First devlog. This is exciting! All my final grades are in, which is also exciting! I have gotten sick 2 days after graduation! Substantially less exciting. Either way, time to hit the ground running. I've spent the last 6 months of college waiting for the moment where I get to work on my own stuff full time. I'm finally here. To start, I think my main goals (outside of some weekly job applications and daily interview prep) are to beef up the current 3 portfolio projects, work on something new that is at least adjacent to game development or audio tools, and get more comfortable in a few areas that I'm not where I want to be yet.

The areas I want to spend some more time in is the priority. These are:

• The Unreal Engine animation pipeline
• Unreal specific C++

The current list for possible additions to portfolio projects is:

• FPS Prototype:
• Ghosts to show prior best time runs(a speedrun classic)
• Fully embrace making Neon White's mechanics and build a card system(and scrap the pointless stamina system)
• Add more levels and enemies(a perfect excuse to get to know the animation pipeline better)
• Optimize, refactor, and polish using everything I've learned since the I did the project 6 months ago
• Horror Puzzle Game:
• Upgrading enemy AI, models, and animations (another good spot to engage with animation)
• Randomizing the maze while remaining solvable (BFS and some careful door/key placements)
• 12-Band EQ:
• Adding an RMS meter using short term fourier transforms
• Adding A- or K-Weighting to the spectrum analyzer to more closely mimic human loudness perception
• Multi-filter high and low pass that can be manipulated by octaves rather than Q to fit industry standard (I currently can only think of dynamically stacking filters for this. There has to be a better approach)
• Optimizing a bit of the memory use and rendering operations (I think everything can be done without the GUI coeffs and stay thread safe, and I know the response curve can be cheaper)
• If I don't optimize those out, at least set up a way where filter coefficient array reallocation is substantially less common (preferably not happening at all)

This section is new projects that I want to do and bring to completion.

• Sokoban & C++: (My sokoban love knows no bounds)
• This seems like a perfect small project to make to gain Unreal C++ knowledge and find any other gaps in Unreal knowledge outside of networks
• Perfect oppurtunity to see just how optimized I can get the runtime of an Unreal game
• An excellent skillset to get before diving back into the complexity of Liberators
• Raspberry Pi: (I love low level things and my wonderful partner got me a one!)
• While I'm not sure on what will be done with it, there are so many cool possibilities
• The current idea I would like is to emulate an NES. The memory and cpu ops of it are so well documented. I think that would be quickly doable and a lot of fun!
• A cheap and small LKFS meter: (why do audio plugin companies make these do too much)
• Would love to work on more audio plugins, and this could definitely be done in a week
• This would be another audio tool that I would use frequently like the eq
• I was an audio engineer during the loudness wars. I cannot overstate my appreciation for a good true loudness unit meter
• Liberators: (This is a turn based tactics game that I would love to work on again, but I'm afraid that the mess I made in it so early in my programming journey may make the work done mostly unusable)
• It will need one heck of a refactor, and last I remember some serious look into some very crazy build tool errors.
• Catch myself back up to speed and finish the enemy AI
• Refactor grid logic and pathing to C++
• Continue development based on the todo list I left myself. Animation pipeline was right around the corner.

This leaves me with a tough decision, but the plan is this: 1 week for each portfolio project to get all of the features I have listed, more polish, some refactoring, and make a devlog on each Wednesday with the updated project. This way I can have better portfolio projects and at least get more acclimated to Unreal's animation pipeline with the FPS and horror games. Next will most likely be the Sokoban game, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

With the planning out of the way, the future logs oughta be much shorter. I've just been thinking about what I would do once I attained freedom for so long, that this is the place I could finally spill it all out. Plus, putting future work out there in the world will make me accountable for it. See you next week with a fresh coat of paint on one of the current selected projects :)