Hello, I am Manuel Angelo Abanilla, currently 18 years old at the time of writing. On the internet, people call me CLORO, as a friendly, outgoing, and approachable person. I have multiple interests, and if I were to list all of them, then it would probably not fit the container of this paragraph. LOL!
Though, for the time, my main interest is I play a lot of Genshin Impact and know mostly all about it. Other than that, I am also very fond of Virtual YouTubers and delve deep really into that rabbit hole
Outside the school life, I mostly sat all day and night on my computer typing relentlessly on the keyboard squashing every bug or unintentional feature on my projects. Then, I go watch YouTube or something, talk to people and be boisterous, and much more.
I’ve worked as a freelance programmer on the ROBLOX platform and helped multiple people in their games through my knowledge of Lua and I’ve worked with a company using Godot Engine with their upcoming game.
How did your interest or passion start?
Starting at the age of 8, I got fascinated with making video games myself through playing games like Minecraft, Pokemon and many others. Mostly fascinated by the idea of freedom and the limitless boundaries that most games give the player, whilst delivering an intricate and great story and world-building experience. At that point, I said to myself, “I found myself a passion, a passion for me to unleash the dormant creative mind that I possess in hopes of aspiring to many in the distant future.”
I started out as a programmer by learning Windows Batch files and creating simple command prompt executables, eventually, I discovered ROBLOX, and learned a more in-depth approach to game development, through the power of Lua, I managed to help others with their goals and creations, all while learning from my mistakes and from my experiences.
Now, I am here fully going out, learning many tools like simple 3D game animation, graphics design, and sound engineering, to possess enough knowledge to pursue my passion to create what I have in mind.
How did you get to know CIIT?
I knew CIIT through my passion. Though, from researching multiple schools related to computer technology. I’ve always wanted a school that embraces the freedom and creativity of a person, a unified, unbiased school with a light-hearted and really great community inside. I asked my dad about that, “I wanted a school where I can be free to be myself, and pursue my passion as a programmer…” there they mentioned CIIT as one of the options they gave me. From its colorful design and vibrant identity, I was instantly interested. And since then, I never regretted my decision.
What are your greatest achievements at CIIT and how did you accomplish them?
While I was running as a programming representative for the student council, one of our programs was to create a virtual hangout place of the exact replica of the CIIT Senior High School building. First, we chose ROBLOX, both a win-win situation as it is an easily accessible game and I am experienced with it. To accomplish this, we developed beforehand a framework for the game, and modeled and cooperated with the staff to get reference images for the creation of the building. Now, the game has been a success, with an interactable environment, and a great place for CIITeens and a-like to have fun together.
Interesting! Tell us more about this ROBLOX project.
From a technical standpoint, the game is built on top of an already existing framework that I actively use for commissions and assisting in game development on the platform. This framework is called CLYDE, a modular framework written on top of the ROBLOX API that provides a more organized, flexible environment for scripters to work with. This is mostly a set of tools that speeds things up.
I find it great to have a codebase organized and easily readable, when there’s a feature that’s been acting naughty, or is in a state of removal, then I can just drag it somewhere and it’ll be disabled, no need to write something or change things up, just kick it out and we’re good to go. This is a thing what Unity practices a lot, a purely decoupled environment (a practice where features are not too related or too dependent on each other) is a great practice for programmers to have their hair in-tact from the amount of hair pulling due to debugging.
That was my intention why I wrote a framework like CLYDE. To be frank, the platform that the place uses is somewhat disorganized, prefabrication is not a common practice in this environment, which defeats automation, which makes people lose their minds if a game becomes bigger..
For you, why is Technology important in society?
Programming. If you think about it, it is literally what built everything that we use in modern society, computers? Software? All that? Well, without programming, how can we even communicate with each other regardless of distance? How can we enjoy the games that we play, watch virtual people move, videos, movies, and all those thingy-magicks that are built inside the internet?
Programming itself is an important tool, better yet, a very necessity that must be integrated into our society. As our society moves to a more technologically-dependent world (it already is, somewhat), programming is in high demand as more companies capitalize technology to advertise, secure more profits, and is the most powerful tool in this day and age.
What are you looking forward to in your future career?
My passion will always be to finally turn my imagination come to life. My future career is to pursue and start a game company, create a very unique and creative game, and hope I build a great fanbase and become an inspiration for ambitious developers to do the same. We all have the potential to have an impact in society, no matter how huge or minuscule it can be, so why not try and pursue our passion?
What is your advice to students who also want to study technology?
For students who want to apply for the programming track, it is always better to know what you really want. Your passion must be more integrated into yourself deeply, because well, at first, programming will be hard, but as you keep trying and learning from your mistakes, soon enough, it’ll become the easiest thing in your life.
Always chase your passion, and that will make you move swiftly in this strand. And also, know some basic math, not too much math though (the computer does it for us anyways…)