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The Journals of Doc Surge is the personal blog of Chris Billows. This blog’s purpose is to explore ideas and concepts through the discipline of writing as an exercise to further personal understanding.

Check out more about me, some of my thoughts on Games and Hockey.

Oct 12

GameDev Skills: Year Three

October 12, 2024 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 1 comments tags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, GameDev Skills, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been almost a three years ago that I made a commitment to spent time developing coding skills and I’m providing an update about my efforts. . . Thanks to Procrastitracker I am able to share these images of my progress when I started October 1, 2023 up to September 30, 2024: This past year of work on Heropath was limited to design and story research. In addition, some Procrastitracker data is missing and Heropath development was restricted due to: . Chris Zuchowski gave a YouTube talk about being careful about the genre of game you create for and that you should not try to make your first game your masterpiece. I am going to follow his advice by switching to a ‘prequel’ that is placed in the Heropath setting but will be much simpler, allowing me some momentum and easier skill development. This new Heropath-related game will be known as Mythway. In summary, I’ve spent about 41 hours working on the game including research, writing, and design. I’ve done no actual coding so at this rate it will take me years to get to 1,000 or 10,000 hours. This past year has not had the direct progress that I had planned for, but […]
Mar 03

Video Game Development Segments: Nerds

March 03, 2024 by Chris Billows in Nerdism in Winnipeg 0 comments tags: Book Writing, Video Game History, Winnipeg
In the first post, I said that I was going to write about Game Development in Winnipeg. Yet you cannot have Game Development without Nerdism (defined as the behavior and practices of Nerds). So this post will investigate the term ‘Nerd’ and its related terms such as Geek and such and explain why it is needed to for Game Development. So what is a Nerd and how is that different from Geek or other similar words? I believe that definitions are the first step to outline and guide one’s written (and coding) work. I am reusing the definitions from this comprehensive Gizmodo article. Nerd The word nerd was first used in the 1950 Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo, in which a nerd was one one of the many oddly named creatures in the titular zoo. According to Ben Zimmer of Vocabulary.com, a 1951 Newsweek article mentioned it as one of the new terms being used by teenagers. It seems unlikely for teens to have latched on to a single proper noun in a Dr. Seuss book so quickly, but there is no recorded source of the word being used previously. It’s possible that it was based on the 1940s slang […]
Jan 01

Happy New Year for 2024

January 01, 2024 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 0 comments tags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
I am wishing everyone a Happy New Year for 2024. May the new year bring you peace, good health, and good fortune. There is not much to report as far as my projects are concerned but I continue to plug away at them and do find myself inspired for periods of time. . . In summary: . As I’ve said previous New Year Days, I am thankful for the privilege to pursue these projects and wish that everyone could have the same opportunity.
Dec 02

Researching Video Game Development in Winnipeg

December 02, 2023 by Chris Billows in Nerdism in Winnipeg 0 comments tags: Book Writing, Video Game History, Winnipeg
I have been toying with the idea for a long while to consider writing a book and the book would be related to a history of Video Game Development in Winnipeg. The prompt to this idea has to do with the following things: I personally know a major player in the Winnipeg Game Dev community and have seen him grow his company to become successful. It is a great rags to riches story that would be a main thread of such a book. The other thing is my personal passion and connection to technology and video games. I grew up as Video Games took off and have always loved playing them and seeing how they have evolved. I’ve even taken the first tentative steps to creating my own game. The third thing is that I am fascinated to recount how this all came to be in my only home town of Winnipeg. I have always believed that Winnipeg does quite well for itself despite its small size and geographic isolation. I think this is something that I’d like to tease out in a book. Writing a book is a huge endeavor but I think that having passion for the topic […]
Oct 08

GameDev Skills: Year Two

October 08, 2023 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 1 comments tags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, GameDev Skills, 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 […]
Apr 08

The Axiom of Player Development

April 08, 2023 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 1 comments tags: Game Philosophy, Games Analysis, Playstates
I keep coming up with different interpretations of my play theory to analyze game design and development. It has evolved from GameStories to Playstates to Play Motifs to Video Game Elements. My Mechanics post on my Heropath blog inspired me to think further about what it takes to develop a player. So I’ve created the Axiom of Player Development, which is based on The Axiom of Maria, a precept in alchemy. I love the concept of alchemy being related to player development since what occurs is almost magical given the passion that players commit to learning to play video games. The Axiom of Maria is: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” The fundamental concept is that by using alchemy, it is possible to transform elements into new states, which are different aspects of the original element. I see the process of player development being the same thing. Following that format I would write: THE AXIOM OF PLAYER DEVELOPMENT The player encounters the video game(The One)The video game reveals symmetrical and asymmetrical mechanics(The Two)These mechanics challenge and develop the player’s skills(The Three)The player’s skills span across breadth discovery and depth […]
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