Learning Journey
A living record of how my skills and projects have evolved. Not a resume — a timeline of what I actually built and what each milestone taught me.
2023 — First Steps
Started C# (self-taught via tutorials)
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Built Pong clone — understood game loops, collision, input
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Discovered Unity — learned the component model
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Finished a 2D platformer with tilemaps and basic physics
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First game jam submission (48h) — shipped something imperfect, on time
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Published first game on itch.io — learned build pipeline end to end
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Started using Git properly — branches, commits, pull requests
Key insight from 2023: Finishing something imperfect beats polishing something forever. The game jam taught me that shipping is a skill on its own.
2024 — Going Deeper
Learned enemy AI fundamentals — finite state machines, pathfinding
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Built an inventory system from scratch — ScriptableObjects, UI binding
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Added save/load to a project — JSON serialization, versioning
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Started Unreal Engine 5 — learned Blueprints, then moved to C++
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Began Infinite Runner (Unreal) — procedural generation, difficulty scaling
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COSMOS game design program
Key insight from 2024: Systems thinking transferred across engines. The inventory patterns I learned in Unity applied directly when I started thinking about Unreal gameplay systems.
2025 — Sharpshooters & More Complexity
Started Sharpshooters (Unity 3D shooter)
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Implemented state machine for player movement (walk, sprint, aim, roll)
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Enemy behavior trees — patrol, chase, attack, retreat
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Profiled and optimized — discovered object pooling solves 80% of GC spikes
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Continued Infinite Runner — leaderboard, replay system
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Started writing technical articles
Key insight from 2025: Profiling before optimizing. I rewrote a system from scratch once, only to find that the bottleneck was somewhere completely different. Now I always profile first.
2026 — Portfolio & Growth
Launched this Docusaurus portfolio site
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Published first technical articles publicly
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Sharpshooters approaching first itch.io release
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Researching multiplayer fundamentals
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Applying to college game design / CS programs
What's Next
- Ship Sharpshooters to itch.io
- Multiplayer prototype (simple peer-to-peer)
- Shader Graph deep dive
- Explore procedural level generation further
Skills Acquired Over Time
| Skill | When | Project |
|---|---|---|
| C# basics | 2023 | Pong, platformer |
| Unity component model | 2023 | Platformer |
| Git | 2023 | All projects |
| Enemy AI (FSM) | 2024 | Sharpshooters prototype |
| Inventory system | 2024 | Sharpshooters |
| Save / load | 2024 | Multiple projects |
| Unreal / C++ | 2024 | Infinite Runner |
| Procedural generation | 2024–2025 | Infinite Runner |
| Behavior trees | 2025 | Sharpshooters |
| Object pooling | 2025 | Sharpshooters |
| Technical writing | 2026 | This site |