S-STEM Scholar Chris Gonzalez's Blog

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great spring break. I didn’t do much aside from fixing up my room, but everyone here is doing well, which I’m thankful for. Anyways, let’s get into this week’s update. It’s a relatively “small” update, but an important one: we now have an early version of our little bat friend! Cute lil fella, isn’t he? I don’t have a name for him yet, though. I tried making him as accurate to an actual bat as I possibly could – while making him cuter, of course. I still have to work on an animation for when he flaps his wings, so I’ll be looking into bat footage to study them. Aside from that, I also need to get started on (attempting) code; the game is the goal, after all. And that’s it for this week! Over and out.

Hey everyone! Before I begin this week's post, I do apologize for not posting last week – it was another rough one, but things are looking good once again, and my mom is in great shape and is now well on her way to recovery. Thank you all so much for all of your kind words. I really, really do appreciate them <3 So let's get started for this week! This week's directive was to begin making a pixel sprite – a small image – of a Mexican long tongued bat for the game itself. There's a few small challenges as far as making a tiny image goes, but my work process always begins with a sketch, so that's what I got done this week. The main challenge, however, was making our little guy look, well, cuter . Cute to some, terrifying to others. Photo courtesy of the USDA Forest Service. I think he's cute as is, but I know plenty of people who would hate to be within a 5000 foot radius of our furry little pal. As such, here's my (very rough) sketch work so far: That'...

And here we go! Week 5! Let's start with some good news: my mom is doing significantly better! She's much more lively now and more like her usual self, although I still have to help her around the house because she gets tired if she walks too much or goes up and down the stairs - I can't blame her, especially considering she had no choice but to stay in bed for at least a month. Still, I can't even describe how glad I am about her recovery. Now, for the bad news: it's been hectic lately (with taking care of my mom, planning a move to a new house, helping my brother and my dad take care of things, etc) and as such I honestly haven't had any time to work on my project, much less any school work in general. However, because of my mother's recovery things are beginning to settle down once again, so hopefully I'll be able to get back at it very soon. It's not much of an update, but it's an update nonetheless. To hold you over for the time being, here...

Hey, everyone. Week 4 now! Sadly, I haven't been able to work on my project much lately. My mom has been pretty sick, so I've been taking care of her. Thankfully it's not COVID or anything like that, but she's been under a lot of stress for a while and it really got to her, so she's going through a bit of a depressive episode. These issues run in my family, and I have them as well, so I know how she's feeling. She's mostly been in bed for the past few weeks, but thankfully she's been getting better lately! All she needs is medicine and plenty of rest. My dad, my brother, and I have been holding down the fort for her. Our dogs have been providing plenty of licks and tail wags as well. Minnie left us a "gift" on the carpet, so she spent approx. 2 minutes in doggy jail. (AKA just enough time for me to get a photo of her sitting still.) Hopefully everything goes back to normal soon, and I can still keep working on my project consistently. Catch you...

Hey everyone! It's week 3 now, and we're flying along fast.  Speaking of flying, I determined the species of bat I'll be researching for this project! Without further ado, let's hear it for the lovely Mexican long-tongued bat! They're charming little fellas, right? What a tongue! Both photos courtesy of the US Forest Service. Unlike many bats, these bats actually love to eat not bugs, not fruit, not small animals, but nectar! They typically feed off of cacti flowers when they're in bloom, or occasionally even the fruit. As a result, they pollinate as well, not unlike a bee or a butterfly. However, these bats can fly long distances, pollinating completely unrelated individuals of the same plant species in the process. That's it for this week! Over and out.

This past week, I admittedly haven't looked much at the code to build the bat game off of. I love computers, and I'm majoring for Applied Computing as well as potentially doing some IT classes on the side next semester, but coding terrifies me – for the time being. However, all I need to do is really just tell myself to take it easy and go step-by-step.  I've always been more of an arts/music guy, so for my first step I've been working on the soundtrack for the game! It gives me a good mental starting point, and it helps to have assets (graphics, sounds, and so on) ready to use and be implemented into the game once coding begins. This is Logic Pro, my music software of choice since I was 13. Each row of those green rectangles (tracks) is a different instrument - some can be drums, some can be synths, and so on. For this bat game project, it's 8 bit noises sampled from a NES game console! I'd let you listen, but it's not done yet :) So this is what an average...