Month 4: Physics and Programming 3

I just finished my forth month at Full Sail. Half my class from last month did not pass those classes so my class for physics was about half in size, and there were some new faces in programming 3 those who took it last month and did not pass. As the work gets tougher it becomes harder to keep your grade at the point where you want it, however with increased studying, in office hours, before class with classmates or by one's self, the work does not seem unmanageable. And of course it helps if you love what you are learning.

We had Mr. Bahin again for physics and he still kept us laughing even though many students were falling asleep in his class due to the fact that the nights before we had class until 1am and had to be in his class by 9am (that's Full Sail for you). He taught us well and did not overload us with work. We had many simulations to program which included friction, gravity and collisions. The lab assistants were very helpful as usual.

For programming 3 we had Arthur Johnson, a very enthusiastic man who taught at UCF (University of Central Florida). He taught us a lot about what to do on interviews and how to be an efficient programmer during different situations. Everyday a question box would pop up, randomly, on the projector with a random student's name and generate a question based on the topics we covered the class before. If the student would get the question wrong they would lose ten GPS (Global Professionalism Standard) points. After the question, which were pretty difficult if the student did not study, the generator would produce a movie/game trivia question to lighten the mood back up. Each lad in PG3 would be based somewhat on the lab before that. This means that through the whole month we made a simple tank game and learned all the different implementations of what we could put in a game from cheat flags to sound to cell based images and even high score displays. Also if you are going into PG3 be ready to learn a lot about file input/output.

Month 3: Linear Algebra, Programming 2 and my first Global Game Jam

In linear algebra we learned the basics of how math applies to programming in games. We had to make transformation simulations, among others, and our own vector and matrix math functions library. The lab assistants were very helpful as usual. Our professor, Richard Bahin, was very knowledgeable and always made the class fun and interesting giving us real world examples and telling us what we need to know when we apply for industry jobs.

Programming 2 was more complicated than programming 1 but we learned a lot more about classes and dynamic memory. Our professor, Justin Tackett, would give us assignments to make programs that one would find in games. We always had a great time coming up with hilarious spells for Wizard characters like "Summon Beans" and the such. The lab techs were awesome as well.

In my first Global Game Jam I worked with a team of 7 other people, from artists to programmer to producers and designers, to make a game in 48 hours. Our team "Lost Sheep" worked very hard for the duration of the jam everyone got along with each other and we were able to produce an awseome, working game in the end, "Shogun's Shadow". It is a side scrolling 2 player platformer were the goal is to be the first ninja to kill the shogun by avoiding the lights and decapatating him.

Download the Game Here!