Diary of an Aspiring Game Designer

Ctrl-Alt-Delete ...or L1+L2+R1+R2+Select+Start

2008-04-28T17:47:00.003-07:00

Reset buttons. Life doesn't give you many, but going to school has been the most life-changing push of that fateful button I have ever known.

I know I've failed to keep up with my own set regimen of one post a week. That was a newb's hope, the rigors of school and work leaving me with just enough time to wind down and sleep before having to start all over again.

I'm now 1 1/2 semester's into my education, and I've already learned so much. In the last 8 weeks, I've learned how to make 3D models in 3DStudioMax, texture them to make them look pretty, and even animate them. I've learned a entry-level chunk of C++ and can write a Console application that does just about anything I want it to, now.

Most importantly, I've made some incredibly awesome friends. I had a spattering of classes with them last semester, but the four of us all wound up in GSP240 last Session, and grouped up to form a team that has been lovingly dubbed "Team Awesome" by our classmates and even some of the faculty. Alongside making 3D models and animating them, we had to make a game, completely on our own. No hand-holding, no tutorials, nada. Not only that, we had to make it in two forms. A fully playable board game version was due the first four weeks, and a fully playable digital version featuring at least 4 levels was due the after the second four weeks.

Needless to say, this group of compatriots I've worked with and I earned the name Team Awesome through hard work, and going well above and beyond the expectations laid before us. The board game we came up with was such a huge hit amongst the class, and other classes that we are now putting it into a pre-production phase. Once we've hammered out a few more kinks, we'll be patenting and trademarking the game and putting out at local game shops to be playtested, and finally, we're going to sell it to a producer. I can't tell you how exciting this whole process is, and the support we've gotten from our professor's and fellow students has been overwhelming. The digital version was also a huge hit, and our team recently recieved information from our professor that he spent the week break between sessions playing our game. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, or that it's ground-breaking...and neither was he. However, he did tell us that he played it so often out of amazement that students this early into the curriculum produced something like it at all. He even had friends over during the break to give it a play, and they too were impressed.

So, in a short time, we're going to put the digital game online for download, and if anyone is out there reading this, you'll be able to give it a play for yourselves. I'm really looking forward to the feedback we'll get once it goes up, both good and bad.

As for the programming end...I've found that there are few things I love in the world as much as writing code. How many times in your life will you ever hear anyone say that!? Programming is something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. It's artistic in a way that I can wrap my head around. I don't have any real artistic talent, but with a few hundred lines of code, I can weave together a program that can do just about anything you could want. And that's beautiful to me. Function over form...it's how I've always looked at things.

Well, this post is getting ridiculously long. Look forward to pictures of the board game during it's production (once the patents and trademarks are in place) and the digital version coming even sooner. Until then, I'll try to post as regularly as my schedule allows.

Setzer out.

Delays are Unforgivable!

2008-02-09T01:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delays! I'll be throwing up the contents of Weeks 3-5 shortly!

Week 2 - The fun begins, and so does the real work...

2008-01-21T15:19:00.001-07:00

What a week. We've been assigned our major projects for the Session, and I have to admit I'm pretty excited. For Logic & Design, our Professor has acquired "Scribbler" robots that are almost fully programmable to do a wide variety of things. Our task is to come up with three programs to input into the robots:

1) Simple: Make the robot move in a pattern to "draw" one of our teams initials.
2) Moderate: Make the robot drive in a set number of circles, with the compensation that if it runs into obstacles it will move out of the way and restart the process.
3) Hard: Have the robot drive along the perimeter of the room, recognizing turns, and indicating the turns it's making by raising flags, flashing lights, and making a noise that differentiates between right and left turns

We're in three-man teams, and each of us is responsible for the actual programming of one of the tasks. My teammates decided that I was most qualified to handle the hardest program, and I have to admit, it's an excercise in patience. Thankfully, I still have several weeks to hammer out the bugs, but I only have the robot to test my logic a limited number of times. This will definitely prove to be a challenge.

In GSP, we've been assigned to write a Game Design Concept document. It doesn't sound that hard, but it requires a lot of thought. We've been told that this concept document is going to be the basis of our progression through future GSP courses, and will culminate into our Senior project. Or it should. We're allowed to change our minds, of course, but we might as well turn this assignment into the first and most important step in making our final project game. I think I've got a pretty strong idea of what I want to do, and I'm liking how it's fleshing out in the Concept document.

As far as our weekly assignments are concerned, we had quite a few challenges ahead of us in Logic & Design. Of course, my friend and I also came to the realization that we've been making our assignments thus far a lot harder on ourselves. We aren't actually required to program anything, but then...I figure if we can turn the assignments into programs...why not? This week, we worked more with If-Then conditions and loops, and we learned firsthand the importance of defining global variables when dealing with subroutines. That cost us hours of work over something that should've taken minutes. But the lesson was valuables...I'm now in the habit of defining all my global variables first and foremost, and that's most likely a good habit to have.

With GSP, we had to put together a Maze game, either by modding the examples provided, or taking resources from them, and making our own. I made my own, titled EmoKid's Journey through Depression. I'm pretty impressed with myself on this one, considering I created a number of the sprites on my own, and only pulled a few things from the resource files. Once again, when I figure out a way to make it downloadable, I will post it up here for your enjoyment and criticism. I can't get better until someone tells me what I'm doing wrong.

As far as lessons go, we learned about the four types of game-players: Hearts - or Socializers; Spades - or Explorers; Diamonds - or Collectors; and finally Clubs - or Killers. We also went over demographic analysis and what needs to go into a game to be appealing to wider audiences.

And that's all for this week. Who knows what's in store for next week, I know I'm looking forward to it.

-Setzer out

Week 1 - Introductions and More Homework than you can shake a snake eater at...

2008-01-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

This has been an interesting first week back after Winter break. It was easy enough to fall back into the groove of having an extra schedule to follow, but odd jumping into a whole new set of classes. Things got moving incredibly quickly. Before the end of the first day I found myself with six chapters worth of reading, two online quizzes due by the end of the week, four assignments from Logic & Design - plus an online lab - and three assignments for GSP, including making my very first game. If I can, I'll post a downloadable version here so you can give it a try. It's nothing ground-breaking, but it's my first so I'm proud of it.

Even with the heavy workload I set out with an eagerness to learn, and I was not disappointed. In Logic & Design we learned the basic coding methods, and practiced fixing Spaghetti Code examples. Our assignments were to write programs in Visual Logic that could:

a) Allow a user to input a radius, and receive both the diameter and circumferance displayed.
b) Display a user's input string information (Name, age, job)
c) Display a single verse of Old MacDonald, after receiving input from the user for the type of animal, the number of animals, and the sound the animal makes.

The last one was tricky, but once we got the gist of it, the rest came along as a breeze.

In GSP, we've been run through a detailed history of video games, from the introduction vectors in Asteroids, to the first arcade of Spacewars! to the current generation of consoles' impact on the entire industry. Did you know that Nintendo is over one-hundred years old? It was established in 1889 by a man named Fusajiro Yamaguchi. The company created and distributed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The game itself wasn't far unlike the collectable card games prevalent today, starring a cast of heroes with equipment cards all featuring seperate statistics. It's things like this that absolutely fascinate me.

We also discussed in a threaded discussion the games that influenced us to play more often, and the games we think had the biggest impact on the industry. What would you say to questions like that? I'd like to see your answers in the comments if you don't mind.

So that brings a close to the week. For someone completely unfamiliar with programming, my head is a little heavier with the processes of logic. The timeline of Electronic gaming history, as well as the analysis of demographics has really given me a great deal more insight into the scope of what I'm getting in to. I never knew that Germany banned games that show any kind of blood, as well as games that depict Nazi's, Hitler, or anything involving the Third Reich. It's all so fascinating. Gang related killings in South Korea over a video game, and even older grudges between Korean players and Japanese players in MMOs. If the rest of this session keeps pace with this first week, I'm going to be in educational heaven!

Hailing Frequences closed.

It begins

2008-01-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings, and welcome to my diary.

I believe an introduction is proper, so let's take care of the formalities. For all intents and purposes you can refer to me Setzer Valorin, or any variation you so choose. The purpose of this blog is to document and pace the process of my education into learning game and simulation programming. I will spare you the GenEd fluff materials, and focus primarily on what is being taught in the core classes of my program.

I am a student at DeVry University, enrolled in the GSP course. The environment is excellent, and the professors are not only knowledgable, but they have all played parts in the industry, some of them major, some of them minor. That element alone makes the classes they teach more than worth it. The University has just recently switched to a Compressed Session format, splitting a semester into two sessions, 2-3 classes per session, over the course of 8 weeks. The hours spent in class per week are increased to match 16-week attendance, but the work loads are lighter, if a bit more fast paced. Some classes utilize an iOptimize program that allows for threaded online discussions, taking quizzes online, and submitted coursework through an online dropbox.

My ultimate goal is to graduate with a 4.0, something that should be attainable if I put in the right amount of effort and energy. My secondary goal is to document the process for the benefit of you, the viewers. I intend to update once a week, barring any emergencies, giving a basic rundown over the topics covered in my core classes. I intend to give regular status updates, and keep a month by month record of my current grades. I would like for any readers to hold me accountable to keeping to my goal of graduating with a 4.0. You're encouragement might just make all the difference!

Since the focus of this blog and these articles is about the material learned in order to become a game designer, I'll leave information about myself to a bare minimum, unless it becomes apparent that it's desired. We'll just have to see how this whole thing flows.

Welcome again, and thank you for joining me on this trip. My current course and grade status is as follows:

Semester/Session: 1st Semester - Session B
GPA status: 1st Semester - Session A: 4.0
Current Courses: GSP110 (Intro to Game & Simulation Programming), Psych110 (Psychology), CIS110 (Logic & Design)
Completed Courses: CTE110 (Critical Thinking), Alg104 (College Algebra)

Comments, criticism, and questions are all welcome. Week 1 of my first Core session is coming to a close, and I will update over the weekend.