Questions Quiz
1) How's your D&D thing going?
Poorly.
It took me most of the semester just to find player to play the game. (They're here, but they're in hiding, most of them I stumbled upon by accident.) I finally got a group together and was able to have one session, but only two out of the three players could make it, and that was after I delayed for three days so that the second of those players could attend. With only three weeks left of school I'm tempted to just scratch the whole thing and wait until I get back home to run the campaign. (people are really flighty here, you can't seem to hold them to anything)
2) Do you still work on game designs and such, or have you done something else with them, such as a novel?
Well, I'm glad you asked. This gives me the opportunity to pimp The Damasca Project. Which was what initially got me interested in game design/programmng to begin with. The project's goal is to try to make a simple action/adventure style free MMORPG. The project has got its second wind recently (and not just because me and a lot of other members finally have free-time to work on the game). We're currently reworking the design, cutting out all the bloating/feature creep that came into the design over the years, narrowing it back down into a feasible project--and starting work on our new engine. We are always in need of artists, we have programmers come out our ears these days and no one to actually do the art (but we can always use more programmers to...).
I've also been toying with C# and contemplating how incredibly easy it would be to program a game like myst, so I'll probably be embarking on trying to make my own adventure game sometime this summer.
As for other projects, I've been rereading my novel, it's really poorly written but does have a lot of good ideas and material within it, so I'm considering doing a full rewrite (and taking the time to do it). I've been working on my drawings and have been working on designs for a webcomic that I'll be starting just as soon as I can scrounge up enough cash to buy a scanner. I'm also considering trying to get into video editing, make some AMVs and see if I'm any good at that.
3) How are college thingamajigs going out there?
So far Augustana rocks. Its really a nice breather, I've been spending a lot of time getting back in touch with a lot of parts of my life that I didn't have the time to address at digipen--namely the arts (music, acting, drawing). The proffessors are also awesome, having a prof. who is good, like Rovner, is the standard here instead of the exception. They're all very approachable, open, knowledgable, and very good lecturers. I usually enjoy learning a lot, and when I have professors that I feel that I'm learning a lot from, and who are very deft at their craft then that just makes the courses all the more enjoyable. It probably also helps that I've gone from barely passing classes to breezing through them (This is not to say that there is little to learn, but merely a credit tothe quality of the instructors in their ability to convey their material in such a manner that the student can understand the material). They also do a very good job of pointing out directions of further study, I can pretty much bring anything question for their particular field of study to a professor and they'll direct me to specific studies, papers, and books on the topic. This has me right now persueing about three or four side research projects on topics and ideas that have been bothering me for years.
However, I have run into the one roadblock that I knew that if I ever attended a liberal arts college I would hit. There is, to my knowledge, no subject of which I am not at some point interested. I like knowledge for the sake of knowledge and I like studying everything, be it biology, philosophy, economics, programming, drawing, acting, literature, history, chemistry, physics, or what have you--there is literally no one subject that I would 'prefer' over the others, nor would I like to devote myself exclusively to any one study to the exclusion of the others. So I don't have a clue what major I should chose. (I sometimes wish I wasn't so easily amused by every topic under the sun). In high school you would take those interest tests that were supposed to reveal what 'field' of study you should go into in college--mine always came back with a '?' because my interests would be perfectly balanced for every subject. If I could be payed to just take classes the rest of my life I'd be in heaven.
I thank God that DigiPen taught me how to work hard, namely--to get all of your work done before doing anything fun, not to disparage working weekends or late nights to get work done, and to not procrastinate. The students here seem to have a very bad case of procrastination, saving everything up to the last minute to work on and then complaining that they "don't have any free time" when they have plenty of free time, they just missused it.
Oh what else, umm... the internet in the dorms is crap, I can only play games over it on the weekend (when everyone is off campus partying) or late, late at night. Bittorrent is le suck (school firewall blocks me from opening up that many ports), so I finally had to get off my ass and figure out how to get anime off IRC. I've already proven myself to be a complete annoyance to the school's IT staff (who I might add are incompetent*). I knocked the entire dorm's network down by plugging a router, with DHCP turned on, into my dorm's ethernet port.
*Af far as I've figured out, setting up the school's network was contracted out, so someone else came in, set everything up, and left the school's IT staff to figure out how it works. Apparently, said staff has never taken the time to actually figure out how the infastructure to said network works/is settup, they just baby-sit it and hope it doesn't go down--so if you come in and do something compeltely unexpected that they just sit around dumbstruck.
4) If you had to choose one element (earth, fire...), what would it be and why?
Ice. I really like snow, and cold days. The more miserable the better. It reminds you that your alive.
5) What's your family like?
Well, my family consists of me ma, dad, and sister. Sister's graduating from high school this year and will be going to Michagan Tech to persue a degree in Civil Engineering/Forestry. She'll be following in the footsteps of my mom and dad, who are allumni of Mich. Tech and summarily studied Civil Engineering/Forestry. They both live back in Spearfish, Dad works for the forest service as their facilities engineer, a.k.a. designs outhouses... or at least it'd be funny if that's all he does, mostly the job entails inspecting facilities, hiring contractors, designing buildings, etc. Mom is a lunch lady for the elementary school.
They're planning on moving to Wisconscin sometime next year. My Dad is infamous for not playing corporate politics right--so he can't get promotions in the Black Hills, so he's heading back east. My mother also wants to live around lakes again and to be closer to my sister when she's in college so, meh. They can do what they want, I'll still go to Spearfish when summer break comes though...
My extended family all live in Michigan and Ohio. Poor fools.
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Poorly.
It took me most of the semester just to find player to play the game. (They're here, but they're in hiding, most of them I stumbled upon by accident.) I finally got a group together and was able to have one session, but only two out of the three players could make it, and that was after I delayed for three days so that the second of those players could attend. With only three weeks left of school I'm tempted to just scratch the whole thing and wait until I get back home to run the campaign. (people are really flighty here, you can't seem to hold them to anything)
2) Do you still work on game designs and such, or have you done something else with them, such as a novel?
Well, I'm glad you asked. This gives me the opportunity to pimp The Damasca Project. Which was what initially got me interested in game design/programmng to begin with. The project's goal is to try to make a simple action/adventure style free MMORPG. The project has got its second wind recently (and not just because me and a lot of other members finally have free-time to work on the game). We're currently reworking the design, cutting out all the bloating/feature creep that came into the design over the years, narrowing it back down into a feasible project--and starting work on our new engine. We are always in need of artists, we have programmers come out our ears these days and no one to actually do the art (but we can always use more programmers to...).
I've also been toying with C# and contemplating how incredibly easy it would be to program a game like myst, so I'll probably be embarking on trying to make my own adventure game sometime this summer.
As for other projects, I've been rereading my novel, it's really poorly written but does have a lot of good ideas and material within it, so I'm considering doing a full rewrite (and taking the time to do it). I've been working on my drawings and have been working on designs for a webcomic that I'll be starting just as soon as I can scrounge up enough cash to buy a scanner. I'm also considering trying to get into video editing, make some AMVs and see if I'm any good at that.
3) How are college thingamajigs going out there?
So far Augustana rocks. Its really a nice breather, I've been spending a lot of time getting back in touch with a lot of parts of my life that I didn't have the time to address at digipen--namely the arts (music, acting, drawing). The proffessors are also awesome, having a prof. who is good, like Rovner, is the standard here instead of the exception. They're all very approachable, open, knowledgable, and very good lecturers. I usually enjoy learning a lot, and when I have professors that I feel that I'm learning a lot from, and who are very deft at their craft then that just makes the courses all the more enjoyable. It probably also helps that I've gone from barely passing classes to breezing through them (This is not to say that there is little to learn, but merely a credit tothe quality of the instructors in their ability to convey their material in such a manner that the student can understand the material). They also do a very good job of pointing out directions of further study, I can pretty much bring anything question for their particular field of study to a professor and they'll direct me to specific studies, papers, and books on the topic. This has me right now persueing about three or four side research projects on topics and ideas that have been bothering me for years.
However, I have run into the one roadblock that I knew that if I ever attended a liberal arts college I would hit. There is, to my knowledge, no subject of which I am not at some point interested. I like knowledge for the sake of knowledge and I like studying everything, be it biology, philosophy, economics, programming, drawing, acting, literature, history, chemistry, physics, or what have you--there is literally no one subject that I would 'prefer' over the others, nor would I like to devote myself exclusively to any one study to the exclusion of the others. So I don't have a clue what major I should chose. (I sometimes wish I wasn't so easily amused by every topic under the sun). In high school you would take those interest tests that were supposed to reveal what 'field' of study you should go into in college--mine always came back with a '?' because my interests would be perfectly balanced for every subject. If I could be payed to just take classes the rest of my life I'd be in heaven.
I thank God that DigiPen taught me how to work hard, namely--to get all of your work done before doing anything fun, not to disparage working weekends or late nights to get work done, and to not procrastinate. The students here seem to have a very bad case of procrastination, saving everything up to the last minute to work on and then complaining that they "don't have any free time" when they have plenty of free time, they just missused it.
Oh what else, umm... the internet in the dorms is crap, I can only play games over it on the weekend (when everyone is off campus partying) or late, late at night. Bittorrent is le suck (school firewall blocks me from opening up that many ports), so I finally had to get off my ass and figure out how to get anime off IRC. I've already proven myself to be a complete annoyance to the school's IT staff (who I might add are incompetent*). I knocked the entire dorm's network down by plugging a router, with DHCP turned on, into my dorm's ethernet port.
*Af far as I've figured out, setting up the school's network was contracted out, so someone else came in, set everything up, and left the school's IT staff to figure out how it works. Apparently, said staff has never taken the time to actually figure out how the infastructure to said network works/is settup, they just baby-sit it and hope it doesn't go down--so if you come in and do something compeltely unexpected that they just sit around dumbstruck.
4) If you had to choose one element (earth, fire...), what would it be and why?
Ice. I really like snow, and cold days. The more miserable the better. It reminds you that your alive.
5) What's your family like?
Well, my family consists of me ma, dad, and sister. Sister's graduating from high school this year and will be going to Michagan Tech to persue a degree in Civil Engineering/Forestry. She'll be following in the footsteps of my mom and dad, who are allumni of Mich. Tech and summarily studied Civil Engineering/Forestry. They both live back in Spearfish, Dad works for the forest service as their facilities engineer, a.k.a. designs outhouses... or at least it'd be funny if that's all he does, mostly the job entails inspecting facilities, hiring contractors, designing buildings, etc. Mom is a lunch lady for the elementary school.
They're planning on moving to Wisconscin sometime next year. My Dad is infamous for not playing corporate politics right--so he can't get promotions in the Black Hills, so he's heading back east. My mother also wants to live around lakes again and to be closer to my sister when she's in college so, meh. They can do what they want, I'll still go to Spearfish when summer break comes though...
My extended family all live in Michigan and Ohio. Poor fools.
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.