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

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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

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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%

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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.

Day 73

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Today we made a brick in GIMP, but fuck GIMP I read the comments and bitches used paint.net so im using Paint.net for the following reasons:

  1. fuck gimp
  5. also fuck gimp

See you next video.

:/

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.

Happy April

Posted by aabicus on

We’re getting things back on board. I happily took March off. I was juggling too many things. I still am, but many of them are wrapping up and I’m getting better at juggling my time. Today I had a large list of 8 things that needed to happen and I’m scrambling to get them all done. Also I didn’t get a dream job at Bioware so suddenly this becomes my lifeline for feeling like a real game developer

And another thing happened that’s been keeping me from my work in more ways that just this one:

 

 

My computer fan just arrived today, so I plan on rectifying that problem ASAP. Can’t well do too much until then, however.

day 72

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Rewatched the video on Blender art. I really need to get back to those Blender videos. Wouldn’t it be cool to know how to create assets like that? I’ve just been pretty downtrodden these past few days. Hard to get back into the swing of things. But I’ll get there. Eventually. 🙂

So my friend tried to show me Flashpoint and I was legitimately interested in what sounded like an interesting premise for a show. Plus the main character is Nick from Left 4 Dead 2.

[The first episode opens with a hostage situation. A man in a busy street has a woman held hostage, a gun pointed at her temple. Police have roadblocks but are keeping their guns lowered.]
Man: Don’t you come any closer or I’ll shoot!
Police: Don’t do anything rash now etc etc
[Cut to Nick perched on a rooftop. He’s got a sniper rifle and the crazy guy in his sights. But the guy’s waving his arms and making it a difficult shot with the hostage.]
Man: That’s it! I’m gonna shoot her!
Police guy (through radio): Nick, take the shot!
[Nick starts to squeeze the trigger as the music crescendos–]
[Immediate cut to Nick’s happy family eating breakfast with him. Caption: Two days earlier.

Aaand I turned it off. I hate that narrative copout so much, and so many shows use it. I remember first seeing it used in the “Tabula Rasa” episode of Stargate Atlantis when I was 17 and hating it there too. It’s a cheap ploy to start the story with something exciting and then dial it back to the “real” beginning which is boring tripe that would make everyone change the channel were it the actual beginning. In that case, maybe consider writing a decent beginning instead using more creative ways to display the character dynamics and information. Otherwise you’re wasting your audience’s time with the plot equivalent of clickbait “Number 15 will shock you!” titles. They’re riding entirely on the audience sitting through bullcrap thinking “I don’t care what’s happening right now, I just want to see how that forced cliffhanger is resolved!”

Day 71 or something, didn’t check

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Okay so I think the interview went fucking amazingly. There were definitely things I said that made me look less than perfect, but I think they got a taste of who I was, and if they don’t hire me, I know I couldn’t have done better.

Yesterday had its own weird event when I got hired for my first ever freelancing nude modeling gig. It was at a shadowy place I’d never heard of starting at 7:30pm and with higher pay than normal ($25/hour!) so I was kinda scared it was like a snuff film or something, but they turned out to be great people and I’m totally game to return whenever. So that worked out.

And with its departure, I’m all out of excuses to not keep doing Unity videos, so we’re restarting Block 4 and leaping back into Brick Buster. Today I rewatched in intro video and cycled 30 minutes and so stay tuned for daily updates again! You nonexistent readers are so patient with me :3