October and (mostly) November Update

Hello there and happy month of December! You might notice that I did not write a blog post for October… I was very busy and didn’t really get anything done between vacation/covid/interviews/etc., life just caught up to me. So I thought I would write one blog post and share what happened in October, but mostly November.

October

I will recap briefly why nothing got done in October. The first week I was on vacation with my finance and did not have access to my computer. I did plan on scheduling videos and I had them all prepped to go, however I completely forgot to schedule them on YouTube and the playthrough continued without those two videos (I will try my best to upload these ASAP when I get access to that computer again).

The second week I caught COVID. I don’t know if you have had COVID before, but let me tell you, it is not fun. I’ve heard of worse symptoms from other people so I think I caught a milder case, or maybe I had less symptoms because I’ve had multiple vaccines, but for me I don’t think it was as bad as it could have been. I was so tired and once I started feeling a little better, could only spend about an hour or two up and doing stuff before needing to go lie back down again.

Week 3 of October I started an interview process (I got an offer for it!). This is the item that took up most of my time. I haven’t done any interviews in a long time, and this one was very long. It was 2 interviews long, and then I had to complete a technical interview using Unity to show them that I could actually code and wasn’t faking it. This whole process took around 3 weeks. That takes us into November, but I did manage to get some stuff done while October was being cruel to me.

November

November was a LOT better. I got back on schedule from several weeks of being off of one and many exciting things happened. First off, I got the job as I mentioned above! I start Dec 3rd and I couldn’t be happier. I’ll be coding full time using Unity (despite trying to move off Unity on my own personal projects, I still really like Unity). I am a little worried how this will affect my willingness to work on my own projects, however for work I will not be working on video games, but more medical simulations so we shall see.

I didn’t get to release very many new videos (as the interview process still took up a lot of November) however I still managed to get some out. Videos released in November:

Haiku, The Robot | Part 13. We have a continuation of Haiku, The Robot. This is the video that has a couple parts missing (11 and 12) but we’ll still be continuing the journey of Haiku.

Bear and Breakfast | Let's Play Ep. 1 | Building first lodge! The second is a game I just started playing called Bear and Breakfast. You are essentially running a bed and breakfast from scratch, but as a bear and with two furry friends. It’s very adorable and if you’re interested in “cozy” style games, I highly recommend you watch the first and second parts below and play it yourself! I can see my future self sinking way too many hours into this game. Bear and Breakfast | Let's Play Ep. 2 | Unlocking the Garbage Dump! is also up on YouTube if you’ve watched the first one and want to continue the series! You’ll notice that the second Let’s Play is edited differently - let us know which way you prefer!

Lethal Company | Welcome to the Disciplinary Process. The third is Lethal Company. Lethal Company was just released on Oct 23rd and has had increasing popularity the last several weeks. If you’re unaware, I’m part of a gaming community called Villainous (originated from Black Desert Online) and this video is a “best of” compliation of a night of playing. It’s incredibly hilarious and worth the watch if you want a laugh!

If you’re interested in checking out some of our other videos, check them out on our DIDS YouTube channel! Also please give a subscription, trying to get out there is beyond incredibly difficult and every interaction we have is appreciated!

Future Plans

If you’ve read the past few blogs, you’ll know that several projects are in the works for DIDS. Right now I’m taking a break from Heaven’s Gate. It’s not going in the direction that I want it to, and with porting it over to Unreal Engine I need to take a step back from it. However, Inner Demons (working title) has now been started. This will be started with Unreal Engine and is more of a storyline based game about depression and death. It will be very dark, very emotional and not for those who easily cry. It’s also based on a real story - me. This is something that I’ve held very close to my heart and it is not easy for me to share it. That’s all I’ll say about it, but stay tuned for future updates and progress.

I’ve been working on Google’s Project Management course on Coursera as well. It’s typically marked down as a 6 month long course, and I plan on wrapping it up in the next week, making it a total of 3 months until I’ve completed it. I’m on the last couple of modules and then I can move onto other things in my life!

For now I’m sticking to two videos per week on Monday and Friday. I’ve been considering changing it to once per week, maybe on Monday, but I feel like that is too little (especially if I start creating progress videos for video games since that is what I want to focus on) so we’re keeping it at two. Colour Quest is also underway still. Two Colour Quest videos have been released and I’m working on both the 3rd and 4th so stay tuned for those!

That’s all for now. I know it was a longer blog post, and I apologize for the lack of content in October, but I hope you guys stick with us on this journey!