What I've Been Up to In October 2023
Cherishing the small moments in this peaceful corner of a chaotic world...
This October, autumn suddenly arrived with its trick of sometimes-cold-and-sometimes-warm weather. The kids’ schools already gave plenty of hints about this season: parent teacher conference week, and a whole week off for “Fall Break” (first time I heard of this… never realized that Fall was the only season I wasn’t aware that should of course have a break of its own… I guess?). We took the opportunity to bond - with a ‘camping tent experiment’ set up in our backyard for a few days (we actually napped in it twice :), bowling, arcade, and also took the time to build a LED-up Tron costume for Halloween. It’s a bit clunky but at night it received plenty of admiring looks and compliments :)
Meanwhile in another part of the world, human tragedies are happening every minute with kids dying, families suffering, the hearts broken. It pains me to see the news about yet another war (Israel-Hamas, in addition to the Russia-Ukraine war). This post by the awesome Animation Obsessive especially hits home for me:
Usually Palestinians are treated or are looked at as numbers. You hear that five people were killed, or that ten Palestinians died. But this is not the case. The case is that behind each number there is a long human story, and that’s why we focused on this one story and individual; we wanted to tell the untold human story behind the numbers.
But it also reminds me that we are just so lucky to be living in a relatively peaceful place where our kids can live and thrive.
Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…
Creating and hacking stuffs
Game Dev
Qin: this month I’m putting a pause on further developing this game to focus on newer projects and a game jam. But give it a play and send me feedback anyway! Android: Google Play store, web: Itch.io or gd.games
Scream Jam: I failed to build anything since I didn’t allocate enough time. Most of the time went to learning about working with 3D in GDevelop engine (yes, it now has 3D capability, still kinda in a wild wild west but it has potential to make decent 3D games) as well as procedurally generated [maze] content. I drafted a design concept doc for this horror game in First-person perspective, the movement will be the 90 degrees movement as seen in old school AD&D games such as “Eye of the Beholder” but the ghost will chase the player in the dungeon… I am pretty sure I will return to this idea and finish it. Maybe after a few other projects. :p
A new edu-tainment project focusing on the concept of ‘photosynthesis’ has started development. Not much to show yet since this month I was distracted by the Scream Jam attempt above, but I rewrote the game design doc twice on this game to refine its ‘hook’ and the flow of gameplay.
Drawing
It is the Inktober month! I’m happy to report that I’ve done it again, following the assigned prompt words and drawing one picture a day for all 31 days! Here are a few interesting ones to highlight (see all of them in Heta Studio’s social channels):
Writing
Book#2 project -“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - I’ve been making great progress editing this book, but it’s looking like it may take longer, hopefully will be publishing by the Christmas holiday time.
The pre-released drafts of this book will continue to be published/shared with my Patreon members every week!
The Web
Last month, all social postings were moved to newly created ‘Heta Studio’ accounts so if you haven’t done so, please, click through my LinkTree page to follow the correct ones!
Patreon recently revamped their service and now it’s easier to ‘follow’ (for free) the creators! I shared all my Inktober drawings on Patreon also for free. But the paid members will continue to get all the full resolution arts and pre-released writing pieces every week! I am also looking forward to providing soft copies of my books and games to my patrons later this year.
Heta Studio Website and Merch Store - no updates, but check them out!
This month I’ve also joined the local game dev meetup groups (in-person & on Discord) as well as checked out a virtual game conference ‘Indie Games Expo’.
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - Continue reading “Tracers in the Dark” by Wired’s Andy Greenberg
Gaming - Continue to play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom; I kinda stopped playing Inscryption but digging deeper into the world of Falconeer enjoying the mix of its dog-fight action as well as the lore and world-building.
TV/Movies - finished Ahsoka S1 - it's decent enough, I give it.... 7 out of 10. Definitely has a lot of loose plo tholes and awkward moments, but I do like how Anakin is shown at the end of the season… White Lotus S2 - it's good, but S1 was better, I think; Scavengers Reign - this is a new anime on Max, I’m loving it a lot!; Loki S1 - honestly I was having a Marvel superhero fatigue but found this surprisingly good. The ending got me to go back and watch… Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - and yeah… this is not a good movie/story/script at all (my last attempt to watch this stopped at 15 min in) - again I skim through most of it only to catch the story of Kang.
That’s it for this issue of my newsletter! If you really finished reading the above, I thank you, and wish that my sharing would either entertain you, or inspire you (if you’ve been thinking about your own creative projects).