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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 16 – Natural Elements

Update 16: May 16th – 30th

It’s been an unusually chill two weeks. My new living space has been treating me well, work has been easy-going, and dev time has been pretty productive. I’ve been planning a dnd game for my friends too, for which they recently made characters last weekend, and now I’m working on harder material so I can start running soon. In addition, I’ve been getting closer to finishing God of War and it’s really ramping up the tension, making a lot more emotional impact on me than I thought it would.

For dev-related things, the first week began with some bugfixing but was spent mostly on some interaction with the environment and experimentation with shaders, but the focus of the second was largely on learning the particle system and making a fire model and some effects.

I guess it’s time to get down to the details.

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Atavism Dev Log 14 – Parrying and a Demo Level

environment

Update 14: April 18th – May 1st

It’s been a busy fortnight between semester finals and Atavism, but everything is coming out pretty well. My work was generally split into two parts; the first week of which was spent on making a level to show off the Tribesmen for my Gamedev club and the latter week of which was spent implementing some new features. I’ll be talking about these things, a bunch of smaller stuff that got done, and then, as always, about what I’m going to be aiming at doing for next update. Without further ado, let’s get down to it.

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Atavism Dev Log 13 – Group AI, Health, and Feedback

Update 13: April 4th – April 17th

Hey I’m back again. Last week I announced that I decided to switch to a bi-weekly update schedule so that I’d have more to talk about, which is already paying off because I have a ton to talk about this update! I’ll first be talking about the changes to the AI that I made, then talk a bit about the health system and some of the feedback I’ve implemented before I talk about what I’m aiming for on the next update.

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Atavism Dev Log Delay And New Schedule

In short:

I’ve been busy this week about as much as I usually have been, but I’d like to say that I’ve thought about it and decided to move the blog schedule to bi-weekly, meaning that I’ll have one out every 14 days instead of every – on Wednesday as they always have been.

The reasoning for this relates to my general dissatisfaction with posting weekly while working at school, something I mentioned during last week’s report. While weekly posts made a bit of sense when I was working far more hours per week, they still take time out of my day to write and ultimately don’t convey a whole lot that’s worth drawing out just for a blog. I’d much rather write a longer blog every two weeks about more important notes of progress than struggle for something to write about every single Wednesday.

As this blog is more for posterity than for communicating with an active user-base, I’m pretty comfortable with doing things this way.

I suppose my aim with this blog was to chart my progress, meaning that as long as I have interesting information to chart, the timescale doesn’t matter. Twitter is better for posting the shorter kind of stuff I’ve been putting here, so I’d recommend that if anybody reading this would prefer it. As it stands, I’ve found a blog is more of a good way to reorient myself to my design goals, making it a necessary piece of the production as I brainstorm out my immediate goals and look at how they’ve been coming along.

With all this in mind, yeah: Two weeks, should result in longer posts. See my twitter for shorter-term but less consistent content. Next blog is next Wednesday.

Cheers!

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Atavism Dev Log 12 – Attack Process and a New Look

Week 12: March 28 – April 3rd

We are back to the regularly scheduled devlog with a busy week and some good progress. I mull over the art style a little, talk about the current and future state of combat, then mention a few small things I did before talking about what’s coming up next week.

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Status Update: GDC

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“Infinite Schism” by Leilani Bustamante

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming…

Hey folks, it’s Wednesday. This is going to be fairly sparse, but I want to get this out fast to get back to work, so I’ll try to recount what I’ve done recently and show a few pieces of art I’ve enjoyed recently to make it visually interesting.

I’ve been listening to a NieR Tribute Album recently, which isn’t a genre I typically listen to, but it takes a bizarre and super fresh take to what is probably one of the best soundtracks of last decade. Anyway, onto the blog.

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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 8 – Tribal Warrior Model

Week 8: February 18-25

After all of my midterms passed and the dust began to settle, I finally got back to work on the weekend and spent a good long time getting this model to a satisfying place. Oh, and sorry this is two days late, but I wanted something significant to show. I’ll never post later than this on a given week.

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Atavism Dev Log 7 – Midterms vs. Modeling

Week 7: February 11-17

Hey so this week is gonna be pretty short but I’ll find something to talk about nonetheless.