Hi everyone!
It’s been 1.5 months since the last update again, so it’s time for a new one. This time, I have some exciting news!
In the previous post, I mentioned that I was on a game project course. Well, at the time of writing, I still am, although now we’re wrapping things up. We’ve now released the game we’ve worked on throughout this year: Bad Feather Day, a small low-poly 3D adventure game in which you control Tengu, a wizard who has been turned into a bird with human arms. By punching and throwing bananas, you need to defeat your enemies in order to obtain the means of turning back into a human. You can download the game for free on itch.io here: https://windysilver.itch.io/bad-feather-day
This project course has been quite a ride. I’ve learned a ton of things both about developing game in a team and about doing code for Unity games. Out of the three programmers in the team, I was the least experienced and I’d be lying if I said that impostor syndrome didn’t haunt me in the beginning. Now, however, I can fortunately say that the impostor syndrome is only a distant memory as copious amounts of Google Fu and a bucketload of successes have built both my skillset and confidence. There’s so much I have learned that making a list of it would take a lot of time and space, so I will not go into that.
Honestly, this course is definitely among my favourite courses so far. Although we’ve had crunch days when we’ve worked on the game for hours at a time and even times when something vital has broken – for example, the first time we were supposed to have a testable prototype out, we were crunching on the same day as the testing event, and our main scene broke twice not long before the event was supposed to start – we’ve also had fun together. We actually got to meet up one day to record audio for the game (and also play some games afterwards) and it was a ton of fun! On a side note, I actually ended up giving my voice to the monkey and parrot enemies during that meeting!
Such a great team that we formed was a true blessing, since it made the weekly meetings and, actually, everything about the course far less of a chore. If I were to change something about how things were done, I’d change something like how we operated in the beginning – such as better communication on who’s working on the scenes – but not the team itself. Despite of the challenges, we succeeded at finishing the game on time and I, for one, am proud of it (the code could be better, but for a product of a learning process, it does its job well enough). The end result is quite different from the ambitious idea we started from; in the original concept, Tengu was meant to gain his human parts back one by one, with the game’s emphasis more on exploration rather than action and the prototype having at least the level after he had regained his arms – but it is one I am proud to say to have been a part of making. I may have noted to someone aloud that it’s a game I am proud to showcase with my own face (as opposed to just hiding behind the picture of a windy silver banana as I tend to do).
Now that this project is done, now what? Well, this is the penultimate course for me this period, so once I’m done with the other course, I’ll focus on two online courses that I need to finish in order to get my Bachelor’s degree (given that two courses I’m still waiting to hear about and the last course of this period yield me passing grades). As for my paper for the degree, I got the results yesterday: it’s passing with the grade 3 (on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is the best). If everything goes well with the releasing process, it should become available online in a few days. It’s written in Finnish, though, so I may opt not to share it since I reckon most people who are reading this don’t know the language.
Aside from the courses, I’ll put more focus on my art projects; I’ll resume working on things that have received little to no attention for the last weeks and finish my next FFM collection (which is, by the way, pretty close to being finished, so I might very well be able to finish it within May). On the hobbyist IT side, I’m planning to do some web programming things to get a firmer grasp on full stack development and have something to show next time I apply for jobs since I was unable to get a summer job this year. Hopefully when I have my bachelor’s degree and some more experience and projects under my belt, I’ll have better luck finding a job. I’ll probably find myself in the grasp of impostor syndrome once again when I venture to the job market, but my experiences with the game project course have taught me that I am capable of learning enough while working on something to leave that pesky thing to bite the dust. Once I get my foot between the door and get some work experience, thing will start coming along from there for sure.
The experiences I’ve gotten from this project course are valuable, but the hope and confidence that have come with those experiences are invaluable especially in these trying times. Although things are starting to look up at least here where I live, the pandemic is still ongoing and will most likely be for some time. It’s easy to lose hope when the end isn’t clearly in sight, but it’s there. We just need to hang on for some time more before things get back to normal. They will definitely get back to normal someday, and I’m definitely looking forward to being able to return to the campus and see my friends.
Onwards to new experiences and successes!
Now, let’s have a look at how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 4 of Aces is in progress. All writing is at 1788 days. Jedova’s reference has been at a standstill most of the time because more often than not I haven’t found the time to work on it. I need to make a comic about Valentine Clanker and lots of other drawings. I’ve been creating data on Scrivener to build a wiki of sorts there so that I can flesh things out for writing. It hasn’t been progressing at all recently, though. Revising is still in a standtill.
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 44 is in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. Revising needs to be done.
- Off-DA projects: As detailed above, the game project course’s game, Bad Feather Day, has been finished and released! Woohoo!
- Greenfield: Due to studies taking too much energy, I haven’t edited this much. I’m currently working on editing chapter 3. Read more about the project here.
- Lyokostar: The translation of Lyokostar 1 progresses: Part 10 of story 6 is in betareading. The monthly Lyokostar 3 oneshots in Finnish are on a hiatus because nobody cares. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: I worked on this a little because Pokémon Masters EX‘s Father or Foe event spurred me to do something, but I didn’t get around to posting anything. I might have gotten more done by the end of the quarter.
- Gaming: Habitica, Duolingo, Pokemon GO and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I played a little of Subnautica Below Zero, but I decided to say the rest of playing after the out-of-Early-Access launch (which was earlire this month). I’ll probably play it more during the summer. I also dabbled a little with Tabletop Simulator with hopes that I could use it for hosting some Star Wars Force and Destiny RPG sessions online, but otherwise not much has happened.
- Other stuff: I’m still pretty badly behind with literature deviations because I can’t read them on DA without getting a headache from the eye strain, but I have gotten some FFM stories read. I’m working on my fourth FFM collection. Reading is still in a standstill on the book side since I’ve spent my reading time online, but I hope I’ll be able to pick up the remaining Death Note volumes and read them in the summer. I’ve been doing stuff on Unity because of Bad Feather Day and I’ve learned a ton of stuff, and I also did one animation on Blender for Bad Feather Day. I should get back to video editing.
- Personal life: As usual, I’ve been drowning in studies as I’m trying to finish my bachelor’s degree during 2021, so there isn’t much to tell. COVID is still going on and I’ll continue waiting for the vaccine; it’s very likely that I’ll get my degree before I have a proper reason to go to the campus again since I have hopes that I’ll be able to get the degree during the summer period.
Thanks for reading this post! Take care!
WindySilver 