Zheph

Got one. Step 2 please.

What was your step 1 for your journey learning piano?

I saw someone say "of" is short for "have". We are truly lost as a society.

😭

I'm trying to transition from game player to game developer but this year's releases are making it very hard and they need to stop.

I call it Phantom Cat Syndrome. Except there doesn't even have to be anything there, sometimes I just hallucinate a cat in my peripheral and when I look, nothing.

As far as Australian wildlife goes, I actually think it's fairly safe here. There's a difference between things that CAN kill you and things that WANT to kill you. Sure, everything here CAN kill you, but we don't have many big predators that WANT to kill you.

Wicked Witch of the West vibes.

Spotted cat fits perfectly cradled in an arm.

This is why I'm late for things.

He is covered in fur.

Oh, ok.

HUNTING HORN FOREVER!

Imagine if, in Monster Hunter, they removed your favourite weapon from the game because it was considered weak. That'd be pretty crazy, huh?

And to cap off week 5, drawing on what I've learned so far, I made this wave effect which distorts geometry based on proximity to a target object.

Week 5: Delved into the world of shaders, creating this orb (tutorial-guided but also my own additions), which is kind of mesmerising to look at...

Also week 4, finished following a 27 hour YouTube series on making a Slay The Spire clone from scratch. Didn't really take many creative liberties with this one but learned a lot! Series found here, highly recommended if you're leaving the beginner stage of learning: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulgh...

Belated week 4 + 5 game dev learning journey update:

Week 4: Building upon week 3, recreated some mechanics from FFXIV interacting with the latency simulated character.
You might recognise Crystallize Time and also a tether mechanic thrown in.
Also wrote my first shader (the AoE effect).

Couple that with the fact that I do contribute to causes where and when I can. I pick my fights, but no one can fight every fight.

I love being told I have a responsibility to X or Y cause. Brother, I'm just trying to survive and feed my cat. Being made aware of something doesn't immediately make you responsible for it.

I think the way I've set up the latency simulator means I could also send the movement commands over a network for multiplayer, so it's a step in that direction as well for the future.

Week 3 learning game dev update: Took what I learned from the book I finished last week and made a latency simulator that can be set to varying amounts to see the effect. Also understanding how to draw a circle by representing the sines and cosines individually with the blue, red and green dots.

Week 2 learning game dev update: Basic tutorials aren't really sufficient anymore. They all teach the same concepts, just wrapped up in different packages. So now I'm reading books and following long-form educational content to get a more holistic understanding of game development.

In essence, they fired me as a content creator for their game (or made me redundant), and forced me to do something else with my life. When one door closes, another one opens. I just hope the one I'm walking through leads somewhere better.

It may turn out that I look back and realise the FFXIV devs reworking Paladin was the best thing they could've done for me, because it made me not want to play their game anymore.

By the way, I've been streaming my entire learning process on Twitch. If you were interested in getting into game dev, yourself, I break down everything I'm learning into plain English, so I genuinely believe anyone could learn alongside me and get a pretty good understanding.

The seed has been planted in my head that one day I'd love to attend PAX AUS not as an attendee, but as part of the showcase. Getting into game dev is something I've been thinking and talking about for years, but now it's finally happening.

I'm quite pleased with how the end result feels to play, but as tempting as it might be to jump into trying to build a game around these movement mechanics, I still have much to learn, especially about the correct way to do things. Not going to get ahead of myself.

What one week of learning game dev looks like. Obviously I followed a tutorial for the basic set-up and assets, but I added custom jumping physics, coyote time (grace period after leaving a ledge), variable jump height, double jumps, wall jumps, dashing, and bonus jumps (from collecting coins).

I mean... you never know when stuff like that might come in handy. Gotta collect this stuff like in an MMO.

People that accept that are willing to allow algorithms, now and into perpetuity, to play with the minds of people, finding the optimal way for them to feel good - completely devoid of emotional connection.