All posts by Dezonus

I'm Dezonus, the owner of this blog, as well as the parent site: dezonus.com I'm currently studying at university to be a Games Developer of some sort, trying to cover lots of bases so that I can get a similar job if my plan falls through. I hope to share meaningful stuff here, but I'll see how it goes. I also hope to share games that I develop with the people who read this, so keep your eyes open ;)
Dezonus Life, Dezonus Productions

Preparations for 2017

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So, once again it’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. I’ll say again that my intentions are to post here more often, but I know that that would be me sounding rather like a broken record. I can, however, guarantee that this will be the last post of 2016.

I’ve recently acquired an ABN (Australian Business Number) for Dezonus Productions. This means that I’m now actually allowed by law to charge people for services rendered. What it means for me, is that I’m now able to properly set myself up as a Freelance Web Developer.

I’m currently working on revamping the Dezonus Productions site. As it stands, it makes for a great folio site, but does not at all convey anything about the web development services I will provide (as when it was created, I wasn’t really doing that). So far, I have a really cool design that I’m quite proud of, I’ve just got to figure out a few more things before I code it up.

I’ve currently got a few clients lined up for next year, which is quite exciting. If I can get some momentum going as a Web Developer, that would be fantastic.

As far as that “Ambitious Project” I mentioned in my last post goes, that been put on hold indefinitely. It was a project for a Client, but I’ve been unable to speak to said client in quite some time.

As far as Game Development goes right now, it’s essentially on the back-burner. That said, I am working on fleshing out a concept for a really ambitious game, but the problem as far as I see it is the scope is way out of proportion. Something that requires a bit more thought I think.

Dezonus Productions

An ambitious project

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I’ve been working on a pretty ambitious project for a while now. It’s for a client, and I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about what it is. However, what I can say, is this is by far the most ambitious and complicated project that I have ever done. It blows all of my other PHP and SQL projects out of the water.

*Warning: Incoming Nerd-speak*

Up until now, I have avoided Object Oriented Programming, and haven’t had much need for Manually coding SQL interaction. This project, suffice to say that not only have I had to research OOPHP and OOJS, I’ve also had to figure out how to get info from SQL, through PHP, into HTML, and then into Javascript. It’s done my head in for a while, but I’ve cracked it just now, and I must say I’m feeling very proud of myself.

Obviously, with this magnitude of a project, I’m going to write up here, and on my Folio (which has been fleshed out recently) when I’m done. But until then, I need to mostly keep it under wraps.

I’m having fun doing it though.

Dezonus Life, Dezonus Webspace

Getting Nowhere

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So, I’ve been job hunting since November, and so far, I’ve gotten nowhere. I’m going to go talk to Swinburne’s careers people later this week, and perhaps that will help, but I’m getting doubtful about it all.

Meanwhile, JTown is having fantastic luck at finding web clients. So, I begin to think, maybe I should tell all these web recruitment people where to shove it, and actually become a legit freelance developer. If the web job recruiters don’t want to hire me, I’ll make them wish that they had. I mean, I do thoroughly enjoy web work, and I do a pretty kick-ass job, so…

Sure, it’s not as good as having a secure income and what not, but I feel like I’m kind of running out of other options.

At any rate, I’m going to do some work on the Dezonus webspace today. It gets a bit neglected with everything else, so it needs it.

Dezonus Life

Life after Uni

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So, I finished up my degree a bit over a month ago, and now I’m transitioning to the next chapter of my life.

I’m still quite disheartened that GBL isn’t going anywhere, because not only was that a really cool game, but working on it for the last year was one of the most exciting and fulfilling things I’ve done it quite some time. And now, with it gone…All that effort was for not really all that much. I mean sure, yes, we completed the assessment, and did quite well (distinction grade), but this is a game, that’s awesome to play, and it’s never going to come to fruition.

But anyway, I’m job hunting a lot. The games industry isn’t the strongest in Melbourne, so getting into it is really tricky. For that reason, I’m mostly applying for web development jobs, as this is something I can do pretty well, and is something I enjoy doing. So far, I’m not having much luck though…

So, in the meantime, I’m working on projects. I have another site with JTown in the works, as well as a web project on my own. Hopefully, these will boost the strength of my web portfolio, and make me more likely to get work.

I also have some ideas for games projects, but these are on the back-burner right now. Part of this is because I’m dreading learning a new 3d modelling program. I’m quite used to 3ds Max, and enjoy working with it, but the student version I had can’t be used commercially, and the commercial version is obscenely expensive ($280/month, combined with the fact that I fundamentally disagree with software subscriptions). Right now, Blender is looking the best.

But yeah, I miss the structure of being a uni student, the certainty that there’ll be something to go to this year, coz right now, things are kinda scary…

Galactic Battle League

Galactic Battle League 3015’s Fate

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So, as I’ve written about a bit, I worked on a really cool game over the course of 2015. On a team of 9, we made this awesome splitscreen hovertank arena deathmatch game called “Galactic Battle League 3015”, as our final year game project. I was super proud of this, we did really well with it. We had a lot of people at PAX who wanted to buy it, plus intrest from ID@XBOX.

We were at the Swinburne Games Lab Showcase. Most of the team was there, and so we got to discuss where to from here.

Long story short, as we made everything using student/educational versions of software, we’d basically have to start again, and not many of the team members wanted to do that. So, Galactic Battle League will not be going any further.

We’re going to try get a free version put up on the Swinburne Games Lab site, so I’ll definitely link that if that happens.

I was really looking forward to seeing this game go forward, go somewhere at least. I’m really disappointed that this wont ever happen…

Galactic Battle League

Rather late follow up

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Again I didn’t manage to post anything in quite some time. Whoops. With a bit of luck, this shouldn’t happen so much any more, but I’ve said that a few too many times.

So, PAX Aus and GBL. PAX was huge, a really awesome sea of lights, gamers, games and merch. I ended up buying a Portal Gun and a Sennheiser gaming headset. But as far as the stands went, there weren’t all that many that interested me. As I wasn’t die hard on Fallout, or Battlefront, or Wargaming (World of Tanks and the like), they were sort of the biggest attraction. That, and stands giving away stuff. But, mostly, I was there for GBL.

So, we had lots of people come up and play Galactic Battle League. A lot of them wanted to buy it, but sadly we’re not at a stage where we’re ready to sell it. We also had a guy from ID@XBOX come up and have a chat with us (me, actually, as I was minding the stand at the time). He thought it was a pretty cool game, and encouraged that if we get set up to get in touch with them to potentially get it on Xbox One. That was pretty damn exciting! We also found an image gallery put out by Kotaku, that was basically a “Highlight of PAX Aus” sort of thing, and that our game was one of the pictures.

So we have ourselves a pretty damn cool game. Combine that with the fact we got a Distinction on our assessment, this project certainly has some ambition.

The only problem now, is sorting out everyone to sit down and have a chat about it. Because, I’d really hate to see all this effort  and interest end up going no further.

There’s a Swinburne Games Lab Showcase coming up next week though. With a bit of luck we might just be able to have our chat then…

Galactic Battle League

Galactic Battle League and PAX

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So, with not posting here in a while, I realised I haven’t talked about Galactic Battle League yet. I ought to do so.

Galactic Battle League 3015 is a game I’ve been working on all year. I’ve been working on it through Swinburne with a team of 8 other students. It’s the final project I have to do with Swinburne, and let me just say, I’m very excited and proud of it. We have a presskit site here if you’re interested: http://panzershark.com/gbl

It’s a Hovertank Arena Battle Game. It’s got familiar elements from a whole bunch of games, but nothing is quite like it. I personally find it really fun, and most of our playtesters have also really enjoyed it. Currently it’s set to only do 4 player local splitscreen, but that’s all we need for now.

Why?

Because we’re taking this to PAX Aus 2015. It’s both extremely exciting, and extremely terrifying. I’ve never actually been to PAX before, and so the first time I’m going to be going to it, I’m going to be exhibiting.

There’s not long left, but I’m pretty confident we’ll be ready when it comes.

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Web Hosts are sneaky buggers

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I just noticed I haven’t posted anything in exactly a year…I really need to stop not posting. So, I’m going to endeavour to post here more often, but I’m quite aware that I’ve said that before…

Anyway, until yesterday, the site had been down for about a fortnight. I hadn’t been notified per say, because my contact details were stored in somewhere on their site that didn’t exist 3 years ago when I signed up. That’s fixed now though.

But yeah, they’d sent a few emails to my other email, the one that inundated with spam from everything under the sun, and thus I rarely check it. But I went onto dezonus.com, noticed it was down with a HostPapa message, and then thought to check it. Lo and behold, yeah, there it was.

Anyway, went to renew, and the charge was almost twice as much. I rang them up to find out what the hell was going on, and the rate I paid first was their “Introductory Rate”. Turns out, there’s a page on their site, that you can’t find unless you’re linked to it, that lists the renewal costs, and that’s how they can get away with it. It’s the same story as my previous host.

I was pissed off, and decided to look around to find better deals…but it seems that even at the higher cost, I’m still doing well.

Still, I think it’s really dodgy that they do that, and that most of them seem to do that. It’d be much better if they were honest upfront, and said “Hey, just be aware that when you renew, it’ll cost this amount”. I probably would have looked that amount up, gone yeah that’s good, and been fine with it. Honesty is the best Policy.

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The Spamming of a virtually unread blog

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So, as you may or may not have gathered by now, not a great deal of people read this. And that’s okay, I don’t post a lot, and I haven’t really gained attention or anything yet. This will likely change when I get my game up, but anyway…

I’ve been being barraged with spam from “Cheap Uggs” with a completely nonsensical message following it. I’m going to look at getting an anti spam plugin, but I do truly wonder why you would bother. By now, they would have figured out that their comments aren’t getting through, and this place doesn’t get much attention (other than them)…so…

Then again, it is the internet…most things don’t make much sense…

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A Lack of Time Management and Reliable Internet

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So, University finished up for the semester. The Holidays Started. I started off great, with a lot of planning for the next major update to Dez-Game, and a minor update to get a refresher of where I was. And then…well…

Winter happened, and when winter comes, it rains a lot. When it rains, I lose internet at home. Not totally, but it becomes completely unreliable. This lack of reliability prevents me from being able to upload to my webspace, work on any of the sites within the webspace (such as this), and also, most annoyingly, prevents me from playing any games which require internet.

I’m not trying to say that the lack of internet is why I’ve made no real progress on things such as Dez-Game…That’s down to a severe lack of time management and motivation. But I am saying it certainly doesn’t help.

I’m a gamer. That’s one of the things that I enjoy most, and recently I got introduced to a game called Planetside 2. It’s an MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter), and the only one I have ever seen. I freaking love that game, and it’s one of the main sources of excitement I have. In fact, since it, I’ve found most other games (particularly MMOs) a lot less interesting.

However, as I said before, I’ve not really been able to play online games lately, which upsets me. In fact, it’s probably why I haven’t been able to motivate myself as much lately…

But anyway. Uni is back on now, and this semester’s timetable is actually not too bad, in contrast with last semester’s… I may very well be able to find some time to get some of these things achieved.

Then again, I do believe that is what I said last time…