<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Christian Nail's Portfolio]]></title><description><![CDATA[Unleashing Creativity, One Project at a Time]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 01:07:38 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[This Week’s Progress: Blocking, Lighting, and Making the Junkyard Real]]></title><description><![CDATA[Level Blocking &#38; Initial Layout 	This week was all about actually getting the junkyard layout built instead of endlessly thinking about it. And honestly, this was probably my most productive week yet. I worked myself to the bone, but it was worth it. I used Trenchbroom to block out the entire tutorial level- every path, fork, clearing, and structure. Most of the major geometry is now in place.I also fully textured the current version of the level, which made a massive difference in helping me...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/this-week-s-progress-blocking-lighting-and-making-the-junkyard-real</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6920fc159e2226b1d41eb941</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2025 23:56:09 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_8a7d54c7e4334cc59e84c4b1cf45f923~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[An Interview with Brendan Kelley, CSU's Game Development Professor]]></title><description><![CDATA[For my capstone advising interview, I met with Professor Brendan Kelley, who teaches 3D animation, modeling, and game-related coursework at CSU. I wanted feedback specifically on environmental storytelling and level design, since those are the areas I’m wrestling with most in Obripo ’s tutorial junkyard. What We Talked About 	A big part of our conversation circled around something I already suspected but needed to hear from someone experienced: solo game development is extremely difficult due...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/an-interview-with-brendan-kelley-csu-s-game-development-professor</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6920eed00682e79f9c090668</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2025 23:20:11 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_926c6f39ad894903982e4b94d6551d8d~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[How I Realized My Level Sucked]]></title><description><![CDATA[Intro For this week’s self-select, I chose Blargis’s devlog “ Making Game Levels That Don’t Suck ”  about his Godot game Bloodthief . I’ve been seeing his devlogs here and there since the beginning (almost 2.5 years ago), so seeing how polished Bloodthief  has become is both intimidating and reassuring- he’s one person slowly grinding away at a weird, specific game, just like me with Obripo . I’m also in a similar phase as he was when he made this devlog: core mechanics mostly exist, but now...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/how-i-realized-my-level-sucked</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6918315c29299e5b48d46d9e</guid><pubDate>Sat, 15 Nov 2025 08:08:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sll06gaCYhY" length="0" type="video"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Environmental Storytelling, and Using Space as a Tool]]></title><description><![CDATA[For this week’s self-select, I read Michael Nitsche’s Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds , focusing on Chapters 10-12, which deal directly with how 3D environments convey meaning beyond visuals. These chapters felt extremely relevant to Obripo , because they don’t treat game spaces as “settings”- they treat them as arguments. According to Nitsche, the way a player navigates a space, the obstacles they face, the viewpoints they’re offered, and the routes they’re forced...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/self-select-8-environmental-storytelling-and-using-space-as-a-tool</link><guid isPermaLink="false">690ffa6921848092cd7728f1</guid><pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2025 03:08:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_763618bc2055408ea8e9b037ed57e76c~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Check-In 6: Code Chaos, and the Birth of a Junkyard]]></title><description><![CDATA[This week was... kind of frustrating, honestly. I’ve spent the past 2+ months deep in code, and I've been trying to merge my own systems with the COGITO template, and every time I thought I’d gotten something right, another node or attribute would pop up that did something unexpected. It’s a powerful framework, but one that’s clearly built to do a lot of things its own way. After about a week of fighting it, I realized something that feels obvious in hindsight: I need to stop forcing my...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/check-in-6-a-lesson-in-letting-go-and-moving-forward</link><guid isPermaLink="false">690bfe338de3a65c6f2f87c3</guid><pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2025 02:04:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_68d8d5d7c6b344f3a1477b5986b51c24~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Designing Systems of Power: The Challenges of Emulating Politics in Games]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reading Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames  reminded me why I fell in love with video games in the first place. His idea that games can communicate through systems  rather than slogans puts into words something I’ve always felt instinctively: that games can unravel the complexity of real-world situations and structures of power in a way language or static imagery can’t. Words can point to a concept, but rules make you live inside it. That’s the fundamental...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/designing-systems-of-power-the-challenges-of-emulating-politics-in-games</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69083dfc12b86a0f317cb02b</guid><pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2025 06:43:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_f1fa6deb019d487f9de661eba90ef82c~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_599,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Check-In 5: Breaking Everything Down, and Rebuilding it Smarter.]]></title><description><![CDATA[This week has been a strange but transformative one for my capstone. After weeks of building and debugging core systems from scratch, I realized I’d reached a kind of threshold- where the game was growing, but my process was getting tangled. So, I took a step back, broke everything down, and began rebuilding it in a way that will scale better than before . Designing the Stealth System 	One of the biggest milestones was figuring out the foundation of the stealth system- specifically, how to...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/check-in-5-breaking-everything-down-and-rebuilding-it-smarter</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6902be63adf13dd214ca701e</guid><pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 03:10:11 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_69e6f6a193f3457a9a205b9de317f107~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_538,h_608,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Are Immersive Sims, and How They Relate to Obripo]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mark Brown's (the man responsible for the YouTube channel called "Game Maker's Toolkit) The Comeback of Immersive Sims  was, to me, the perfect way to help explain and put words to the kind of design philosophy I'm wanting to adopt. It reframed everything I thought I knew about the kind of game I’m making- and reminded me that the games I’ve always admired ( Thief, Dishonored, Deus Ex ) are less about stealth itself, and more about player choice . They’re about the player being trusted to...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/what-are-immersive-sims-and-how-they-relate-to-obripo</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68fc09cd49fb0f70215e94cb</guid><pubDate>Sun, 26 Oct 2025 23:00:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_9bfce0c76fa64777abd7de44e9d8bb07~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Check-In 4: Skyboxes, Getting Sick, and the Dynamic Lighting Epiphany]]></title><description><![CDATA[If Check-In 3 was about battling lightmaps, this week was about accepting a short-term defeat - or at least learning to fight smarter. I’ve spent most of this past week wrestling with lighting again, but this time, something clicked for me. I finally realized that the baked lighting approach I have actually looks pretty decent. It’s not perfect, but it captures that retro, low-poly warmth I’ve been chasing since the start. Thief: Deadly Shadows'  moody purple lighting and sky 	That said, I’ve...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/check-in-4-skyboxes-getting-sick-and-the-dynamic-lighting-epiphany</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68f0482f27064b4fa449ce04</guid><pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2025 01:42:28 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_378157d434124e94b48ce0739510875c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_967,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Poland's Law and Justice: The Simplification of Authoritarianism, &#38; Democratic Backsliding]]></title><description><![CDATA[What if control didn’t look like soldiers in the street, or a plethora of hidden surveillance cameras- but instead, it looked like...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/poland-s-law-and-justice-the-simplification-of-authoritarianism-democratic-backsliding</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68ebdc7b5aaaeed328cae8b4</guid><pubDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:57:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_ebf1d834d0074930938319f056cef804~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_914,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Check-In 3: Shadows, Patrols, and a Headache Named LightmapGI]]></title><description><![CDATA[This week has been all about two things: getting my tutorial’s layout finished and beginning my slow descent into madness over lighting....]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/check-in-3-shadows-patrols-and-a-headache-named-lightmapgi</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68e6bd1b34d71f351cae1d58</guid><pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 20:21:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_228a2a97d4534888b34f828dbe4574ca~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_750,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Panopticism and the Architecture of Maintaining Control]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline &#38; Punish - Panopticism , I was struck first by the feeling - that crawling awareness of being...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/panopticism-and-the-architecture-of-maintaining-control</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68e1ce80f550be2c3a5e9a31</guid><pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 19:17:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_5299e9ebdc8948c38febab36f6395856~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_800,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obripo Progress Check-In #2: The Meat &#38; Potatoes]]></title><description><![CDATA[This week was all about finally starting to see Obripo 's tutorial space come to life in Godot. I sketched the layout last week, and now...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/check-in-2-wip</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68dc0de3f9153517fdb7e088</guid><pubDate>Tue, 30 Sep 2025 17:26:48 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Arousal, Joy, and the Psychology of Lighting in Games]]></title><description><![CDATA[When I first saw the title, Lighting for Tension in Video Games , I expected a study on how different lighting setups inside a virtual...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/arousal-joy-and-the-psychology-of-lighting-in-games</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68d88815ef091a1617dfb3a8</guid><pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:58:36 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Obripo Progress Check-In #1: First Steps]]></title><description><![CDATA[Since last week, I've made some pretty big steps forward. When you ask game developers what the most difficult part of development is,...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/capstone-progress-check-in-1-first-steps</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68d08058c9b60ffcbecb194f</guid><pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2025 23:13:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_64a519182ee74769b8644f1656c525b0~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_748,h_639,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Csikszentmihalyi’s Concept of “Flow” and Its Relevance to Player Immersion]]></title><description><![CDATA[When I read about Csikszentmihalyi’s idea that "attention is a limited resource" (from Chapter 1), it immediately clicked. For me, focus...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/csikszentmihalyi-s-concept-of-flow-and-its-relevance-to-player-immersion</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68cf3c7b6288140e1e736510</guid><pubDate>Sat, 20 Sep 2025 23:52:07 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Leader Giveth &#38; Taketh: Slogans, Rewards, and the Cult of Personality]]></title><description><![CDATA[Disclaimer: This post reflects my early-stage observations. Some of my comparisons to contemporary politics are provisional and will...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/the-leader-giveth-slogans-rewards-and-the-cult-of-personality-a-literature-review</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68c75ff39c95827cb917bdba</guid><pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 01:04:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9ce511_4ae957723f7e44fa969394a0f1397490~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Leavy's Research Design &#38; Discovering My Capstone's Purpose]]></title><description><![CDATA[When I first proposed Obripo as my capstone, I thought of it mostly as a stealth-horror game with political undertones. But as my ideas...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/leavy-s-research-design-discovering-my-capstone-s-purpose</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68c740490d13c9ba3a6c8e9a</guid><pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2025 22:39:42 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Investigating Historical Methodology for Obripo]]></title><description><![CDATA[For my capstone project, I’ve decided to ground my research in Historical methodology. This approach centers on examining past events,...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/investigating-historical-methodology-for-obripo</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68c12925e6f9264530e5657c</guid><pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2025 07:39:39 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sound, Image, &#38; Frustration: What Christian Marclay Taught Me]]></title><description><![CDATA[Hi! It's been a while since I've posted, but I wanted to take the opportunity to post my response after discovering through Art21 the...]]></description><link>https://cdnail01.wixsite.com/christian-nail/post/sound-image-frustration-what-christian-marclay-taught-me</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68bdac0d8c49b59a19726e15</guid><pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2025 16:03:22 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Christian Nail</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>