Overview
Check out my resume's Skills Section, RPG style!
Methods, Measures, & Results
Play here: https://cclawhon.github.io/skills-tcg/ to see a small sample of a 2 day project in Godot 4.4!
Methods: The goal was to end boring bullet lists of skills and recreate them as Summoned Roles in an RPG Trading Card "Game" (no game yet, just seeing the different decks ;) ) The graphics took me 2 days to do as well. (more on this in the deep dive below)
Results: You feel excited to learn about my skills and your eyes aren't bugging out from trying to peruse another ATS-friendly text-only resume!
Deep Dive
Check it out on my GitHub: https://cclawhon.github.io/skills-tcg/
The Read me file has all the details here: https://github.com/cclawhon/skills-tcg
skills-tcg
Welcome to Summoned Roles!
The "Skills" section of my CV turned RPG-Trading Card Game!
Step 1.
Simply choose an aspect of CC (OrdAura-X, LiaseIllume, FathomDepth, SearchLight, or FyreForge), and see the cards from that skillset magically appear before you.
Step 2.
Choose any card, and it will turn over to reveal deep insight into CC's powers when that role is active. Each skill has many facets, from its halo (CC's aura), to the level of innate integration, to the inner-strength required to maintain it. Skill cards even include Borne Spark which tell you the entity inspired or deepened the role in CC's amalgam of skills. Imagine the SearchLight skillset coming to life in the summoned role Diviner of Data as she wields the Distaff of Deepdives!
Or, satisfy your alter-ego with the unapologetic stare of the Antihero of Authenticity! Whatever the skillset, you will find each of the Summoned Roles entrancing and engaging, silently thanking your lucky stars you didn't have to read another text list of boring skills on a resume!
Step 3.
If you would like to understand more about the cards' layouts, simply click the "?" button to see a guide that includes colors, iconography, and descriptions.
Step 4.
Click the X top right to go back to the home screen and choose another skillset!
CC & AI
Art & Design: I created all the art using AI (mostly Adobe Firefly) for initial images, then relentlessly mixing/tweaking/redesigning/drawing on them in Photoshop. All writing is original. Writing & Text-I do not use AI to write original works, because I am a writer by trade. However, I DO use ChatGPT for inspiration, ideas, and organization. Every once in awhile I know something doesn't sound right and I am too tired to edit it, I ask ChatGPT to help. Full disclosure: CAIDE (CC's AI Devotee of Excellence, aka custom ChatGPT, and I won't lie--some days the E stands for Exasperation) helped me with the title "Summoned Roles". I had 47 options, and we mixed and matched until this one magically transmogrified sometime around 2AM.
Code & Script-As for coding, I am self-taught. So I use a lot of open source code (why reinvent the wheel?) which I tweak for my needs, or I write from scratch when necessary using the documentation for Godot or Unity. Open source code is often what I use to learn deeply about how to do the most complex version possible of something. I find keeping code simple and direct, using resources for effective streamlining/loading, and doggedly insisting on "separation of interests" is most effective. AI like Claude, Copilot (MS version), Gemini, and ChatGPT tend to WAY overcomplicate things that should be very straightforward. They WILL break all your code lol. But when I know what I want to do, which I should before I begin, some of the customs are built to help me with a plan for how to code it. (Software Architect GPT = BFF). So, moral support, honing ideas, code snippet debugging, and game design docs: AI for the win :)
Credits:
Made in Godot 4.1 (The Greatest Orchestration Foundation for Development and Organization Transformation - I bet you didn't know that's what Godot stood for??? LOL)
Music/Sound FX: Some Pixabay and Fesliyan Studios, one Suno AI gen. The Intro Song is a mashup mixdown of these I made using Adobe Audition. The lyrics of the bulgarian chant are mine and translate as: a world of mystery awaits, let your wisdom guide you like the light of a thousand stars.
Card Layout: Godot Card Layout by Cyanglaz (Godot Addon)
Other Scripts: original with some help from ChatGPT "Code Copilot" custom (CAIDE sadly is not my coding bff--he's more of an idea guy lol)
Designs HUD, GUI, & Images: CC Lawhon (wielder of Firefly prompts and Photoshop), and Adobe Illustrator stock tweaked for buttons/UI type things.
Animations: I do all my own from scratch. Here, I had to "add" a card to flip since you cannot effectively animate cards within Codot Card Layout nodes. So the card flip animations are keyframed in an AnimationPlayer node.
A note on animations: I don't like TWEENS in code, they rarely do what I want. FYI with some shaders or more timed/overlapping animations, I do code them because you can crash a Chromebook running 8 anim players at once in a 3D scene with volumetric fog lol. Every once in awhile I will do the animation in Ch, Pr, Ae, Blender render (or Cinema4D if I am desperate), when only video or 3D animation can capture the look I want. I rarely find use for Adobe An - it is too complex for what I usually want to do and makes doing it literally excruciatingly painful.
Enjoy Playing with Summoned Roles!
If it cannot be gamified, it shall not pass! -me