In this post:
- C# Course
- Youtube Tutorials – Aseprite and spore
- Unity Live Course
- Learning multiple languages and scope
- Decision on courses
This has been a big week for me as I completed my C# coding course on CodeAcademy. I feel good about this, even though I did finish a Python course last fall, because up until this point I had dropped out of more coding courses than I have completed! At University of Waterloo I attempted 2 true coding courses, and left them before the drop deadline out of frustration. But I guess with age I have gained more maturity and passion for the subject and am happy with my learning journey.
I’ll talk about one thing that inspires me: YouTube tutorials. I have been particularly interested in coding adventures where people try to create a feature or mimic an existing game (like Minecraft) from scratch. I find these helpful to get into the computer science for gaming mindset by understanding how experienced people approach problems. Below is one of my favourites, about recreating the Creature Creator from the ultimate God-game, Spore.
Speaking of tutorials, I have been dipping my feet into the world of video game art by learning a bit more about Aseprite and Blender, and as well finally getting a student Adobe subscription which I made my portfolio (available upon request) with inDesign. I really enjoyed the below Aseprite tutorial. Getting that software (at $20, what a steal!) has been really great. I even made a little monster yesterday. I can’t wait to make more sophisticated 2D pixel art. I loved making gifs at art school.
I am lucky enough that Unity is running a Live Course over the next month for the Junior Programmer Pathway that I am taking. It helps for motivation to be attending a lecture every Monday and Thursday that is engaging! I am looking forward to the Game Jam that they are going to host in June or July. I have an idea, and it might involve my Brantacan concept (;)), but I am not going to touch it until I actually start the Game Jam this time!
With my girlfriend who is an expert in pedagogy, we went over my learning plan this week. It’s good, but it needs more of an emphasis on collaboration and seeking help and evaluation from others. I will finally post another post on the learning plan one pager next week and think about this some more. In the mean time, my friend behind Captain’s Gambit game and I are talking about our programming adventures biweekly. I found a lot of validation in what I am doing in talking to him, since he is quite a bit more experienced. For instance, I have been toying with the idea of continuing with CodeAcademy in Python even though there is no more C# content. There is a Computer Science pathway there that I think will help my general thinking processes even though it is not in the language I am primarily working on. He, and another friend who is a software engineer at a major company, do both think it’s a good idea. My friend and I also talked about the importance of scope and the difficulties of scope creep. I think my design background helps me, but I want to pay more attention to this.
Finally, I have to make a final decision on courses. I got accepted to the George Brown College PostGrad Certificate in Game Design (for which I put together a significant portfolio this week). I am attracted to it just to learn the fundamentals in structure, and to really set aside the time this year. However I am concerned about the cost and lack of flexibility in my career while I am doing it, while being increasingly confident in my skills to learn the materials and network on my own. My other concern is that there aren’t a lot of good online courses with accreditations (if that matters) in game design. I’m testing out the CalArts Game Design specialization on Coursera. It’s well done, but a little light (good for beginners though). We’ll see if that matters in the end.
Today and this week my focus is on wrapping up the Unity Learn content for the week. I have a bit of work to do on my Major Research Project. I really want to get started on Blender. I also need to properly learn to use GitHub. I am going back to Calgary for a month so I need to set up all this stuff on my laptop, and I’ll be off to the races there!
Thanks for reading, and as always, I’m eager for feedback!
best,
gceh
geoff evamy hill 