position, but I’m too qualified to hire for a shit gave dev position.

What to do, then? The obvious answer is to keep plugging away at volunteer/indie projects and find one that’s worth the time and will pay dividends. After all, with the internet and endless tutorials/training at my disposal I (and everyone else, to be fair) have no good excuse not to. It would just be so much easier to drive to work, do a thing from 9 to 5 and then come home and get paid. And then get a nice sizeable refund on tax day instead of kicked in the nuts by Schedule Cs. It’s so stress-free. I’ve been doing it entry-level for under $10 at dead-end customer service jobs for months now. I guess I just hubristically feel like I’m ready to advance to something better. Consider this blog post my Disney princess song.

Luckily I’ve worked out a completely separate source of stress, that of my lifelong singlehood. I guess its around 25 that my biological clock finally started whining about how it was sick of being lonely and to start looking for charming gals and gents to spend nights with. And I may have wasted a few nights in bars wondering why the fuck I wasn’t at home writing or playing video games, and then ultimately going home eventually and doing just that. But me and my eros had some long conversations and eventually convinced it that I’m just not ready to spend time on another person right now. I want a steady job and a satisfactory level of content-creation skills under my belt before I can afford to try and balance my life along with someone else’s.

I have to remember that I’m incredibly lucky with where I already am. Not only am I a white decently-thin male in a first-world country who lacks any physical deformities, I’m doing something most people can only dream of. I’m risking everything and toiling in a self-chosen city following my dream. When I look at someone and feel jealous, I remind myself “Would you trade lives with them?” And the answer is always hell no. I’ve got my priorities straighter than anyone I know my age. And I’m going to succeed.

Five and O

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Blizzard and EA both said no today.

That’s five now. Blizzard, BioWare, EA twice, and Bethesda. Thrice I’ve made it to the second round of interviews (the ones where you dress up and go speak to people at the studio), every time I’ve made it to the phone interview. Every time I don’t get the job.

I guess there’s nothing to do but keep trying. After all, who hasn’t heard all the stories that go “<famous person> got rejected 97 times before landing his dream job and becoming famous”, and by that rubric I’ve barely started.

In exactly one month it’ll be the one-year anniversary since I moved to Austin. Not sure what I have to show for it but I still think I made the right choice. I just need to work harder. There are so many basic skills I still lack. HTML, Photoshop, and Duolingo are all very easy skills that I really should have taken the time to learn by now. Lord knows after losing that EA gig with the John Madden division because of a lack of HTML knowledge, that should have been the first thing on my to-do list.

So I’m going to start on those three things. I should have plenty of time since I’m still unemployed. I’ve made it this far without having to call my parents and ask for money, but if I can’t find a job and fast that won’t last much longer.

At least ROSS, my frequently-appearing AI character and the protagonist of my first story published on this blog, is doing better, having recently become the world’s first AI lawyer.

STAR_’s and Bars

Posted by aabicus on

I feel really bad for star these days. He’s a huge inspiration to me and the first Youtuber I ever got addicted to, and a lot of what I’ve accomplished was because he provided the spark. But he seems really sad in his streams, and it shows in the videos he uploads. I don’t think he’d even read a message were I to send it, he probably gets loads due to his hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but I hope he’s doing better than it seems and things improve for him.

Things aren’t doing great over here either. It’s been pretty hard to motivate myself to write. Projects are backlogging themselves, my exercise bike rides are the only daily goal I’ve been able to commit to, and my work starts up again tomorrow at 8:30am.

So this blog post is basically one of those lame apology ones that content creators do when they’re aware of how little they’ve output recently but don’t actually have content to make up for it. I have a job interview with Blizzard in two days, I think I’ve got a pretty good shot of making their Overwatch customer service team, which would literally be a godsend because it’s my current favorite game of choice. Overwatch is basically Team Fortress 3, or as close as we’re ever going to get, so I’d be ecstatic if I made it into even a small part of that franchise. One day I might be able to work my way up to QA testing for them.

A reminder that I’m still cranking out daily articles on The Daily SPUF, it’s a blog kinda like this one except the content is publish-worthy and publicized over there. Otherwise, I’ve made progress on one of my Clickteam Fusion games and it should be coming out in maybe a month, god willing. Haven’t really told any of you anything about it but it’s a 4-level platformer where I practice creating cutscenes, reactive AI, and a Sonic-style ring system for taking damage.

EDIT: ended up sending a message anyway. It’s always worthwhile to thank someone who’s made a difference in your life

Find the Cure! source code released

Posted by aabicus on

Thought I’d release the source code for this game since when I try to play it on itch.io it doesn’t work. I’ll figure out what’s wrong and fix it eventually but for now, you can read this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PfNt2Ltol6itzaprcPzoTB8dH-bttbDjrpetP5rO0bY/edit

Those hoping to play the game can do so here, but I legitimately don’t know if it’s working, and my friends won’t write me back to let me know ;_;

#OccupyDarwinsSoldiers We are the 99%

Posted by aabicus on

So we have, like, a follower now. Like, a real person. Who actually followed the blog. Apparently they get like an email or something every time I post. And this terrifies me. Somebody’s going to actually read this? Do I need to be more politically correct? Should I stop describing  all my criminal activity in gruesome detail and posting nude pictures of all my girlfriends and boyfriends I’ve had since September 2012? What are they even hoping to read? I don’t even know, but hopefully this is part of it.

Well, you nonexistent readers are now part of the 99%, and thanks to horizontal resentment I can rest assured that your ire will direct towards the 1% of existent readers and not myself, as the arguable person of power in this metaphor. So idgaf

Today we colored our brick into a bunch of different colors so the game doesn’t look like sad white chalk land. Then we dragged them into the world. Exciting and pretty basic stuff, but since I haven’t watched a video since April, I appreciate him going slow.

Oh, new announcement! So if you’ll recall, I promised myself to bike 20 minutes a day, and unlike my Unity daily goal I’ve been fucking golden at the biking one. The trick came when I discovered that shoutcasted competitive L4D2 matches existed on Youtube and are really fun, so now I watch one of those while on the bike and it’s awesome. To celebrate absolutely nothing we’re adding a third once-a-day to the ole repertoire, and its an embarrassing one so thank god a real person decided to join just in time…I’m going to draw something every day until I’m a not suck artist. It’s the hugest bottleneck in my game development (other than not owning HTML5 exporter for Clickteam Fusion) so Imma just keep doing it until I can do it kinda skillfully. Whatever drawing will be posted here because otherwise I won’t remember. So without further ado, Karl the Policeman.

First drawing on ipad

Don’t occupy Darwin’s Soldiers too hard, or he’ll pepper spray you.