Well, I have not been very good in updating this blog, and to my 3 readers I am deeply sorry. Travel is an intense and challenging experience, and one that lays waste to good habits. Its worth it off course, but alas I have neglected my professional development in the past few weeks. I hope to be much more prolific in the coming period, and my goal is to push out my first 3D game by mid May. It is a good opportunity to practice my modeling skills again, which are currently slowly rotting from disuse. More writing is in order as well – my fingers itch to write and I know I have grown worse in the absence of practice.
Quick update on the rest of my life: I’m currently at Leicester university, studying away. My units are:
Compression methods for multimedia – a fascinating course on the optimal ways to represent data. Highly recommended, and I think invaluable if I were ever to have to work on network applications.
Operating systems, distributed systems – concurrent programming and memory management seem to be the overarching theme here. Also very interesting, and I think I’m finally getting my head around threading.
Software engineering project – a fairly unremarkable project, but with a good group of people.

In May, I’ll be traveling around Europe for a month. In April, at this point, I’m going to be traveling around America for 2 months. So I’m incredibly excited for the next few months.

If one is to tell stories, one must have them.

Getting trapped at university for 4 hours gave me the opportunity to do some drawing. I did this one totally from my imagination which is very rare for me. Absolutely no reference – and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Music for this post is Shadows by the ever funky Midnight Juggernauts.

I am so sorry about that middle one.

OH GOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER FAAAAACE.

Music for this post is Paris by M O O N.

Today I did a bit of writing. It’s that thing where you sit down and stare at your keyboard and wonder why the hell did we invent this bloody language thing anyway I mean damn it’s hard to use well. “Saudade” is a fascinating Portuguese word that, according to Wikipedia “describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.” The poor things is only 800 words so give it a chance.

Chances here.

Music for this post is Orange Colored Sky by Nat King Cole.

This right here is a post for all the little tidbits I never got around to posting. Call it a “2012-roundup” if you will. And what a rollercoaster of a year it has been! Also attached: a little bit about what I’m doing next year.

Felix: Chronicles of a Shadow

This sexy beast of a video is a little demo of a 2D stealthy platformer I got to about 15% earlier this year. To be honest I cannot recall why I stopped development – perhaps because it just didn’t turn out to be amazingly fun? Still, a good learning experience! Perhaps I’ll get it going again sometime!

Tram People and Stuff

Because I like to look like an utter wanker, I sometimes draw on public transport. This is a little gallery of all the poor, poor souls who have caught my eye on the tram this year. More next year? If I don’t get arrested for leering at strangers, yes!

Unused Game Assets

I often start out on a little prototype which fails to really grab me in the end, leaving many little sad and alone assets sitting in my folders. Therefore I present to you a collage of said assets in all their rough glory:

Next Solar Cycle

Rather exciting stuff next year. I will be going on exchange to the University of Leicester next year from January to May. In early January I’ll be doing a tour with the guys from Topdeck, which I’m pretty excited about. This will be the first time in my adult life I’ve been in Europe! Everything hasn’t quite gone to plan regarding the trip, but I’m still pretty excited to live in a different country for six months. Well, that’s pretty much everything I can think of, dear Reader. New Year’s Resolution is to DO MORE WRITING, get fit (haha you say, but I’ll have you know I’m 5 weeks into an exercise regime without 1 missed day!), and generally just be happy, motivated, mindful and productive. Merry Whatever to you all!

The music for this post is Cohen’s Masterpiece by Gary Schuman.

I have a very long list of things that I sometimes do when I’m bored, and on that list, somewhere, is making tshirts for Threadless. This is one I made today which I would personally buy. What do you think? And yes, it is a Snoop Dogg reference, but damnit if the joke doesn’t work.

When/if it’s released for voting I shall let you know – and I hope you vote on it! I don’t really mind what score you give it, but vote!

Did you see that last picture of a cliff and wonder what might hav been below it? Probably not, right? Well here it is anyway.

Yo, chaps! Remember this post? Well here’s a totally-not-impressive-or-fun-or-functional prototype. Check it:

Idea: A game based on the travelling salesman problem, where the user must determine the shortest path connecting all given nodes. Thrown into the mix are walls (red), optional nodes (don’t have to be connected to complete) AND a level editor! Optimised for mobile devices, very touchscreeny. Start dragging from any node and connect them all with the shortest distance possible. For the editor: click the type of node you want to place, then where you want it. Placed nodes can be dragged around, or dragged to the top to destroy. You’ll need to make your own levels at this point. Have fun!