I've promised myself that 2019 will be my year of return. 2017 was kinda hard for me and I wanted to treat 2018 as my recovery year, to which I successfully did it in the final days of the year by finishing my paper. I started out this year with a bang by having a thesis seminar in January (from now on, any instance of "final paper" would be considered as "bachelor's thesis" here) and since then I've been busy with completing my administrative requirements for my thesis defense which in turn is the reason why I don't post anything about this Awards Season on my other blog. So far, nothing's special happening as all that remains is the waiting towards this year's Oscars, the awards season for TV ended in SAG Awards, and the online couple competition hasn't begin yet, maybe next week? Nobody knows...
One week ago, however, the same day where I properly posted something nice on Instagram again like above embedded post, was where the end of the road for me in a spectacularly successful fashion despite the college feeling like a ghost town with only a few people around which would explain why there's a lack of more festive shots after my thesis defense. Yes, the actual word I was looking for to describe the final test for my final paper is basically "Bachelor's Thesis Defense" ("Bachelor's Thesis", as in the "final paper" I always refer to + "Thesis Defense") which I did during when the photo was taken by one of my supervisors (obviously). It actually went well despite a little stuttering at some point, and there was the feeling where I opt for straightforward actions, answering the examiners' questions without any difficulty since the topic I've chosen was in sync to my interests and the fact that I struggled during the development of the application helped a lot.
But then you started to wonder what kind of application I developed that it took too long for me to develop it. It is actually something to do with artificial intelligence, something I haven't considered as I tried to find something that could reach my multimedia roots as well. Apparently, I came across a game that eclipses both entertainment and education values needed for my project in the form of The Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS), an Open Source racing game that has been used by researchers as a platform to test out artificial intelligence-based controllers of varying approaches. Considering that the game has been used by international researchers and I came across zero papers from my country that discussed this topic, the decision was ultimately made at that moment. The project took roughly more than a year due to the fact that I have to re-learn programming languages, as well as the approach I use and how to make a controller in the game, but the end result was satisfying enough.
