January 16, 2016

Learn from the past

Sunrise of Jan 1st 2015

In the blink of an eye 2015 has ended.

Hey guys Nemo here, Happy New Years 2016!! A bit of a late Happy New Years post but better late than never. So another year has finished, and I guess it’s a good time to have a brief recount of 2015 and where I’ve been since my last post which was published on July 12, 2015 at 1:44pm. So let’s begin.

I set out 2015 to become more active, by doing more with my time, discovering what’s around me, taking more photos, and developing more games. And for the most part I’ve managed to become that active person. I’ve discovered numerous hidden gems around Australia by travelling up and down of Sydney. I’ll just show you a few of the images taken throughout the trips.

Apart from becoming an outgoing person, I’ve also spent a good amount time being a hermit crab working and developing games. In 2015 I’ve made an attempt at developing 9 games of which only 5 managed to get fully polished and complete. Out of the 5 complete games, 2 of the games won 1st place and 1 game made an appearance at Sydney’s Supernova to promote Vengador a comic book. I have uploaded all these games on my online portofolio if you guys haven’t tried it yet!

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Although these 5 complete games has helped me become a better game developer, what really taught me to design better and understand games development were through the failed attempts. In the upcoming weeks I shall go into detail as to why the 4 games remained uncomplete. I’ll go through the issues I’ve faced and what I’ve learnt from dealing with these situations.

Anyhow that’s a brief update of what has been happening on my side of life in 2015. Let us make another memorable year! This year I aim to post more regularly, and keep up with what i’ve started in 2015 which is to develop more games, and travel more!

Remember

The days are long, but the years are short.

Sunrise of Jan 1st 2016

ciao for now. Nemo out~

June 3, 2015

Let’s Talk Risk

Hey guys Nemo here, let’s talk about risk. Not the board game. I’m specifically speaking about risks in life.When was the last time you took a risk? Hold on before you answer that, let’s define risk. Risk by definition is the act of exposing yourself into a situation involving danger. So technically speaking, everything in life is a risk.

Well, not quite. There are types of risks and it boils down to 5 main types:

Types of Risks:

Unavoidable Risk – The one where you’re walking down an empty street, and all of a sudden out of nowhere a car runs you over. Or the one where one of your family member wins a 10 million dollar lotto. Unavoidable risk can lead to results that can be both beneficial and detrimental to your life. This is the one that you have no say in it. It just happens.
Stupid Risk – The one where you’re jumping off from a plane without a parachute. Smoking in a gas station. Making toast whilst having a bath. The list for this one can go on and on. Stupid risks are unnecessary and bound to kill you. This is the one to avoid at all cause.
Silly Risk – The one where you trip over a rock, or you’re just drunk. Silly risks gets you attention.
Dangerous Risk – The one where you gamble your life fortune on poker or lotto. Essentially the “High risk, high reward” idea . The one that can result in perilous results, but the results may be worth the risk.
Life Changing Risk – The one where you travel overseas alone. Or even take courage to ask out that special someone out on a date. Or even moving out of your parents house. It’s the one where the outcome is irrelevant. No matter what happens it makes you stronger. This is the risk everyone should jump at when given the opportunity to do so.

The 5th risk is the most important.

Benefits of taking Life Changing Risk:

1. Opens up new challenges and opportunities.
– By travelling alone overseas, you meet a variety of new people which can create new connections. Connections can potentially offer you new job opportunities. Thus challenging you to learn new skills.

2. Can lead to positive outcomes.
– By asking that special someone out you opened up the possibility for a positive outcome. Previously the chance of this outcome never existed. Even if you get rejected you learn to become stronger, more confident and helps you for your next attempt.

3. Help clarify your goals in life
– By moving out of your parents house, you have to take responsibilities. Responsibilities that shape your short, medium and long term goals in order to survive.

Negatives of taking Life Changing Risk:

1. nothing.

I’ve always liked the idea of taking these risks. I believe it is a necessary step to take in order for yourself to grow stronger. So I urge you guys to take risks in your lifetime!

Remember:
“You’ve got to risk it to get the biscuit.”

If you fall just get back up 🙂

Nemo Out.

February 28, 2015

Finding Nemo

Hey guys Nemo here : ). Sorry I’ve been away for the past few months. The first two months of 2015 has been a busy one for me. I decided to spend less time on social media. This gave me a lot of extra time, which I was able to spend on self discovery. It’s been a hectic 2 months of spontaneous journeys which I will share with you guys over the weeks to come.

“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee

Wattamolla Beach, Royal National Park

February 12th 2015, a spontaneous trip with a few close friends to Wattamolla Beach located in Royal National Park. Now for those who haven’t been or heard of Wattamolla Beach, its a beach famous for its cliff jump onto the lagoon and its cliff side hike. The cliffs are around 7-8m high. Sure you may say that doesn’t sound too high but once you get there you’ll be like hell no. Also 5m is when you start to feel the fear of height.

Oh boy was I excited for this trip at the start, I was talking with my friends on the way how awesome its going to feel when we jump off the cliff. When we arrived at Wattamolla and saw the cliff from a far, it didn’t look too bad, until we step foot onto the cliff and looked down onto the lagoon. Now for those who don’t know me, I’m not a big fan of heights.

Now there were three of us on top of the cliff. The first friend fell off the cliff with ease, he didn’t give it much of a thought, just walked off the cliff and into the lagoon. It was somewhat inspirational? So, now there was two of us left on top of the cliff both still pretty scared, deciding whether to fall or not. Both convincing each other to jump together or jump first. Out of no where, she ran off the cliff, with a loud battle cry following a light scream and a big splash. It happened so quickly my mind could not comprehend it all. I was left alone on top of the cliff.

Fear – an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

Fear struck me hard when I stepped foot onto the cliff edge. Each time I looked below, more of my non existent confidence drained out of me. I sat there looking down on my friends trying to get encouraged. It’s a funny thing fear, it grows stronger the longer you wait. All I had to do is take one more step and let gravity do its thing. I kept telling myself it was equivalent to me tapping a simple A button to preform an action in a video game.

In the end, fear had took over my body and mind. There was no point of return. It’s a shame I couldn’t make the jump and by the time I had gained confidence my time was up and had to leave, otherwise I would have been consumed by the thunderstorm rain. I learnt a valuable lesson on this journey. First of all, be the first one to jump off, it’s always the worst being the last one standing on top of the cliff with no support behind you ahaha. Second, don’t think, feel. Don’t let your mind take the chance to think about all the danger, the pain that it might bring on your body. Just let it happen. Tap the A button.

“The pain of discipline is nothing like the pain of disappointment.” – Nemo

Also on the side note

Try out the game that I’ve made with a friend which took 1st place for the Hectic Game Jam #4

MAGIC BENNY VERSE THE WOOD CUTTERS

Henry Saal and I present to you Magic Benny Vs The Woodcutters our Hectic Game Jam #4(make a game in 48 hours) game. You play as Magic Benny, a wizard trying to prove himself to the great wizards by whacking animals to stop the woodcutters from chopping down the tree. We had a great time developing this game and an even greater time showing it around and sharing the fun and laughter with others at the jam.

This Game Jam was particularly special for us as the theme were requested by children in hospitals and orphanages. We were able to make their dream games come true just in time for Christmas. Thanks to Hugo Santos and theHectic Games Jam team for making this all possible! The game is dedicated to John Taylor, Sloan Cross, Thomas White.

You can try Magic Benny vs The Woodcutters a number of ways.
Game Jolt
Windows 8
Android App

Well Ciao for now 🙂

I will be uploading a new post on Let’s talk Basics and more of these Finding Nemo talks. Keep in touch!

September 1, 2014

Ludum Dare Post Mortem

Hey guys Nemo here, so here is my post mortem after finishing Ludum Dare 30. LD30 was my first game jam, aswell as my friend who attended with me. It was truly an insightful experience for both of us. For this post mortem I’ll be focusing on what went well, what didn’t go as well and what I can do better next time I attend Ludum Dare or any other game Jams. Okay so lets begin the break down!

What Went Right?

1. Project Management/Communication

Asana and Skype saved us! Project Management and Communication determines whether the project is going to fail or not. As many of you may not know I live in Australia whereas my friend lives all the way in Singapore. We had a 2 hour time difference, which would have caused a lot of issues. However we able to over come this by having video skype calls whenever we were working on the game. We were also able to split the tasks required for this game and assign it to each other if we weren’t able to complete it.

2. Core Mechanics

Fortunately we were able to come up with a fun core mechanic within the first 2 hours of the game jam. Before the game jam had started we had initially planned to take up around 4-5 hours on just design of the game.

3. First prototype within first 6 hours

After all the design phase of the game we put a milestone to finish a playable prototype within the first 6 hours. We were able to achieve that milestone. Once we got a prototype working we could then properly see how the mechanics of the game could be enhanced or additional features to create more depth into the game.

4. Sound in a game

I always found implementing sound to be a hard one. We were able to find some nice musics by Kevin Mcleod and generated some interesting sounds from bfxr.net. Sound was something that I didn’t really found that important until now. After including sound into the game it changed the whole atmosphere and feel of the game.

What Went Wrong?

1. Deciding on scope of the game

Whilst working on the game we kept thinking of new features to add into the game. We had atleast 10 different types of different blocks that we wanted to implement and also a rotating feature (which we managed to implement however didn’t really serve a purpose in the gameplay and was taken out) and a level system. We took away those unnecessary features in the end and only built on the core mechanics of the game.

2. Merge conflict

We encountered some issues with Bitbucket and Source Tree. We had some encounters with version control, some files had conflicted with others and we had to learn to resolve those issues. One time we lost a chunk of code that we spent for and 1hour which was disappointing. However I was able to learn on how to handle these sort of situations if it were to occur in the future.

3. Sleep

Sleep. Oh my god. For all those future ludum dare competitors make sure you get a good rest in between each day (except the last day go hard out :D). I realised how important sleep is during this ludum dare. On the second day of ludum dare I was up late trying to figure out a simple math problem which took more time than it should have. If I had taken the time to sleep earlier and work on the problem during the morning with a active brain I would of been able to save time.

What I can do better next time?

1. Set proper milestones

So yeah, I learnt to make proper milestones during any Ludum dare and game jams. Make sure you know how much time you have and be able to estimate how long it is going to take the following feature you require. If you don’t know how long it is going to estimate then break down the task into smaller tasks that you can estimate the time it will take. You should also make sure that feature is going to be worth to the total project.

It’s always good to plan ahead but don’t end up spending all of time planning, sometimes you have to just get into prototyping the game.

2. More sleep

Sleep. 72 hours seems like a short time but really it isn’t. Get atleast 6-7 hours of sleep each day and wake up early so you have an active day to be able solve problems that may arise throughout the day.

I also learnt you shouldn’t just fix your sleeping pattern for ludum dares and game jams but life in general. It really helps you to become a better version of yourself, because remember your body is your mind. Keeping a good healthy body will keep your mind focused. So yeah. Go get some sleep and I’ll talk to you guys next time! That’s all for today. Nemo signing off~!

ItsNemo

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