Hey, I'm Bigfootmech

This is a portfolio of sorts, to document the various tech-adjacent things I have been doing over the years.

It's been sorted to newest/most relevant first.

Recently, I've taken to doing Game Jams.

Both as a form of therapy to perfectionism, and a way to self-improvement.

One of the things I want to get better at is working with others. So if we're in the same Discord or something, hit me up to jam together!

This isn't just to the programmers - really you don't need a skill in anything. The only real things you need are will, and time.

This also isn't just for those participating in GWJ. I'm happy to do other jams, engines, and languages!

If not, you can still check out the things I've made so far.

It's not much. But I feel it's important to both show where I've come from, and to fail.

These 'games' were all made in a week's time. Mostly by me on my own. And it's more about personal growth for me. So don't expect to see anything too amazing. Or even working in some cases.

I've technically been modding since Warcraft 3 - with varying degrees of success.

The most recent game is Hollow Knight Silksong.
You can view the repos here, as well as
Nexus Mods https://next.nexusmods.com/profile/Bigfootmech/mods?gameId=8136
and Thunderstore https://thunderstore.io/c/hollow-knight-silksong/p/Bigfootmech/

You can also view some of my other/older mods on my Steam Workshop page https://steamcommunity.com/id/bigfootmech/myworkshopfiles/

and steam talk page (way outdated) https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/User_talk:Bigfootmech

To replace a weight-loss spreadsheet that didn't quite work smoothly, and started crashing,

I'm currently re-working it in to a custom piece of software.

• Godot frontend, because I found it easy to work with for game jams.
• C# backend, because I wanted to extend my Java knowledge to a new language.
• Set up like a web api,
• with autowiring,
• and sqlite storage.
• as well as the usual testing suite

To kind of copy what I already know of, but also understand how and why those work.

And to learn the C# language and build system.

My favourite thing I've done so far is probably my Dragon Train mod.

It took about 2 weeks of hacking a Chinese IL2CPP game. And the effect is more or less exactly what I wanted. I still laugh whenever I see the video.

(the game originally has a dragon that comes on screen, and roar. replaced it with a train + HOOONK!)

Yes. I feel more proud of this stupid thing than: a university degree, a martial arts black belt, or anything else I've done so far.

The first time I ever touched electronics would have been somewhere between 3 and 5 years old. I found this magic 'del' button on my dad's Windows 3.1 work computer that made things magically disappear.

As a young kid, we also had a "Sega Megadrive" bought from the flea market dealers - later I found out that it was actually an NES repackaged. But that didn't stop us having fun on it.

I also remember my cousin introducing me to his DOS machine, and playing the original DOOM game with me - since I was too young to control the movement and shooting at the same time (also I found the demons scary).

This trend would continue through the years with various cousins, and various games. Another one of which was Worms2

In and around the early 2000's a lot of things happened, and I don't remember the exact order, but...

I got my own first PC, which I managed to kill several years later by putting a power cable between the master and slave pins on a hard drive.

We spent time in Net Cafes playing GTA3, vice city, Warcraft 3, and towards the end C&C Generals.

I was forced to make an account with some alternate to GameSpy and XFire called 'Steam' to play Half Life, and Counter Strike.

I WASN'T allowed by my father to play Deathtrap Dungeon, because it seemed age-inappropriate. And instead he pointed me to Chip's Challenge as a puzzle game.

I used Winamp to watch internet-radio-and-tv broadcasts including Anime - which I didn't even realise was a 'thing' back then. And Pokemon on the TV was just "normal cartoons".

Of course, I also started secondary school.

In Secondary, I distinctly remember making some projects that have now been sadly lost to time.

Some of these included Flash games - one was for German homework (the windows said "das fenster" when you clicked on it).

I also made a personal website, that was hosted on a "free" provider. And also even made a Bionicle font for one of the pages.

As time progressed, I started building my own PCs. Of course tweaking them with regedit, and Group Policy. And being the house internet admin, and tech support.

As well as playing and making maps (mods) for Warcraft 3, and even made some 3D models that there's barely any evidence left of.

I was also trying to get in to Source engine modding, and there's actually an old Steam Talk page that records some of those adventures.

My current profile picture was actually made by me in paint at lunch in school, and I treasure its sentimentality.

Towards the end of secondary, I also remember having an interested in hacking. AutoHotkey automation (macros). Doing hackthissite, and basic cryptography in maths at school. Even making my own cheats for AlienVsPredator2 (single player) in TSearch, which is like an older, weaker CheatEngine. Even tried some hex-editing.

Even went to my first Anime Convention on my own.

Towards the end, both school pushed me towards, and my parents told me that I had to go to University, so I picked a course the only way I knew how...

It made me think of Deus Ex (2000). One of my favourite games at the time.

During uni, I continued going to anime cons as well as gaming, in tandem with other social endeavours.

I also did some modules that included programming. Assembly, C-flavour, Matlab, and even some smartphone coursework.

I actually really loved seeing how basic logic gates built in to an ALU.

And of course, I did a final project in Java of all things.

After finishing, I got a job as a Java web backend developer. But something was bothering me. It just didn't feel right.

I still learned stuff. And a lot. Using Linux, setting up a dev environment, how big code bases are structured. And some of the other devs were really awesome!

But I felt like I was going too slowly. It didn't feel fun. And it totally wasn't what I was expecting.

Programming = Nerd = Alone time... right?

Wrong. Meetings! Every day! Probably several. Also, I hope you like being in a room with 300 people all the time.

After a second job that worked out even worse - It didn't help that both offices had closed down, and moved to a different city - I hung up my dev hat. 'At least for now'.

Time went by, and I still did small projects. I didn't consider it 'real' coding.

I made a firefox extension. Abandoned an early-stage mod for Factorio. And made some small mods for Don't Starve Together about things that were bugging me in the game. The hardest thing being the display pictures for the mods, as I didn't want to use art I didn't have a license for - so drew everything myself.

Also A small Shadertoy project in WebGL reflecting Kerbal Space Program's requirement of "at least 3" (but likely more) satellites for full-coverage of a celestial body ground-vehicle remote control (ie: constant signal).

I even did a deep-dive on decompiling, to make mods for Tale of Immortal (a singleplayer, Unity, IL2CPP game).

Parly because at this point, I was stubborn in "not letting those dumb things (a game... ie: actual Rocket Science, and university level astrophysics and aeronautics | or "standard modding for a Unity game" ... actually pretty advanced hacking) beat me".

Partly because it harked back to the a topic I was interested in earlier. It seemed like a small extension from hex editing, TSearch, and the assembly I'd done at uni... Right?

Well, after a week 15 hour decompile times, and leaving my PC on overnight, I finally managed to stumble my way through to seeing the game's guts. And managed to pull off the first English code-mods for it.

There weren't exactly 'no' tutorials. But there were none for the game in English. So I had to find something adjacent.

I used youtube turotials on hacking old games with Ghidra, text ones for modding games for IL2CPP, as well as MelonLoader and Harmony Monkey Patching.

Between that, and my struggles to auto-translate, and then interpret the Chinese docs, I finally managed to make my proudest accomplishment... a runaway train that swoops in and obliterates mystical Chinese monsters.

For some ungodly reason, after dousing myself in decompilation, I decided the next good idea would be to make a 'mod loader' in the style of MelonLoader for the game LifeCraft, in C++ having not touched pointers since uni.

Spoiler alert: to access random parts of memory, you need pointers. Not just that, but C++ in particular is a whole new thing now.

You can see the (succesful) results of the effort as one of the Git repositories here. I am also taking a remedial course (read: watching 4th year university lectures) in C++.

A little more time went by, and I still can't leave well enough alone.

I still feel like I "don't want to forget" something useful, or "have to perform", or "should be using spare time to look at different programming languages and styles" - the grindset mentality.

I tried an online seminar, a dev 'meetup', and just talking to developers that were still in the "corporate" space. But I still hate it. In fact, I recoil from it.

But also, I started doing game jams because they were relatively approachable.

With ridiculous statements like "just make a game. it can be programmed as badly as you want to, or have 1000 if statements. As long as it works".

===

A much more casual atmosphere.

No daily stand-ups that felt like they really put the screws on, while also cutting in to time. (and I'm not saying they "are" bad. I'm saying they work very poorly for me emotionally)

It was a refreshing take.

And what was great, was that I could fail. So I did!

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Letting go of perfectionism, and expectations, and just trying to improve has helped immensely.

Not only that, but I've seen many others who've come out with a story quite similar to mine in some ways.

Many burned-out devs out there.

So I feel like I'm not alone, or a failure.

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And now I'm working on things that I think are important:

• sustainability, and the importance of not burning out
• getting stuff done within a time limit (game jam window), as life is time-limited. And we can't be perfect about everything all of the time.
• learning to enjoy the process. As well as taking the time to find out what it is that I actually like

And part of that is, I want to lose weight. For personal health.

Whenever I tell people, they dismiss it, because I "look fine".

But

• my waist is more than the British Heart Foundation recommends for good health (40 inches at the widest point).
• My BMI has always been more than the 'ideal' range (18.5-25)
• And my measured "body fat %" is high 25-30%.

When one thing is out, you can dismiss it. When it's a few things -- I'd say there's good reason to at least try to take action.

I'd already tried losing weight after starting to work, since I'd only gained 5-10kg on entering uni, and new jobs (the "free biscuit" jar is NOT free!).

But that only managed to backfire spectacularly between advice to "eat more protein" made me eat more peanutbutter,

and the free calorie tracking apps putting on pressure by reducing the "calories to eat" daily (and I already felt very hungry).

More recently, I've found a bunch of youtube videos (search 1600 calories full day eating) that actually explain and break down a lot better - at least to me - the hows and whys of weight gain/loss

From those, I managed to set up a spreadsheet, and a program which made me steadily lose weight (maximum recommended by NHS = 1kg/wk), and I managed to go from near obese to near ideal in 4 months. (spoiler alert: I gained it back - over a much longer time period of about 2 years though)

However the spreadsheet was a faff to use, and even started crashing more and more frequently as it held more data.

So, having seen some people say they're making a "program" using Godot (which I thought was novel),

and just enjoying it's general ease-of-use for jams,

I decided to dive in to learning C# (it's similar to Java, how hard can it be?), while making my own program that would replace the spreadsheet bit by bit.

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So now, when I have time, or feel like it, I work on that as a personal project. As well as on other game jams to keep me centered - and learning other new fun things.

I hope to be able to get my project to a state where it can replace the spreadsheet completely. But my first estimate of how long that would take was ~5 years assuming I worked on it consistently - which I knew was unsustainable. And we also all know how accurate first estimates are.

And I hope to maybe be able to share my project with others when I'm done. Because I have many friends who face similar - or worse issues.

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But there's many times when I've said I'm doing something - only to then abandon it from pressure.

So I'm mostly keeping it under my hat, and driving the project by my own needs first.

As well as re-testing the theory about what drove the success in the first place.

Thank you for coming on this journey with me :)

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Bigfootmech

Occasional modder / indie dev, and big anime&gaming nerd.