PS4

Day 6 of 30 ... So, I have the best wife ever. Today, she surprised my with a PS4 (The Last of Us edition) as an early birthday present! I'm so excited to play the Playstation exclusives that I've missed out on up until now ... The Last of Us, Uncharted 1-3 (and soon 4), and Journey - to name a few. Also, The Order: 1886 comes out later this month so I'm going to have my hands full!! Finally I can experience the Naughty Dog games firsthand ... SO excited!

I love games very much, and I've always had fun playing them ... but I'm starting to play them with a more critical eye these days ... more like a researcher in a way. I've always been a combination between an explorer/completionist/achiever as a gamer - so it feels natural to look more critically at the design aspects of certain games. I'm very fortunate to have the ability to do that across multiple platforms ... the living room is now sporting an xbox 360, xbox one, a gaming PC, and a PS4. Again, so fortunate for so many reasons ... 

Clandestine Activity

Day 5 of 30 ... There's not much I can write about today, not because nothing happened ... but because I just can't talk about it yet :) I assume that I'm the only one reading my blog at this point and that's totally fine ... it's more of an accountability thing anyways - however, just in case I'm going to play this close to the vest for now. More info soon ... suffice it to say, I spent the entire day doing some pretty cool stuff with respect to game development - so it was a really good day. 

GOTY

Day 4 of 30 ... Ok, I have a confession to make - I didn't care for "Dragon Age Inquisition" ... for the first 3-4 hours or so. The good news is, I'm around 9 hours in at this point and I can honestly say - it's definitely hooked me. It took quite awhile for the control scheme to gel with me for some reason ... probably because I've always thought a mouse/keyboard would be the ideal setup for the Dragon Age games. That all said, Bioware did a fantastic job with the game from what I've seen so far ... and the control scheme is awesome - it just takes a little getting used to. 

Today (and tomorrow) I'm doing something pretty awesome with respect to my career in game development ... but I can't talk about it yet - so ... more on that soon :)

A little bit of Unity

Day 3 of 30 ... so, the good news for today (other than further progress with my Atlantean sword) is that I've been successful in importing my first character model from Blender into Unity - complete with 2 animations (an idle animation and a jump animation). One of the next challenges I see in the near future involves binding the jump animation to a key-press (right now it just loops into the idle animation). 

Atlantean Sword

Day 2 of 30 ... ok, so I'm a little late on this post but, technically speaking, this is work I accomplished yesterday so this totally counts. I'll post again later today with some additional progress :)

I've started modeling something more complex in Blender ... Conan's Atlantean Sword from, arguably, the best movies of my childhood (http://goo.gl/poJTjA & http://goo.gl/aPn2x3). So far, it's looking really cool ... sure, it's fairly low-poly at this point - but with some more attention it's going to be awesome. 

Progress

Day 1 of 30 ... inspired by "No More Zero Days" on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/NonZeroDay/), I've decided to accomplish something specific/measurable with respect to game development every day for the next 30 days. 30 days from now I'll be coming home from San Francisco after my first experience with GDC and I hope to have, at a minimum, a few good portfolio pieces finished by then. 

So, what have I been up to? Lots. I've made progress in Python 2.7, Blender, and Unity ... and I've realized that C# should probably be my next language to learn. Also, I purchased a new development environment - now a new MacBook Pro is helping fuel my dream. I'm extremely fortunate for many reasons :) 

I'm getting more comfortable in Blender and Unity thanks most recently to this awesome tutorial by Zak Reynolds (http://www.zakjr.com/blog/blender-to-unity-workflow-part-1/) ... I created my first character with a full armature skeleton and was able to create a couple of animations that imported successfully from Blender to Unity.

SNES List

I remember the day I received my SNES ... my Mom and Dad picked me up from spending a week at a summer camp in East Texas and I vividly remember (a) being so excited about seeing my family and heading home and (b) the SNES I unwrapped in the back seat of our Suburban. It was packaged with Super Mario World - which came to be one of the defining games of my childhood.

SNES Favorites:

• Super Mario World (to date, one of my all-time favorite games)
• Final Fantasy II (aka Final Fantasy IV)
• Super Metroid
• Super Punchout
• Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
• Super Castlevania IV
• Blackthorne
• TMNT: Turtles in Time
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Knights of the Round

All things considered, I think the SNES is one of my favorite consoles of all-time. Lots of amazing memories ... 

Nintendo Entertainment System

Time for a list of personal NES favorites because, why not?

I got my NES around 1985-86 for Christmas and my Dad and I would play games (I remember "Rad Racer" specifically) together on an old TV set ... as I remember, it took us more than a few minutes to figure out how to hook up the system to the TV as it had that weird RF-modulation thing going on. Once we got it sorted out we were pretty happy though.

NES

• Rad Racer
• Super Mario Brothers
• Jackal
• Cabal
• Trojan
• Rygar
• The Legend of Zelda
• Fester's Quest
• Battletoads
• Bionic Commando
• Contra
• Castlevania
• Final Fantasy

It's worth mentioning that I still have my original NES ... AND, it still works. It's currently at my folks' house and gets regular usage on holidays when I'm home for a visit.