Right, first off, had my programming exam today, and I’m pretty happy with how it went. I’d have liked a few more seconds to add the last 3 damn lines I needed to finish it, but whatever, I’m confident I passed.

All I have to do is turn up to a graphics portfolio interview, and fingers crossed I’ve passed the year.

Anyway, I’m sitting here reading people’s plans, checked out Blitzs’ “Meet the Programmers” web chat which was pretty cool.

And suddenly, I’m very excited.

Why?

Because I have the whole summer to make a game. Properly this time.

I’m going to buy a calender for starters, just as a starting point so I can mark down any key events and plans.

Then I’m going to plan a game, properly. I mean planning it, ideas, and sticking to them. I’m going to plan when I do features, and I won’t do my experimentation, I want to seriously dedicate myself to making a game this summer. I don’t care if it’s a big or small game, I want to prove to myself I can do this.

First off, I want to finish my Android practice and get a game finished on that. This is just a case of porting, so I don’t really need to plan that too much. It’s a simple game anyway.

After that, this is when I want to start my planning. I’m going to stick to my plan of learning DX11, but I’m going to designated days and stuff like that.

I wouldn’t mind working with someone honestly. I’m not a designer at the end of the day, I’m a programmer, through and through. I just want to work on an official project.

Which just this second gave me an idea. I could do some kind of friday video update? Stuff that I’ve accomplished, learned, and other stuff like that?

Anyway, you can check out my Youtube channel and check out the recent videos I’ve uploading regarding Android. Despite it being a steep learning curve, it’s quite a neat thing to do, simply because I’ve realised how spoilt I am with PC resources.

I definitely want to use Youtube as some kind of creative outlet though, I want to share my experiences, but I don’t think I’m personally interesting enough, so maybe these update videos would be? Who knows, you let me know. ;D

Good luck to those with exams, and have a great summer!

So the results for Ludum Dare 23 - Tiny World were released yesterday.

1402 games submitted,

1072 in the compo,

Bamsquitch came 204th place overall.

In the ‘Fun’ catagory, it came 145th, and in humour, 194th.

I, am so bloody amazed it’s unreal. My goal was to get above 500, and 250 being the ultimate goal, but my god, I was so utterly… shocked.

I didn’t think it was that good, but I can’t complain.

This has done me a good thing actually, it’s verified that I can do what I want to do, I’m not a bad programmer, and that I might just actually make it as a game dev.

Sure, 200 isn’t 10th place, or 5th, but it’s baby steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.

Thank you Ludum Dare, for being so awesome.

Anyway, a life update is that I’ve finished all my Uni lessons, which is quite… odd. I feel weird about it, as if I should be doing something uni related, but I can’t think what. The only two things left are a Time Constrained Assignment (TCA) where I need to implement a design in 2 hours. (We did a mock one, I’m glad I did it, because I would have lost quite a few marks on the actual one doing the mistakes I did.) and finally, a Graphics portfolio interview to do. I’m half dreading that, and not. Mainly because I don’t think my portfolio is up to par, but we’ll see.

These are on the 21st and 28th respectively, so I have some time yet.

Anyway, I want to start Android ASAP, then DirectX immediately afterwards. I was thinking of refining my Allegro engine, but I don’t see much point honestly. I’ll just have to see during the second year.

Anyway, happy summer, and good luck to those who have exams!

I’m happy once again. :D

P.S on that note, I actually did some experimentation in VB.net yesterday, that was nostalgic, but it felt really good. The results weren’t really what I wanted, but I got some stuff to work. It seems that things I want to do are out of the reach of VB.net and most standard graphic libraries. Which is a good and bad thing.

Anyway, ciao!

So, I had a pretty rough day yesterday. I don’t want to go into it, because I basically screwed up and don’t want to bore you with it.

But, personally, it was pretty bad, and it really did a number on me. Emotionally too. So, I really have to change. I can’t stay laid back anymore. I need to find a way to motivate myself, and a way I want to do that, is by trying to work more, get a routine, and stuff like that.

I also want to rant less on this blog, but I had an idea about that.

I get a website, do cool stuff there, and rant here.

But I need a website, I keep asking people, but I just can’t make up my mind.

In any case, I need to sort my life out. If I want to be the best I can be, I need to stop thinking I am and prove it.

I complain a lot about other people, but in reality,

I’m just as bad.

Time to fix that… As long as I make it into Uni next year, which has been compromised pretty badly this week. I have seriously screwed up, very badly.

I’m really sorry about this post, but I really have to get something off my chest, and it’s really hard to complain about it to someone, because no matter what I say or do, I will seem like a stuck up bastard, and I’m really not. All I want to do is help people, and better myself not only as a person, but at what I do as well.

I’m a perfectionist, I will admit. But that does not make me arrogant.

It’s grinding on me more and more lately how petty people on my course are sometimes, and I’m finding myself actually judging myself more and more because of what they say about me. I knew I would get shit, but I didn’t expect it to grind on me as much as it does. People have said I’m ‘full of myself’, people beat down on me behind my back when I screw up.

So what if I screwed up? I’m not perfect, I just try to be when I can. Is that really so wrong? So wrong that I want to do well?

I’ve also been told that I don’t know anything about programming, be it by peers or a lecturer.

Yeah, I know I don’t know EVERYTHING, but I’m fairly confident in my ability so far. I’m not about to let people shit on my years of programming. That was mostly self-practice to begin with.

Now for my next peeve, which I really don’t want to talk about, because it’s going to sound awful:

People have admitted they’re jealous of me, or feel shit when compared to me. That’s a wonderful compliment, but at the same time, what can I say?

“Sorry you’re not as good as me”?

“Sorry you’re so bad”?

“Maybe you should try harder”?

I honestly can’t say anything that will bitchslap those people and not only make me feel like a pig, but a bad friend too.

I hate feeling like this. I just want to be proud of my work, without being looked down upon, or thinking that I’m some arrogant dick that thinks he’s better than everyone else.

It really doesn’t help that I have deadlines this week, and next, as well as an assignment and graphic portfolio interview. And if any of you have seen my art, you know it’s… not even a word bad enough to describe it.

I seem to be flitting between self-depression and stress every few minutes, and it’s really wearing me down. I just want to get to summer, where I can be left to my own devices.

Also, as of right now, I have 5 facebook chats open and 2 steam chats open, all asking for some kind of programming help. So I can’t be that bad.

If I have a mental breakdown over Twitter in a few days, you’ll probably know why.

Bamsquitch. Fantastic word, I’ll explain about it at a later date.

Anyway, I took part in Ludum Dare if you follow my twitter, and I’m going to bed, but you can see my latest post here.

need

sleep

I’ve been bragging a lot about taking part this last week.

But in the back of my mind, I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to take part.

I really have a lot of work to do between now and next friday, so much that I’m boarderline starting to worry.

I’m pretty confident I’ll get it all done though, but we’ll see.

I’m definitely going to be coding over the weekend, even if it’s just my assignment, who knows, I might stream it.

Only three weeks left… scary. So much I want to do though.

Anyway, on positive notes, I might be getting a new graphics card (Geforce GTX 680), learning electronics, and checking out a house tomorrow. (I can’t remember if I said I’m moving out. Pretty scary, but just another stage in life I suppose.)

I’m also hoping that this moving out thing might encourage me for more game devving, but who knows.

I’ve been getting a bit more tech savvy lately, which I’m pretty happy with. I’m quite happy to experiment with things I wouldn’t touch before. (Registery, bash script stuff, electronics, etc.) I’ve just always been scared of breaking things.

And I’m starting to get better at this whole object orientated programming thing. Definitely makes life easier.

Anyway, I’m procrastinating. Can’t wait to see what’s made for Ludum Dare this time. Although I honestly hate the majority of themes in the final round.

Oh well.

Don’t ask me how, seriously.

Well, with a lot of guess with with certain functions, I managed to get the right amount to generate this nice lighting system, it’s not fantastic and it’s definitely not next-gen or anything, but I’m certainly proud of myself, I never thought I’d be able to do something like that.

Well, enough talking about it, I couldn’t turn it into a gif, so you’ll have to make with a video:

So yeah, I’m pretty happy with that, especially how it all merges together, not sure if I’ll end up keeping it in the game, but it’s still good to know.

Okay so my experiments from yesterday and today resulted in this:

And:

The shade shows the paths it searched. It’s very quick, and very nice. I quite like it to be honest. I’m also pretty sure it’s A* path finding, but it might actually be Dijkstra. Not sure, but it works, so I’m happy.

Here’s hoping it earns me a few extra marks in my assignment which I will be avoiding today…