Lost my Job and updates to Gutter Dev

Whoops I was unlucky enough that the massive crashing waves of the game industry's current layoffs pulled me loose from my very comfortable job at BHVR. The irony certainly isn't lost on me that half my motivation of leaving indie years ago, was because I was looking for better stability in my career. Stability which I had undeniably been granted via much better pay, benefits, healthcare, and a 3 year work visa. So needless to say, still 100% worth the 2 year journey.

In an optimistic way, I really don't mind the shake up. Like sure of course the initial band-aid tear stung. I had the chest sinking realization and vague sense of failure. Though both a mixture of pouring of support from friends and peers plus some very kind referrals for my next hopeful opportunities soothed the sting greatly. The real hell of it all now is just the uncertainty. My last stint of unemployment (like nearly 5 years ago) lasted around 8 months and that simply sucked. Plus now I've got a fiancé, cat, and $1700+ a month rent who won't keep rising. BHVR was very kind with its severance, but even still I know we can't afford for me to ride out unemployed summer vacation while I hope to get lucky again like I did with Ratloop. (Lucky in that my roommate was hired just before me and metaphorically left the door open)

Sure yeah I've got plenty more experience under my belt now, and yes I know more people yadda yadda. Fingers crossed and good chance I'll get my own foot in a door much easier this time... but I also know the last two years has been a relentless, unprecedented, RECORDBREAKING combo breaker of layoffs flying across the entire industry. Like literally the worse down-turn the business of ~video games~ have had since they basically stopped existing for a while in the 80s. Now we can see how a multibillion billion dollar industry's attitude of "we could never not make more money!" becomes a chain reaction of sand castles crashing down one after the other. God I could go on about the  i n d u s t r y  but I won't and can't because I'd never manage to focus all of those thoughts succinctly into a written medium. I mean christ look at how long this blog post is already. I'd only manage to express all those thoughts while talking over myself in an endless ramble to a kindly patient friend or family. This paragraph really lost the plot. My point is that right now I'm at my best, but jobs in general are at their worst - so I get to feel nervous regardless of any personal confidence. 

AND YET STILL, I'm trying to be thankful and hold on to the twinge of optimism that this is going to be good for me in the career long run. That it's the kick in the ass I've wanted to seriously focus myself professionally. My creative soul forever craves to prove a meaningful demonstration of my value as a game designer. Which can be oddly hard to do when your job that doesn't always directly ask for that (especially when they simply don't have enough work to give you). So now jobless, I at least feel as though that my ever-vague proposition of "personal value proving" has a simple path forward now. One, work hard and smart enough on my own personal projects well enough that they're worth showing to others (hiring managers) literally as a design portfolio. Two, get a job. Both steps are integral for my feelings of self-worth, but I'll I'll gladly take just step two if I accidentally stumble into it first.

All this to say, I appreciate having a fire under my ass to not only motivate me to do my own portfolio project work, but also to motivate me into making it PRESENTABLE. As if a professional will be looking at it and judging to decide if I've continued to earn the career I've been striving to thrive within since highschool. Lowkey I also appreciate it knowing I was probably never going to be in a position where I'd decide to leave the comfort and stability of BHVR. Like it's really easy to keep thinking "I want a family someday, I should probably be saving more money" and not exactly want to rush to pull the indie / unemployment ripcord. That fire really does burn especially hot being nearly 30 and thinking about so much about "the wife and child" aye.

So yeah will be looking for a job and ideally posting more blogs and logs here to best document my personal dev progress until I find said job. To kick it off, I just posted a string of Gutter Dev videos on YouTube. The vast majority of these videos showcase work I did like 6+ months ago during my inter-project unreal training weeks at BHVR. My declared primary focus of which was learning unreal enemy AI / behavior (lol) trees. Which I did! Honestly with how complex it was to learn, I think the enemy functionality is what I'm now most proud of in Gutter. Which says a lot because previously my pride was all about how I got the mantling system working in like 2 hours one random weekday night. Ideally my "enemy AI pride" will soon also be supplanted by some sick, detailed, and robustly designed level environment of a grimy city's port coast and boatyard. I'm sure I'll do a great job at that as long as I don't keep getting distracted by and reorganizing my old blueprint code in an effort to remember how it all works and stomp out the bugs.

Until then here's a demonstration of the enemy behavior states and their transitions showcased. Said states being idle / patrolling, investigating, and alert. (Also here's the tutorial series that finally helped me get it all working)

Lastly to anyone reading can go to my Gutter Dev Log page check out any previous work or to keep up with further progress tracking of the project .