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Electronic Media Maker Man




As I continue to iterate through 7 day game prototypes and improve as a programmer a desire to exercise my filmmaking/animation skills has bubbled up-

This is my life right now- well this and working out-


As you can see its art free- my prototypes are just code and un-textured prim's- maybe being in this art desert is making me want to make vivid things?

I've got another music video to do soon but....

My current game prototype is my first foray into procedural generation and online multiplayer- it's going pretty well and might stick and become a real game- but if it doesn't I'll discard it and move onto another-



I'm getting a lot better at coding and my understanding of game development is evolving and it's all starting to make sense to me- Here's some books I've read recently I can recommend

Clean Code
This is probably the best book on programming I've read- it will help make your code easier to read/work with + make more sense to you and other

The Pragmatic Programmer
This is the second best book on programming I've read

Designing Games: A guide to engineering experiences
This book is EXCELLENT- it helped me understand what games really are and how to approach designing them- I highly recommend it



My journey is game dev has been interesting- I started out now knowing how to code at all- I jumped into Playmaker and became really good with it- I built some pretty complex mechanics with it BUT I know nothing of proper code architecture- then I learned how to code and built some messes that worked(Like my WeirdoWare toy thing here)

And then I started to study proper code architecture and NOW I can finally make things that work and are easy to work with- so my best work lies ahead starting with my current prototype ^_^

I was hanging out with a friend from back in my "SomeGuy" days I hadn't seen in a long time recently and he didn't even know I had made my 2014 film "I am Nightmare" so I flipped through it and showed him some scenes-

As I was watching it- I was thinking to myself "I could do this so much better now" - I saw so many opportunities for improvement- so it got me sort of interested in making another feature film to see what I could do now-

NOW that is NOT a good reason to make a "film"- I should have a story that I want to tell that pushes me to make it NOT because I want to test myself-

I have a few feature scripts I wrote that I never produced sitting around but they aren't really grabbing me- I'd have to write something new- but I'm more interested in a film that writes and directs itself-




SO when I think about "films" I'd HAVE to produce it in Unity and then I get to thinking about this narrative AI engine I've worked on and off one the past few years and I'm like "BACK TO THAT ENGINE SO I CAN MAKE IT IN THAT!" It still needs a lot of work-

I'm planning to do a 7 day proto with it in the next two months-

Just for fun I might make a little animated short film in Unity- I'm really interested in releasing "films" as executables and adding interactivity- I feel like I can bring something interesting to it given my background as an animator/filmmaker and now with my coding abilities-

There's been some related things brewing in my notebooks for some time but I have so many game ideas and prototypes to build first- once I'm settled in I'm sure I'll start producing a ton of stuff-

This week I was learning how to use interfaces and abstract and virtual methods which are nice to know- this youtube channel has some great Unity/coding tutorials

Speaking of Youtube- some time in the next few months I'm going to return to making video blog type videos- I stopped making those years ago- I enjoy watching a few conversational type youtube channels when I have a chance so I can see the value in them-

I also have a few application/service ideas that involve creators and crypto-currency that I haven't seen made yet so if I get the time I'd like to build those too-

Well, that's the end to this update-

I hope you all are well and I'd like to send a special hello to Tim out there in London ^_^ Thanks for your comment on my last post- I almost don't believe you ran into someone else in London who knew my logo haha- it must have been Alexi!

Best,

M dot Strange








Comments

  1. Glad to see you are getting better at coding in Unity. It's a steep path, but with your will power I know you'll become a master. As for reasons for making films - because you want to. Doesn't matter why. Justing making them is reason enough, IMO.

    Psyched about you doing more YT videos. I always loved those. Reminds me of late night crazy radio dis I listened to when I was a boy. I think people would really like your video updates.

    Personally, I would love to learn filmmaking in Unity. A tutorial would be awesome. I haven't the slightest idea how to set up a process for this kind of filmmaking, but really want to try my hand at it.

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