King of Shadows – Weekly Update #125 (Final)

Hey everyone, the week has come and gone and, as the title suggests, this is the final weekly update for King of Shadows, so I hope you enjoy reading it from start to end, and that you will enjoy the game just as much when it is completed.

Before we get into the nostalgia trip, let’s take a look at the Jadence sprite, since I have now completed her up to the same stage as the others so far with all the outlines and flat colours.

And here she is! While her part in the game is short, I look forward to implementing her in the prologue chapter of the game.

When I started these updates, I was prepared to be in it for the long haul, but when I see that this has been going on for 125 weeks, and think about how much has happened in the past 8 months, it amazes me that I was able to keep going for so long. Certainly, there were many weeks where I did little to no work on King of Shadows itself, and some where I didn’t work on any projects at all, however it’s still great to see how far I’ve come from where I started, and though things will become busier as I start my job tomorrow, I aim to keep moving forward, continually taking slow steps towards building my career in games.

Although the chapter involving these weekly updates is coming to an end, a new chapter shall begin. I was hoping to have something ready to share on the monthly update format in this update, but it seems time got away from me this week so I’ll have to save it for another day. I’ll definitely make a post on it when I have something to show though so keep your eyes peeled.

The time has come to end off this update. Thank you all for your undying support over the last couple of years, it means more to me than my words could ever do justice, and while it is for a great reason that these weekly updates are going, I will miss them. I will see you in the new updates, and as always, thanks for following the development of King of Shadows.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #124

Hey everyone, hope you’ve all had a great week, it’s certainly been a very nice week for me. Been working really hard the past few days and as a result the Jadence sprite is nearly complete. I would show it now but I think I’ll keep y’all in suspense for the next update.

This week I’m just gonna give some quick points regarding where I plan to go from here. Thanks to the feedback on the last update, I decided that I will go ahead with the monthly update format once I start my job, and I definitely hope to be just as good – if not better – at keeping up with the updates then as I have been up to now.

I’ll leave off here for now as I do want to save a lot of what I have to say for next week’s update, as it will be the final weekly update. Thanks for following the development of King of Shadows and see you next week.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #123

Hey people, as some of you know already I got some very exciting news this week, and if you’ve been following the past couple of updates you can probably guess what it is so I won’t beat around the bush: I got the call this week with the results of my participation in the Test Analyst job opportunity and as it turns out I ended up getting the job, which will be starting in a couple of weeks’ time on April 15.

This is huge news, as this will be my first paid job and it’s a full-time one. Sadly though, it does come with the drawback of not having as much time to work on King of Shadows and other projects. I will spend as much time as I can over the next couple of weeks to finish up the Jadence sprite and doing some more work on the planning, but once the job starts, progress will once again slow to a crawl.

There are two problems I’m considering at the moment, the first of which being the rate of my progress on projects. If I continue to keep up the weekly format, there will likely be many weeks going by without any progress to report at all, so I’m thinking about changing the format from weekly to monthly.

The second problem I’m considering is the whole “King of Shadows” title for the updates. While it is the major project I work on, I also tend to put other projects under the spotlight in updates, and also talk about games I enjoy playing, sometimes even just how my life is going in general, since I often feel that there isn’t enough progress on King of Shadows to carry an update on its own. For this reason, I might also rebrand the updates if I switch to a monthly format.

I’d like to hear your feedback on these ideas, so please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below or on the post linking to the update. With that said, there are still a couple of weeks to go before this takes place so I’ll definitely keep up the weekly format until then. I hope you all have a great week and I will see you in the next update. Thanks for following the development of King of Shadows and stay awesome.

PS. I know you were probably expecting an April Fool’s joke but at the time of writing I only just noticed what day it was now so you get off easy this time haha.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #122

Hey everyone, it’s been a great week for me and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. As I have mentioned in the past couple of updates, I have been taking part in a program that has an opportunity for me to become a Test Analyst for a big company, and as of a couple of days ago I am now all finished with it. This update will mainly be focused on what went on there, but before that I want to touch briefly on the placeholder Jadence sprite, since I had the opportunity to do a couple of hours of work on her today.

As you can see, both of her arms and hands have now been completely filled in, which I believe is probably the most difficult part of any character. Although the hands aren’t done as well as I would have liked them to be, I knew that I’d have to just call them done at some point since I don’t want to spend too long on these sprites, especially with a full time job potentially around the corner.

With that aside, now let’s get into what went on in the 2-week program. As some of you may recall, I was able to attend this program as a result of the STEMLabs program I did in December, where I was tasked with building and programming Lego Mindstorms robots, and the third week of the recent STEMLabs program I was involved in where I was tasked with a bit of website testing and working with Apple’s Shortcuts app. From the recent STEMLabs program six candidates were selected to go into this special 2-week program working in a company’s facilities, and three would be selected to fill Test Analyst positions in the company after the program.

Since the program was a collaboration between the company and the people behind the STEMLabs program, we were mainly working with the Lego Mindstorms robots again, except this time we were split into three groups and given our own part of a supply chain, which we would swap with each other throughout the week and a bit we had to work on it. Me and my partner were assigned to the Delivery segment of the supply chain, then we took over the Warehousing section with the goal of completing what they had started and/or improving upon what they had already done while one of the other groups was to do the same with ours, and then we moved onto the Dispatch segment while the other groups moved onto their next segments respectively. The goal at the end was to have a mini supply chain where each group’s robots would work with each other with as little human intervention as possible. In the end we were able to finish it, although there were a couple of points where we had to nudge the “packages” a bit so that the robots could pick them up.

Throughout the two weeks we had a lot of the company staff popping in, interested to see what we were doing, and a few giving presentations on what their roles were and how they fit into the company, it was very interesting to learn about some of the things you generally wouldn’t think of with a supply chain (one of the main functions of the company, as you can probably gather by now).

For most of the second week we were tasked with setting up automated testing with an application called UFT, where we set up the application to run repetitive tasks, one of which being making an account and booking a flight on a website with different data in each iteration (for example, Person A would make an account with their own name and details then book a flight, Person B would make an account with their own name and details then book a different flight, etc.) It was a very cool exercise, and I look forward to more of it if I do make it through.

There were a couple of the company staff that spent most of the 2 weeks sitting in on the program and observing our progress, and they seemed to be very impressed with how we went and said they’d be aiming to let us all know whether or not we made the cut by the end of the upcoming week so if I do know by then you will all be definitely hearing about it. If I am successful I will be starting sometime in April so I’m very excited to find out.

Anyway that’s all I have to share for this week, see you all in next week’s update and thanks for following the development of King of Shadows.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #121

Hey people, hope you’ve all enjoyed your week. This is just a small update on how things are moving along as there isn’t any progress to report on King of Shadows and I want to save the detailed breakdown of the Test Analyst program for the next update, when it will be finished.

All I can say for this week is that it’s been a really cool experience so far and although the days can get a bit long it’s been great to meet the staff and chat with some of the friends I’ve made during the programs leading up to this. Whatever happens from here onwards will be a great result in my eyes.

Anyway I will leave off with that for this week so get excited for next week’s update, where I will fully explain what has been going on in these programs and will hopefully have a definitive result in terms of where I will be working.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #120

Hey everyone, hope you’re all well rested and ready for this update like I am because I have some very exciting news to share. But firstly, let’s take a look at my progress on the placeholder Jadence sprite.

She’s really starting to come together now, although it may seem like a mess of lines currently with all the vector paths intersecting I’ve done quite a bit of work on her since last week’s update. The right arm is probably going to be one of the more difficult parts to get right but overall it shouldn’t be too much longer until she’s up to the same stage as the previous ones I did. Well I guess we’ll all find out soon enough anyway.

Now that that’s said and done, I am very pleased to announce that I have been selected to move onto the second phase of the Test Analyst job opportunity, which is essentially a 2-week work trial at the company. If things go well then I will be one of the 3 out of 6 people selected to fill the positions, and if not I’m still in a pretty good position since – as I mentioned in the last update – there are other opportunities available for me if I don’t go through, although getting some full-time work in a field like this would be an ideal scenario.

As for what this means for King of Shadows? I’m not certain yet, but at the very least I want to give this opportunity my best efforts for the next couple of weeks to increase my chances of nailing it so progress may be either slow or halted depending on how things go in terms of hours working and travel times, as well as other activities and commitments.

In any case, thank you all for your support for the project, even if it has been something as simple as reading these updates every now and then, I will see you in the next update so keep being awesome.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #119

Hey all, it was a very busy week for me last week and I was very tired by the end of it but I gave the program for the job opportunity my very best shot. Hopefully this attempt will bear some fruit even if I don’t get the position.

I have done a little bit more work on the Jadence sprite, and she is slowly coming together. With all that’s been going on it is still going to take some time to get her even to the same state as a few of the other placeholders, but the end result should be worth it.

All that aside, I do have other work opportunities available to me that I intend to explore if the Test Analyst one doesn’t work out, one of which I am very interested in pursuing.

Anyway that’s all I have to share for this week, see you in the next update and thanks for following the development of King of Shadows.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #118

Hey people, it’s been a big week for me as I’ve been preparing for the job opportunity I mentioned last week and so I wasn’t able to make any progress on the Jadence sprite, but I have come up with a couple of cool ideas for the plot which I will be putting onto the project plan.

What are these plot points you may ask? Well as much as I’d love to share them you’ll all just have to continue waiting to find out.

Although very short, I will have to leave the update there for now as I have an early start in the morning and want to make sure I’m well-rested so I can give my best efforts. With that said, thanks for following King of Shadows and I will see you all in the next update, hopefully with good news regarding the job.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #117

Hey all, hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been a pretty big one for me, and I’m getting really excited since there’s a potential job prospect coming up so hopefully things go nicely with it.

I haven’t been able to achieve too much on the game this week, I’ve done a little bit of work on the Jadence placeholder sprite and a little planning for the story, but nothing really worth showing off at this point. I’ll try to get a bit more done next week, since the following few weeks may get very busy.

Anyway that’s all I have to share for this update, see you in the next and thanks for following the development of King of Shadows.

King of Shadows – Weekly Update #116

Hey people, I know it’s a bit late but I really wanted to have this ready so I decided to delay it to today. Anyway without further ado I have a very special announcement. Please take a look.

That’s right. I have now completed my work on Construction Chaos. It has been a lot of fun working on this project, and although I didn’t get absolutely everything I wanted into this game due to time constraints and lack of programming experience, it has come pretty far from when I started it back in September. And who knows? Someday I might end up doing another project like it.

I’d like to thank Envision Employment for the opportunity to work on this game for them, and the 3D Artist Ivan Barbarich for his massive contributions of 3D models, textures and animations.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this update, see you all in the next update and thanks for following the development of King of Shadows.