iQuest #16: Notes for future students

- One thing I noticed in my time in iQuest was that many of my goals completely changed from the beginning of the year. Unless you have a fairly straightforward quest, be very sure of what you want to do.

- Many of my goals were too ambitious and I never managed to fully finish all of them by the end of the year. Keep your goals simple and have them add on to your last goals.

- Get a mentor or internship asap or you'll wind up without one for the rest of the year.

- Don't procrastinate!

iQuest #15: REFLECTION

I had a pretty swell time in iQuest this year. I really enjoyed having the extra time to put into my work after school. That really helped me accomplish a lot more than I thought I could this year, although not necessarily what I planned to work on in the beginning of the school year. I said I was going to spend time working on my own game, but I wound up doing more programming for my older project, BrawlBox, in exchange for money. That was the area I was most productive in while in the class.

I'm most proud of my most recent project, rendering models in the model viewer as they appear in the actual game.

Before:

After:

The stage in the actual game:

This took me a couple months to do, you can see some code for it here.

As for what I've learned about programming in general, it's that it's really time consuming and you need to keep your priorities in line or else you'll wind up with a bunch of unfinished projects. Learning how to do things is no problem, it's learning to finish what you start is what's hard to do. That's something I've learned about myself as well. I have some trouble maintaining focus on one project at a time.

I actually wish that I had not charged for features so I could've worked on my game more. I made a good amount of money but I really strayed away from what I really wanted to do just so I could make some extra cash. I'd say I put in a lot of effort but fell short actually keeping on the path I intended to follow. Even though I didn't accomplish much with my game while I was in this class, I did learn how to keep on track now. I've finally started making some progress now.

I would definitely recommend this class to others. Whether or not you accomplish any goals you set, you'll leave the class with more experience and knowledge!

The class is like a bridge of learning:

iQuest #14: Positivity

"You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind." - Joyce Meyer

Now I don't know who Joyce Meyer is but I liked this quote because it's simple and straightforward. How can you expect one thing if you feel the opposite? You need the mindset to get the kind of experience you want, otherwise you'll be blinded by our own negative thoughts. What you feel is what you get!

One word that describes my iQuest experience:

 Effort

Pizza is the most positive thing.

iQuest #13: Bucket List

1. Start my own business specializing in the production of video games
2. Create my own successful franchise
3. Get a neat house by the beach
4. Visit Japan
5. Learn to play the piano
6. Learn to skateboard
7. Get married
8. Travel across the country with friends
9. Play a video game with a virtual reality headset
10. Make enough money to help people in random ways and through charities

Tokyo!

iQuest #11: Five things I will get done in two weeks

1. Program my game's basic gameplay mechanics! I had to start over on this because the Unreal Engine was updated so much since I last had a subscription.
2. Model 2nd development character model for testing
3. Develop a concept for a demo environment
4. Finish all paid programming requests!!! Gotta get this out of the way so I can develop my game full-time.
5. Eat pizza

I like pizza

iQuest #10: Personality Word Cloud

   

So this word cloud is a conglomeration of the results from the John Holland and Myers/Briggs personality tests. I think it's neat that the tests were consistent and accurate in describing my personality. The paragraphs given at the end of the tests describing how I think as a person were just about spot-on and really describe me well.

iQuest #9: Goals For Semester 2

Hello dear people of the world, I would like to inform you all that my goals have not changed! YES, I am still doing what I said I would in my last post: programming requested BrawlBox features for money. Go ahead and take a look at that post to learn more.

As soon as I can get all of my current tasks done, I will go back to developing my game. My (ideal) goal for that is March 1st. Unfortunately programming can be unpredictable, so I can only say I'll do my best to meet it.

Once I meet that goal, the next goal would be to get something visual made for my game. A lot of the beginning design work is programming the game's general backend so that it functions properly and roughing out concept art and beta models as filler for the final game models. Hopefully I can make something in time for finals, but if not I can always present my work with BrawlBox. Unfortunately my game's overall goals are pretty long-term, especially since I'm still learning how to use Unreal Engine 4.

The only actions I need to take are work as much as possible. Just about anything besides work will be an interruption.

The only thing I need to accomplish my goals is time. I NEED MORE TIME