I’m going to admit that I was very productive this week, partly due to watching a fair amount of Mad Men the past couple of days. However, I still managed to at least get started on a GameMaker project, and I’ve began designing some level and mechanic concepts to help me build the thing. Here’s what I have so far:

From here, I’m just planning to make these levels as a sort of basis for what I can do, then go from there to create far more complex environments. Still not entirely sure what this game is going to be about, I have some ideas, but nothing concrete.

As for other stuff I did, well I made new background for the site, I think it looks significantly better than before. And I also cleaned up my work environment (As in my room), now I can use my other desk for actual art projects again.

In terms of games, not much. Still playing Persona 3 Portable and Persona 2. MK9 for the PC came out and it seems decent. It feels kinda clunky seeing as I’ve been playing Persona 4 Arena a fair amount. And I went back to the ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus Collection, to which I realised it has Remote Play support, which is awesome. ICO holds up better than I thought it would, although modern game design hasn’t done any favours to my puzzle-solving ability. They’re not too bad, but I certainly had to refer to a walkthrough to point myself in the right direction a couple of times. Right now I’m at the East Gate Bench.

Speaking of ICO, I’ve started to think about gender roles in games again, and my personal opinion on it is very different to how everybody else thinks it should be done. I’m gonna do a tad more research before I write anything.

And I also played Battlefield 3 seeing as it was on PS+ this month. And you know what? It is awful on consoles. Damn near unplayable.

Plans For Next Week:

• Continuing work on GameMaker project.
• Improve productivity rate.
• General C# Programming stuff.
• Upload 1st Year Uni Work, College work, Secondary School Art Work, other art work, etc.
• Livestream @ Twich.tv/SGTADMAN on Friday or Saturday. Either games or work. (NOTE: Due to the friends I have, this stream might be NSFW in terms of language, and is not representative to me or my formal work in anyway)

That’s it for now, see you next week!

-Adam

So the first week of Summer projects has proven to be an interesting one. I spent most of my time doing the improved graphics of the MGC forum and altering all the layout stuff for it.

It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but for a first coat of new paint it certainly does the job and there’s still plenty of improvements to work on. Next on the list of features in a homepage and the actual editing of the CSS that gives the forum that look (I’m currently using Forumotion’s back-end for most of this stuff).

In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, I went back to a previous GameMaker project to see if I could correct and revive it. I made a couple of levels to see how it played and it worked fine. The idea in question is a platformer with personal commentary overlapping it to give some idea into the mind of the creator of the world… Or I could just use it as an outlet for my thoughts, which would make this blog rather redundant. Either way, I did more work in two hours than an ex-colleague of mine did in three months. And by that I mean I did work while he sat an played Guild Wars 2 and complained at me for his laziness.

Anyway, I have noticed that I’m not super-productive like I used to be. I still played quite a few games between tasks and often got sidetracked by videos and things on the internet. Well, at least I know what to cut down on during next week. And for reference, no, I don’t work on weekends unless I really have to.

Next Weeks Plans Are:

• Progress on GameMaker project.
• XNA/PS Mobile stuff.
• General C# programming for practice and improvement. (I haven’t coded in a month)

-Adam