Programming is where it's at!

Wow, are we really starting our 7th week? It seems like we've just begun, yet we've already done so much. We've finished our first two rounds of prototypes, and I was very pleased with the work both of my teams did. Those were written in Flash and Actionscript, and several very interesting games came out of those two-week rounds. Now we are starting on our 3D prototypes using Panda and Pyton, and again we have just 2 weeks to create a game - this time focusing on story. Of course, that's not all we are doing. The programmers are working on some very involved C programs (after doing a few tough assembly programs - whew!), the artists are all designing/texturing/animating character models in Maya, and the producers are, well, producing. I can pick on the producers because I originally came into the program as a producer (a technical producer as you may hear them called). But after sitting in on the programming classes and realizing I didn't have a good answer for "What does a producer do?", I decided to switch tracks. And don't let "Sir Charles" (or Chuck as we like to call him) fool you. The job of a producer is not that sexy. The real sexy jobs are held by programmers. Don't believe me? Just take a gander at Dr. Gourlay's blog on "Fluid-like Simulation". Very Sexy!

But we already knew that. What I have learned is that you really have to prioritize here. In undergrad, prioritizing just meant figuring out what you could put off, and what you couldn't. But here, you are working with teams that depend on you. And frequently you are working on different teams at the same time. Should I work on my programming assignment right now? What about my prototype team that needs me to write code for our game? And how's my development plan team coming along? Of course, the other team members on each team are also juggling assignments and teams, so getting everyone to do what you need when you need it means we all have to do a little "producing" of our own.