(no subject)
It's the beginning of day 2 of my illustrious Digipen junior year, and all is well so far.
Since I'll be using this journal as a developer's blog as well as a personal journal, I may as well outline the progress that I've made over the summer.
We just finalized our group (I hope) yesterday. It consists of:
For the uninitiated, our game will be project Kick You In The Fucking Nuts, and it's a third-person shooting/melee game that enables players to use superhuman feats of prowess (that means athletic ability such as running and jumping, fuckwit) to travel around floating islands to complete some standard FPS-style objective. Like capture the flag. Or onslaught. Fuck, I don't know.
Think {That DBZ (lol) half-life mod meets Devil May Cry meets fucking Spiderman 2}. It will literally kick you in the fucking nuts.
As for classes, GAM is awesome. Ellinger never ceases to impress me, and this was no exception. The lab was standard, but still better than any other game class labs, and the lecture was phenominal. He even hired on some cool Microsoft guy who knew a lot about design patterns, and the one and only Steve Rabin, who works at Nintendo. If you don't know Steve, you should really read the article he wrote for Game Programming Gems 4, entitled 'Finding Redeeming Value in C-Style Macros'. I think that's what it's called, but the article really is cool, and it describes a way to create macro'd interfaces for base and inherited objects that elegantly reuse interface code. Think about it - you want to change HP from int to float, and you just edit the macro. The preprocessor inlines the rest, and with some trickery, you won't have to worry about accidentally hiding virtual functions when you change data types! It's good stuff. There are also other tricks in the article, but that one jumps to mind.
I also attended CS330 today, and I can see why people consider it a hard class. It's basically MAT250, but more focused on notational confusion than actual math. The example of how to use algorithmic notation made an exceedingly simple algorithm into a convoluted behemoth of state machines and pseudocode. I'm sure that this notation will actually simplify more complex algorithms and actually allow the analysis of their complexity and whatnot, but for now it's pretty daunting.
Also, I should be getting FFXI today or tomorrow. Rock on.
Since I'll be using this journal as a developer's blog as well as a personal journal, I may as well outline the progress that I've made over the summer.
We just finalized our group (I hope) yesterday. It consists of:
- Rizwan Ahmed(oh christ am i spelling this rite): The cautious toll booth guard with a heart of gold
- Primary Responsibility: AI or graphics.
- Secondary Responsibility: Looks like special effects
- Work done so far: Basic 3D engine, reflection, shadows, texture mapping.
- Jack Kern: The cautious toll booth guard with a heart of silver
- Primary Responsibility: Likely physics.
- Secondary Responsibility: A mixture of Game logic and UI, maybe?
- Work done so far: None. But not to worry! This guy's nose will soon be to the grindstone!
- Andrew Khosravian: The cautious toll booth guard with a heart of nougat
- Primary Responsibility: AI or graphics.
- Secondary Responsibility: Interested in Audio or Game logic
- Work done so far: Some skeletal animation research/framework
- Ben Russell: The only normal guy on the group. Criminy! What a bunch of freaks.
- Primary Responsibility: Netwizzityworking.
- Secondary Responsibility: Would like to do a large portion of Game logic, and maybe audio. Will work on UI but only in return for continual sexual favors from the team member of my choice.
- Work done so far: Scripting framework, variable loading framework, most of the network framework.
For the uninitiated, our game will be project Kick You In The Fucking Nuts, and it's a third-person shooting/melee game that enables players to use superhuman feats of prowess (that means athletic ability such as running and jumping, fuckwit) to travel around floating islands to complete some standard FPS-style objective. Like capture the flag. Or onslaught. Fuck, I don't know.
Think {That DBZ (lol) half-life mod meets Devil May Cry meets fucking Spiderman 2}. It will literally kick you in the fucking nuts.
As for classes, GAM is awesome. Ellinger never ceases to impress me, and this was no exception. The lab was standard, but still better than any other game class labs, and the lecture was phenominal. He even hired on some cool Microsoft guy who knew a lot about design patterns, and the one and only Steve Rabin, who works at Nintendo. If you don't know Steve, you should really read the article he wrote for Game Programming Gems 4, entitled 'Finding Redeeming Value in C-Style Macros'. I think that's what it's called, but the article really is cool, and it describes a way to create macro'd interfaces for base and inherited objects that elegantly reuse interface code. Think about it - you want to change HP from int to float, and you just edit the macro. The preprocessor inlines the rest, and with some trickery, you won't have to worry about accidentally hiding virtual functions when you change data types! It's good stuff. There are also other tricks in the article, but that one jumps to mind.
I also attended CS330 today, and I can see why people consider it a hard class. It's basically MAT250, but more focused on notational confusion than actual math. The example of how to use algorithmic notation made an exceedingly simple algorithm into a convoluted behemoth of state machines and pseudocode. I'm sure that this notation will actually simplify more complex algorithms and actually allow the analysis of their complexity and whatnot, but for now it's pretty daunting.
Also, I should be getting FFXI today or tomorrow. Rock on.