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Oops! Looks like I focused on my website for like a week and then dropped it before moving on to other projects. This kind of behavior makes me believe I have some form of undiagnosed neurodivergence. In lieu of getting into the various signs of why that could be the case I will just talk about all the projects that I currently have.

I started developing a video game this month. The reason I just started out of the blue was because I was falling asleep in my Computing (C++) class and I desperately needed a reason to be interested in the material. I have had this idea for a game for 8 years of an arena shooter with a fantasy aesthetic that incorporates many different types of movement from different classic shooters like Quake 1, Unreal Tournament, and Painkiller into one game. The idea also involved the idea of using mana instead of ammo and for the combat to revolve around the rate of mana regeneration you have. If it sounds similar to Quake Champions, it is. I did have this idea in 2018 after all. I am, however, against the idea of non-symmetric stats and active abilities like Quake Champions has, and I think a lot of other people are too. I think that it would be better to have each movement system to be represented by a character, and for each of those characters to have their own passive ability like in Quake Champions, but other than those attributes, they would all have the same hitbox and the same health. I heard it mentioned somewhere that Quake Champions came from the idea of making an arena shooter fighting game, which I do see. I think that is a genuinely interesting idea to explore, but unfortunately Quake Champions was forced to maintain a more restrained design philosophy in the pursuit of competitive rigor. I am not constrained by a competitive scene, I am not worried about making something broken and unfair as long as it is somehow still fun in the end.

Enough about Quake Champions, what am I actually doing? So far I have downloaded Unity, Visual Studio, and Github Desktop and have started learning the workflow in these programs. Yesterday, I set up version control and a Github repository. I still don't understand fully what I am doing but I am sure I will figure it out as I go. As for the game itself, using Isaiah Kelly's fork of WiggleWizard's quake 3 movement script for Unity, I have successfully added a couple systems into the game and even got help from him in order to fix an issue with the original code. How nice! As a base, the script can be modified to represent QuakeWorld, vanilla Quake 3, and CPMA movement by only editing some values, so that knocks a couple games out of the way very quickly. The most impressive system I have added was definitely Unreal Tournamemt 2004 style movement. It required adding dashing in all directions, dashing off walls, and double jumping. I did take a couple of liberties with the movement though. When playing UT2004 as research for the code, I didn't like how unresponsive it felt at times to dash in quick succession. There is a "cooldown" on the dash that makes it feel hitchy. I did not add this counter and also made it so that you can buffer the dash by double tapping before you hit the ground. This makes it so you can dash around very fluidly. I have also added crouch sliding, which covers Quake 4 movement. The crouch sliding is extremely fun, especially when combined with all the other movement at the same time. At the moment I made it so I can toggle each type of movement on or off for testing the different types of movement and soon I will also add profiles to instantly swap between the different game movements. I have already spent hours just moving around in the demo, which is a really good sign im doing a good job so far.

Besides that, I have a circuit project that I am working on. I was inspired by Mohit Bhoite to try and make a little free-form circuit lamp. I plan on making an icosahedron, A.K.A. a D20, with 10 diffused LEDs at the vertices going around the shape in two rings. The circuit is actually quite simple and I verified the design in PSPICE and breadboarded it already. I was facing a dilemma on how to power the lamp but I have decided to just use a 9V battery. Originally I did plan to use a 9V battery but then I found an old Elegoo power supply and thought about using that instead. The problem was that it only outputted a maximum of 5V and I needed 9v for the two sets of 5 parallel LEDs. I spent some time designing a voltage booster out of a 555 timer, and it did work, but I decided that it would be much simpler to either buy a barrel plug jack and use a DC power supply or just use a battery. I already have the brass rods and tools I need to build it, but I need to make a final decision before I order whatever parts I need to finally build it. I will probably make that decision and subsequent order when my finals are done.

I am also considering ripping CDs from my university library to put on my iPod. This is not so much a project as it is a mission. The other day I conducted a little research to see if my idea was even viable and I concluded it is. The CDs are all indexed and searchable online, and I already have a very compact disk drive I can bring with me to do the ripping. I have no idea when I will do it, as summer is fast approaching and I have no time right now due to finals, but I will definitely get around to doing it. Probably. Maybe.

So yeah, other than a bit of extra art and writing on the side, that is what I am doing. In terms of things that aren’t personal projects, I have had an absolutely hellish last month of classes. I failed a test and the workload has been absolutely insane. I also got Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and it has been a nice destresser. Here, have a Tlilli I am sure there is stuff that I am forgetting to mention or am omitting but this is already long enough. I wish anyone reading this a lovely summer and to success in your personal projects. Good luck out there!