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.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Thundering March
17 days to graduation! Every time I remember that I'm graduating this semester, I get really excited, but I also get really weirded out. Even here at n-Space, I still feel like a student at FIEA. It's going to be really trippy once I'm officially "done" with the program.
n-Space is everything I could've hoped for in a career experience. I've been working on Star Wars : The Force Unleashed DS, and we're already in thick of production. That means I had to dive headfirst into the tools and get ramped up pretty quickly so I could contribute to milestones meaningfully. The best part is that this wasn't terribly surprising -- this is exactly what I've come to expect from my education at FIEA!
The atmosphere here is really friendly -- everyone seems to know everyone else's name, which is also pretty similar to the school experience. Everyone's also pretty talented and dedicated to making great games. I'm thrilled to have such a killer position in a good, local company so quickly.
Continuing news of Brendan's game-playing: my latest game picks up were Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP -- fantastic game! ... and God of War II for the PS2 -- okay game. Pretty much more of the same. I'm quickly losing interest in most video games for one terrible, terrible reason -- I reinstalled World of Warcraft. I'm finally playing a Warlock, like I've always wanted, and it's just as terrifyingly excellent as I dreamed it would be.
Gotta get to work, but today's not all bad -- it's D&D night!
n-Space is everything I could've hoped for in a career experience. I've been working on Star Wars : The Force Unleashed DS, and we're already in thick of production. That means I had to dive headfirst into the tools and get ramped up pretty quickly so I could contribute to milestones meaningfully. The best part is that this wasn't terribly surprising -- this is exactly what I've come to expect from my education at FIEA!
The atmosphere here is really friendly -- everyone seems to know everyone else's name, which is also pretty similar to the school experience. Everyone's also pretty talented and dedicated to making great games. I'm thrilled to have such a killer position in a good, local company so quickly.
Continuing news of Brendan's game-playing: my latest game picks up were Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP -- fantastic game! ... and God of War II for the PS2 -- okay game. Pretty much more of the same. I'm quickly losing interest in most video games for one terrible, terrible reason -- I reinstalled World of Warcraft. I'm finally playing a Warlock, like I've always wanted, and it's just as terrifyingly excellent as I dreamed it would be.
Gotta get to work, but today's not all bad -- it's D&D night!
Friday, March 9, 2007
Game Developer's Conference
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!
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!
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.
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