Currently Listening to: Let's play Mario and Luigi: Partners in time by Pharaoh2091

I'm half way through the month so I decided to reveal what I have been working on, a Tea Making Simulator/Visual Novel. The work isn't so far from what I did on the previous project, but it is different enough to give me something to new to try and program. The base mechanics are randomly being assigned an order to follow and cycling through the various options until the options match the current order. From this, I plan to extend the project to include a visual novel element whereupon the player completing the correct order is then treated to a small cut-scene with whoever placed the order. The more orders you complete for the one person, the more back story is revealed.

So my current status on the project is that I've finished the base build of the project. This includes changing the options to make the tea (tea type, extras to include, and teacup selection), the randomizing recipes to be assigned to the recipe cards, and the submission button to check if the recipe is correct but I haven't programmed in the visual novel aspect that I mentioned earlier. The reason being is I want to get the base art done for the project perform delving into the more complex programming. The whole point of this one month project was to see how much of an entire project could I get done not just one aspect.  

Next week I plan on focusing solely on art, beginning with the UI and then moving on to the items. I'm a bit concerned about the art as I believe it is what will take up most of my time. Unlike in programming, there is no clear indication of when the art is finished, and myself being a tad of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my own art, I find it quite hard to stop and move on to the next. I get caught up on trying to improve each one and adding the time spent together has me running behind in my schedule. Hopefully, since I'm aware of this being an issue and know I want to get all of the base art done by the end of the week, I will be able to be less concerned about making it perfect and just get the work done.

After that MIGW will be almost upon us, meaning that I will most likely be quite busy so I'm dedicating that last week to try and implement the Visual Novel portion and write the characters backstories. I doubt I will be able to but I hope that I'll be able to include some rough sketches of the characters as well, but I said it's not important.

I'll probably post again sometime next week discussing and showing some of the rough art I produced. Maybe if I show the art it will hasten the process for me.

Currently Listening to: LoZ: Wind Waker Speedrun by Chaotic_Ace - SGDQ 2015

It's October! The start of a new month and since the High Tea Games project is currently on hold, I decided to start work on a solo piece of work. Also, I'm going to try and set up some more goals for myself, regarding practicing art and writing. 

The new project I've just started has been an idea that has been circulating around my head for about a year or so and is fairly different from the projects I have worked on thus far. Most of the games I have designed recently are all some type of adventure game, focusing on designing ways to display information to the player and producing puzzles that rely on the player's retention of said information. It has been a while since I designed more mechanic based gameplay, where the game isn't so reliant on the player's thinking.

That being said the game I am working on currently still does have the player needing to retain information, only this time there is a lot more interaction the player can be going through while processing the information. I will probably elaborate on what the project is later on as I have a basic idea of what the game is but haven't fleshed it out enough to a point where I can start writing on all the mechanics planned.

I plan to complete the core game elements within a month. As this project is quite small in scope I hope it will serve as some kind of test of my abilities. I want to see how capable I actually am of making a small game on my own without any outside motivation, just me and my dedication. I want to have the system working smoothly, basic graphics and maybe some simple sound design.

So, what are my goals for this month?
~ Complete base mechanics of the new project: As I've said above I want to test my limits a bit to see what I can and can't do and understand where the problems lie if there are any.
~ One page of sketching per day: This month I'll focus on pose construction eventually get to a point where I can place the faces I can draw on to size appropriate bodies. 
~ 4 posts to the blog: These have to be detailed posts about any subject matter related to my work. Some weeks it can be an analysis of a game/puzzle/mechanic, other weeks it could be  a recap of what I've been currently working on. 
~ Re-establish my work schedule: Due to my family being on holiday recently I lost my regular schedule so it's my aim this month to re-establish it once more, working 4 days a week from 9am - 4pm. I have the weekends and Wednesdays off, however, I feel I may change this to Thursday's as that's the day I often go to see Pritika (the other member of High Tea Games) and I find in those mornings I don't often get much work done.

These goals are all to do with improving myself as a game developer, whether it be through improving my art, programming or even understanding of design. Through meeting these goals I hope to be a better developer.

A new website design! Yes, I re-designed my website! Why do you ask? Well, it's about a month away from Melbourne's International Games Week (MIGW) and I needed to print off some new business cards. I didn't really like the design of my old business cards, as I felt they never really illustrated anything about myself or my aesthetic, so I decided to design a new card for myself. What does that have to do with the website re-design? Well, the old business cards I made, were designed to match the website I had made, so upon changing the business card I also had to change the site.

These changes to be made to the website and business cards were most welcome. The original design was made when I was quite sure of the artistic direction I was heading in and I also didn't yet know how to reflect my personality into my designs. Hence, when looking at the original site it seems quite bland and simple. What I ended up designing for myself was something that I believed would look good to others, made it a tad more business-like to show my professionalism. To me, at the time it seemed to be the best choice but coming back to it later I found quite hard to put any of my work into the site as my art and writing style didn't suit the site, they were too jarring mixing them together. What ended up occurring was I would spend time trying to alter either the site or my work so they would better together. A lot of the time I ended up not putting in the work as I simply couldn't get around the contrast between the two.

 So, what did I keep the same from the old website?

• The Text: First of all I kept all of the text I previously had. In all that I wrote, I made sure my voice still had character, so the changes made in the website would only accentuate my bright tone, not diminish it. 
• The Layout: I also kept the layout of the website the same. There was nothing wrong with the interface of the site (at least in my opinion), it was easy to navigate so I saw no need to change it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• The Logo: The last thing I decide to keep  the same though I did alter it a bit was the logo. I always liked the shape and curves of the logo, but I never felt the sharp points and the slickness of the symbol was quite a representation of me. I change the logo to incorporate the new colour scheme of the site, and I rounded the points so it was so harsh. The logo now suits the site and myself a lot more, but it still retains what I like about original.

And, what did I change?

• The Colour Scheme: The colour scheme of the old site was nice but  it was very office/business-like, not a place of creatively. I change the colour scheme from white and various shades of light blue to a more drastic colour choice, black, red, blue and yellow. Black being the being the base so my work can stand out on it, and the three primary colours, as they contrast against each other, are eye-catching. These colours are bold, far more playful and creative than the old colour scheme which was the main attributes I wanted to change.
• The Font Style: The fonts I chose for the old site actually clashed quite a lot with the rest of the style of the site. This was done as I thought it would soften the feel of the site. The fonts I now use for the headings has a playful side and is also able to hold bold colours while still being very legible. The font I chose to use for the body text, I chose to be somewhat similar to the original, except the font isn't as rounded. I kept the playfulness within the headings but left the body to be more simple so for longer posts like these, it's easy to read.

Below are some images of the original site. It is still in my opinion that the site was well-designed, and served the role it was designed to fulfill, to be a professional looking blank space. Unfortunately, I realised after designing the site, it wasn't what I required for my portfolio. What I have designed now seems to serve the purpose I want now but we'll see in a years time if I've decided to change once again. 

Currently listening to: Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull (Audiobook)

At the start of the week, deciding to have a break from programming for "Project Junior", I instead chose to look over my resume, portfolio, and website, to see that they were all still up to date. To my sudden realisation that though my resume was very current I hadn't edited my website since two years ago when I decided to quickly put it together with the mindset that I would edit the content later on when I had time. Well, two years have gone by and oh my, the website has no content of what I have done since then. 

First things first, I deleted the sketches gallery. I remember when I first placed it up, I put placeholder images I had drawn when I first obtain my tablet. They were not bad, but I felt if anyone were to see those pieces of work they may presume that I consider those pieces as acquit representation of my drawing skills. I plan on putting sketches back on this site but I want them to show my current level. 

I also decided rather than have the 2D and 3D pieces separated, I would now place them on the same page in two different galleries. I just found there were too many pages before the viewer could actually see an example of my work. By having the one page the viewer can click the "gallery" link from the front page and immediately go to my featured work.

After removing the extra gallery pages, I added a page for my written work, called "Articles". I created this page as I needed a place where I could put my exegesis from my Honour's year. I wanted to also have a place where in the future if I did write more academically on the topic of game design I could host my work here. 

​With the pages all sorted I decided to look at the Game page, the main reason why I wanted to create a website in the first place, I wanted to show off the games I created. The main problem with this page is that they only showed off the games I developed while I was still in university and had none of my recent projects. So the first thing I made sure to do was to upload my most recent complete works up, "The Enchanted Door" and "Festival of Realms". It was while I was implementing these pages that I realised I also needed to edit the other game pages. The original pages were literally the game and a sentence to explain the controls. There were no descriptions of the game, an explanation of how the game to be, not even a decent credit section. This definitely needed to change, so I added the components I felt was missing. Currently, I am half way through the pages I need to edit so I'll use the rest of the week to work on that.

And this leaves us with now, updating this blog post. I want to try and write something on the regular. I first want to dictate my process in game develop so others can see and secondarily to show myself the progress I've made on those days where I feel nothing is moving forward.