Strange Update 3_10_17
I just finished this music video gig for a pal in Greece
Here's a bunch of stills from it too cause I think they looking fucking cool maaaaaaaaaan
I made it in 3 days with Cinema 4d + Unity-
If you missed the music videos I did for my wife's music here they are
Most ALL of the work I've done in the past year or so is as of yet unseen- its for this big game thing I'm wrestling with everyday- its a monster- if I can tame it and overcome it- it will be awesome- Well I should rephrase that- when I decide to just let loose with it- it will be awesome-
As experienced as I am in other mediums game dev makes me quake with fear like nothing else haha- I've come to love programming and I'm learning fast- I'm going through a common thing wherein you look at the stuff you made at an earlier date for your game when you didn't know what you know now and you have to resist the urge to redo it all since it works- its not pretty but it works- if it ends up being really bad for performance I'll redo it- but for now I'll leave it in-
I just got this awesome Unity asset called Archimatix to help with my level design- I read the manual and did the examples- I understand how to use the tool BUT after learning how to use it I realized that I need to learn about architecture in order to design things with it properly so I grabbed these two books on Architecture I'll be reading next week
Architecture: Form, Space and Order
101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL
Since I got into game dev I've studied and read books on a whole lot of different things- its been a fun and exciting journey thats taken me into areas I'd never thought I'd be in-
If I've never said it before here- I fucking LOVE BOOKS- I get super excited when there's some new thing I have to learn about- I go seek out the best reviewed books on the subject and read them all- when I don't know something I look at it as another opportunity to learn and grow-
My favorite part of learning game dev has been the Ai stuff- these old Game Programming Wisdom books are probably my favorite of the lot I got - I got them all except #4 as its $150 usd for some reason 0_o
I found it sort of difficult as an absolute beginner to learn how to program from books- I'm learning C# btw- It was easier for me to learn from video tutorials at first then once I got the basics and had made some scripts of my own I could learn from books- Unity's learning section tutorials are excellent and there's a bunch of Youtube channels like Brackeys that are really helpful too-
I feel like today every "creative" person that uses computers/high tech for any of their tools should learn to program as you can make/modify your tools for specific uses and you can create new things and express yourself in unique ways through the code you write- I resisted learning how to code and made excuses for myself for years-
I also realized that you can't be a real geek unless you know how to code ^_^ So if you fancy yourself a "geek" and you can't code you're doing it wrong maaaaaaaaan-
With my new skills/abilities + years of experience in various mediums I feel like I'm close to doing my best work but it hasn't been done yet- everything so far has been practice- I'm not going to claim this next game is it as I'm still green in the space BUT once I get a handle on this Ai stuff and my coding skills get better I'm going to do some crazy shit-Â
As always I love sharing all the new stuff I learn so I'm going to create some "how to code" courses with my strange school in the next year or two-Â
So if you want to learn and have a hard time so far maybe I can help you?
Speaking of you- who still reads this blog? Anybody out there? If so leave me a message in the comments- let me know what kind of stuff you want me to write about here-
When I want to take a break from the bleak concrete and mobile phone zombies here in Silicon Valley my wife and I take a bus over the hill from San Jose to Santa Cruz and walk along the ocean in a place where the people are much more human and chilled out- here's a photo she took so you can see yer old pal M dot is still alive and well in 2017-
As I'm slaving away on my PC %90 of my waking life I don't spend much time with people outside of my tiny immediate family BUT the time I've spent with the people I've met through my work has been some of the best time in my life- so thanks to those of you out there I've met and also to the others who choose to pay attention to some random obscure person like me in the endless sea of information that is in internet.
I promise to create my best works for you into the future.
Best,
 M doTs
Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.