Category Archives: Game Development

“next few days”

Posted by aabicus on

Hi old blog! Here’s what I’ve been up to last few days. (Did wordpress change something massive? Everything’s layout is stupid):

  1. Just got back from Scotland. Was fucking awesome. We saw sites and sights and suites and I think even Dad enjoyed himself since we did a guided tour for once, meaning he didn’t need to drill sergeant us everywhere. There’ll be a long article about my trip on the Daily SPUF soon.
  2. Speaking of which, I’ve ported EVERY post of mine from the Daily SPUF (and Lambda Generation) to a backup blog https://aabicus.wordpress.com/ so that if the main blog goes down again (like what just happened with the Daily SPUF, scaring the crap out of everyone) I’ll at least have my work.
  3. Electra City is done except for music, which a musician friend of mine is doing. Says they’ll be done in the next few days. All righty…
  4. I’ve enrolled in this and I’m fucking terrified. It claims to be for beginner/amateur game developers, but look at that syllabus! C++, trigonometry, Blender…they’re not fucking around. But summer’s over, now we’re in sink or swim territory. Wish me luck.

 

Hey man. I think we would have started an open relationship.

Posted by aabicus on

Special thanks to my phone’s auto fill suggestions for providing the title of this post. Lord knows I had no better ideas.

In 48 hours I’ll be on a plane to California. I’ve spent 1 year plugging away at Austin, Texas, and while I’ve learned loads of new skills and earned certifications from online classes, I just can’t seem to make it stick, and I’m switching pastures. And in particular, I have my sights on Overwatch. The Blizzard team designing that game lives in Irvine, so if I want to become a part of Overwatch from the inside my living options are quite short. In order to earn enough to afford an apartment in Irvine, I’m swallowing my pride and moving in with my parents so I can build up an income without losing rent and food money.

 

But I cannot make this decision without admitting that it terrifies me. One of the few things I had was my forward movement, and this move isn’t nearly as cut-n-dried as the one that brought me to Austin. I cannot deny the obvious elements of convenience and shirking of responsibility that come with living with my parents. We all know that guy who coasts through life, never advancing and coattailing on family and friends indefinitely. I need to be absolutely sure I don’t fall into that rut.

 

But it honestly might be too late. I don’t have nearly enough of a plan to justify this move. I’m leaving hundreds of dollars of furniture and electronics that I couldn’t fit into my duffel and carry through the airport. My friends in Austin are going to miss me, and I’m pretty sure I killed a serious opportunity with one who’s more romantically compatible with me than anyone I’ve ever met. Am I giving up too soon? What exactly is my plan to attract Blizzard once I’m in California? Why aren’t I applying for them right now, here in Austin, so I could maybe get the job and move then?

I dunno. But the tickets bought and time moves steadily onward. My guts telling me this is the right call. I’d grown complacent in Austin, scraping by via nude modeling and an underpaid customer service job, and with Lyft and uber departing the city I don’t have the transportation options I need to travel throughout this city. The extremely sensitive line between forwarding myself and becoming a stagnant NEET might be the mental trepidation I need, and my parents house will keep that thought constantly on the forefront of my mind. On July 1st I unpack, and July 2nd I start jobhunting. I will continue my classes, I’ll continue shoutcasting Overwatch scrims daily, and I’ll apply to Blizzard every opportunity I can.

 

In other news, the Steam Summer Sale finally gave me the chance to buy the Clickteam Fusion HTML5 exporter. I’m excited to finally upload some of my games to Itch.io. I finished my most controversial Flora story yet and got great reactions from my readers, it’s called “5 Stages of Flora” and you can read it in the codex I linked last article.

I’ll miss Austin. I’ll miss my exercycle. I’ll miss this period of my life. But I never expected it to be permanent, and while friends can hypothetically lead to career advancement opportunities, it’s pretty clear these arent. Onward and outward.

Insert Title here

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.

1412sweet_1__90747.1406663850.1280.1280

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.

1119

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.

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.

:/

Posted by aabicus on

So today I called tech support so they could walk me through installation of my new parts (I was gonna try to install my new fan myself and immediately smeared the thermal paste. Fucking boss technician right there) and they put me on hold for 4 hours. Then after four hours, they were closed. So thanks for that guys. And of course tomorrow’s sunday, and tech support doesn’t open till monday, so yippikiyay i get to be desktop-less for another 48 hours. I’m so frustrated by my inability to do all my shit, its really hard to keep my tone level. But can’t be helped. I’ll let y’all know once i have a working desktop so i can run programs more intensive than Payday the Heist.