Thursday, May 31, 2007

Summer semester is rollin'

Ah, summertime - every student's favorite time of the year. Oh wait, at FIEA, our students are hard at work on what will surely be the greatest student game of all time, Master Plan IMHO.

Master Plan actually started out as an idea from the sometimes strange mind of Brandon Miller, a student in the programming track. Brandon was our first student to actually take classes from production and programming. And when I say take, I mean take – like assignments, tests, presentations. The faculty was waiting for him to cry wolf and he never did, so he got to pitch his idea to the students in December, and lo and behold, they liked it.

Fast forward to this semester, and we’ve got 34 eager students putting together Brandon’s dream, complete with stunning visuals, websites, game covers, and a game engine that will redefine what is possible in academia. No spoilers here, but be sure to check it out in August on the good ol’ FIEA website.

It’s kind of ironic that we spend so much time talking about console development, but then the students put out a massive product for the PC. Why? Well, first and foremost, we want the game running on an HR rep’s desk, alongside our student resume, so that developers understand that the employee they’re interviewing has participated in a game not unlike what they’re currently making at their studio. We figure if they need an XBOX devkit to run the darn thing, they may be less apt to check it out. Technology is also moving fast, and today’s PC hardware is more akin to what the students will see in the outside world – I like that Master Plan is full of custom shaders and pushes many more polys than possible on XBOX hardware. Do I wish we had PS3 or XBOX 360 devkits? Yes. Are we teaching the techniques our students will use when developing for those and other platforms? Of course.