End of Week 9 01/17/25

In the beginning of this week, we wrapped up the mapper project. We got all the necessary parts in play, and it is pretty impressive. I am working on a video presentation now. It is possible that we return to it one day to refine and improve it, but we will move on for now.

The next phase of our journey is very interesting. I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but my true passion lies with entertainment. I have always wanted to produce art in some form for entertainment. Movies, books, comics, you name it. But video games are at the top of the list. I can still remember the first game I ever played. It was called “Infestor” and it was on the original iPad. Up until then I thought the only thing I ever wanted to do was put together Lego sets. But video games opened up a whole new possibility. I continued to play mobile games (back when they were good) for the next couple of years. Then, when I turned five, I got surprised with a Wii U, and more importantly, a video game called “Lego City Undercover.” That game remains one of the best I’ve ever played. At the time I was fascinated by it. I began to try to design games of my own. I never got far, as that is obviously quite the undertaking, but I would dream of concepts and ideas. I can remember times when my dad attempted to teach my and my sister (now a computer science student at Illinois) how to code. I never could get it until recently when I’ve started to really learn, but I always knew that was the only missing piece between me and what I wanted to do.

That fascination has only grown over the years. As I’ve gotten older, my writing skills have improved greatly. I cringe when I read stories I wrote years ago, but they were the stepping stones to the kind of writing I do now (which is in turn the cringey stone on the path to my future). I am no artist, but I’ve drawn hundreds of pictures in my lifetime, and could do enough art to get by. As I play games, I study what works and what doesn’t. I have genres I like better than others, but I would say some of my opinions would be pretty universal. I could go on a tangent about game design, but I will save that for another day. What I am getting at is this: I have had time to hone the necessary skills for all non-technical parts of game design. It is time to learn the rest.

All that to say, this week I am diving in to Unity and Blender. We are going to try to make a 3D game! In the most primitive sense, of course. This will be mostly individual, as my dad knows little about 3D game design and I have to watch online tutorials. I will keep you posted on progress. No major takeaways this week. Just trying to keep trucking.