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Showing posts from 2018

Sketches from the airport

The San Jose International airport is my new place to hangout and I'm not even going anywhere- I ride along this bike path near the airport- then lock my bike and walk into the airport- I sit near this piano - Last week this guy with a long white beard played the piano epically and then winked at me after- I'm pretty sure he was a time traveller but then again I'm really not- my brother in law thinks it was me from the future but we'll never know..... I try to go to the airport every weekend- its a nice place to think/draw and come up with ideas- So I recommend your local airport as a creative hangout- fancy hotel lounges are great hangouts too- Here's the rest of my airport sketches from the last weekend in 2018

Unity/Game dev notes + book recommendations

I'm now finished with most all of the programming for my big game project- all the code required for the entire game has been completed- I'm sure some small things will pop up and there's still a lot of testing to be done by third parties BUT all the components I need to make the game are done- Working on this, the second iteration of this game and the first one using C# scripts instead of Playmaker fsm's for everything started out pretty chaotic- When I started it I knew a little bit about programming but NOTHING about clean programming- I had huge classes that did all sorts of things- my data was mixed with my logic- it was a mess- I kept working through it though- refactoring as I learned more- Now my classes are much more modular- I finally got it- when you start out you are so excited to get things working you ignore your working practices- instead you want to "finish" the script/mechanic and move on to the next one- leaving behind a hodgepod

Why did I scrap the previous version of my big game project?

Sometimes you start projects over because you are stuck in a loop of --> This project is fucked If I start over now with what I know it will be better Start over and rebuild it better than it was before Proceed to fuck up project Go back to step 1 ( Spelunky dude Derek Yu writes about that trap and many more useful things here ) On the previous version of this project I liked how it was going BUT the iterative process was SO SLOW and the "code" at the time which was made up mostly of Playmaker state machines was a MESS- I knew nothing of code architecture at the time- so yeah it was a nightmare- Now that the project is back up to speed and humming along better than ever I thought I would show some proof of the improvement- A note about speed- in game design- the speed/ease of iteration can make or break a project- so a slow iteration time just kills the project and your motivation- The Unity startup time is the time from pressing play in Unity

I updated my site with some things you might have missed

I'm not the best at presenting my completed works ^_^ I made a new site at mdotstrange.com you can check out. There are probably some things there that you haven't seen before so go take a look! I'm still working on my big game project which is going really well- to prevent burnout and to give me some much needed breathing space from the project I've decided to work on other projects on the weekends- So far my weekend project Queue includes: Visual novels, a regular novel, new strange school full courses, and music of course- *Geek notes I made the site using the new Google sites- which I think is a brilliant web design tool- After using it for five minutes I cancelled my old/slow/expensive web host and moved my sites over to Google sites- So if you need a site (Which if your only web presence is in a walled garden like DouchebergBook etc you should probably have a site on the open internet)

The Circle Closes In: A strange visual novel

I kicked out a new visual novel called "The Circle Closes In" I would say this is my first "real" one- the Anime one was just me messing with the tools- Here is the trailer And you can download it here There's a few unpublished scripts that I have that I'm considering turning into visual novels- And I'm going to finally turn this story idea I've had for years into a regular novel on the side- My current work plans are to work on my big video game M-F and work on visual novels on the weekends- Anyway- the strange train keeps going- full steam ahead! ^_^ Expect more everything-

Anime Flesh Invasion : A level IV super senior visual novel

I took a day off from my current game project to make my first visual novel "Anime Flesh Invasion" You can download and "play" it on my video game page thing  Geek notes: I made it using Ren'Py  in a day - its an awesome little program! If you have a wacky little story you want to make that would work as a visual novel give it a try! It exports the executable you can then upload on itch.io like I did- I got almost all the art for free here at Cloudnovel and made most of the music in 10 minutes in Ableton- The Ren'py language was designed for non programmers so its really easy to use- though it does get a little tedious with longer stuff- Anyway- I'm back to work!

The man without a phone

The man without a phone There once was a man that never owned a dumb mobile phone, let alone a smart one. When he told people this they looked at him like he was a freak that was missing all the fun. Day after day- the man without a phone watched peoples behavior change, to him they started to seem quite deranged. They stared at their hands day and night- at these small screens and the apparent world of wonder inside. They ignored their children, they ignored their pets, they didn't notice the man with the knife walking behind them about to blood lett. These people seemed so nervous, bothered, and anxious when they weren't using their device- They seemed like they were addicts- and without their drug they were lost little test subject mice- On the street the man without a phone still says "Hi" to anyone on the sidewalk- most don't hear him or they ignore this unscheduled biological human voice talk. But they always hear their phone- Once th

Strange update 10-22-18 : Low level design pain + pain

One of my new friends I bought for $15 Hello there to anybody that still reads this old blog or might be reading 100 years in the future- It's been some time since I wrote anything here- I have been posting pretty regularly on my youtube channel though- Ok, so where are we in October 2018? I'm still working on my big game thing- latest video on that here I'm through the majority of the coding for the game OR SO I THOUGHT I WAS...more on that later ^_^ I've been learning/working on games for 4+ years now... I brought my wealth of experience from film/animation/music etc into this venture BUT it only helped me a little.... why? I've found that when making "static" things like film/animation/music/writing you are forgiven for your lapses in organization because once individual parts (scenes animated, chapters written, music recorded) have been finished they cannot be "broken" Now, in order to complete the static projects I did I

A postcard to you + I'm back as a biological human

I started making Youtube videos as a biological human again... As of right now (7-20-18) I have 9 hand drawn postcards left to give away- if you would like one just send me a mailing address --> mdotstrange@gmail.com I've got a new feature film on tap to go along with my big game project and I'm going to document both from here forward- Since I don't use the CANCER that is the current iteration of social media (besides Youtube) I don't post photos anywhere but here- here are some photos from my recent trip to Japan with my wife and brother in law- Breakfast in Shirakawa-go Biological me and biological wife(YRY) These nice guys gave us a free lesson in playing these Noh drums in a Noh museum in Kanazawa Museum of old stuff in Takayama Amazing pond full of tadpoles, frogs, newts, draonfly nymphs+++ in Shirakawa-go Your friend the puppet master waiting for the toilet A nice view Back to work for me, M.

Strange little things matter in life

Sometime around 1997 a friend and I were driving through our neighborhood on our way to see a movie or play basketball- I can't quite remember which- anyway- I spotted a doll head in the gutter and asked my friend to stop the car- I got out and retrieved the doll head- I put it on the floorboards of my friends car- we went and did whatever we did and I took the doll head home- At the time I was making live action short films using the name "SomeGuy"- I was just beginning to play around with animation- I kept the doll head on my desk- this is some old album art where you can see the doll head sitting with my stuff way back when- In that photo next to the doll head are some Barbie parts I found in the street- they had been run over a few times which gave them this nice texture that made it looked like they were burnt- asphalt road rash burn- Why I am I talking about this stuff? I kept that doll head around and started using it in my weird little animations

Death, Grief, Cats, Weighted randoms, Hope

I just realized that I haven't written any non code text in a long time. It feels strange to write without syntax or without a specific problem to solve. I should say that I am writing this in an attempt to deal with a problem. The problem is grief- the grief that comes with the death or imminent death of a pet. I haven't had that many close human friends in my life but I've always had cat friends- I've had them my whole life. My last cat, Sneakers- died under mysterious circumstances- we found him dead on the sidewalk in front of our house the day after we came home from Iceland to attend the funeral of my wife's father. My wife's fathers death was a huge shock- our cat being killed right after felt like being kicked when you are down- I thought he had been hit by a car, but my neighbor told me that he had been killed by a mentally ill homeless man- I later found a man that fit the decription who claimed that he suffered from "demoni