by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been almost a year ago that I made a commitment to spent time developing coding skills and I’m providing an update about my efforts. I can say that it has been a real joy to feel a sense of progress since I’ve undertaken this new endeavor. . . Thanks to Procrastitracker I am able to share these images of my progress when I started October 1, 2022 up to September 30, 2023: This past year of work on Heropath was fraught with some challenges and issues. Some Procrastitracker info is missing and Heropath development was halted due to: . As I mentioned in my Heropath blog post I have decided to re-write the codebase which got me into playing with 3D in Godot to explore that as a way of expanding the immersive aspects of Heropath. 3D is really challenging and I can see why sticking to 2D is logical for beginner game developers. But I am going to continue to explore 3D as my concept is meant to be a surreal heroic adventure-strategy game and First Person would allow a more surreal experience. In addition, I am continuing to work on my Design and Logic of the game. This is pretty […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been almost a year ago that I made a commitment to spent time developing coding skills and I’m providing an update about my efforts. I can say that it has been a real joy to feel a sense of progress since I’ve undertaken this new endeavor. Here are the details Here is a pictures of what I’ve spent time at. Thanks to Procrastitracker I am able to share these images of my progress when I started October 11, 2021 up to September 30, 2022: In summary, I’ve spent about 41 hours watching videos and reading about game development, 54 hours planning and writing, and about 63 hours doing actual coding. I’ve done less than 2 hours a week of actual coding. At this rate it will take me years to get to 1,000 or 10,000 hours! This past year has given me six insights: I feel validated about my initial conviction to avoid GameDev because it is engrossing, allot of work, and will take 100s of hours to accomplish anything of merit. While it is a huge undertaking, it is possible to do this in small increments. I now see GameDev skill development being acquired by carving out […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Playstates Theory0 commentstags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Games Analysis, Personal Resolve
Since I’ve gotten over my scarcity hurdle, I’ve found an increase in creativity for me. This new energy has lead me to refocus on new core interests by closing down projects and renaming others. Below is my announcement of changes: Billows Enterprise – My root website that acts as a starting point for my business offerings. Used to be called Promaginy (08/2004 to 12/2016) and then Billows Cyber Holdings (2017 to 2019). The recent name change reflects a shift to include coaching and consulting as an offering in the future. Billows Cyber Enterprises – My business offerings of web apps and web sites that will replace Cybersidline.com. Also to be closed down will be Fandomnaut.com and EpicStartPage as I refocus to take aspects of those sites for a new web app. Those web sites never worked as well as I wanted and its time to mothball them and move on. Chris Billows Video Games – It slowly dawned on me that that doing things I am passionate about even a little each day gives me increased energy and this applies to my game development offering. I also decided to not get ahead of myself by trying to create a studio. […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been just over four months since I made a resolution to start learning how to code. I slowly began to introduce myself to coding concepts using Chris DeLeon’s course ‘Code Your First Game’. I am really enjoying coding! I can see its appeal and how it forces you to get to know how your own mind works. Errors and mistakes are a reflection of perception errors 99.9% of the time. I’m making a concerted effort to stay open and not get frustrated when things do not work. The course had me build some very basic arcade games and culminated in a limited, simple puzzle demo demonstrating the first steps of Heropath. I am really pleased how having a project to work on has given me a focus that I did not have previously. I am now able to take the research and theorizing I’ve been doing and apply it to the roots and definitions of Heropath. Now is the time to adopt a game development engine. I’ve done some research and listened to the feedback of some of my Twitter follows and I’ve come to a decision about which engine to work with. What I’m looking for […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
I’m a conceptual thinker and because of such I can get caught up into ideas and concepts and believe that understanding something is the same thing as doing something. Such ignorance is typical of thinking types. So I’ve made a resolution to start taking up coding to 1) fix/build my own websites, 2) build my own video games I’ve avoided developing these skills because I’ve always felt I didn’t have the time, but I’ve matured enough in my self-awareness that I need to stop with the self-limiting thinking – the scarcity mentality that plagues so many of us – and just be open to possibilities. The self-limiting thinking that I don’t have enough time to fit it all in is poisonous to getting started. I’m now okay if I don’t finish or accomplish anything since I am going to approach this skill learning with a beginner mind and just enjoy the journey. I’m going to track my skill development, not put any pressure on myself to learn a certain amount of skill by an arbitrary date, and try to find the way of combining intention with spontaneity. Starting today I am going to make a resolution to practice this. Today […]
by Chris Billowsin Playstates Theory, Republic of Bloggers0 commentstags: Change of Mind, Games Analysis, Playstates
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-serial on Game Dissonance at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments. Dear Chris, First of all, thank you for your kind reference to me. It gives me joy to know that my enthusiasm for your work has helped you. Your work to me has been invaluable as it helped evolve my understand of philosophy and video games. We have been able to create a digital pen-pal relationship that honours the Republic of Bloggers. Thank you for doing what you do. Now onto my response. As you have consistently stated, stories exist in more than books and films and prove this by successfully operating a consultancy that offers narrative design showing how stories can be told via video games. These stories sometimes are not knitted well to game-play and your article explained how dissonance occurs in those situations. This made me think further on the ideas that I’ve been teasing through a few recent posts that video games do not need to be Art or Literature to be meaningful. Video games are their own medium and thus need […]
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