Self Reflection: Week 3

Overall I think this week was a little bit of a mixed bag, admittedly. Some good progress and some days where it was just hard to get things done. Really trying to put to heart the idea that I really need to plan ahead with specific tasks and stick to them, and hopefully it's a lesson I've learned now, since I decided to put a task in specifically for deciding that to help me along in the future.

Starting from Saturday, the 15th, I worked mainly on adding pickups to my Codename Blast project, and found it to be surprisingly rather easy. Didn't take too long to implement but I think it was still a very useful way to spend my time alongside all the job hunting I did that day.

Sunday was Father's Day so I admittedly decided to spend the day with my father instead for some quality time, and I think it's important to keep such things in mind to keep a variety outside of work and just keep yourself connected to your family. Only one you got, so might as well make the best of it, right?

Monday was then going back to Codename Blast where I then implemented enemies dropping the pickups I had implemented last time on defeat, as well as adding items that could increase ammo capacity and maximum health. Again, didn't take as long as I thought, but that's a good thing, since that just means I'm starting to get used to the Unreal Engine, which is exactly what I'm hoping for! I also listened to more of that Eggplant podcast, mainly about this year's GDC and how it was for them. I think it's important to get an understanding of how conferences like that work out to know what to expect and plan around it if I get the time to go to it next year.

Tuesday was more design work on my Brutal Beauty, focusing on one of the last levels of the game that's got some special gimmicks going on. I won't divulge the details here for privacy reasons, but needless to say I believe I came up with a solid, work-able concept that I'm very happy with and think will be fun to both play and implement. I also looked up certain companies I had enjoyed games from to apply for any programming job offer I could find, and I think it's at least good practice.

Wednesday really only got something accomplished in terms of networking, and it's where I decided to reach out with both old and new people working as programmers in the games industry and beyond with hopes to continue to learn whatever I can about it. I was going to work on coding work for Brutal Beauty as well but I just wasn't having a very energetic day that day so it ended up not getting done. Didn't help that I really didn't know for sure what I wanted to do until far too late.

Finally, Thursday, I decided to allocate my main task of it to just setting up the next week's tasks to perform, just so I don't have to worry about that issue again, moving forward, and I've managed to get that done and hopefully I'm able to follow through with it again with this in mind. I also listened to Programming Throwdown again, this time on debugging, and I feel like I learned a little more about the ways in which you could test your code.

So as mentioned at the start, this week was a bit of a mixed bag, but I'm already trying to learn from it and improve my system further to continue myself on a productive path. So long as I'm able to continue to improve, I believe there's nothing to worry about. Slow and steady wins the race, after all.