About
My name is Charles, otherwise known by my online alias "stixc" (pronounced "sticks"). I am a 23 year old game developer, musician/sound designer and graphic artist from Memphis, TN working on my pet project CyberAnima, a retro cinematic action-adventure FPS inspired by Half-Life and The Legend of Zelda, with a early 2000s PS2/GameCube era flare.I suffer from high-functioning autism, ADHD, anxiety, and a variety of other mental problems, and as a result, I'm a very introverted, shy, yet zen kind of person. Aside from game dev, I also make music, previously making dubstep music as Digiwire before retiring in 2021 to focus on game development. I also like to draw, tinker with technology, but don't expect me to be a professional artist or IT technician any time.As of right now, I lack a job (never had one my life so far) and a driver's license/car due to personal issues, the pandemic, financial struggles and a bunch of other reasons causing these things taking forever to achieve. In the mean time, feel free to donate if you so choose!
Biography:
I was born in Memphis, TN, USA on October 23rd 2001. I was initially diagnosed with low-functioning autism and ADHD at an early age and for a while up until the mid to late 2000s, was non-verbal. However as time progressed, many of those elements diminished, such as being non-verbal. I was later re-diagnosed with high-functioning autism (or Asperger's Syndrome) a couple years afterwards.I've wanted to become a game developer ever since I began playing games as a toddler. The very first game I played was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, and it left a huge impression on me and sparked my deep interest in video games over other mediums. Though I also had interest in other things, such as art/cartoons, music and technology/IT, making games seemed to be the medium that suit me future wise. In the late 2000s I started learning programming through websites like Scratch, then later I dabbled in HTML and Python with mixed results. Alongside coding I explored game modding, tinkering with games like Blockland, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Doom, and Quake. I experimented with engines like Game Maker, Stencyl, Multimedia Fusion (later Clickteam Fusion), and Unity as well at a young age.Despite my interest, coding always intimidated me—likely due to my ADHD or something else. And to this day, coding remains my Achilles' heel. As a kid and tween, my game development efforts mostly involved sketching ideas, doodling characters, and writing concepts, whilst hoping my adult self would someday accept how game development works proper.But in the meantime in the early 2010s, like many gen Z kids of my generation, I was in the process of making dubstep music. From 2012 onward, I taught myself music production and sound design, and some time by 2018 I was officially releasing music as Digiwire. While I now find dubstep somewhat cringey and annoying, I still feel proud of what I achieved and the skills I developed in music and sound design. During this time (2012-2016) I also created YouTube videos, including machinima in Blockland and Garry's Mod, alongside general life stuff. However looking back and recalling from memory, they're pretty cringey and naive and I'm sort of glad they're lost media. I can be sentimental about many things, but my old videos aren’t one of them.Afterwards the COVID-19 pandemic hit, giving me a chance to dive back into game development. I downloaded Unreal Engine and started learning the Blueprints system for it's ease of use. This marked the beginning of my hobby project CyberAnima and the end of my music "career" as Digiwire. After a year of working in Unreal I switched to Godot due to its lightweight nature, which was perfect for CyberAnima. This is because it allows me to authentically replicate the PS2/GameCube era graphics, a challenge I found tricky to tackle with Unreal.As of 2025, I’m still working on CyberAnima. However, mental roadblocks, personal issues, and other life challenges can cause development to be very sluggish in some regards. Despite the issues, I remain committed to finishing CyberAnima. Though life has been brutal in some areas, I haven’t given up on what I love the most. But once it's done and it's released, then I will party hard for getting this far.
Tools of the Trade:
The following software is what I am using to create my current project CyberAnima:
• Godot Engine 4
• VSCodium
• Ableton Live 12
• Adobe Photoshop
• Blender
• TrenchBroom
• NotionAnd for music (for CyberAnima), the following synth plugins are used:
• Roland XV-5080
• KORG Triton
• Spectrasonics Omnisphere
• BeepStreet Sunrizer (Roland JP-8000 emulation)
• theusualsuspects Xenia (Waldorf MicroWave XT emulation)
• E-MU Emulator X (+ Proteus 2000, Xtreme Lead-1 and Orbit-3 banks)
• AudioRealism ABL3 (Roland TB-303 emulation)
• Native Instruments Massive
• Reveal Sound SpireEffect plugins from iZotope, Native Instruments, MeldaProduction, kiloHearts, Valhalla DSP, Togu Audio Line, alongside a plethora of free/open source effects are used too.I also use old school sample libraries from the 90s/2000s from the likes of Zero-G, Spectrasonics, AMG, Sony/Sonic Foundry, IK Multimedia, Best Service, among many others.
Games
CyberAnima
A retro early 2000s sci-fi action-adventure FPS
(In development, pet project currently)
NOT AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE/DOWNLOAD
(still in development!)
CyberAnima is a retro cinematic FPS akin to Half-Life with some 3D Zelda-like elements to it. It also takes inspiration from the early 2000s, in graphics, music, and story.In the game, you are going after a technology megacorporation nearing the cusp of the new millennium, preventing them from unleashing something unspeakable before time runs out. The game is being built using Godot 4.I've been coding some prototype concepts and throwing ideas around for this game since the pandemic started. Development is very slow since I am still a novice developer with an ADHD infested mind and limited coding knowledge, but I swear on my own oath it will kick ass once it's ready.
Gearhaed
A third-person mech combat game
(Scrapped Nov. 2023)
NOT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Gearhaed was supposed to be a small scale mech game akin to MechWarrior 2 but with Armored Core/Ghost in the Shell PS1-esque combat, aiming for more of a mid-90s esque style with it's PS1/early MS-DOS 3D graphics. It was scrapped because I wanted it to be small scale and simple, but I got too ambitious with it and I scrapped it because of that.
Flatzone Maximus
A Quake map jam entry
(Sept. 28th 2022)
Flatzone Maximus is my entry for the Quake Brutalist Jam, and is pretty much my first and only Quake map. I made it within 10 days for a two-week jam, and even though it has flaws, it was something I made for shiggles, for funsies, alongside the fact it was the first ever map I released publicly.
Stickfigurate
A crude simple hand-drawn FPS
(scrapped Nov. 2021 + March 2022)
NOT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
This was a simple FPS game I wanted to make just to make a quick buck or so, originally being developed within GZDoom, before switching to an easy peasy FPS editor someone made, before scrapping altogether because I didn't like how the game was turning out on a lot of levels. The game could return in name and art-style, but the gameplay will probably won't be like this.
PotatoQuest
An outdated joke visual novel
(July 2017)
NOT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
This game is a joke visual novel I made at a game dev camp at my local university in 2017 using RenPy. The game has tons of copyrighted assets and a bunch of outdated, cringey and crappy dialogue. As such, I will not be releasing this game.
NUKE
A silly RPG concept that was canned
(scrapped late 2016 + early 2017)
NOT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
I had the idea for an RPG akin to EarthBound, Mario & Luigi, Chrono Trigger and so forth, but focusing even more on comedy than anything serious/psychological like most EarthBound-like RPGs you see nowadays, with some Duke Nukem and Evil Dead 2-like influence in there. It was called NUKE (displayed as "NUK≡"). The basic plot was similar to Duke Nukem, about a macho hero guy, trying to save his girlfriend from a supernatural edgy antagonist making fun of tropes found in those kinds of RPGs.It was going to be made using Clickteam Fusion (I even managed to make some kind of prototype if I recall), and I was going so far as to set up a Kickstarter and other plans to make it a reality. However my game dev skills were SO INEPT that I ended up scrapping it early on. This was because I was focusing on school, and after scrapping it started to work on my EDM music as Digiwire more often. That is until I retired from Digiwire and tried game development proper around when the COVID-19 pandemic started. It was simply too ambitious for me at my age and my skill set at the time.Nothing about this game has survived since most files regarding it has been lost to countless drive re-writes. What you're hearing is from memory. Sorry.
Music
Drones of Sleep, Insomnia and Strange
2022, ambient/drone/sleep-aid
At the end of 2022, I released the ambient album Drones of Sleep, Insomnia and Strange (or DSIS) on Bandcamp. It is a compilation of ambient music I made from late 2019 till mid 2022 or so, mostly worked around the time when COVID hit. It is inspired by Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, alongside the works of Brian Eno and Biosphere. The purpose of the album is to help me sleep, being full of melodic drones and noises that are calming in my ears.I am considering creating a follow up in the far future, we shall see.
Since 2012 I've dipped my toes into releasing abnoxious EDM music. Dubstep and similar genres, if you will. However I actually dislike the music I made, and retired from Digiwire for a plethora of reasons, mostly due to lack of interest, drama, and wanting to move towards game development. I'm blessed I have musical and sound design skills, but I'm not happy with my previous work.If you want to listen to my old work for funsies, you can check out the Digiwire SoundCloud account, or buy from Bandcamp if you care. There's also an archives account with a bunch of old demos and ideas that never went anywhere.
Other Music
Aside from the old Digiwire project, I also have my own personal SoundCloud where I dump whatever ideas or stuff I make. However I haven't used it in a long time since I'm focused (music-wise) on creating CyberAnima's soundtrack than anything original. Maybe when I have time I can create more music, either another sleep aid album like DSIS, or something new entirely. I dunno.And again, I have a Bandcamp account, but the DSIS album is the only thing that's on there since it's a fully complete album.
Donations
I have a Ko-Fi page if you want to donate some dough towards me. Considering I don't have a job, driver's license, or anything of that matter right now, it would be nice if you'd donate. I don't care if it's just a couple cents or $100,000,000 for shiggles. Anything will work, as donations keep me alive in some capacity.
Contact
If you want to contact me for personal matters or so forth, I have the following:
Discord
My Discord username is just stixc. If you find me on a server, you can DM me through there; but sometimes it doesn't ping me if I get a DM request, but I will try to respond ASAP!
Bluesky
On my Bluesky, you can send me a DM for any private inquiries.Twitter (I'm not gonna call it X) has been tarnished by bots and poor decisions recently, so I'd recommend you DM me on Bluesky. Or use Discord like above, or email me below.
If you want to email me something business related, or don't want to use any of my social media, then contact me at [email protected]