Weekly Wisby 20: What’s next

Still sitting at home, I’ve now managed to procure an audience with the corona care center. They are pretty lax compared to Holland: after the test they told me 48 hours until someone calls me with the results. They don’t call sooner if you are positive, unlike in the Netherlands, and 48 hours is a huge step down from the 20 minutes I’m used to. Plus, it’s done via automatic email, which is much more reliable than a worn-down health service worker that does 30 such calls per hour.

At least I get to spent my time doing everyone’s favorite activity: writing reports. As much as I like being in school and not having to worry about money or the job market, writing reports at the end of a semester is BOOOOOORIIIIIIING!!!!!

I guess in a way these blogs are also reports, but these are funner because I get to do them in story form and because I get to share them with my folks at home. For the most part though, going over my experiences and reflecting on them is not nearly as fun as just diving into code and solving problems. But ey, such is life, and the benefit of writing down your thoughts is not lost on me. I just wish that experiences were transferrable instead; it would save our teachers a lot of report-reading.

We also had our final Break It presentation and I honestly think it went great. Everyone had their own topics to talk about and we didn’t have any mayor hiccups, aside from being 5 minutes over time. I personally talked about setting up the Discord server and the Codecks page for our team. Instead of slides I was sharing my screen and showing people around directly, which is a huge time save of the usual “make pictures and put them in slides” stuff, because it is so much easier to show people around when you can actually move the mouse.

And then, as I kept writing reports, and I kept being bored by staying at home… I got itchy. Real itchy. About a project from 7 months back. This is the story… of 2Dx.

I like cool things! And I like making cool things in Unity! And in my first year at the HKU, I thinked my coolest thing! My mind wanted to see if it could find a way to make 3D objects transform to 2D, and 2D objects transform to 3D.

It wasn’t until one and a half years later that I would actually start working on this. With some primitive testing I got a version rolling… that was absolutely crap. But with some extra effort, I made a second version! …that was also garbage. It wouldn’t be until the 4th version that I could show off something really special. I present, the very first showcase I made of 2Dx!



This version was what we ended up with after our 3-month project. But after that, I revised it! Then I went on internship… and revised it a second time! After another 6-month hiatus, I revised it for the lucky 7… and then I got absolutely depressed working on 2Dx and never wanted to see it again.

So, as you can imagine, I started working on it again after 7 months of break.

It has been an absolute blast! Once again I’m breaking down a lot of issues that are plaguing the system. See with my 6th iteration, I actually made a short demo you can play at the link down below. Even though it was really fun to create, 2Dx still proved to be extremely annoying to work with. I’m hoping to alleviate a lot of these issues with this update, making sure that adding new stuff takes minutes of programming instead of hours. It’s a tough challenge but I’m making good strides already!

Definitely try it out if you like Portal since it takes after it! https://casey-hofland.itch.io/2dx-demo

I’ll be working on this some more. I’ve already spent 2 years on it: what’s one more?

And that concludes my blog of my stay here in Visby! 20 weeks (minus like 2 or something?) of adventures packed in a complete narrative!

So… what’s next?

Well… there’s project snowflake of course (see week 18). And I still have 2 weeks here in Visby before I head back. I won’t be writing blogs for those, mind you: it’s been real, but it’s time to explore other things. Man, as much as I like it here, one of the first things I wanna do when I get home is pet the cat, use our dishwasher (yes, you heard me) and play some games on the switch. Vreeland might be a small town with nothing to do, but it’s still the place where I grew up and there’s a lot of comfort in what you know.

*Siiiiiight… I’ll miss this place though. Living on my own here in Visby has been a wonderful experience. Some a bit rocky maybe, but each day here has felt like a blessing and a privilege. I’ve made some amazing friends (speaking of which, Wednesday I should go to board game night again), learned C++, participated on a game jam with a game I am truly proud of and have never felt so connected to my peers. One day I’ll come back to Sweden. Until then… what a great exchange this has been. Thank you to all my friends and teachers who have made it one of the best half years of my life. Aight Y’all, Casey Away!