Did ya miss me?

Well another semester of game Dev begins, and a strange one at that. With only 2 professors that we've had previously through this course this semester could be full of surprises. Hopefully things will go well, better than last semester of course, but we will see.

Courses this semester include:

• Film-making
• Animation & production
• Game design & production
• consumer behavior
• Networking

All together new, which is good as we have had repetitive semesters for the past couple of years and it will be a nice change of pace. 

Anyways thats enough school talk... as the first class has only just started. Lets get onto the good stuff.

Winter was OK, a lot of work after a long semester just replaced the stress that left when the semester ended. Luckily it wasn't all bad though, no Scott pilgrim for me but all together Christmas itself went rather well. Got a couple of games, a season of castle, some books and much needed resupply of clothes. Not to mention Christmas only taking the day itself instead of its usual 3 for my family, gave us more time to relax on our time off.

O yes...games

not much has changed over the holidays, maybe some cataclysm thrown in there with a couple of games I had yet to purchase for Xbox. Btw the answer is no, I did not get much school work done over the holidays.

Hopefully this quarter will be better for the gaming world, with a couple of big titles coming out, but not too many games to make me broke.

Well not much left to say now...so yeah

we out. 

Aaaaaand its gone

Well here we are, at the end of a semester and half way through the creation of a racing game. Things went rather well in the last few weeks of classes; getting assignments handed in, working on the game, studying for tests. In the end we are left with a game that has a menu, character selection, options for track selection, possible ai, and a working racer. Ive just finished my game engine final exam and am feeling great about it, despite this semester's brutal downturn, things have turned out well due to hard work...and a little luck.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. (drum-roll please)
my top 10 list of reasons this semester went to hell!

          10. Procrastination
            9. Work
            8. Course layouts
            7. Time - management
            6. experience point setup? (homework worth exp. need to be level 4 to attempt final)
            5. Assassin's creed brotherhood
            4. Fable 3
            3. Team members not in game engine course
            2. Holidays
            1. Halo Reach

But all in all, the semester is generally done, the stress is now gone, and I am left to relax through the winter break.

so yeah.....we out.

Dev blog post #9 - Its been a while

Ok quick little update, since we havent had one for a couple of weeks. We have a vehicle working now, and heck most of our game for that part. just getting some of the features ready for tuesday and the homework assignments ready to hand in

as i said this was going to be short

we out.

Dev blog post #8 - One hell of a week

This post will be short, as we are busy and do not have much time on our hands to spare. As one of two programmers in our group I am left to deal with a large load of programming to do with the game engine, particularly has been giving me a very large headache (havoc + wildmagic = unhappiness)  Locomotion, which i mentioned last week is the key feature i am focusing on and is coming along, hopefully to be done by the next lab date.


Other than that our models for vehicles, levels, and characters are coming along swimmingly, with the final pieces coming into place soon.

and with that i bid the adieu.... hey i said it would be short

we out.

Dev Blog #7 - Locomotion

Welcome to November, the month of work work and more work. Generally my job has come down to getting the locomotion system for our choppers working, you know so we can drive our vehicles around the track. there are many current theory as to how to get this done. Personally I'm going to take the force approach, where as long as my vehicle is weighted and the wheels have the ability to roll (and are attached to the thing) the more force i apply to the vehicle, the faster it will go, dragging along the chopper in the direction of the wheels.

Modeling is coming along, our 3d modeler is working on the games levels and our characters are getting rigged and weighted. once those are done we move on to the vehicles.

Other than this we have a couple of business assignments, not directly involved with the gdw, and a big business of gaming presentation which is asking us to present something Before its actually done...

Out of context, fable 3 is played and finished...meh. Black Ops came out yesterday, woo, but the multi-player is laggy as hell...

Oh, the Scott pilgrim movie came out on DVD yesterday.. so yeah



we out.

Dev Blog #6 - NOVEMBER!

Yes, it is here, and it is going to be a long haul of hell to finish our game. I am of course talking about the last month and a bit of time we have left, it sucks i know, but were stuck with it.

Side notes:

• Finished Buisness of gaming assignment (woot)
• Got through midterm week (thank god)
• Got a new job

And on to the main topic: BUGS

In all the time I've had working as a programmer through my classes, wildmagic has had the most bugs. and some of them dont even have a reason to be there (vector bugs anyone?) Me and my game engine partner have run into the portion of our game where to move foreward, we have to  get rid of some things, and fix some issues with code.

Another note, modeling is going great, only a rigged character and a vehicle left to make for our assignments in the class.

Umm...for now thats about it, yeah the other posts will be more extensive...

we out.

Dev Blog #5 - Decisions Decisions

Well the past week was an interesting one, leaving a large percentage of my classmates with decisions to make. To mid term or not to midterm was the question...or more the trial. We were tasked with finishing 20 exp of homework assignments before the midterm date, if you didn't finish them, you don't get to do the mid term.

I made my attempts, many of them, coming to a close with one medium question completely finished but unfortunately was unable to submit it. and 3 other medium questions in development. The one i have finished was  to create a wall in Maya and use wild-magic and havoc to fire projectile spheres towards it to bring it down.

My in development pieces are as follows, a menu system, shader effects, and the ability to allow the user to see inside other objects. Hopefully (and this is kind of a has to be done or I'm screwed thing) I will be done these other parts by the final. (oh BTW, i can only submit 2 of the medium questions, i just need to get the menu/effect things done for the game Dev project)

Moving right along, by the end of the week (Friday at approx. 11:59 pm) we each individually need to finish and submit our pitch documents for our business of gaming class. Another modeling assignment shall be handed in (as its already done) by Wednesday and we shall begin rigging our model for our next assignment.

November shall be long and difficult, but in the end we shall triumph.

we out.