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The 2019 Year in Review

I feel that 2019 has been a big year for me.

There are other cliche ways to begin a year in review, but that one is the most appropriate. The last year has been an odyssey of self-discovery, new experiences, and time management; 2019 carried me from a skilled, broke college student finding his way to a skilled, young adult with finances and a partner. I’ll probably always be finding my way.

I found art in drawing, refined in painting – and through it, myself – displayed in dazzling color and through curious, thoughtful aesthetic works that challenge me to think and learn in whole new ways.

I found a love of nature I had previously only appreciated at a distance – a love for atavistic rituals and natural lifestyles, ecology and hidden natural systems, and for trees, plants, and the multitude of growing things that make up our world (particularly mushrooms – and our friends, the whales).

And, indeed, I found love in Bailey – my loving partner – and all the small moments, activities, nuances of human experience, and breath of emotions, cognition, and sensations, that come with committing to another person.

There are countless things I found in 2019 that transformed me, making this review more personal than the last one.

It happens to be also the only thing I’ve written since the last one – so I suppose I was out for catching up on a lot from the start.

I’ll start with the beginning of the year.

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Atavism Dev Log 19 – In-Depth Bird AI

Update 19: June 27th – July 11th

Another two weeks, another progress post.

On the personal side of things, I finished Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, the former of which I’ve been replaying before I get to The Last Guardian. I knew they were good, but I was caught off guard by how good they were and how well they hold up. Ico especially, as both the incredible use of space and gorgeous architecture left me impressed moreso – I think – than the spectacle of the slaying colossi in the other game. After finishing them, I read some interviews and such from Ueda (the studio’s director) and some critics on his games, and I’ve been rather sucked in by the minimalist style and design philosophy that the games do so well. Overall it got me thinking a lot about my plans and priorities as well as what makes elegant game design, something I feel inspired into refining myself as things go forward.

They also made me really appreciate inverse kinematics and finer attention to kin-aesthetics, something I’d like to really experiment with soon.

Development-wise, I’ve ended up refactoring almost all of the Bird AI – something that doesn’t really feel like progress, but it is – and built some more on top of it to kind of finish off the flying part of their behaviors. Still some spitshine to do there, but I’m ready to move on I think.

This blog goes well into depth about what I’ve written, so avoid it if maybe you’re a casual viewer or at all interested in avoiding spoilers about how they work.

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Atavism Dev Log 10 – More Animations, AI plans

Week 10: March 8-14

On the tail end of what could reasonably be considered a Wednesday, I come bringing progress. There aren’t any flashy gifs this time, but I go over a bit of the AI behavior I’ve been planning.

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ATAVISM DEV LOG 5 – AI Groundwork

Week 5: January 22 – 28

The actual meat of this week’s blog is fairly technical, with talk about the AI framework I’ve been implementing  if you’re into that, but if you aren’t then you get a neat video and a progress plan at the end. Let’s jump right in.