StrayStudios

Tennis 2082

2008-05-22T07:55:00.002-04:00

A new PS3 Tech Demo

2008-05-17T00:12:00.004-04:00

Despite all the negative critism by the users I was truly impressed when I saw the new tech demo for the PS3, titled "Linger In Shadows". Although very abstract, I was highly impressed with the close ups on the cat and the fur shaders. This comes a long way from Shadow of the Colossus. Other points that impressed me were the rope physics, and the depth of field (some of which I expect to be demonstrated in Insomniacs upcoming game).

This is a quick share. If you have further understanding of the graphics system please share with me what you might have thought after a closer look.

Windows 7 - Will it be amazing?

2008-05-14T02:18:00.002-04:00

Yep I totally ripped this from Joe Thomas's away message.

Oh and yea there will be voice recognition UI.

Mirror's Edge Trailer

2008-05-09T22:18:00.002-04:00

This is one of those games I've been waiting for with a lot of anticipation ever since the article in Edge magazine.

Excited about AI

2008-05-08T00:52:00.002-04:00

I'm truly, truly, truly excited about this month. I'm finally putting in the hours to learn and apply AI. I woke up at at 4 am, and at 5 am I was on campus, reading Artificial Intelligence for Games by Ian Millinigton. Although we spent half of lecture going over the silly-bus, and some more time on Dishonesty Policies, we eventually got down to business. Of course that only meant going over what AI is, and the three basic Data Structures: Linked Lists (Queues), Hashmaps, and Trees.

Since several people did not finish the lab on time Jeremiah did provide an extension for it which is largely due to the fact that lecture ended rather late.

So it sounds like the first day wasn't overly exciting, and next class isn't two days from now. What in the world will keep me busy until than?

The answer! Robocode! At the moment it's me and Casey Flach in a team for the monthly competition. My goal is nothing short of first place in Hall of Fame! Anyways feel free to check out the rules here.

Cookouts, GTA, AI, and Cheesesteaks

2008-05-07T01:07:00.005-04:00

Hey Guys

Boy do I feel guilty writing after a long period of absence. I think I'm just old school like that; you know, how websites should maintain a steady stream of content in order to keep its ~~frequent~~ visitors happy. Now a days, we have the amazing technology called RSS and an average user may subscribed to hundreds of such blogs. It's no excuse for such a long period of absence so I do apologize. I'll try and pick up where I left off. Oh and as a quick shout out; had it not been for Steve VanZandtm, our past instructor for Rules of the Game here at FullSail, it may have even longer.

So GDC! Yea it came, it passed.

After GDC, I had took a class in OpenGL and focused deeply on graphics. Over the course of March my understanding of hardware, the pipeline, and shaders grew immensely.

What else I learned, is that compared to my friend Joseph Thomas (if the name doesn't sound familiar, don't worry it will soon), I am not very fund of graphics programming.

Still that didn't stop me from learning enough to finally develop my own DX framework for future projects. This is largely thanks to the tutorials by Chad Vernon. Who's cvxporter I finaly got working (feel free to e-mail me if you have trouble).

Cookouts

So for those that don't know. The bunch of us in GD have been organizing cookouts at Wardpark (Cady Way park) for a few months now. If all goes well, we hope to turn these events into an official club (The Game Networking Club). We usually play football, soccer, Frisbee, talk, eat, and last time even had a chess set out. Everyone is pretty much welcome, it's largely informal. We do ask for $3 or to bring your own food. Either will help in the lot, and we always have left overs. Our next meet is this Sunday May 11th. Don't forget to send your mom a card ;)

AI

OK so I finally get to rant a little. This is the class I've been dieing to take since I first signed up to attend FullSail. I've had the opportunity to meet and drink with Jeremiah Blanchard, our AI instructor, and he's a great guy. First day of class is tomorow and I expect to be on campus at like 5 am. I've already finished the first lab (I know we aren't supposed to), and having my DX framework complete I plan on finally building up my portfolio in the area I'm so passionate about.

The Portfolio

I know, I know. I've talking about this for so long and yet straystudios.com has remained static for over a year now. I'll make up for it hopefully soon (maybe not this month, but before September). Steve who is a veteran from the Digital Arts and Design department is willing to lend me a hand on my layout, I would really like to produce it in Flash.

Cheesesteaks

I'm a huge fan of Philadelphia. I've grown up on the Philadelphia cheesesteak. I'm talking about Pats and Genos baby. None of that imitation. Until recent, there hasn't been much to quench my hunger in that department. I'll keep this to the point. University and Goldenrod. There's an amazing place called "Phil's Famous Cheesesteaks". Best ones I've had in Winter Park.

Well that's it for now. More soon. ~~Promise~~.

What inspires you?

2008-02-19T23:21:00.004-05:00

The Game Developer's Conference is well under way. Many are participating in the "Destroy all Developers Challange" while other take the time to sit in on the many available tutorial session during the past two days. Myself, well I try to stay motivated.

Monday began with a tutorial on "Core Shader Algorithms and Techniques," which covered many techniques in the lattest edition of ShaderX books. The most memroblewas a technique that covered by Carsten Dachsbacher from University of Stuttgart who spoke about a new technique for generating texture maps. Instead of using texture atlases he suggested an idea called "TileTrees," a data-structure that generates 2D tiles around the surface of a model.

Later that night, I met up with Sean Hathaway, James Leonis (http://virus2566.blogspot.com/), and Mike Arlington (www.deflesca.com); where I had been introduced to this year's scholarship recipients. I got to meet some fascinating people:

- Andrew Armstrong - a student from England who is this year's Eric Dybsand AI Scholarship recipient. Check out his website at http://www.aarmstrong.org/
- Jordi Fine - Jordi is an inspiring Game Designer with some real works under his belt. Definetly check him out at http://www.jordifine.com/
- Enrique Saul Gonzalez - Will be attending Tokyo University, with a goal of producing educational games for the Japanese.
- Andrew Sorkin - Sound design and composition, easily stands out as one of the few people I get to meet interested in audio for games. Check him out at http://sorkinsound.com/
- Tatyana Dyshlova - She's currently attending Brown University, with the intension of working with hardware and production.
- Michael Lee - Michael just like myself is last year's Eric Dybsand scholarship recipient. After catching up, he's apparently doing very well with his own company at http://ludoko.com
- Silvia Lindtner - highly talented, she's interested in pursuing sensors in video games and is currently enrolled in University of California. I was especially impressed with her business card, particularly after learning she designed it herself. Her website is equally as impressive at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lindtner

Phew, that's a rather large list, and I do appolize for anyone I forgot to mention.

The following day (today), I stumbled down 4th street to Mascone center where I set down for my day two tutorial which covered "Physics in Video Games". Although the lecture started off slowly covering most fundementals such as the Euler's method for velocity as well as angular velocity. Squirel was quick to point out some of the pitfalls involved with irregular timesteps and tunneling. The lecture picked up pace after lunch during which I got to speak with Ben Retan (www.benretan.com) who is also a Full Sail student about to graduate. The second half opened up with the Minkowski Differences, a crash course in GJK which absolutly blew me away with it's complexity, and finally wrapped up the tutorial with a talk on constraints.

Overall these past two days have been incredibly exciting and I try to recover my energy tonight and get some more work done on Amoeba Sports, I can not wait to get back and put some of these techniques to work.

Pre-GDC 2008

2008-02-17T20:24:00.002-05:00

In the past 72 hours I've slept a total of maybe 10, in small intervals of 2 hours, 3 hours, and that which I wouldn't even consider to be rest during the flight. The cause for all of this is of-course the Game Developer's Conference 2008. I wont waste my breathe on the importance of this event, but that doesn't mean that my school schedule would in any way be lenient towards this once a year phenomenon. Therefore I have spent sleepless nights wrapping up the Gameplay AI for Amoeba Sports (Beta), and as of a few hours ago I would have to say it's been a total success. A week's worth of features, and gameplay mechanics finished in more or less a day and a half.

But I wont get ahead of myself as I am now past exhusted from the flight. From MCO airport we first went North towards Atlanta, during the flight we experienced some technical difficulties where the landing gear on the right wing would not release. The stewairdess did not help the situation as her nervous face was read by every passanger in the five feet radius, who continously kept glaring over my should looking at the wing. When we eventually landed, and my headache subsided, we faced a fifteen minute delay and took off again, this time for what seemed like a six hour long flight, I landed only three hours later (time zones are funny that way).

Oh I almost forgot, I'm not attending alone this year; as Jim Leonis, MFA, and Sean are all joining me, and where supposed to have gotten to San Fransisco an hour before I did. After landing I had quickly unpacked my cell phone and attempted to call them, as we planned to meet up at the airport. After dialing Sean, followed by Jim, and followed by Mike; I found each one of their cell phones turned off (I understand the airplane policies, but I see no reason to fully turn the device off and cut off all communication with the outside world). After three hours went by and I began to panic and think that something might have happened to my deer old friends, and worse yet I might be left sleeping on the cold streets of San Fransisco as the hotel room was registered uner Sean's name; I got the bright idea to call up Rev (Sean's and MFA's roommate). He informed me that they had missed their flight and had not departed yet at 2:00 pm EST. Which means they would not arrive for another four hours.

At the current time of blogging I am at the familiar Citizen's Cupcake Cafe, the place changed a little but still nice, and my friend's still have not turned on the mobiles. According to flightaware.com they should have all arrived at 5:10 (that was 30 min ago). So in the meantime I had registered myself at the Masconi Center and read every slip of paper I could find in that black bag of goodies. My favorite being a Ping Pong Ball by GameDev.net, which will surely be used sometime in the near future. The other item of interest is a "6 hour Energy! Mini Thin RUSH." That's right, if you haven't seen this yet than it wouldn't be far from the actual produce provided. As I like to live dangerously I intend to save this for the upcoming Wed or Thur.

Amoeba Sports [Buzz]

2008-02-07T22:09:00.000-05:00

"Did you hear about the new shooter for the PSN?"
"You mean Amoeba Sports right?"
"Yea that's right, there hasn't been much information released about it"
"From what I understand it's a genre soup title. A shooter + soccer + arcade survival game."

Above is a fictional conversation about a real game that Casey Flach, Charlie Prouse, and myself (Michael Kofman) are developing in the span of two months. Two months for the design, research, tools development, engine architecture, testing and debugging. For most a schedule like this would sound ludicrous but that is in fact what we're doing this month in our SGP course. To make things more interesting, we made the decision to create the game in full 3D, using vertex shaders to simulate cell shading, dynamic particle effects, a robust AI system that I'll talk about in detail at a later time, steering behavior, a dynamic HUD, and so many other features. We are currently at the point of a playable demo, and in the coming weeks I'll have screenshots to wet your appetite. For now here is our dust jacket.

"Image above is a prototype"

Set in a puddle in 10 billion BC, you play as an amoeba attempting to furiously collect amino acids as you’re very existence depends on it. Using your several brain cells, you must out smart both the opposing amoeba, and other smaller life forms all competing for the amino acids. You must collect the amino acids and fill up your personal colored nest and keep them there as the smaller life forms attempt to steal them from you, or slow you down in the process. As an advanced form of amoeba, known also as an Amoeboid, you have the abilities to spout out goo blob bullets, create a powerful bubble shield to stop the bullets in their place, dart to forward to avoid danger, and even the ability to send out waves to create a ripple. By using these theses abilities, you must shot, push, and block your way to being the top dog in the puddle.

Month 2 - Day 1

2008-02-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

It's the beginning of a new month, and that usually would mean new classes, and new instructors. This time it's different; same class, same assignment, and the same team. SGP Month 2 is said to be the most hectic time during the time spent at FullSail second only to final project upon graduation. Before I go any further into it, this past weekend was a blast. Granted we only get a measly three days to recover, time that is hardly ever used entirely for resting, we had organized another cookout. Combined with the month ahead, it consisted primarily of the month ahead. Me and Jim Leonis had brought meat that he had done a pretty good job preparing at the park. Meanwhile we organized a soccer game, that was fun but lasted maybe fifteen minutes before people ran out of breath. Well what can you do, when all the time spent is sitting on your arse looking at a flickering tube. Overall it was a lot of fun, and I intend to try and organize it again next month.
This weekend was also Magic night, myself, Taylor, Sigsby, and Mat all drafted the new Morningtide expansion, which got me interested in Magic again. I can't wait till I can sustain that hobby of mine.

The leisurely weekend ended Sunday as I dove back into programming, fleshing out more of the AI Engine but more particularly the functionality that will allow for a testable environment and SVN. Casey being occupied with Super Bowl XLII I stopped work short and went to bed for a 9 am class.

I woke up earlier than planned, about 6 am or so. I debated going back to sleep, but choose not to. Realizing that I still had lots of chores left unfinished I got up and went into the shower. After I came out, I decided not to wait precious energy on chores, packed my laptop and headed out. I figured I should try and squeeze a few more lines of code, before integration.

Me and Casey pretty much worked hand in hand the entire day, and completed a very impressive chunk of code. Finishing up the GameStates we are now left to patch up holes in the system.

All this would be fine and dandy until we realized that the .x files exported out of Maya 8.5 using cvxporter don't save vertex coloring, which is ultimately crucial for our vertex shader. And so the search begins, we confirm the problem, and I begin looking for alternate solutions. Obviously using an alternate 3D modeling tool is always an option, but it's not something we want to do for two reasons. First the unit scale would be totally off and we would need to adjust the dimensions of each model by hand. Second, their is a learning curve to using an unfamiliar 3D modeling tool.

So back to cvxporter, Chad Vernon decided to switch up his plugin to run through Python. Since I am totally unfamiliar with the language, and I know few people who are; I say, what the hell let's give it a try. I install Python24 for windows. Grab the ctypes that Chad mentions in his instructions (mind you I know how to follow them). Set up the Environment Path for PYTHONPATH, and it the cvxporter.py simply doesn't work. Wow, a fantastic time sink, but hey! Their is always tomorrow...

Two Week Dash

2008-02-03T03:38:00.000-05:00

After a month that can best be described as walking on ice with a sevnty pound weight, Stickbiscuit Studios ( Michael Kofman - Project Officer and Gameplay, Charlie Prouse - Interface Lead, and Casey Flach - Technolodgy Officer ) we nailed our game document, earning our first $150k SGP dollars out of a possible 1.5 million to be accumilated. Our second milestone towards the end of the month did not pan out so well, earning us only 160k our of a possible 300k for that milestone, the team walked away disappointed. While I tried to cheer up the team, and push the blame onto the overly unjust critism and grading scale, I realize that I failed as a project officer. In the comming two weeks until Alpha I intend to step up. As far as my work goes, and also actually play the role of a project officer and nag as much as needed to keep on schedule.

Time to go to sleep, tomorrow will be a long day.

First Day of Rules of the Game

2008-01-10T20:50:00.001-05:00

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.

Oh Man, Best Game Ever

2008-01-06T17:23:00.001-05:00

GDC08 First Keynote Announced!

2008-01-04T02:14:00.000-05:00

This is big news! As some of you know I will be attending GDC08 this year, this time without a scholarship to lean on, I am more determined than ever to make the most of it. So after I opened my e-mail today I find that they have begun to announce the keynotes. Last year's being Miyamoto, and Phil Harrison; suffice to say that's one tough act to follow. So to my surprise I was too ignorant not to recognize a name as famous as Ray Kurzweil. But after doing minimal research on this man, he has quickly grown on me as an inspirational figure.

Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.

As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray’s web site Kurzweil AI.net has over one million readers.

Among Ray’s many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame , established by the US Patent Office.

He has received fifteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.

Ray has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best selling book on Amazon in science. Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.

Yakuza 3 - Oh Snap!

2008-01-03T11:38:00.001-05:00

Tooo Cool

2008-01-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

You gotta check out this trailer.

Games Noir

2008-01-02T05:26:00.000-05:00

A game Noir, as described by Steve Gaynor in the recent publication on Gamasutra, is a B grade game that is budgeted to not be as risky as a triple A title, and yet having enough content and quality to be noticed by the mass consumer. So what does this imply for the Game Design? As the author pointed out, the comparison for a Game Noir does necessarily mean we should mimic the style of a film Noir, which after all is not an interactive form of media, and while a strong story is one way to sell a B budget game, it is not the only. Steve suggests experimentation in game play, and several of the earlier comments below the article mention games like Portal. While a game like Portal would certainly classify, it got me wondering what kind of games could I come up with under such limitations. So this is what I came up with, and while keeping such innovative ideas a secret did cross my mind, I also think it will be a few years before I'm in any position to make them, at which point they will no longer be as innovative, and their will be new technology, and a new ideas to draw from.

Title: Water
Concept: There are very few games that truly explore the water world, and the fun possibilities that lie with it. Most water based games fall into the category of races, which while it may be fun, is no different than racing on sand, in space, or on dirt. No this game should put the player in a position where water is used as underlying game play mechanic.
Gameplay: So imagine for instant that you play a silver surfer type of character, who can generate generate waves that can be used as weapons, or ramps for other players. Imagine a form of capture the flag in this style of gameplay, or football-isc rules. As long as the development is constantly thinking about how to make water more and more fun, and not throwing in any half-baked side elements this would be a truly fun game to play.
Story: This really wasn't about Story, but I believe unless the game is built as a multiplayer only title such as Warhawk, than a story should have as much care as the game play. There is nothing worse than progressing, through a game without a feeling of discovery. I believe that's what a good story does for simple games such as this. So, if it were entirely up to me, I would have this game be a growing up tale, about a boy who goes onto compete in a large arena. Imagine any story about a professional athlete being told from his child hood and eventually taking him to the Majors.

Title: Kendo with a Paintbrush
Concept: Painting has been demonstrated as a feasible game mechanic by Okami. In fact it was incredibly well executed, but than that was it. Is it that we as an industry are too afraid to draw from the same because we would be copying? Or are we too short sighted at other alternatives to painting in a video game. In fact by only utilizing the freeze time + analog sticks paint mechanic and drawing not a single thing more from the game Okami, some truly original ideas begin to come to mind, and playing Kendo is just but one of them. Kendo is about reading an opponent's next move, sort of like chess, it is about looking for patterns, and being creative.
Gameplay: Your weapon is a brush and your face to face against an imminent threat. As mentioned earlier, I see nothing wrong with using the time manipulating game mechanic from Okami. But to make things a bit more interesting, you can only paint within a much smaller radius of your brush, and when you choose to paint you can only slow time down, you don't freeze time. This will allow for your opponent to react but in a much slower fashion. Imagine now the sort of effect that would follow such slow motion sequences that would be exchanged between each player or computer player. Player one begins to draw a projectile circle (keeping in mind that this uses a lot more paint and the circle must be completely closed), he aims for the head. Player two, noticing the shape, steps to the side, and while watching his own avatar slowly begin to move, he begins to draw his own attack. Blocks, Strikes, Parries, fencing or Kendo this is the core of the game play.
Story: Hmm, well could we do something similar to the above? Yea sure, it would work, but for the sake of being original and daring as a Noir title should be. Let us take on the role of a girl. Why a girl? Because Kendo would be out of place for a girl, that statement in itself not being entirely accurate, that is half the reason. The other half of the reason is it can be quite interesting for boys playing this game who may or may not yet understand girls or woman for that matter and have the story be told about a serious issue from her point of view. For example, how time keeps passing her buy, and she's getting older and older and still not sure of what to do with her future. Will she practice Paintbrush Kendo for the rest of her life? That can't possibly be it, but yet her grades limit her options. It could be a story about her pursuing a meaningful life, and overcoming challanges. The use of a girl as a main character is in fact completely irrelevant towards how the story would unfold, unless there is a hint of romance involved in which case boys and girls act differently.

Anyways, I feel that from this little exercise I've learned two things about making a great Noir game. Focus on only one key gameplay mechanic, than focus even more on the story. Keep things from being repetitive buy using the gameplay as a reward, rather than the other way around.

Hope you liked these ideas, and will inspire who ever you are to come up with some of your own. Oh and if your a famous game designer yourself, with some hiring power, I got a lot more haha : )

DXUT Game Architecture Part One

2008-01-02T01:21:00.001-05:00

Understanding *.VSPROJ

I’m of course referring to a standard Visual Studio Project. In order to understand DXUT and for that any API integration, it is quite vital to understand project dependencies and settings. So this first tutorial will focus on just that with emphasis on DXUT project settings.

On quick thing to make a note of is that a visual studio project are the multiple project builds. Most books on this topic already assume you understand this, but for those with less experience in this area due to one reason or another I’ll quickly explain this concept.

A project build are unique project settings often to do with the compiler, and the linker. The most common three types of builds are the Debug, Release, and the Profile build.

The Debug build is usually the configuration you use while trying to test, solve problems, or quite simply debug. This includes enabling things like symbolic debug information, and disabling any form of code optimization such as inline functions for example.

The release build is by far the easiest one to understand because it is what you’ll be providing the end user with. With that being said you want to omit any unnecessary debug information, and include any form of code optimization.

The debug and release builds are what is defaulted during development using Visual Studio. You will then be expected to make any additional builds on your own (doing so is easy, just do some research). The question would than arise, as to what the purpose of these extra builds might be, and this is what I believe a Profile build that is often regarded as in programming books. The profile build or whatever you choose to call it, may be a build specifically designed to run a specific piece of hardware; such as a cell phone, a PlayStation, a different operating system, or it may quite simply act as a midpoint between a Debug and a Release build for testers etc. As long as you understand this, than choosing the appropriate settings for a Profile build or choosing to omit it entirely becomes a simple mater.

Now that’s out of the way, in Visual Studio switching configurations is as simple as choosing one from the drop down list above. Make sure to note the “All Configurations” option which will allow you to make consistent changes to all current builds.

Next you must decide on how you wish for your project to be organized. There is nothing wrong with using the default directory structure that Visual Studio sets up for you, but after reading Mike McShaffry’s Game Coding Complete, I feel in love with his design which you can find on page 93 of his publication. This is roughly what it looks like:

Project Code Name
- Docs
  - Documentation, game concepts, etc.

[Configuration Properties]

[General]

Output Directory, your output directory is where you can expect to find your .exe
Intermediate Directory, compiler specific files, this should probably be configured to point inside your Obj folder if you choose to follow the advised dir structure.
Extensions to Delete on Clean, during the rebuild step the following are the file extensions you would like to be deleted. If you’re confident in what you’re doing this is a great opportunity to delete unwanted logs etc…
Build Log File, I have never utilized the following log file, but it should be clear as to what to expect here.
Inherited Project Property Sheets, this is important if you are setting up your project from an empty project with absolutely no defaulted settings. Feel free to read more on this topic if you wish, but for a DXUT project set it to

$(VCInstallDir)VCProjectDefaults\UpgradeFromVC71.vsprops

Configuration Type, the following drop down list determines exactly what your project is built to do. If your building an application (*.exe), a static library(*.lib), a dynamic library (*.dll).
Use of MFC, set the following to Use Standard Windows Libraries
Use of ATL, set the following to Not Using ATL
Minimize CRT Use in ATL, think about this for a sec. Are we using ATL? Then set this to No.
Character Set, DXUT is infamous to using Unicode and not Multibyte which is more common to hand written DirectX. Remember a character set is not something that can’t be changed if you wish by using prefixes such as L, or T.
Common Language Runtime support, No Common Language Runtime support.
Whole Program Optimization, No Whole Program Optimization. Remember what we discussed earlier with various build types.

I’ve went into a lot of detail when it comes to General Configuration, from here on out I will not spend the time to explain settings that are build specific, or that have nothing to do with enabling DXUT. Remember that it is important to learn how to do your research here, and I believe I’ve provided you with the stepping stones to do so.

After creating your project and going through the steps of configuring your $(IntDir), $(OutDir), and various build options you should install the latest DirectX Distribution. Each distribution should come with the latest DXUT files usually located in (C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (November 2007)\Samples\C++\DXUT). A good way to find it is to perform a search for dxut.h on your entire computer. Eventually you will two folders, [Core] and [Optional]. What is this you might be wondering? The core folder is where you’ll find dxut.h and other essential header files involved with successfully compiling DXUT code. In other words you’ll defiantly need these files. On the other hand Optional contains the majority of the DirectX wrappers for game development. Please be aware that DXUT does not document the optional wrappers and is not truly part of the API but are provided as sample code for producing your own wrappers to do the same. With that being said, I don’t copy both folders directly, but instead make a new folder in my project source directory called DXUT and paste the appropriate header and cpp files.

Now you’re going to want to right click on your project and add existing files that you just copied into your project. Second, you want to go back into Project Properties and navigate to Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Additional Include Directories. Than point once again to the DXUT folder w/ respect to your *.vsproj file. Assuming it is inside your Source folder, simply typing in DXUT; is sufficient.

* If you don’t see the C/C++ tab inside your Configuration File it is most likely due to the fact that Visual Studio has not yet identified your project as a C++ project. To do this simply create a .cpp file such as WinMain.cpp. And open up properties again.

This concludes Part 1 of the tutorial. If you would like to continue without waiting for my next update, feel free to purchase Game Coding Complete or you could simply navigate to Mike McShaffry’s forums at http://www.mcshaffry.com/GameCode/board.php. Something to note about the way Mike sets up his DXUT is by building a separate project with its own precompiled header, and outputting a *.lib. He then sets up his next project that being the Game Architecture project and set’s it to be dependent on the DXUT build. He also does his #include for DXUT files inside his Game Architecture project and not the DXUT project. Hopefully you’ll figure it out. Or feel free to wait for my next update where I’ll try to take this tutorial all the way to rendering a blue screen via the DXUT function calls.

Dreaming

2007-12-28T06:13:00.000-05:00

Dreams can be incredible healers. Letting yourself go without worrying about tomorrow, and allowing yourself to dream; I woke today with my feet and arms absent of the usual pain, and amazing energy for productivity.

Last night I was inspired to dream, after watching a fantastic film called "Paprika". Their were references to Millenium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers so I'm only assuming it was done by the same art director, but quite on par with the visual quality of those films. I absolutly don't want to ruin a single moment of the film so I wont say a word more, but it's a must watch by everyone.

A few days I've also finished reading Ender's Shadow. The fourth book in the series from Ender's Game by Orson Scottcard. I was recommended to skip the second and third book and go straight to the fourth, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first. Orson's writing improved considerably, as I spent less and less time trying to outsmart little Ender, or in this case little Bean. Still, what's most fascinating about the series are the various types of games the kids play. As someone who still holds onto his childhood, and a game developer I am extremly enticed to maybe one day produce one of these games, especially the squad based AI.

That's pretty much it, I wanted to give you guys some updates, and a little entertainment. I guess I should get back to work.

PS: I finally got DXUT working, but the architecture still seems to puzzle me in several places. I just can't believe there isn't any documentation .... should I take the initiative?

Trouble with DXUT

2007-12-24T18:11:00.000-05:00

For those who aren't familiar with DXUT, it's an API that's included with DirectX to be used for games. With convenient functions like DXUTInit( ), DXUTMainLoop( ). It is incredibly enticing and trying to build a Game Architecture based around it is incredibly temping. On the other hand, their is very little documentation on it outside of the MSDN that seems to be heavily DX10 oriented.

I am currently stuck at the fact that dxut.h doesn't have any body definitions for DXUTInit() and I am puzzled by my inexperience. If anyone is familiar with the API please leave a comment, or contact me?

String theory, and the ten dimensions?!

2007-12-24T11:57:00.001-05:00

I'm sure some have read books; some understanding the concepts, others not really, and some others, well they think they understand. For me, I found this amazing video online that simplified the entire concept (and I do stress concept) into a short little video that I can't help but share here.

So check it out. the string theory unraveled.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Getting Ready for GDC08

2007-12-13T16:27:00.000-05:00

I'm incredibly excited with so much to do in order to get prep. Finish a website, learn dx10 shaders, and find a roomate. Btw pictures from last year's GDC are here. Check em out, and shoot me an e-mail if your going.

The Devil and David Webster

2007-11-12T03:13:00.000-05:00

The Devil and David Webster

by Chris R. Lunt.

Heaven's donuts are jelly donuts. The blend of texture, from the cool, sweet ooze of the jelly, mined with tiny rasberry seeds, to the firm, spongy cake, so lightly encrusted in a thin glaze of sugar, that cracks and flakes as you gingerly tear off small pieces of delight, is certainly the greatest experience a humble man can afford.
I was eating a jelly donut when he first appeared in my office, smelling slightly of gunpowder. He was tall and gaunt, with deep-set eyes and crooked teeth, long, delicate fingers, and sloped shoulders. He wore a black Ozzy Osborne concert t-shirt, frayed black jeans, and dusty black high-tops, unlaced. He smiled at me in an ugly way. I put down my donut and glanced at my watch. 7:00 PM.
"You're David Webster."
I nodded.
"You're a programmer for Core."
I nodded again. Not only was I a programmer for Core--I was the best damn programmer this group had ever or would ever see. I suppose I should introduce myself. I am David Elijah Webster, master programmer. I'm not just blowing smoke here either. I'm the best damn programmer to come out of MIT since code was constructed one bit at a time. I can do it all: C, LISP, assembly--even the languages no self-respecting programmer would deign to look at. I can do it all in no time flat, with the most elegant of style. Code sprinkled with glistening semicolons and flowing rivers of indentation. Lesser programmers avert their eyes when I enter the room.
"They say you're the best, and I'm here to challenge you."
I sized this guy up again. He had the right shape. The pot-belly, the greasy hair, parted with percision. The fingers. And the funny smell.
I told him I didn't have time.
"I'll make it worth your while," he said. "I have something you might be interested in. Follow me."
I grabbed my box of donuts, and followed him down the hall and into the elevator. He pressed a button and the elevator descended into the basement. I'd never been in the basement before. For that matter, I didn't even recall that the building had a basement. Nonetheless, the elevator chimed, the doors opened, and we stepped out into a wide room that was entirely featureless. That is, except for the fog on the floor and two workstations that were set up, side by side. One of the workstations was mine. The other was a workstation like none other that I had seen before. It was magnificent.
It was matte black. More than an object, it looked like a hole in space. The monitor it sported was the biggest I had ever seen, and the keyboard was a flow of liquid lines, containing a field of keys of different sizes and shapes, packed in like cobblestones. The mouse floated above the table, and had no wire. Next to the computer was a box with a small chute coming out of one side, and a large red button on the top. The monitor was flanked by two gigantic speakers, and I could see a sub-woofer poking up out of the fog. It hummed. It steamed. It was the most beautiful computer I had ever seen.
"You approve," said the stranger.
I swallowed and said, "It is beyond description."
"It's a custom job. And it's yours. If," he said, "If you can beat me in a coding contest."
I looked at him incredulously. "What's in it for you?"
"I will have defeated the greatest coder in the world, and thus, I can claim that title. AND, I get to keep your immortal soul."
He smiled the ugly smile again.
Here was a dilemma. I was dealing with the Devil. There was no doubt about that. And he was no doubt very good. I am somewhat attached to my soul, but oh, the prizes. The glory. I can easily claim to be the best coder in the company, in the Bay Area, probably on the whole planet, but if I pulled this off, I will have shown myself to be the best coder in this entire theology! Vanity got the better part of me.
"What's the contest?" I asked.
I won't bore you with the details, but it was seriously ugly. Ugly in a way that makes the most arrogant of coders cringe and causes managers to pad development schedules into the next century. It had to run in any language, including the nasty chicken-scratch ones. It had to be backward compatible all the way to the ENIAC. And it had to run on Windows. I cringed.
But vanity won. I signed the forms, agreed on a deadline of midnight, and we sat down at our machines and started to code.
My watch said 8:00 PM, and I started warming up. Class definitions flew off my fingertips like throwing stars. Structures and declarations grew like perfect crystals, and I didn't even break a sweat. True to the task, I soon lost myself in an endless cycle of postulate, create, instantiate and verify. Bits grew to bytes, to K, to Megs, and finally to Gigs. By 11:00 PM it had come to that crucial point. With an hour to go, I had to put all the peices together. It wasn't going to be easy. It was going to take all the concentration I had.
Then I hit the first bug.
At first, I wasn't sure where it was coming from, but then I spotted it. It wasn't mine. It was bug in Windows. Even worse, it was a bug in Windows that stemmed from a timing problem with the system clock itself. I couldn't see a workaround. I was stymied. I genuflected and called Microsoft support.
"Hello, and welcome to the Microsoft help line. Please enter your 64 digit user identification number, followed by your 32 digit password."
While I frantically typed number after number, trying to navigate through layer upon layer of phone menu, I heard him pick up his phone and call a number.
"Hello, is Bill in? ... I don't care, wake him up ... Tell him it's Mr. Black ... Hey Bill, what's shakin'? Listen, I needed to know a workaround to one of your bugs ... Yes, I know what time it is ... Yes, I know ... Bill ... Bill! You remember our little deal? ... That's right. Now be a dear and give me that workaround ... Mm-hm ... Right ... Thank you, Bill. I'll be seeing you."
I was shocked. It was obviously pointless continuing my desperate journey through Microsoft's Help line. I needed immediate genius! I scarfed down a grape jelly. Sugar shock engulfed me, and my vision tunneled. I shuddered once, something clicked, and I determined the answer I needed--I could use the clock on the sound chip to get my timings.
I dove back into the code, and was quickly integrating modules when I hit bug number two. It was even uglier than the first. In fact, it was the ugliest bug I had ever seen. It was a problem with C. With the language itself. There's no way fix a broken hammer using the same hammer.
I wracked my brains. I clenched and grunted and sweated and thought and Thought and THOUGHT, but to no avail. Over my shoulder, I could hear Him chime in, "Bugger, isn't it? I remember putting that one in back when I was working on the Unix kernal. Did you really think there was a Kernighan and Ritchie? Rearrange the letters in their names and you'll discover an interesting anagram."
I ignored him and continued thinking. My mind went deeper and deeper into the problem at hand--my senses dulled, my breathing grew shallow. My eyes rolled back and sweat beaded on my forehead. Clumsily, blindly, my hand pawed it's way to the box on my desk, containing my last jelly donut. It raised slowly to my lips, and I bit.
Pounding waves of sugar induced euphoria washed through my mind. I felt my brain hum and crackle. My hands trembled, my body shuddered, and I began to type. I was a man possessed. Complex topographical math equations formed on my screen. Klien bottles and hypercubes locked neatly into place like pieces of a puzzle. Beyond my control, a complex mathematical world formed in my computer, with additional dimensions unimaginable.
I felt a small pop, and I came to. I looked at my screen. I had worked around the bug.
My watch read 11:45. Frantically I continued putting all the modules into place. Glancing for a moment at my rival, I could see I had him worried. He was typing furiously. Smoke poured from his ears, and flames licked around his collar.
Then I hit the third bug.
It was not so much a bug, it was a limit. I only had 4 Gigabytes of memory, and I had used it all. There wasn't a bit left. I had compressed data to a point so fine that it was in danger of collapsing into a black hole. I was storing memory in every conceivable way, including keeping a chain of sound waves running between the speaker and the microphone. There was no memory left to be had.
Frantic, I reached into my box of donuts, and my heart sank into my stomach when I realized that I had eaten the last one. I glanced at my watch, but it was too late. I was sunk. I had done the best that I could, and I had nothing more to give.
The Devil laughed, and grinning cruelly, he reached over to the box with the chute and the button. Remember the box? Slowly, firmly, his hand pressed the red button, and a jelly donut slid down the chute and onto the table.
My jaw dropped. "What...is...that?" I asked.
He languorously chewed as he replied, "The Box of Eternal Donuts."
"The Box of Eternal Donuts!?"
"Yes," he said.
"It never runs out?"
"Never," he said.
"It's mine if I win?!?!"
"If you can win, it is entirely yours," he replied, grinning cockily. My mind reeled. The Box of Eternal Donuts. The Box of Eternal Donuts! My eyes darted everywhere, my jaw hung slack, and my throat emitted strange animal-like noises. Anything. I would do anything to win! I just needed the smallest amount of memory. But where could I get it from? I glanced at my watch again, and a plan came into my mind. A beautiful, devious plan.
I went quickly upstairs and retrieved the emergency toolkit that we keep in the medicine cabinet. I ripped the case off my computer, and quickly scanned for the right connections. I pulled two wires, and unscrewed the back of my watch. The Devil's eyes widened and he desparately started coding again, but it was too late. I got the last of the memory I needed out of my watch, and pressed the ENTER key seconds before he did.
The watch burst into flames. Sparks flew from the disk drives and the monitor glowed and throbbed, finally melting into a puddle of glass. The computer exploded in a shower of sparks, and then there was absolute silence.
There was a pause, and both of us turned as the printer started, slowly emitting a single sheet that wafted gently into the out bin. I nonchalantly strolled over, and held up to the Devil's scowling face, a sheet imprinted with two words. "Hello World".
Nothing more needs to be told, other than, as I write this, I am sitting in front of my new computer, munching on what is undoubtedly the best jelly donut I have ever eaten.
(c) Copyright Chris Lunt May 1995

Everyone can draw

2007-07-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Is something I trully believe, creativity is something that all humans can do. With that being said, I am a huge supporter of user created content, customization, and this brings me to some good news regarding Little Big Planet. It was recently announced that Little Big Planet will not just be "an obstacle course simulator". The enemies ranging from giants to little robots I'm confident that the creators of Kung-Fu will provide plenty of variations, but the question is how much of this will be sandbox and open to user manipulation.

Customizing the materials is fairly given, but what about the AI? Will the user be able to modify stats such as strength, hit points, and maybe even create our own creatures of evil.

Well suffice to say, I'm very excited. Could you imagine a story driven game with free episodic content created by users?

Heavenly Sword Demo

2007-07-27T11:40:00.001-04:00

The demo starts off all too familiar. If you've followed gametrailers.com than this is nothing new, but it was extremely satisfying to move through the environment which might I add looks absolutely gorgeous. It hard to put my finger on it but be it the moving of the grass or the colors, it's something I could easily see myself being taken with no matter how many times I see it. So than I start swinging that big sword on my back, the first swing follows a delay and reminds me heavily of devil may cry style game-play. So with that in mind I start looking for a pattern and quickly begin stringing together quick swings followed by a heavy swing. Aside from the familiar there were several things that the game was doing that seemed unfamiliar, and unfamiliar to some is usually regarded as bad but let's not judge too soon. Heavenly Sword does not let you jump easily, in fact there is no jump button and so there is no easy way to escape from being gang banged by dozens of enemies. Now there is a roll button, but quite frankly it's nowhere near as enjoyable as skillfully leaping feet above them and quickly landing behind the front lines. So although at first I abused this feature; I don't like to cheat games. So I begin to look for a more cinematic solution. I find that blocking works pretty well, and quickly the game became very fun. My only real complaint is the fact the demo is un-satisfyingly short.

Left 4 Dead

2007-07-14T00:16:00.000-04:00

My top pick from this year's E3

New toys, I hope they'll let me play

2007-07-01T03:46:00.000-04:00

So lately I've been hearing rumors of things like Vista becoming the official OS for FullSail laptops, an upgrade to DirectX 10, and now the news of NaturalMotion coming I am trully thrilled. You can read more on this announcement at Gamasutra.com.

Emotions in Videos games

2007-07-01T03:33:00.001-04:00

Another big promise from the great Peter Molyneux : )

Eve

2007-06-19T16:56:00.001-04:00

New Additions

2007-06-19T03:42:00.001-04:00

I don't know why I'm always up so late. I couldn't fall asleep earlier due to a headache the size of Texas, and now I'm sitting here making it worse by taking part in what probably caused it to begin with.
Today was pretty uneventful, I've been sick the past few days, so I've been trying to recuperate. I slept most of the early part of the day, but woke up not feeling any better so I made a rash decision to take two hours out of Arthur's lecture. This probably wasn't a very good idea to begin with because Arthur is very similar to Shane who doesn't waste a single breathe without spewing out something important or at least mildly interesting. Still the part of the lecture that I missed were dos commands, and basic batch file applications. The topic became quickly more complicated as we dowelled deeper into the subject with binary iostreams. The practical on the subject had me worrying as I spent the entire Lab trying to perfect myself on the subject. As far as I am aware, only one person got a 100% on this one (Dan), and I believe Taylor also did pretty well. Me, personally, well I think I did well. Basically speaking, I know the material covered very well now.

The practical was simple actually, it involved opening up a binary file, reading in the arguments passed to the program and than printing them back out. The part I missed involved reading back from the file. When I read in a string, I had missed the null terminator and had assumed that it would be copied over to the char* in my program. Well to make the long story short, I'll probably talk with Arthur and see if he can be a bit more lenient when it comes to grading these practicals, as there is a heavy penalty on each section that doesn't work even it was caused by a very minor error.

I also spoke with Arthur about maybe being able to put some of these practicals up on the blog for others to check out and try out themselves but he made it pretty clear that it wouldn't be a very good idea to distribute any FullSail related content. So I might try and replicate the examples if I have time using my own versions.

Well that about wraps up this update, last but not least I wanted to mention that this site might have a new writer. Payton Gannaway has been a supporter of StrayStudios for some time now and I asked if he would be interested in blogging here along with me. Hopefully he'll find the time to do so, and provide another point of view.

Prepping for Resistance

2007-06-17T11:47:00.001-04:00

Well give me time :D

FX Composer 2 Beta 3

2007-06-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

This news came from Gamedev.net, but I simply must pass on the news. After diving back into Maya and 3D I'm starting to see the power and potential of a tool such as this. So this is simply a quick share. Go check it out here.

Exceptions

2007-06-14T02:36:00.000-04:00

Last weekend was really busy, I barly got a chance to play any video games between the XNA Tutorials, and the additional FullSail homework; more work was given on the conecutive Monday and Tuesday.

On Monday I was given a fairly rude awakening as it's a lot harder to keep up with normal classes when you don't get extra practice. The topics covered in PG3 were Templates and a review of Linked Lists. Here are a few intresting things I picked out from my notes.

Container – the usual name used for Linked Lists or objects that hold other objects.
Every virtual function is put into the virtual function table
Because the virtual keyword uses more memory we try to shun from it when it’s not appropriate
Templates need to be all inside the header file.
CCYA - Check Cover Your Ass. Check for copyright code.

and some useful VC++ shortcuts

CTRL K, S - surround your code with a snippet
CTRL K, K - Bookmark a section in the code
CTRL K, N - Move to the next bookmark

I did pretty well on the Practice Test for Physics, and things began to look up from there on. So that pretty much takes me to the today's topic, Exceptions. Although not a new topic for me, I had no idea how little I actually knew about the subject, but all's well that ends well as I aced the practical on the subject that night. This practicular practical was kind of fun to make and I'll remember to ask for permission to put it up for download. So that's it, I'll wrap up tonight and go to sleep with some more snippets from my notes.

Nesting classes

Nested Classes are not in any way related to one another

Access types are as default (classes::private)

Exceptions

throw

Syntax: throw variableName

The moment you throw, the stack unwinds

The stack unwinds until it reaches a catch

If there is no catch than the stack unwinds to main, after which it
will call Terminate and then abort()

Exception Specification

throw(int it)

A way to better notify the catch what your trying to throw

http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2006/03/22/558390.aspx

attempts, otherwise unwinds

catch (dataType)

if the dataType matches exactly, it’s as if the exception never happened

specifying a variable to dataType such as catch(dataType num) allows
for manipulation of the thrown variable

catch(…) also known as ellipsis

will catch all dataTypes

can not be given a variable

throw bad_;

ex: throw bad_index(“Naughty subscript”);

#include <exception>

struct bad_index : public exception // : is a base list, public
inheritance “is-a” an exception

bad_index(char const * const message) : exception(message)
{ }

.what()

by adding a (gcnew String(instance.what()) is a trick to go from managed
to unmanaged exception handling.

finally()

will execute regardless of try / catch block

this will execute even after a re- throw()

Only works in the focal

CTRL + F3

Set a keyword and search down

Search Down Next

SHIFT + F3

Search Up Next

Learning is Exponantial

2007-06-11T04:30:00.000-04:00

Everyday we learn a little about something, or else the day is wasted and we start tomorow no different than the day before. We learn unconsciously most of the time, and because of this, the knowladge passes through us like wind. Still human potential is boundless and when a person becomes self aware of his potential and the ability to learn, things become limitless.

In the past few days, to be more exact in the past week or so; I've learned so much about what can be done, that I have a hard time sleeping at night, just thinking about what else I could be doing this very instant.

Below I'd like to share some of the fastest knowladge I've managed to get my hands on this weekend.

XNATutorial.com
A collection of 30 videos covering both XNA and CSharp syntax. The final videos cover the Farseer Physics library which further pushes what can be done in very little time.

Although XNA is a fantastic tool for many, I'm not a fan of managed code, and although I plan to continue learning all that can be done as well as with time exploring the rest of the .Net framework.

What's to come:
http://playstation3-homebrew.blogspot.com/
http://ps2dev.org/ps3/Tutorials

Too Slow

2007-06-06T01:42:00.000-04:00

I'm certain that I checked my e-mail at around 8pm eastern today and had no new e-mails to speak of. Than my outlook bin updates itself at 1:42 am and I get an e-mail from EA asking if I want to fill out a survey concerning C&C3. Having actually purchased the game I was thrilled to do so. Only to be told ~ "Sorry we got all the opinions we needed"

: <

736+ Pages in 28 Days

2007-06-05T14:54:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I posted a picture of the two new text books that we received for June. One of those books is a Physics for Gaming book. FullSail doesn't expect us to completely memorize the text but we are expected to do as much as we can outside of class. This month's personal ambition of mine is to read it all. So below I've outlined the 736+ pages.

CH1 & CH2
Chapter 2 covers Basic Conepts which will mostly be review of Newton's laws, and forces. I expect this is where we'll spent at least three classes.

CH3
Rigid Body Motion, here comes the calculus.

CH4
Deformable Bodies for chapter 4 looks like the first heavy chapter as it covers basic spring systems, and the more complicated control point deformation among other things. I'm saving this for the weekend.

CH5
Physics Engines, obviously we're not going to be making one this semester and although this is a very math heavy book the chapter covers all the fundemental techniques, depending on what we learn in PG3 I might tinker a little if I can follow this far.

CH6
Chapter 6 is titled Physics and Shader Programs. Sounds simple enough, well here is an in depth preview.
- Pixel Shaders
- Skin and Bones Animation
- Rippling Ocean Waves
- Refraction
- Fresnel Reflectance
- Iridescence
Well I'm excited!

CH7 & CH8
This is the halfway point and dives back into Linear Algebra and Calculus. We will most likely dive deeper into the following chapters in class.

CH9
Numerical Methods as a name suggests will be a very boring and slow dive into concepts like "Higher-Order Taylor Methods" and other famous old people's methods of number tricks. Heck their is even a section called "Stiff Equations."

CH10
The last official chapter of the book is on Quaternions and rotation. I expect that we will cover this in depth near the final days of Physics at FullSail.

Hackers

2007-06-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

Hackers is a fantastic movie that in a quirky way is kind of cool. I know that I'm one of the few that hasn't seen it, but I can see how some of my peers got into programming after seeing this movie, I know I would have.

June

2007-06-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

Just picked up books for June classes.

I'm looking forward to this month a lot more than the previous. Although the skimpy C# book that we got hardly accounts as a text book, our instructor Arthur is someone to look forward to.

10 Reasons why I want a new Desktop

2007-06-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

1. Unreal Tournament 3
2. Alan Wake
3. Hellgate London
4. Halo 3
5. Shadowrun
6. Left 4 Dead
7. BioShock
8. Crisis
9. Haze
10. Half-Life 3

Playstation 3's Merit

2007-06-03T12:51:00.001-04:00

A recent article on gameindustry.biz titled Striking Balance speaks about the possibilities of a price cut on the system and what if anything it could possible do to improve current sales.

I'm in agreement with Rob Fahey. In fact I really can't say it any better.

The final element which Sony needs to turn the PS3 around, sadly, is one which is in short supply. That element is time.
Time for high definition televisions to become more widespread. Time for games to finish development and woo audiences. Time for services like Singstar and Home to be launched and to mature. Time for Blu-Ray to establish itself, and become a desirable element of the console. Time for the arrogant-sounding and widely reported comments of executives like Ken Kutaragi and Jack Tretton to be forgotten by a vocal audience who don't forgive easily. Time for consumers to tire of their PS2s and look for the next big thing.
Time, sadly, is a commodity Sony may not have in great measure. The Wii continues to build a market - and Microsoft may have slowed down for now, but it would be foolish to assume that Redmond will never learn how to build mass-market games and services.

Having purchased the system only three months after release I am still a proud owner. I have confidence that the system can still produce games that will not be matched on the competition, thanks to the SPUs. I am confident that graphics are still a wowing factor when it comes to gaming. I'm also certain that things like @Home are not a gimicks, and that the internet will soon see a whole new level of interactivity. Modeling a character who looks like yourself than taking it into the virtual GAP store and trying on some thrifts on a virtual "me" is an appealing idea for anyone.

Wishing to contribute to the cause, I'll be one of the first to pick up the dev kit when it's available and create my own extention to called StrayStudios.

Authenticity

2007-06-01T15:41:00.001-04:00

Nowadays I spend my time mostly preoccupied with FullSail. Outside of class & studies I find myself playing a ton of video games. I've played every game out on the PS3 so far, when I run out of PS3 games to pick up from gamefly I'll take a classic PS2 game for a spin. From rewarding experiences like God of War II to the disappointing Enchanted Arms I'm slowly getting a grip over what makes a great game. In my eyes it's the quality of the title, and how seriously it takes itself. A game should be no different than a quality book, or movie. A great form of entertainment does not mock itself.

The Wheel Man

2007-05-06T23:16:00.000-04:00

There have been several games that have recently caught my attention. The Wheel Man is one of them. The fantastic cinematics and the undeniably believable render of Vin Diesel makes this, slightly overused action star, as cool as ever.

Other games like the yet to be released Stranglehold, and Command and Conquer 3 are making me ever more curious about the possibilities of what can be done with the interactive media when combined with great camera angles, recognizable human faces, and novel like plots.

Working Late

2007-04-18T02:56:00.001-04:00

FullSail is all about late nights. This month I have a class three times a week that goes from 5:00pm and ends at 1:00am. That follows up with another class the next day from 9:00am to 5:00 pm. The hardest part about FullSail isn't the hours but learning to spend them wisely. You see one of the very cool things about the school is that every day you can meet someone who will probably end up in the entertainment industry, interesting people, and yet very carefree people at the same time. While no amount of knowledge will compensate for a strong network of connections, no amount of connections will compensate for any amount of knowledge. It's just the way things work I suppose. The problem I run into is deciding at what point and time am I to indulge in my own studies. Don't get me wrong I'm not exactly struggling in fact thus far I have went through with bare minimum, but seriously that's not why I am here. I came to FullSail not to be average, nor have I forgotten how hard it was not so long ago working full time and coming to a home that I couldn't even call my own. Time to level up my time-management skill …

Game Design Tutorial

2007-03-06T21:56:00.000-05:00

The past two days I spent attending the Game Design Tutorial. The focus of which has been MDA

Mechanics
Dynamics
Authentic

Coming from a web design background MDA seemed a bit of rhetoric to me. It focuses on the idea of sticking to theme/goal/and really simplifying out the gameplay mechanic without using words like FUN and GAMEPLAY. This is huge, it was a pleasure to attend this knowing that the thinking is being made more popular because even if it is an obvious, it is often overlooked and skipped.

Pre-GDC

2007-03-04T16:56:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is GDC you can feel it in the atmosphere. The morning started off with a wonderful chat over breakfast with man who had just finished having breakfast with his family. He let me sit at their table since seating was in short supply. After breakfast I had a very interesting conversation with him about the IT industry and the innovation revolved around Google Inc., Apple, and the rest of silicon valley. If time permits I definatly want to head up there and check it out.
After some more time spent over Calculus on the train, I bumped into an old buddy from my first GDC at King of Prussia, PA. Kevin Dunde is easily spoted with his cowboy hat and was with his friend Paul Frost both of whom came all the way from Canada for the week.
Later at Virgin Records cafe I met up with Nikki Inderlied and Jack olmsted from I4U News. I think Jack was helping Nikki advice, who was also here at GDC for the very first time. Anyways, after wraping up with soem more Calculus I'll head back out into the city and see what else I can find.

Straying into San Francisco

2007-03-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

Awe San Francisco: The City of Grandeur and Exhilaration.
After a brutal eight hour long flight, or the sum of two, I had finally made it. Expedia.com had done a wonderful job of booking my flight and hotel. I had no problem although I was a little worried, I haven't flown or ever flown by myself before. I settled into my hotel, Good Nite Inn, and than took BART towards Powell St. in downtown San Francisco.
I didn't make it up the steps of the train station where I was blown away and forced to start snapping away my camera. I have never seen a more beautiful city in the states, and I've been around too. I've lived in Philadelphia for seven years, and I've been to New York, pre-9/11 and seen the gorgeous streets of Boston. Still nothing comes close.
On the train I met a girl who had traveled to San Fran. from Osaka, Japan. I spoke with her for awhile and soon after it really hit me. There are probably more Asians here than Caucasians, and believe me I don't mind one bit. I've always dreamt of going to Japan and seeing Tokyo and this gave me just a small insight on what it might be like. This was all made even more appetizing since 4/5 could be models.
Yep I was sold! I called my friend and exclaimed that I want to live here post graduation. I really thought that I would end up somewhere in Europe if I had a choice, but I don't think I would be unhappy living in California.
Right now I'm hanging out inside Virgin Records' Cupcake Cafe (free internet) and try to get some work done for Calculus. Afterwards I'll try and make it down to the Golden Gate and see if I can catch a picture of it in the sunset.

Gates & Gaming

2007-01-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

Before I go on, I have to say that Bill Gates is one of my personal heroes. I don't exaggerate when I say I would love to learn from that man. I have always been a fan of Microsoft and what they do. So by no means is this a personal vengeda against the company or the man. I simply disagree heavily on their current stance with XBox 360.

It is without a doubt that the year of the old (2006) belongs to the 360. Games like Gears of War really took the system to the next level. Other games included Call of Duty, and the not so raved about Blue Dragon (a great game but heavily underrated). So when asked a question of what Microsoft has been doing for the past year (it's NOT so wasted one year as Gates claims). The answer is comprisingly H.G.L or Halo Gears Live.

Gates is seriously underestimating his competion in this console war. The online in 360 is great and fun but what makes you so sure that PS3 and Wii will not adapt the same functionality. The scores, tallies, friends systems, their all nice. But if you've ever played a game like counter strike. How often do you actually utilize the steam friends list. I'm not saying that it's not a good feature, it simply doesn't take priority or add to the gameplay experience.

Microsoft's pillar games like Gears of War and Halo are fun, yes. But in the end their just very good shooters. The system offers nothing else in the IP realm that might come close to games like Final Fantasy, which I might remind you have always carried the Sony machine technically year after year. Games like Tekken which I expect to see sweat drops outside of CG. Grandturismo HD which will put some people as close to driving simulator as one can get. The sheer amount of games comming out in late February, March, April, and the months to follow will all rival Resistance. So difference is, while games like Final Fantasy break ground level, the games to follow regardless of IP always push the envelop further. I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of the Cell, the YES isolated graphics processor (which comes only slightly short of the combined power of the 360's cpu and gpu), and finally the tremendous amount of space that is there to take people's breathe away.

While the Xbox will continue to do well for the next few years to come, we will see it's limitiations in Halo 3. And it will only be on par with games being released less than half a year into the launch of PS3. How about we all wait and see.

Experiencing FullSail

2007-01-18T01:17:00.000-05:00

It's been two weeks since I took the 1,000 plus mile drive down 95 and embarked onto what I can call nothing short of life changing experience. While there is a lot to talk about, I'll try to focus this blog primarily on what it took to get to FullSail and what it's like once I actually came down to visit.

The FullSail application process is not a difficult one. Although I hold the school in high regard, anyone with a High School Diploma or a GED can get in. Their requirements aren't all that difficult but the school isn't for everyone and the price tag is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome when applying for a school like this.

The Application
At first I had a little difficulty getting a hold of an actual application for the school. Although I haven't checked the website recently but I had to contact Admissions and they had e-mailed me the official application.

The application requires the following:
- The Application Form
- $150 Check Addressed to FullSail for the Application Fee
- $500 Deposit (Refundable) to reserve your seat
- High School Transcript or GED Test Scores
- Game developers must provide transcripts for Algebra I & II
- Two Letters of Recommendation
- 2 professional or 1 professional and 1 personal
- 5 Essay Questions:

1. What aspects of your prior educational experience (high school or college) did you appreciate most? Where did they fall short?

2. What characteristics make for a good entertainment industry employee? A good student?

3. Each of us has a left and right brain that fuels our logic and creativity. Thinking of your creative side, what areas come naturally for you?

4. There may have been a specific event or moment in time that inspired you to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Please tell us about that, or any occasion that triggered your desire to work in this industry.

5. Imagine your professional life five years from now. What would be your ideal job title and description? What would you do in a typical day?

After about a week or so time (make sure to actually call Admissions to keep up to date on the process and make sure that they received all the information). You will be sent two packets in nice FullSail engraved folders. One of them is pretty important. This is the enrollment package. There are two forms that you are required to sign and return ASAP to continue your application process.

The Enrollment Agreement
This a very brief agreement, I'm not going to summarize it because it's very straightforward and I suggest you read everything you sign if you are planning to apply to this school.

The GPS (Global Professionalism Standards) Agreement
This is something very unique to the school. GPS works just like your GPA and will show on your transcript from the school once you graduate and be visible to possible and future employers. GPS is quite simply a gauge of your professional etiquette. What does that mean? Well, if you don't hand in your assignment on time, if your late to class, or if you quite simply misbehave, than expect to see a drop in your GPS score which starts out at 100%. There are also ways of raising your GPS score above 100% by getting involved in the community.

Lastly you are required to complete a Math Self Evaluation. I highly suggest you do not skip this as this is almost exactly what you will see during your assessment test once you begin your program.

You can also send in a $10 security card deposit. This is optional; you can pay this at registration. I did.

After another week or so you should see your final packet from FullSail. This is the general packet which will include housing information, potential scholarships, financial aid information, loans, and a bit more. For me this was mostly review of things I have already done or completed so you don't have to wait if you contact FullSail and get involved.

Financial Aid & Loans:
This process is very straightforward and is pretty scary for a lot of people.

Step 1: Apply for a pin# for Fafsa
Step 2: Fill out Fafsa and retrieve your ECT score (your expected family income score; I really don't remember the proper acronym).
Step 3: Go to Sallie Mae website and depending on your financial situation apply for loans. Obviously the best loan you can get is the Federal Parent Plus loan. Get your parents to co-sign and your done.

This wasn't the case for me, since I had no co-signer. The alternative is the Student Signature Loan and the CampusDoor loan. I suggest you call FullSail Financial Aid. Get to know your Admission's advisors, and your financial aid advisors early!

There are three terms in FullSail. Each term you need to take out loans. The terms are 8 months + 8 months + 5 months. Finally the maximum you can request is $40,000. This is the maximum the school can issue you for both living expenses and tuition. Disbursements also start after the first 45 days. Expect to pay all living expenses out of pocket until than.

Housing:
This is a problem since there are no dorms in FullSail. You will get a listing of others looking for an apartment. After two unsuccessful attempts at a roommate, I opted to get my own apartment. This is the best decision I could have made for myself. This is also a very personal decision everyone should make for themselves.

Things to remember about housing:
- Rent
- Water/Sewer
- Electricity
- Internet (Go with BrightHouse over Embarck)
- Distance from the school + Gas (6 miles is too far)
- Furniture (Wallmart is the best)
- Rentals Insurance * (AllState is really cheap)

Upon Arriving
Two days before classes begin everyone in your program will gather during the same time in the lobby and get processed through registration. This is a very painless process that takes no more than 15 minutes depending on how long you take to fill out some last minute forms and surveys (ex. what radio station you listen to, what's your fav. movie and so on). You also get your picture taken and given an official student id. This badge you can use to get into any building on campus. It's official! Your now a FullSail student.

After the Registration takes place there is a scheduled Assessment Test. Do not take this lightly! I did and I'll explain the repercussions in my next post. This test determines where you will be placed, if allowed to enter the program at all. The test is not difficult by any standards if your on par with your Algebra and Algebra II and your basic graphing.

The following day everyone goes through orientation which is a long four hour long session in the Auditorium. This is where you will get your schedule and your Assessment Test score. The score determines where you will be placed.

I'll stop here. I hope this was at least somewhat informative. I apologize for poor grammaticism and flow, it’s 2:13 am right now and I’m very tired.

Book Wish List

2006-12-09T15:14:00.000-05:00

Right before entering high school I would read a ton of technical books. The list of books I've read was immense but the books I wanted to read was even more ambitious. While digging through those same archives this is what I stumbled on.

My Book Wish list

Here are some of the books I’d like to recommend to the CRSD Library. I’ve broken these books into categories and provided a small rating next to each. Most of these books are under $30 so I honestly hope the library can obtain them.

ANATOMY

Dynamic Anatomy (*****)
Dynamic Figure Drawing (****)
Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery (***)
Drawing Dynamic Hands (***)
Drawing the Human Head (****)

ANIMATION

Digital Character Animation (*****)
Digital Character Animation II: Essential Techniques (*****)
Digital Character Animation II: Advanced Techniques (*****)
Character Animation in Depth (*****)
Animation Facial Features and Expressions (****)

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Film Directing Shot by Shot (****)
Film Directing Cinematic Motion (*****)

COMPOSITION

Type in Motion (*****)
After Effects 4.0 Classroom in a Book (*****)

LIGHTING

Digital Lighting and Rendering (an absolute must)
3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (*****)

LIGHTWAVE

Inside Lightwave 7 (*****)

MAYA

Maya 4 Fundamentals (I personally recommend this book)
The Maya 4 Handbook (*****)

MOVIES

The Making of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (****)
Art of the Matrix (****)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Portrait of Ang Lee’s Epic Film (****)

PROGRAMMING

Graphic Gems I (****)
Graphic Gems II (***)
Graphic Gems III (****)
Graphic Gems IV (*****)
Graphic Gems V (****)
This is a must series
AI Game Programming Wisdom (*****)
Real Time Rendering Tricks and Techniques in DirectX (*****)
Game Programming Gems (*****)
Game Programming Gems II (*****)
3D Game Engine Design (*****)
Introduction to Algorithms (*****)
The C Programming Language Special Edition (*****)
Effective C++ (*****)
Physics for Game Developers (*****)
Multiplayer Game Programming (*****)
Computer Networks: Systematic Approach (*****)
Internet Game Programming (*****)
OpenGL Programming Guide (*****)
The Mythical Man-Month: Essay on Software Engineering (*****)
Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules (*****)
Code Complete (a must)
Game Developer’s Marketplace (out of print but one of the most amazing books)
Game Architect and Design (***)

TEXTURING

Digital Texturing and Painting (a definite must book)

MAGAZINES
Game Developer
Computer Graphics World
ieMagazine

Mr Whitesell

2006-12-09T15:01:00.000-05:00

I was going through some of my old archived folders and stumbled upon an e-mail I sent to Mr.Whitesell. My first programming teacher. While I wont comment much on it I felt it would be appropriate to put it on the web.

Dear Mr. Whitesell,
I’m not sure if you received my e-mail on my project because I never got a reply from you confirming so. So please let me know if you have and if it worked ok.
Also I’ve realized that I haven’t sent you my address book program which turned out nicely. It has its own font, and a lot of extra features even a calendar that reads days of the week. Well I’ve included that program in the attachment just in case.
I wanted to thank you for the great year. I’ve really improved as a programmer. I’m not going to stop here, and over this summer I’ve set a goal to learn C++ and become fairly fluent in it. I’m also going to get better in Maya (a 3D Rendering Program), Flash (generally I’m good with it now but I plan to make my web site in it this time around). I’m letting you know this for the independent studies class. Besides maintaining the school web site we will also be able to take individual projects, correct? Well my ambitious goal for next year is to create a 3D demo. I want to learn how to create real 3D environments and maybe move into physics and so forth. This will ultimately lead me into creating my first 3D game. Which I believe I’ll continue in the fighting genre, since I should be fluent with Maya by then, or in fact I am at this point I can create my own 3D models and later learn a 3D api like DirectX or OpenGL to export those models into code. This ambitious goal can not be possible within one year unless I start learning C++ today. This is why I want to learn as much as there is to learn in a short period of time of 2 month. I’ve purchased a book, which will help me move along, and created an organized schedule to help me in making consistent progress. If you’re wondering why not wait, learn C++ next year, and then create 3D environment the following year. Simply by the following summer I want to start on a real game and try to actually publish it. While this seems way to unrealistic, especially for a high school student, others have done it and succeeded. Granted most worked in teams of at least three. I hope to find others who are just as interested in the programming and inspire them to work with me. Another thought that may come to mind why even bother to release a game. I want to attend MIT, that’s my dream, while I might not fit some of the criteria for the school yet by being the top student in the school (these guys have 92% of the kids at top 5% class rank, and 100% are at top 10% in class rank). That seems almost impossible, but I’m going to try my best for it. While my grades alone wont get me excepted I have to show them that I’m dedicated, and want to succeed. I’ll be able to accomplish this by showing what I’ve done. Creating some sort of visual portfolio for them to look at. This same idea may interest others (maybe others in independent studies class).
This goal is out of reach now but I can do it if I try hard enough. I’ve already taken classes at bucks in order to transfer into Hon Analysis. Analysis will also hopefully give me a better grasp of a few complex programming concepts. Well besides that goal that I have for the independent studies course we’ll also be working on the school web site. I have allot of experience on web design. While I don’t have a site up just yet, I’ve been doing web design for 7 years. Meaning since I was nine and the internet first became available to the general public (money wise). I created countless web sites slowly improving, I quickly mastered HTML, and within a year I memorized every tag. Which may be impressive and may be not, but slowly improved with each site I created, or redesigned. I became obsessed with good design. I have fluency in most graphics programs including Photoshop, Paint Shop, Illustrator, and Flash. Next year I think it would be interesting to take the south web site and make it very sophisticated. Flash animated, create a tour guide, launch a forum (I know CGI/Perl, and Henry knows PHP so whatever you prefer). Actually I think a forum would be really nice. One it could provide a place where people from south can talk freely, ask what last nights hw was or even talk with teachers about certain assignments. I mean not all teachers are enthusiastic about releasing their e-mail addresses. So I thought that would be clever. If you’re interested I’ll be more than happy to show you some of my past work, while it’s over a year old at the moment it’s still pretty good. I would like the honors to help redesign the school web site to invite more students to visit it. It’s pretty heavy in content right now, but there is no realistic reason for many students to visit except maybe use class links if they don’t know how to install it as a shortcut on the desktop. Why not release articles and tutorials like that to students, maybe combine with the newspaper club and have them post up news and events at council rock (unless you want us to do it). It’s not very hard to make a simple news script for people who are illiterate in programming to use. Yes with all these features comes the threat of being hacked because it may get so much attention. But I’m sure that things like that can be avoided. Anyway these are just rambles about next year. It’s been a real learning experience.

I was sort of young and stupid but I'll never forget my first programming teacher. Take care Mr. Whitesell!

Zenkaikon Part 2

2006-11-02T15:02:00.000-05:00

I got a chance last night to upload the rest of my pictures from the Anime Convention so check them out here.

I'm planning on another Anime Convention this weekend called Diplocon. This one is about 100 miles away but should a blast to attend. I need to figure out costs and if there is a hotel available or if I need to drive back and forth. They'll be showing allot of anime, have CS 1.6 tourney, DDR, and Soul Caliber. So I think I'm going to have allot of fun there. I'm going to see if I can come up with some sort of costume for Friday and land a post-holloween special on a cool TopHat or something. Also looking forward to seeing familiar faces.

Searching

2006-10-30T19:28:00.000-05:00

Today's goal was to reasses the cost of attending Full Sail along with living there. I compiled a nice little excel sheet and turned my room upside down in the proccess.

I purchased these three must read books today during lunch break. I'm going to start with Code and work my way through the series.

Today was terribly painful at work. For those that don't know I work at an OfficeMax distribution center at the moment (I change jobs quite a bit but this one pays very well 12.50 an hour with benefits and generally much more laid back than other jobs I've encountered). Today we had a company wide meeting about the new core values of OfficeMax and how OfficeMax wants enter the Blue Ocean and leave the Red Ocean. Our new core values are Passion, Ingenuity, and Fun. Man was the meeting fun ...

Zenkaikon

2006-10-30T00:16:00.000-05:00

This weekend I attended my very first Game Expo (VGXPO) and in the proccess stumbled upon my very first Anime Expo (Zenikaikon) as well. There I met a lot of very interesting people. I had met up with Mellisa Diaz who is the owner of http://preciousmiseries.com and http://stitchesandcompany.com/. She was kind enough to draw me a picture and sign it, which I'm going to store away for when she becomes a popular artist and designer.

I had also met a girl named Evirion who is a friend of Melissa's. Francine (Evirion) had won first place at the cosplay contest. Francine hand made her entire costume, and it was the most authentic and realistic thing I've ever seen. I spent some time talking to her about how long it took, the cost and labor of it all and generally what its like to cosplay (now that I think about it, it would be kinda cool to interview a cosplayer if this were an Anime related blog). I got so excited about cosplaying that I decided to try it out in the future. At first I wanted to do Magna Carta and the like. Those costumes seem very intricate and I'll try to build one for the next big East Coast anime con but I will also try to have my first costume be a little simpler so right now I'm looking into Allen Walker from D.Gray-man wearing a top hat : )

I had the opportunity to play some GO with a girl who is attending UPenn and has a real Go club. I'm thinking about attending, but she's really good ^^

Here are some more pictures from the event, and some advice. If your an Anime enthusianst and have never attended an Anime-con than your missing out. I have been watching this stuff since I can remember and yet never experienced a gathering of so many people that are interested the same things as myself.

Quite before the comming storm

2006-10-20T12:16:00.000-04:00

I've been dormant for several weeks, but not uneventful. In fact so much has happened both in the game industry, and in my personal life that I am dedicating several hours of blogging this Saturday to put up rants, reviews, and a little something something.

Expected Blogs:
- Windows Vista Review
- FullSail, yanking the anchor.
- Magazine fananza.
- PS3

And lots more. I don't want to list everything I have planned due to the possibility that I might not get to everything and its always best to set the expectations low and deliver more (see. Playstation3).

Days go by and still I think about you

2006-09-25T08:35:00.000-04:00

The weekend was a mess in a half for me. I mean generally I got some good sleep over Friday night and Saturday wasn't too bad, but Sunday night ... well I slept in my god damn car.

The good points are is that I did setup Windows Vista (build 5728 x86) on my laptop and I can't believe how much fun it is to use that operating system. It really is fun navigating, and doing everything that I was originally so used to and took for granted. I'll definatly get some fantastic screenshots and a good review of it in the comming days.

I'm still experimenting with the new Windows Media Player, IE and definatly going to give Office a spin. Good job Microsoft!

Game Testers

2006-09-21T14:35:00.000-04:00

When I was younger I was always under the impression that game testing is the best way to get into the industry. I was also under the impression that it was job filled mostly by fifteen year olds with lots of free time and good writing abilities.

A nice thread grew quite large on IGDA that was originally started by an inspiring fifteen year old. For those of you considering this as your dream job, get the facts, and check out the post by Ramsay on pg 1.

Preparing for FullSail

2006-09-20T14:45:00.000-04:00

I'm officially an IGDA member which means I can now attend E3 and GDC. I also had inquired help from the IGDA community and got a very welcoming set of responses. The thread stretched on for four pages and has neared almost 1,000 views. I'm going to try and summarize what I've learned below.

Holding a part time job while attending Full Sail is unrealistic and ill-advised
Getting a loan is not difficult and their are many lending institutions

I'm sure you've checked it out already, but the fafsa site has some info on it: http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ , as well as the Sallie Mae site:
http://www.salliemae.com/

Also, you could try looking into what scholarships are available for Full Sail. Here are some search sites:http://apps.collegeboard.com/cbsearch_ss/welcome.jsp http://fastweb.com/, many schools will tell you about financial options, so calling their financial aid office would help. - ghostgirl

I seriously recommend not working a part time job while attending Full Sail. The classes are very compressed, and time is very limited. You'll need that spare time to develop your skills, and work on a demo reel. The sleep schedule is all over the place. One of my classmates had a part time job while attending Full Sail. He was 24/7 wasted, and he failed half way through the degree. There was another who also had a job, he managed. So it's possible. As long as you get the daily 8 hours of sleep, you can last no problem. It all comes down to holding the pace.
I put in far more side work because I wanted a job upon graduation. I was the only one in my class who had invested the time into a full demo reel before graduation. I think only 3 of a class of 45 landed our professions, 2 of us in the game industry. here are more people than ever being churned out of colleges, Full Sail is the correct choice, but even then I'd say your chances of getting in are less than 1%.
The longer you job hunt, the more effort you put into your talent, networking, as well as picking an ideal location, you can increase your odds by 10% or more. A lot of them just don't have what it takes, and that's a good thing for those who are truly serious about breaking into the game industry. Even then you are entering
into a field where the competition gets higher each year, with no signs of slow down yet. Do not get a bike! There are bike thieves in Florida. They caught them, but new ones crop up. They steal the bikes right out of the college parking lot (they monitor security)! I had mine and about 4 others stolen by two SOBs who are now rotting in kiddy prison. I'm pissed, because I never got my bike back. Custom made. Anyways, after they were caught, the stealing continued a short while later. They have stuff that can clip through any bike chain. I seriously recommend a car. Parking is awful, but a car can save you lots of time, and the Florida weather can be very erratic on bike. They get lots of floods, so sometimes riding a bike isn't possible. On foot or by car is your best choice.
They also have bushes that shed thorns on the sidewalks. They can pop bike tires a lot, and drivers there are dangerous for cyclists. I saw one kid die from a car smashing into them. The driver ran the light and hit the kid on the bike. On foot you are way more agile and able to better cope with all the stuff they make you carry to class.-sagema

Be very careful about taking out a loan. Read as much information and exercise caution before signing on the line. http://www.studentloanjustice.org/-melodyaw

Food will cost you a fortune in Florida. Not as many healthy things were on sale, and very few generic brands of food were sold in Win Dixie. I spend about 50% less in NY on food bills. I didn't pay a water bill at Park Apartments. The electric bill is never low. I recall 1 month I didn't run air conditioning, and was only home on average 9 hours a day (That means 30 hours of lights on max), mostly to sleep. Even then, my electric bill was $100. You have all these circuit breaker surcharges which prevent, lightning storms from destroying plugged in devices. Poor Mike had his cell phone melt one night plugged in (Pay the bill). They get lightning storms all the time there, but don't lose power much.
If you are female, guard your laundry at the Park Apartment Laundromats. Make sure you pick an apartment complex with a built in Laundromat. Get theft insurance on everything, just in case. I had theft insurance on my bike (Go me!).- sagema

I had a friend who had to take out enough "living money" in loans to support his wife and kid. I really wouldn't recommend taking out this much money in high interest personal loans. You should plan your finances out and estimate how much your total loan will be and what your interest rate will be. Determine what your montly payments will be when you graduate and how long you'll be paying them off. Ultimately, you have to make the decision yourself but I can tell you first hand that high loan payments SUCK.
-jeffason

Again thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.I also spent sometime doing research and compiling the month bills.

Please note* these are personal estimates based on my own decisions so they will defiantly differ if your in a similar situation or maybe a few years down the line.

Rent-----------------------------$650.00
Utilities--------------------------$200.00
FIOS---------------------------- $50.00
Food for One---------------------$200.00
1 Monthly Video Game-----------$50.00
Usenet via NewsHosting--------- $13.00
IGDA Membership---------------$4.00
Magazine Subscriptions---------- $10.00
Clothing--------------------------$20.00
Haircuts------------------------- $60.00
Personal Care Products---------- $25.00
Paper Products------------------ $30.00
Toner----------------------------$10.00
Notebooks----------------------- $10.00
Gas------------------------------ $200.00
Car Insurance--------------------$200.00
Cell Phone----------------------- $45.00
Total----------------------------$1,777.00

A safe margin--------------------$48,000.00 for 21 Months
Tuition-------------------------$64,000.00
Grand Total!!!! $112,000.00

Time to start working on those scholarships -.-

Next Gen Games

2006-09-20T10:48:00.000-04:00

Last night I browsed through atleast fifty new next-gen titles. High resolution graphics are not dead!! Their has been a common misconception that graphics in video games are as good as they get. This is simply not true! Looking at the upcoming titles I envisioned what the games would play like based on a shear picture. While the price for the PS3 is still out of this world, I would by no means regret putting a down payment on it.
The XBOX360 has also recently made an impact on the Japanese industry at the Tokyo Game Show 2006 (the E3 of Japan). Releasing one hundred ten titles and several RPGs (myself being a big fan I’ll defiantly jump on checking out the details once I get home from work). The wii is also something I would love to own or give a test drive. This being the case I am strongly considering purchasing all three and trying to write it off as a tax deduction for educational purposes.
Also I’ve found another great place for news on the industry. GameIndustry.Biz is an invaluable resource for news and information on the game industry.

XNA

2006-09-19T13:13:00.000-04:00

Have you read the news lately?
Count how many times Microsoft is mentioned in the technology section. XBox, XBox360, Vista, Zune, and it doesn't stop there. A few years ago Microsoft introduced the .Net framework which officially replaced COM and COM+. For those less geeky readers I'll quickly explain what .Net really is since I had to go through the trouble of learning some of it right around March this year.

The Dot Net framework is a fancy word for describing a very large collection of modules that help define Windows. This includes everything from protocol handling (how you view the web, check your mail, or download p2p). Basically these are complete functions which support Windows XP from ground up and were originally known as COM and COM+ (for NT). I'm not going to get further into detail on the subject but you can imagine how fast and easy it becomes to design new software when the hard part is already done for you.

ASP.NET is the server side of the framework which allows web developers to utilize all the power of dot net and than some. ASP.NET is also very attractive as it is almost syntax insensitive. What I mean by that is that ASP can be coded using C++, C#, VB, and even JScript (Microsoft's JavaScript). It also comes with a prepackaged developing environment that while expansive is by far the best out there. I took the time to learn Visual Studio and it is one of the most customizable, flexible programming environments I've ever had to deal with. In fact if your good enough you could write your own plugins to help make the software suite your own needs. You could even customize it to work with PHP, and Lua (see VSLua) with very little effort. Using this technology, one could deploy cell phone applications with the simple download of an API. Heck their is even a Robotics department at Microsoft that has designed a package for hobbyist and professionals to easily program and build their own robots. This environment is very similar to that of making video games, in fact so simular that Microsoft has introduced XNA.

XNA is Microsoft's answers towards game development. Allowing for full fledged games to be built using the same environment as other Microsoft applications. Using C# and the same tool kits one, according to Microsoft, could publish their own indie games at a much faster rate with more professionalism. I'm defiantly going to check it out since LearnXNA has already released four free chapters of tutorials to get you started.

GDC '07 doubles in size to become the new E3

2006-09-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

The Game Developers Conference is to take the torch once help by E3, and become the largest trade exhibition for the worldwide gaming community.The size of the show floor is to be more than doubled for the event in order to incorporate the growth of attendees, due to take place at the Moscone Convention Centre in San Francisco next March."

As GDC enters its 20th year, it emerges as the event with the largest gravitational pull of any other game industry-only event," said Jamil Moledina, executive director of the GDC."While it remains our primary goal to serve the game development community and ensure that the session-based half of GDC remains unchanged, we also believe it is time to dramatically upgrade the range of expo opportunities.""The result of our expansion is that GDC becomes the natural choice for all companies in the game industry ecosystem to exhibit and conduct business," added Moledina.The new show floor will be built around a core of existing GDC expo suites and a networking lounge, surrounded by company's ranging from publishers and developers to mobile games firms, peripheral manufacturers, outsourcing specialists and international consortia.Booth spaces, expo suites and meeting rooms will be available for vendors, while the new Game Demo Theatre will showcase upcoming games from developers and publishers.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

The GDC is planned to be my first Game Expo, and I'll be applying for as a helping hand in November. If I'm lucky I'll be able to bring back some pictures and souvenirs.

One hundred ten

2006-09-19T10:37:00.000-04:00

On January 8th I hope to walk through the doors of FullSail Real World Education institution for game design and development. Until January 8th there are one hundred ten days. In those one hundred and ten days there are roughly thirty weekends. During those weekends StrayStudios (the current delineation of Michael Alexander Kofman) will set out into the world of game development.

Step 1.
Send in an application to FullSail and fill out FASFA.

Step 2.
Get accepted to FullSail, take out loans, and apply for an apartment.

Step 3.
Review C++ and flex those programming muscles with a simple card game.

Step 4.

Get some coffee and count down till 2007!