Now
11 september 2024,
Recently, a typhoon named Yagi passed through the region we’re in. It’s one of the biggest in a long time and has been devastating, with extremely strong winds, flooding, landslides, and more. It’s not fun for everyone, but it’s quite impressive to witness such a force of nature.
Learning chinese
I really like the way the Chinese language works. Each day I learn a few words with Hanzi.live, a web app that I’ve built for my language learning process.
It is intended to be used to access the knowledge tree of the language. I’ve condensed the grammar of the language into various types of sentences and words. It’s in Vietnamese though. It will stay free and ad-free as long as it exists. Probably, I will open-source it someday.
I’ve translated the Tao Te Ching in both Vietnamese and English. I’m quite happy with it.
Making music
Since March 2024, I’ve had to temporarily halt the process of composing a piano concerto and a symphony. Instead, with Jane and Pink Dawn, we’ve decided to make a RPG game in 2D with Godot to earn a living income for the long term, and mostly because it’s fun, and doing things together is even more fun. And, a game needs music too after all. I’ve given my digital piano to a friend a few months ago, and now we’re saving up for another one. So, once purchased, alongside playing for fun, I’ll be making game music and maybe composing a piano sonata.
Making a game
The name of the game is: Wisdom of the Trees - (樹木的智慧 in Chinese, and 樹木の智慧 in Japanese).
And we are the - c本y crew - (pronounced K crew).
The word “cây” means “tree” or “木” in Chinese and pronounced like “K” in Vietnamese, while “本” means “root” and looks like “”.
Our - c本y crew - office is set up; it is also our home, with around 100+ plants/trees.
We are building all the plans and stuff with Trello. I have a lot of fun coding with Gdscript, playing with Godot and implementing game design. Claude.ai has been a big help.
Recently, I’ve learned about shaders, and it’s so cool to be able to utilize the GPU to process each pixel according to your needs.
Pink Dawn is teaching herself Python with help from Claude and me. She’s learning really fast and seems to enjoy programming. She’ll be able to help me with coding in no time.
Jane is learning to draw pixel art, create character animations with Krita and Aseprite, and design other assets and architectural elements. She recently sketched some characters for the game. I’ll be helping her next month once our drawing equipment is set up.
The game right now has a workable backbone: a turn-based combat system, menu system, bartering system, scene management, items, spells, skills, etc. The plot, mechanics, and characters are somewhat worked out. There will be 30+ chapters, each relating to an aspect of life.
We are enjoying the process so much, and it’s been a pleasure doing things together. Even the potential financial return doesn’t seem to really matter at this point, though we are pretty sure it will be a success when the game will be out. Our aim is to make the best RPG game, which is also the best philosophical book, meaning it has to be beautiful, engaging and educational. And this kind of education is not based on discipline, meaning people are not made to conform.
Anyway, we are sharpening every little detail by the day.
Things that I like:
Things that I use: