First Day of Rules of the Game

6:00am - Woke up, as the information from yesterday flooded into my head. I set some water to boil for coffee while I head into the shower. I take my time and let the water drip down on me, brainstorming today's todo. (Create a point distribution spreadsheet, game synopsis, produce a 3D demo of a moveable object, RoG (Rules of the Game)).

6:30 am - I decide to forgo coffee, and instead move onto some cereal. I drop my recording of yesterday's lecture and begin to listen to them while eating.

7:00 am - After running through the syllabus, and reviewing everything from yesterday I begin to recreate the point distribution spread sheet for the team.

8:00 am - I head out to campus for our schedule group meeting.

9:00 am - Seeing a lot of familiar faces in SGP-2 I spend most of the time socializing until Casey shows up, followed by Charlie. We discuss the spread sheet, deciding that we will attempt many at many new boundaries. We intend to implement Shaders (vertex shaders, pixel shaders), particle effects, and even fluid dynamics most likely using D3D terrains. We also work out the game synopsis, thanks to Charlie's great creative writing skill which I will no doubt fall back on in the future.

12:00 pm - We split up and head for lunch, before I do I meet up with Dan who is part of the only group attempting 3D in the month ahead. I try to size up the scope and depth of his project, and it's quite impressive, at the same time I become very excited. After all it is much easier to follow someone's else's footsteps, and hopefully make some new ones along the way.

1:00 pm - ROG begins.
1:15 pm - Apparently this class is being taught by a new instructor, and not Dave the creator of Dungeons and Dragons. I do not mind. Steve VanZandt comes off as well informed, and a well organized instructor. In fact I would go as far as to say that he is a good example of a college level teacher (by normal standards). On that note, when role was called I was rather unoptimistic in saying 'here'. He replied back saying, 'awe you must be the invisible type'. While maybe those weren't his exact words, and they were said in such a way that I may be the only one that heard them. I noticed he did not pay very much attention to me for the duration of the class, except for several glances to make sure I'm paying attention (I'm a little worried about my GPS).
3:00pm - On that note we began lab early, being told that we will continue lecture after lunch break. So based on my first impression to the teacher, or at least my assumption to that impression, I decided to make a point to stand out. I raised my hand several times, and when we broke out in order to play board games ( a supposedly education process ), I choose to persue the simpler board game (Blokus). While it was my first time playing this game, I decided I could do much better in this game compared to the other games which had either intricate rules, or a rather large luck factor. In short, I wanted to win.

5:00pm - By the time lunch time came around we had played five games. My first game, I feel I got rather lucky and made correct decisions. Everyone at the table had been a first timer. I managed to win with 25 points ( a perfect score ). After winning the first game, and also sharing several of strategies, I did not fair nearly as well in the second game and had got -18 still coming in a far second. For the third game I managed to pull a not perfect victory with -7, this time beating our past DirectX teacher Chuck. Chuck is a great guy, and was pretty good at the game, so I really enjoyed it. With each consecutive game, it became harder and harder to win, and the competition became more and more fierce. By this point everyone was keeping track of the number of pieces left over, blocking others, and quickly making aggressive cuts into territory. Being experienced in both spatial tactics of chess, and go I was well aware in the idea of over expanding and being too passive. The fifth game was incredibly dominating. I managed to squeeze off a third of the board to myself, completely blocking any and all crosses using the double eye strategy common in GO. I ended up being able to take all my turns without waiting as no one really could cross into my territory. I won with a -4.

6:00pm - Lunch was brief, ate Chinese, and was pretty relaxing. Spending time not working on the SGP game became incredibly daunting. In fact by this point that's all I could think about. After lunch I spent the time drawing enemies, and thinking of game mechanics. This made the following lecture even more so daunting. I simply was not interested in the fluff. Game Design? Please, that's not what I'm paying the money for, and as shallow as that may sound I can not feel like this is yet another repeat of something I've already experienced, partially or totally. ECG, Behavioral Science, HAM, and the two day GameDesign track at last year's GDC have been plenty. I can make a card board game, all I care about now is how to make it render.

9:27pm - I'm home, I've finished my green tea, and wrapping up this blog post. Going to shower and begin working DXUTMesh which is by no means straight forward. I also intended to write about 3D Fundamentals, but I think I will leave that for a later post.