FIEA descended on GDC this week, so I thought I'd update you on how it went.
Ron Weaver, Michael Gourlay and I started the week attending the IGDA education sessions where we had fun mingling with other game programs and exchanging ideas. Admittedly, this session was a lot more help when we were creating our curriculum, but it's great to be able to give back now that we're hitting our stride. I talked to several people in the investigation stage of their programs about why having a program with artists, programmers AND producers was a really effective way of teaching the material. Michael spent about half his time in the physics workshop on Tuesday, which he really enjoyed, and Ron said the interactive storytelling workshop was great.
Wednesday's highlight had to be seeing all the new virtual world stuff from Sony. It's clear they've gone from trying to copy XBOX live to innovating in that space, and the fierce competition leaves us gamers as the clear winners. It will be interesting to see if the "Home" really takes off and becomes a place to actually meet people. In Pete Isensee's talk on Wednesday, it was enlightening to see the new C++ features being adopted by people coming out of the Technical Report 1 (TR1). Definitely some useful stuff there for game programmers, including some new built-in syntax for hash tables and arrays.
The awards show Wednesday night was exciting, and even though Opera Slinger didn't win the award, it was great to be included in the student showcase. Since so many of the student games were great, just getting there takes a lot of work. But for those students out there hoping to get into the 2008 student showcase, here's a warning: the competition is getting better and better.
Miyamoto's talk on Thursday was inspiring for up-and-coming game designers (or so I heard). It was neat to hear him talk about the student games in such a positive light design-wise, especially since I think Opera Slinger had one of the more innovate designs in the group. I also enjoyed the Saint's Row talk on multiprocessing architecture; it allowed me to compare what they did with what we did on Madden. It's clear that the second generation of games on the 360 had the time to take concurrency more seriously, and his talk gave me some ideas on how to get more efficient when dealing with multiple processors, in a very generic way.
All in all, it was a great conference and it was nice catching up with all my longtime friends in the industry, as well as making a bunch of new ones. I'm looking forward to GDC 2008 already!
Friday, March 9, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Outstanding March
I got a job!
I'm gainfully employed as an Entry Designer at n-Space, a company here in town. I'm working on handheld material right now, but I expect to be working on console material sometime soon.
It's only my third day and I'm already having a spectacular time. The atmosphere of the studio is really almost exactly the same as the atmosphere at FIEA. Everyone's friendly and more than willing to help out a new person on the team. And I haven't really had any shortage of things to do, either -- with production underway, there's always a task sitting around that the new guy can get stuck with!
Besides, any place with its own Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter arcade machine is sure to win my heart over.
Actually getting a job in the industry really vindicates the effort that I've put out for the past year. It really makes me feel like I've achieved something worthwhile, and that alone is really worth its weight in gold.
I'd tell you all about what I'm working on, but I'm not allowed to, so you'll never know! Hahaha! ... actually, I'll just blog about it once I can talk freely about it. The suspense!
... that actually makes me feel guilty about leaving you hanging. I'll leave you with this: The week before I started work, I played all four of the Monkey Island games, courtesy of Matt Laurence (currently pimping himself out at the Game Developers' Conference -- good luck Treblemakers on the Student Showcase!) Fantastic games! Everyone should at least play the first two: Secret of Monkey Island, and Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. Highly recommended. Go grab 'em.
Seriously. Study up, because I'm gonna quiz you about them next time.
I'm gainfully employed as an Entry Designer at n-Space, a company here in town. I'm working on handheld material right now, but I expect to be working on console material sometime soon.
It's only my third day and I'm already having a spectacular time. The atmosphere of the studio is really almost exactly the same as the atmosphere at FIEA. Everyone's friendly and more than willing to help out a new person on the team. And I haven't really had any shortage of things to do, either -- with production underway, there's always a task sitting around that the new guy can get stuck with!
Besides, any place with its own Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter arcade machine is sure to win my heart over.
Actually getting a job in the industry really vindicates the effort that I've put out for the past year. It really makes me feel like I've achieved something worthwhile, and that alone is really worth its weight in gold.
I'd tell you all about what I'm working on, but I'm not allowed to, so you'll never know! Hahaha! ... actually, I'll just blog about it once I can talk freely about it. The suspense!
... that actually makes me feel guilty about leaving you hanging. I'll leave you with this: The week before I started work, I played all four of the Monkey Island games, courtesy of Matt Laurence (currently pimping himself out at the Game Developers' Conference -- good luck Treblemakers on the Student Showcase!) Fantastic games! Everyone should at least play the first two: Secret of Monkey Island, and Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. Highly recommended. Go grab 'em.
Seriously. Study up, because I'm gonna quiz you about them next time.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Busy February
How about them Colts, eh?
Things have been ramping up here far more than I ever would've given the fourth semester credit for. I'm working on several research projects this semester and keeping my eye open for employment opportunities. Some of the larger projects I'm working on have been keeping me very busy.
The project communications plan that I've been working on still has me entertained (and productive!) but I've added a couple more tasks to my workload. I've been looking in as a consultant along with Matt Laurence for the Master Plan game that part of Cohort 3 is developing. It's a position I'm honored to be in, as I'm keenly interested in seeing the project succeed. The whole team seems to be on the ball and eager to get things done. I'm pretty anxious to see the results of their first milestone goals, which should be coming up shortly.
Some more games are actually getting made, too. I've assembled a team to take on the mtvU 'Change the Course of HIV Challenge'. We're building a Flash game that not only teaches the player about the effects of AIDS on a community, but should also be a lot of fun to play. I'm pretty happy with the whole team, and they seem similarly happy with the game's design. We should have something online and playable shortly.
Finally, I've started experimenting with creating my own solo Torque game -- it's going slowly, but I'm still excited with the results so far. Maybe I'll have a screenshot for you next time.
Until then, watch your back!
Things have been ramping up here far more than I ever would've given the fourth semester credit for. I'm working on several research projects this semester and keeping my eye open for employment opportunities. Some of the larger projects I'm working on have been keeping me very busy.
The project communications plan that I've been working on still has me entertained (and productive!) but I've added a couple more tasks to my workload. I've been looking in as a consultant along with Matt Laurence for the Master Plan game that part of Cohort 3 is developing. It's a position I'm honored to be in, as I'm keenly interested in seeing the project succeed. The whole team seems to be on the ball and eager to get things done. I'm pretty anxious to see the results of their first milestone goals, which should be coming up shortly.
Some more games are actually getting made, too. I've assembled a team to take on the mtvU 'Change the Course of HIV Challenge'. We're building a Flash game that not only teaches the player about the effects of AIDS on a community, but should also be a lot of fun to play. I'm pretty happy with the whole team, and they seem similarly happy with the game's design. We should have something online and playable shortly.
Finally, I've started experimenting with creating my own solo Torque game -- it's going slowly, but I'm still excited with the results so far. Maybe I'll have a screenshot for you next time.
Until then, watch your back!
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Back to work
The Fall semester ended with a bang, and a selection of two games the students will be working on for the next two semesters. After all the buzz around Opera Slinger, they jumped right in, and many of them worked on research for their games over the Christmas break. Now, we're seeing lots of prototyping, storyboards, concept art and design ideas being thrown around, which is always an exciting time as the games take shape.
I've been spending a lot of time over the last month or two working with programming students on their interview skills, mainly by giving mock interviews and sample programming tests. It's always exciting to see how much better they get at interviewing after just a couple sessions of being asked technical questions. Once they get some confidence, their whole demeanor changes and they interview much more successfully.
I'm almost done with the classwork for my PhD program, which I'm doing here at UCF in Modeling and Simulation. This semester, I'm taking a class called Advanced Computer Graphics, which is actually turning out to be a very interesting, rewarding class. We're talking a lot about raytracing, something the professor insists is moving toward realtime applications like games. Last semester, I took a class in neural networks, where I wrote my own neural network for a game and had the game difficulty adjust as the game was played. It was a fun project, and taught me a lot about what's possible when you have a lot of CPU power to dedicate to AI.
I'm looking forward to going across the street to the Magic game tonight - they're hosting the Bucks. They started out hot this year, but have fallen into a bad stretch lately - hopefully my presence there tonight can help then get a much needed win.
I've been spending a lot of time over the last month or two working with programming students on their interview skills, mainly by giving mock interviews and sample programming tests. It's always exciting to see how much better they get at interviewing after just a couple sessions of being asked technical questions. Once they get some confidence, their whole demeanor changes and they interview much more successfully.
I'm almost done with the classwork for my PhD program, which I'm doing here at UCF in Modeling and Simulation. This semester, I'm taking a class called Advanced Computer Graphics, which is actually turning out to be a very interesting, rewarding class. We're talking a lot about raytracing, something the professor insists is moving toward realtime applications like games. Last semester, I took a class in neural networks, where I wrote my own neural network for a game and had the game difficulty adjust as the game was played. It was a fun project, and taught me a lot about what's possible when you have a lot of CPU power to dedicate to AI.
I'm looking forward to going across the street to the Magic game tonight - they're hosting the Bucks. They started out hot this year, but have fallen into a bad stretch lately - hopefully my presence there tonight can help then get a much needed win.
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