Lesson Learned

The past couple weeks have been pretty intense. Our two week rapid prototyping assignment was scheduled due last Sunday night. As such most of the teams were hard at work trying to complete our over-zealous game ideas.

It just so happens that the second week fell on the only time I had planned to miss from FIEA. To future students I would strongly recommend against taking any time off. By missing classes as well as time with your team you're sabotaging your own success.

Our first game almost made it to completion but didn't quite meet the 'fun' requirement. We spent a lot of time working on collision detection, the artwork, and layout but we did not have enough time to play test the game. Another recommendation is to "play test early and play test often". I feel somewhat responsible; because while I was away we were unable to incorporate changes. I returned on the day it was due (at midnight) and had to incorporate all the art and sound assets into the game. The combination of better organization, a present programmer, and more play testing definitely increases the chances of success.

Time to get started on our next rapid prototyping assignment and our programming assignment. Until next time!

Games, Dames, and Lames: week 1 - Introduction

Okay. I'm here with my week in review. I could bore you with some flubber about how cool it is to be learning to design video games. But, you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t already know that! For reals, I’m here to spill my heart about my adventures in video game stardom. Yeah, I know you think I'm just playing Madden '08. Beating dumb freshmen and taking their financial aid refund checks. I wouldn’t do anything like that?!?! Actually, I’m caught in an orgy of Rapid Prototyping the best damn Flash shooter game and making a sexy alien octopus while mind mapping a schizophrenic graffiti artist with an appetite for the ladies and government conspiracies. Yes, FIEA is the “pooh” like Winnie (I’m keeping it "E" for everyone and quite lame). It has only been two weeks, and we are in the thick of game design. Like any other code monkey operation, I’ve grown fond of my fellow FIEAns in all their uniqueness. Surviving in FIEA is like a sandbox video game. While not GTA, the profs are industry professionals that deliver some of the most difficult missions ever conceived. They are the Big Bosses that can crush your ego with one blow. So far, their industry antidotes are funny and insightful. I hope they keep the good stories flowing.

I can see FIEA producing monster video game developers to enter the real world. And, I can actually envision my cohort transforming into Mad Max meets Police Academy. I hope to experience a lot of both visions for your entertainment purposes. So, I have my game face on and ready to tackle all the obstacles in class and on computers and consoles. I will be shooting the “pooh” and reporting from the video game development frontlines like an opinionated schmuck with a blog. Oh, I am an opinionated schmuck. I won’t bore you with the lore of why my life is better than yours, so I’ll go back to playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption while you wallow in your lame existence. So, I talked about the games and the lames. What am I missing, hmmm…. Oh, the dames! Maybe, I’ll talk about the dames next week. Are you ready for the madness? Until next time, I wish you Love, Peace and Soul.....

Disclaimer: Fictional names are used to replace the real names, places and things of the crazy events revealed in front of your virgin eyes.

Full Swing

It is only the second week and FIEA is already in full swing. As a programmer we've already taken an assessment test to evaluate our level of understanding of some of the key programming concepts we will use here. Based off the results Tom (Carbone, our programming professor) custom-tailored the programming class for the programmers and technical producers.

In our production for media class we were split into groups of 7 and given a topic for presentation. Today we presented the project and we can now focus more on our Rapid Prototyping assignment.

For our Rapid Prototyping assignment we were split into groups of three or four with the purpose of making a "fun" game in Adobe Flash CS3. Being the only programmer on the team makes it tough to make a full mini-game from scratch in the two week time frame we were given. Things are getting tough and my free time is dwindling with each passing day but when I go to bed at night I know I love what I'm doing.

A new cohort arrives

Well, I was going to do a post where I talked all about Siggraph, but Jon beat me to the punch. After reading his post, I was glad he summarized the show for you and not me - mine would've been much shorter. Jon forgot to mention the girl at the booth next to us and the fact that he was always 5 minutes late in the morning, but I digress...

MasterPlan sure made great strides in a few weeks, when it went from tech demo to game. I have to hand it to the students - they really pulled a rabbit out of their hat. They waited until the end to do too much - a common thing for games being developed in the real world too. Games take a long time to get running when you don't start with a game engine, and then additional time after that to get fun - which means if you're not willing to go all out at the end, you end up shipping something that's not as fun as you might've planned. MasterPlan is by no means perfect, but I definitely had fun at Siggraph demoing it, which is always a good sign. I'm hoping that the students will take some time this semester to get the game running on a computer with less than 1.5GB of RAM for GDC, and maybe add a few more bells and whistles before calling it done.

Today was an exciting one at FIEA as we welcomed cohort 4 to their orientation. We're starting to get the hang of it, so we kind of knew exactly what to talk about, what kinds of questions to expect, and all that. It is also great to see excited new students ready to become the new "best cohort ever" at FIEA, and I am confident that this cohort will make us proud. The best thing we did this time around was to create a forum on our website for all the students to communicate with, which really helped them connect to find housing and other Orlando information from afar. These students just seemed more settled and acclimated than in the past, and that's what I attribute it to.