USC Ch. 7: Milestones and Mountains
Started on Undertale's Genocide route. Still can't beat Sans. Oh well.
Anyway -- it's 2017 and I've just kicked off the year with some awesome milestone achievements! I finally published my videogame of four years, Little Green Soldier on the Scirra Arcade, and it's playable right here! Within a single week it's risen to the very top of both Hot Games and Top Rated Games, now sitting at an average 4.4 out of 5 stars -- just 0.1 away from the very highest rating. It's so cool to see so many people out there still genuinely enjoy retro platform shooters! And my website is also up too, right here -- tried to implement a contact form after speeding through PHP on Codecademy, but too bad Github doesn't host server-side languages like it does for HTML and CSS. Speaking of which, I should really start figuring out what server-side means. Damn I know nothing.
Which is why I'm pretty scared of what's coming up! Next weekend is the Global Game Jam, which unlike the tiny one I managed to nab Best Game in, is a battle with literally thousands of others from all around the world. From the looks of 2016's top games, there's going to be some seriously beastly competition, and I wonder if my pixel art will hold up -- if this turns out as disastrous as CalHacks again I'm flipping out. At the very least I have a dorm to sleep in this time, as opposed to the damn floor/table.
There's also my Data Structures and Object-Oriented Design course, strongly rumored to be the ultimate skill gate for USC Computer Science. The workload seems daunting to say the least, and true enough I got lost as soon as five minutes into the first lecture -- the pacing seems to go at light speed. Apparently it's all downhill after this course -- with the exception of Operating Systems -- so I can only puff up my chest and take it as it comes.
On a happier note, I also got into Introduction to 3D Animation! And it's with a really cool professor with tons of technical animation credits in movies like Stuart Little, Harry Potter, Ghost Rider and Beowulf. And yes, I actually get to learn character rigging and deformation, awesome! Not sure how I'll juggle the projects in this class along with Data Structures assignments and Writing papers (ugh), but it's still pretty exciting. Please don't let me have to drop this class. Well, this is it for 2017's first post! I'm also 6 days away from my one-year anniversary in posting to this blog, so to make a quick quip -- I'm glad I made it this far! Made it into USC, into programming, into animation, and into the ever-prestigious USC Games program. I'm finally thriving in an environment that appreciates my creativity, and I'm plenty grateful for it. To a decently well-spent 2016, and a...survivable 2017!
