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Season 3, 2025

2025-10-01

Season 3 is over! The year keeps marching on and boy does it keep developing! At this point I'm kind of reserved to just seeing what the hell happens next. All plans are dashed. Just throw stuff at the wall and see what the hell sticks. I was prepared for this year to be a whirlwind, but I don't think I was fully physically ready for what that would feel like lol.

On a different note, I'd like to mention that this is the first Seasonal Recap to be posted on oscarno.online! I'm glad to finally be making myself an alcove on the web, and a single place I can chuck all the stuff I do that isn't really professionally facing. Goodness knows there's a lot of it and I often forget about most of it cause I don't record anything or share any of it. But no longer! Now I have a little junk drawer that is freely viewable by anyone at any time ^_^

Recap: Season 3

Let's start by taking a look at the goals from last recap:

Portfolio Updates

I did actually do this, but also flubbed on my end and didn't send the people who wanted to see them the right url. WHOOPS! Not a big deal, a bit of sub-concious sabotage going on there methinks.

Contributions to projects

This was kind of shoved to the side with the sheer focus on things outside the projects. More on that later.

Preparations for Games Week

Oh yeah there are preparations. I'm AMPED for games week this year. Really excited to show everything that's been going on over the past 9 months. Part of me wishes there was more stuff to show ... kind of a crazy thing to feel, but I feel it nonetheless.

Another Game Jam?

yeah as if. there was no way that was fitting into this season. too stacked.

Sweet, now it's time to get more in depth with what actually happened over the course of the season.

Sound Processing Unit presents:
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Honestly a highlight in a year just stuffed with highlights. After a bucket load of hours spent transcribing, arranging, rehearsing, practising and co-ordinating, the six members of SPU finally got to present this wacko project to the world!

The night went off without a hitch (which was honestly kinda weird, we were all ready to be dealing with technical issues all night). We were all a bit flustered at the start, but once we settled in, we had a great time. The feedback we got from audience members was really encouraging, and I reckon we should definitely do it again. We've kind of spent all of the dopamine associated with the completion of the project, but I reckon another gig in the new year will be a great way to get more eyes on it, and make the time we spent this season more worthwhile.

SPU has some plans for future games, but I really think we need to milk this crash set as much as we can without it running stale. We put too much time into this shit for it to be a one time thing lol. Hopefully a ticketed event next? who knows...

Grant Season

This was probably the biggest surprise for me this season. There was lots of work to do, and it was the kind of work where you can just keep on tweaking something over and over and it fills up your whole day. Overall, I'm glad to have had the experience getting something ready for a grant application. Understanding more what external parties are looking for in a pitch, and what makes a game promising.

Looking back, I'm definitely proud of what we were able to produce across multiple projects during this period, but I definitely put myself in a tricky position. The external pressure and potential value of grant writing meant that I found it hard to say no to working on it at all times. There also wasn't a super locked in schedule, which made it hard to put something down and leave it for a while. I ended up neglecting work that was important to me, and it meant I started to become rusty on some of the trickier creative things I had been working on throughout the year.

I think the big takeaways for me here are that I really have to be on top of my own boundaries especially in crunch times. Not only will it make things easier and more manageable for me, but also for everyone else involved. When it comes to periods like this, I reckon some more rigorous forecasting will help to scope out how much I can commit to in a period like this.

Indie Dev Night

Both Dungeon Pizza and One More Trail made appearances at Netherworld's Indie Dev night in August! Dungeon Pizza was there for the second time, and One More Trail had it's first ever public showing! As always it was great to get these games into people's hands, and see reactions from people who have never come into contact with the games before. There are bright futures ahead for both of these games, I think, and I'm excited to share more of the experience of making each of them.

iPod Classic Restoration

With MIGW quickly approaching, I felt that it was the perfect time to restore my old iPod Classic and load it up with some tunes! After ordering the parts, and waiting a week or two for them to arrive, eagerly pried the shell apart and got tinkering. I had just about everything set up pretty quickly, but unfortunately, I needed to replace the headphone jack, as the original had gone bust. I took the opportunity to grab a bigger battery, and had to wait again.

Once it arrived though, I performed the surgery carefully and got everything back together. I gotta say, closing this thing up was pretty terrifying, once those first clips co into place, you're committed to sealing this thing up TIGHT. Lickily, I didn't run into any last minute problems, but I was sweating. The iPod now rocks a 3000mAh battery (almost triple the size of the original) and 512GB of storage (almost 5x the original heheh).

An interesting wrinkle I didn't anticipate was the issue of dealing with my music collection on the home PC. At the moment I'm split between iTunes (old faithful) and MusicBee, with the former for traditional music releases, and the latter for soundtracks & scores. Mainly games stuff lol. Other than a little iPod firmware quirk everything works pretty smoothly and I'm excited to make this thing a more regular part of my routine.

Web Dev

Something I wasn't expecting to get so into this season was web development! I wanted to help the people I was working with have autonomy over their own web presence, and make a little guide to get the started with a static website. Little did I know this would balloon into a 5000+ word tutorial, mainly because I just found it interesting lol. I also used that time and knowledge to make but this very website, and a site for Memory Card Audio.

Obviously my frontend dev skills are still pretty green, but I reckon both of these sites turned out well, and I'm excited to keep adding to them in the future. All in all, webdev is absolutely not something I'm going to pursue in a professional capacity, but I do like being able to make my own stuff, and it feels very cool to have websites I have control over. It still takes me time to learn stuff, but it is great having that feeling of pride over something you've made, and it not needing to stand up to scrutiny or be genre defining or whatever.

If you read this and end up making a blog style website, please send me a link (dm me on bluesky or something). I will read every word you post there.

Book Clubbery Pleasant: Consipiracy 365

Book Clubbery Pleasant returned this season! For those unfamiliar, the group picks a series, and then each member gets one book, and must recap it for everyone else on the night. This time, we decided to use the size of the group to our advantage, and tackle the 12 book series "Conspiracy 365". As always, it was a fun night. Next time we might look at trying multiple people on the same book 👀

Season 3 feelings

Alright, time to be blunt now. I felt like crap through most of this season. I remember things feeling rough in July, and thinking about the reflection I had just written for Season 2. "Oh this is just like how I was feeling rough in April, I should be able to get through this, it'll just pass." I thought to myself. I ended up venting all these thoughts in a big ol diatribe. "Great, kinda similar to last time." I thought. Now that I had untangled that knot, it was time to move on. But unfortunately the feeling lingered, and I wasn't really able to shake the feeling of apathy for basically the whole 3 month span.

I was feeling stuck here for a while. Over the past couple of days it I've been feeling better, but I was pretty run down for most of this season. The hardest part right now is that I can't really pin down why it happened. Currently I'm just trying to get some more sleep, and give myself recharge time. Will be hard to check in with this one with how Season 4 is structured, but I'll try to keep an eye on things and give myself time when I need to.

Media Log

Movies

Games

Books

Season 4 forecast

Wehehell Season 3 was a lot to handle, but Season 4 isn't slowing up for anyone. First two weeks of October is MIGW and SXSW back to back. I'm going to be wrecked so will probably need at least one week of recovery, which pretty much writes off October entirely lol. I'll be movin' and groovin' down there so it will be an important time for me to be building relationships and generating leads for down the track.

November and December are pretty empty at the moment. We can axe te last couple of weeks of the year from the calendar too cause of holidays, which leaves us just over 6 weeks from the end of October through to mid December. I'm predicting a bunch of random crap to appear in this time, but it's going to be a perfect time for me to draw those boundaries and make sure I stick by them.

Season 4 Goals

  1. Make a new friend at MIGW & SXSW
    It's going to be huge, but mainly I just want to meet someone cool and new to me. I always enjoy having another person I can look forward to seeing each year.

  2. Cancel on things (or at least be late)
    I have a habit of putting other's needs before my own, and sticking to the plan no matter how far out of my way I need to go. So for this next season, I'm going to try and move things if they're even slightly inconvenient, and just straight up cancel if I don't feel like going. Overall I'm aiming to feel more in control of my own time

  3. Dedicate at least a few hrs for chilling each week
    (and actually follow through)
    The more of these I write down, the weirder it feels lol. This one is an attempt to create time to recharge, and allow my "on" time to be focussed on getting stuff done. The only way this works though, is to actually sit down and do...nothing hahah. This time has to be solo, no social overheads, dedicated to something that seems fun to me.

  4. Gear up for 2026 A new year is sneaking around the corner and once again, it's going to mean lots of changes. Residency will wrap up, jobs will start, projects will continue. Getting a solid plan together will probably make up a significant portion of next season's post.

  5. Develop a music practise & composition routine
    This is going to be a really rough habit to lock in, as it's going to take a lot of time, but I think if I gradually build it up, I'll be feeling more comfortable. This is something that I swing back and forth on, but at this point I just have to make it a core part of my schedule.

Season 4 Key Dates

Oct 3 - Melb for Games Week
Oct 14 - Syd for SXSW!
Oct 19 - Back to Bris
Oct 31 - Halloween

Nov 1 - Orchestra Concert
Nov 22 - JAWS in Concert!

Dec 25 - Holidays :)

Season 4 media forecast

Games

Movies

Books

Thanks for reading. Let's close the year out strong.
Live your dream,
Oscar.

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