More study and review today, finishing up the homework sections for part 4 of the class. That only leaves one very very busy day left to try to complete the work for part 5, which would finish out the semester. Considering everything else that’s going on tomorrow I don’t think I’m going to make it, but we’ll see.
Managed to get through a lot more of the music homework today, getting close to the end, but I don’t think close enough. On the plus side, I think reviewing the material is proving to be really useful for driving it home, so I certainly can’t complain.
Aside from that, I feel like I really need to stop putting these updates off until the next morning. It seems like any time I do that they don’t get written until the next evening anyway, and I have to scramble to remember what I was doing the day before.
Getting close to the end now, and I’m getting a bit antsy about being able to finish everything on time. I launched into the next homework assignment, an analysis of The Scientist, but it’s a long song, and I didn’t get a chance to complete it. It doesn’t help that I’m letting myself get a bit sidetracked by other projects, time to get focused.
Speaking of sidetracking, I mentioned the gigantic “learn to code 40 games” udemy course I picked up, and my general displeasure with it. That has sadly only grown, but it kind of sent me off on a tangent of wanting to improve my own coding. I started experimenting around with an idea I had, trying to recreate the original Legend of Zelda, working off of the assumption that if I can figure out how to do that, I can then take that knowledge to make my own original game in that style, sort of an homage to the classic. I’m sure I won’t reach that goal any time soon, but it’s another item for the back burner at least.
Oh, wow. Really late with this one, so yesterday, I mean, today, I carried on with my current process. Piano practice and homework catch-up for music theory. Sorry if these updates are getting a bit repetitive, but I guess that’s what happens when you end up doing more or less the same thing for days in a row.
If it helps change the pace a bit, the homework for today was a full song analysis of Greensleeves. That’s not actually something that I’ve done yet, despite having already made plans to do so with a couple of different tracks from Final Fantasy. I’m still getting to those, but the rest of the homework will have to come first.
Outside of the music practice, time was spent today diving deeper into game development. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been on a kick lately when it comes to picking up learning resources, specifically classes aimed at the sorts of things I’m trying to do. This time I picked up a couple of additional classes on game development in Unity, one claiming to teach you the basics of forty different games. So far I am super unimpressed. I worked through the first batch of tutorials to make a very simplified space shooter. The result is about what I expected, so that’s not the disappointment, the problem is that I have a sneaky suspicion that the instructor doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, not at a fundamental level, and certainly isn’t going out of his way to teach it if he does. And the second “game” in the series is exactly the first game, just from the side, and taught almost exactly the same, which means the class isn’t trying to build on and reinforce knowledge that has already been covered, it’s just going to assume you are starting from scratch each time. I’m going to try to stick it out for a while, in the hopes that some of the later “games” will actually have some interesting techniques in them, but I’m not terribly hopeful.
More homework today, primarily, but at least I’m getting closer to the finish line. I’m really hoping that I have time to finish it all up before the end of the challenge. If not, I guess I’ll just have to carry it over into next month, but it would be nice to get it done all in one go.
Aside from that, I put together a new piece:
It’s fairly simple, but I think I like the way it came out. I went with a bit more of an organic approach this time, actually “playing” the built in piano with the computer keyboard for the main melody line.
In other news, I’ve picked up a few new reference sources for game development, which I’m hoping will turn out to be alright. I’m already a little leery of the first one, considering that the instructor keeps saying “brackets” when he means “parentheses” and “voids” when he should really be saying “functions” or “methods”. And his advice early on was to use comments only when absolutely necessary, which is just plain dumb advice no matter what you are coding. Seriously, any developers or potential future developers reading this: use freaking comments. Comment the crap out of your code. Have more comments than actual code, if you want. It gets left out of the compile, so it’s only adding size to your source code, and good commenting practices will save you a ton of time when you inevitably have to come back to that code to edit it later. If you are writing scripts in a non-compiled language and trying to store those scripts on a floppy disk in 1982, then by all means, keep them sparse, but otherwise do yourself a favor and comment that code.
Another day concentrating on the homework, I will get through this class. Outside of that, there’s actually not much to report today.
I did spend a little bit of time today bouncing around some of the other fields, watching some videos on writing and drawing in addition to the music review. To be honest, it all gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.
I also made some progress on Runic Alchemy, implementing functions to automatically generate the runic books. I’m still trying to work out the best way to display them for the user, it’s going to take some thought and probably some trial and error. I really can’t wait to get through this section though, once the books are fully operational I’ve just got the magic generators to get in place and my core gameplay is finally complete.
Another weekend day, so not a ton going on to report outside of the standard practice. I’m afraid it isn’t particularly interesting to read about, but it’s a bit of progress all the same. I did flesh out my 30 minutes with a bit of actual composition, though it’s still a work in progress. Thought I’d try using my actual full-blown DAW this time, since I still haven’t actually done any real work in it, so far everything has been written in the online version. Cakewalk is going to take some getting used to.
A fairly light day today, spent some time reviewing modes and how they work, specifically in relation to video game music. And of course the ever present piano practice, including some tracks that I don’t usually include in the practice rotation. It went well enough, but I’m wondering if I should be spending more time focusing on straight scales.
Another day, and more homework completed, including a more or less successful attempt at analysis. Some of this stuff is starting to actually sink in, so I count that as a win. I also feel like today’s piano practice actually went fairly well, I tried a couple of the tracks that I haven’t really played and did a decent job with both. It’s possible that they are just extra easy, but I’m going to count that as a win as well.
In other news: an actual video today! At least, I hope. I still have to try to edit it, so there’s still plenty of space for things to go wrong, but as of the time of my original posting, things are at least looking hopeful.
I’ve recently picked up a replacement for my old and ailing smartphone, opting for the at this time current flagship device from the Samsung Galaxy line: the Note 9. It’s supposed to have one of the better cameras available at the moment, and actually has a full HD front facing camera, which should let me get decent video quality while still getting feedback on the video without having to mirror my screen off to a laptop. And, I was pleased to find out, I have the option of directly connecting my digital voice recorder and microphone to it for improved audio quality without the need for recording a separate audio track and combining it with the video in the editing stage. If the video that it produces actually plays nice with my editor, or I can find an alternative editor that does play nice with it, then the new setup should be considerably more reliable and efficient.
Two thirds of the way through, and I’m doubling down on the idea of completing the first “semester” of the music theory course. I moved away from it a bit just to get more into material that would be more directly useful to my current projects, but at the same time I’m so close to reaching the end. So I’m buckling down and doing the homework that I haven’t gotten around to yet. According to the instructor, completing fifth species counterpoint marks the end of the content from the first semester of his collage course, and that is very nearly the point that I’ve reached. So that will be pretty gratifying. Afterward I can shift back to studying techniques more specific to ambient and game music for the remainder of the challenge.
I consciously decided to skip the “video” update today. I’ve been having an incredibly difficult time with the recording setup lately, and I’m honestly not sure why it’s proving to be such a hassle. On the plus side, I have a couple of new options available to try out, but I wasn’t able to get everything together to test it today. Tomorrow I will try to see if I can’t get an actual video together.