Just to let you know…

So, if you’re following this blog and wondering why the posts have stopped, it’s because I’m documenting my second semester’s work on a separate blog, titled Crowence Game Development.

If you want to keep up with my more recent work, you can do so by following me on this new blog, which can be reached by clicking the link below:

crowencegamedev.wordpress.com

I hope I’ll see you there, but whether you do or not, thanks for checking out my blog. Have a good one.

Semester Reflection

I don’t know how I feel about this semester. It’s had enough peaks and troughs to be officially classified as a mountain range, and while I’ve been pleased with how a number have things have gone, I’ve been generally unsatisfied for a number of reasons.

The Final Week

Having finished last week’s post before heading to bed on Monday night, this week technically began on Tuesday. I headed to the studio relatively early in the morning, as per usual. For a chunk of the day, I went over my earliest blog posts, highlighting key phrases and sentences (and making some slight edits where I noticed the wording was wrong). This took me longer than I’d hoped, but I felt it was necessary, as it was based on feedback that Adam had given me to improve my blog posts a good while ago. Once I’d finished doing that, I made sure that all of my blog posts were categorised properly (split into phases), and then changed the blog’s menu system to make it easier to reach particular posts at any given time. After I’d finished tweaking the blog, I started contributing to the team’s GPP. Throughout the day, I was often feeling extremely unhappy, although I understood that the week of hand-in is probably the worst time to be spending time doing little other than staring at walls. After feeling particularly bad during the evening, I went to bed.

The Fifteenth Week

During Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, I worked on finishing off my Writing to Publication pieces, ready to have them checked by Calum in our final session in the afternoon. During this final session, Calum looked over my work (while I looked at his upcoming book), and told me a few things that needed changing. Thankfully, I didn’t need to redo any of the pieces, so I was able to make a few finishing touches and hand it in later in the afternoon. Parts of the day were also spent trying to help others with their submissions (as it was due the following day), and I was also quite unhappy at times, and thus struggled to get much else done. I ended up going to bed relatively early, as I’d been very much behind on sleep for a while, so didn’t get any work done during the evening.

The Fourteenth Week

While I intended for this week to be comprised of a mix between programming work for the main project and writing work for Writing to Publication (which is due on the coming Tuesday), I accepted the fact that I’m prone to feeling unhappy and incapable of getting anything done at times. Therefore, I wasn’t particularly surprised that that became the case at numerous points throughout the week, sometimes for large chunks of the day. While I did want to get main project work done during the week, the earlier deadline for Writing to Publication meant that I felt that I needed to focus on getting that work out of the way before being able to shift my attention towards the main project. It ended up being the case that after finishing last week’s blog post on Monday (and celebrating New Year’s Eve with friends), I spent the rest of the week working on Writing to Publication pieces and feeling unhappy. Suffice to say, I did not make any progress with my work on the main project this week.

The Thirteenth Week

I started the week on Monday with the genuine intention of getting work done, though it was Christmas Eve. I still had to draft and write my family’s cards, but intended on getting on with Writing to Publication work or programming afterwards. I ended up spending a chunk of the day feeling less than great, but some good company helped me to feel better. It wasn’t until the evening that I finished the cards, however, so I didn’t get any work done that day. It’s safe to say that I didn’t work on Christmas Day (Tuesday), and I also didn’t get any work done on Boxing Day (Wednesday), though I think it’s safe to say I enjoyed the better parts of both days. I hope your Christmas (or whichever holiday you choose to celebrate) was decent, too.

The Twelfth Week

Since I finished writing the previous blog post in the early hours of Wednesday morning, this week technically began in the less early hours of Wednesday morning. I went into the studio to work on editing my Writing to Publication work (based on feedback from Calum). I took quite a while to make the changes, since I wasn’t massively in the mood for working on that stuff, and eventually had to buy some cards and head to my CBT session. I didn’t get any more work done that evening, so there’s not really anything more to say about Wednesday.

The Eleventh Week

When I went into the studio on Monday morning (quite early, as usual), I didn’t really get a lot done at first. Bernie spoke to me about an idea he’d had, in which the player would have to synchronise with characters by matching patterns with the analogue stick, with different patterns in each scenario. I disagreed with the notion of treating musical interactions as distinct minigames, saying to Bernie that I’d prefer for the player to have a consistent toolset so that they learn how to naturally synchronise with characters and represent different emotions, as they would with a real instrument (though I don’t feel that the game’s interactions need to be as complex as playing particular instruments in reality).

The Tenth Week

I began the week on Monday morning by spending more time working on the book proposal for Writing to Publication. When the session itself began in the afternoon, there weren’t many of us there (as no new content was planned to be covered), and after giving us a farewell speech and recapping the different things we’d covered throughout the semester, Calum gave me some feedback for what I’d done, telling me what needed changing. After that session, I found that my mind simply wasn’t set on work, and struggled to get much done. I briefly tried tampering with the mechanical prototype I’d made to represent synchronisation, thinking of how to tackle Adam’s request to prevent the player’s bar from snapping between the top and bottom positions when turning the stick, but I wasn’t able to get very far with it. With my mind remaining elsewhere, I also struggled to get anything done in the evening.

The Ninth Week

I began the week on Monday with an early start in the studio, spending some time keeping my professional website and social media up to date with some of my more recent work. After that, I put some more time into my book proposal for Writing to Publication before the week’s session. During the Writing to Publication session itself, we looked at reflective writing, and how we could go about tackling the reflective piece that comes as part of the module’s final submission. As well as how we could reflect on our work, we looked at why we should do so, and how it’s important to record evaluations and what’s been learnt for constant improvement. After that session, we spoke as a team about how we’d be tackling individual work on the project after the feedback that Adam had given us on Friday. I decided to work on the mechanical prototype I’d come up with for the team’s second idea, being a simple prototype in which the player must move a line vertically to match the rhythm of a line moving on a sine wave, rewarded with a sense of connection.