Weekly Wisby 14: I bought a hat!!!

I bought a hat!

I am a hat-guy now!

Many of my friends have been telling me they enjoy my blog, but grow to wonder about how I’m actually doing. So this one’s for them:

I’m doing great! Have you seen my hat?!

Nah but seriously, I’m doing okay. Life has admittedly been busier than I would like right now… but ey that’s just how life is sometimes ya know? Amongst my responsibilities like the game, the community and my class, there’s lots of other stuff I wanna do like this blog, cooking… and SINTERKLAAAAAAAAS!!!!!!! Yeah baby, for all of you who don’t know what Sinterklaas is, it’s basically Dutch Santa, and we celebrate it on the 5^th of December instead of the 25^th!

Amongst the pictures I send to my team explaining Sinterklaas was this one:

Moments later:

And, even though they don’t have the good stuff… I found these!

Only Dutch will understand.

The truth is I’m very occupied right now… but it’s for the reason that I’m keeping up with work as well as my social life! Not all duty is work, and not all work is demanding, and none of it is dull! There’s… stress. I’m not sure if I’m going to stay here for another half year or if I’m going to come back to Holland in February, and the choice weights on me. At least for now I can focus on if it’s even possible, without worrying too much about if it’s what I want. Certainly… spending my time in Corona-free wonderland sounds better for my future than drowning in quarantine… right?

At the end of the day, I’m facing my challenges, I’m putting in my hours, and I’m doing all the things I wanna do. Sometimes it’s tough, but that keeps it interesting! There is not a second I regret coming here and I’m really happy to have this exchange experience. I hope you’re all doing well, living your life, finding some solace watching YouTube, chatting in your servers, reading some novels or whatever you do to stay social. Remember, you’re a herd animal and I wish you a happy Sinterklaas here from Sweden!

Making games sucks man! Seriously, who’s idea was it to put a bunch of nerds with no communication skills in a room for a year or 2, letting them fight over what button is jump, until a game comes out? Matching up art, code, sound, interaction, lighting (to name a few) and have it all follow a single creative direction: it’s madness.

That’s why we’re very happy to see our first interaction working in the game!

 

It might not seem like much, but having all your components work together is an important step in game development, and having a playable test like this is a major sign we’re on the right track!

Of course, the astute amongst you may have noticed that our character is currently a moving ball of drab. It was my job this week to look into humanoid animations and I think the results speak for themselves!

Some different animations playing on different models to make sure everything works as intended.

I also improved the light blending of my day-night cycles. There were some issues with the blending of color when the sun and moon switch out, but with some extra effort I’ve now created scripts that give you artistic control over this blending.

See how the sky and the shadows fade in and out, instead of suddenly popping into view.

There are definitely more improvements I could make, but I think it has all the features we need for our Alpha to hit the scene! …you know… once it’s ready.

Taking a closer look at my hat picture, you’ll actually notice two things:

1. I’ve got a hat.

2. It’s snowiiiiiiing!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t believe it!!! The last snow I saw in December, in the Netherlands, must have been a decade ago. All hope for a white Sinterklaas has been drained out of me over the years: and now here it is! Let me share with you some pictures of how lovely the town looks coated in thick icy powder!

The tree outside my front door: I get to walk past it every day <3 

Icy City Streets.

My friend Julius.

Clearly we forgot about auto-exposure.

Ducks Surviving and Striving.

More tree.

And finally, a snowed-under Gotland Sheep.

After inquiry the hat-seller-lady revealed to me that it usually snows all December so it’s not letting up soon! At least I’ll have pictures to show my children what snow looked like before we nuke all our ice caps into space.

This post is dragging out, so I’ll just end on this last programming note. Ulf, our C++ teacher, has recovered from his illness! But since going out in the snow was still discouraged by his doctor, his lessons were online. And he’s given us our finals assignment which, let me say, is absolutely brilliant. Very close to a job we might be getting in the real world, our assignment is to refactor an old codebase. In this case, it’s code written for a first-year course. Naturally, an amateur’s code base will have tons of juicy errors for us to ameliorate. With our first task being to scout the solution for problems, I made a video recording of me doing just that; here’s a little bit for your entertainment pleasure!