Month 12: Software Engineering and OpenGL

This month we learned software engineering, scripting, memory management and debugging techniques from Derek Hughes. We also learned OpenGL from the man who wrote the book, literally, Richard Wright. It was a tough month to get through because schedules get all screwed up around this time of the year. We had eight day straight weeks with four day breaks in between. We still learned a lot and the information was fresh in our heads when it came time for tests.
In Software Engineering we coded many useful applications and techniques. The Memory Manager let use organize and distribute our memory directly from the cache, it gave us a lot of practice using bytes and the memory window. We also made a File Archiver which allowed us to pack files into one large file saving on loading time. We used Lua to begin scripting and learned how to call functions at runtime.

In OpenGL we learned how to utilize the Rendering Interface to make 3D objects and write shaders to make cool materials. We rendered a lot every night from snowmen to solar systems to radars to ships and even molecules. We even learned how to use OpenGL to program for the iPhone. We had to make a project of our choosing throughout the month, I made Bad Mr. Frosty from Clayfighters with dissolving binary falling from the sky and an option for ludicrous speed.

I learned a whole bunch this month, the books were supper helpful and the teachers were very knowledgeable. Well it’s just going to get harder from here. Wish me luck guys, thanks.

Halo and Kinect

It’s been another crazy, high-pace month at Full Sail. Amongst the odd schedule which arose from GDC Austin, we had some guest speakers from Bungie and Microsoft. Kerry Allen and Christopher Willoughby presented their game, Kinect Adventures, which is going to be bundled with the device. It was cool seeing Kerry present because I had the pleasure of working with him in a game jam back in my first month. Josh Hamrick, a Bungie developer who worked on Halo: Reach, came and played with us in the auditorium.

Chris and Kerry showed us how a game utilizes Kinect with the tool program for skeleton tracking. They also showed us a demo of the technology with Kinect Adventures. They played through an adventure which consisted of mini-games like water rafting and an obstacle course. They also showed us how players can jump in and out of the screen and Kinect will sensor their body and bring in their avatar and even take pictures while the players are in funny poses. They also spoke about the importance of networking in the industry, a value which every speaker I have heard cannot stress enough.

Josh Hamrick spoke at the school but a lot of students had class during his presentation so he made it up to us by playing Reach with us the night before in the auditorium until early morning. We brought in huge televisions and Xboxes. We played many matches and fought bravely, but alas the mighty Hamrick (iamtylerdurden) foiled our attempts. Playing with my fellow classmates and teachers was a blast and a very rewarding experience. It was an awesome night I won’t soon forget and the most fun I had at school.

A Note on GDC and Networking:

Rob Coble held a meeting to brief students who were going to GDC. I attended the meetings because I plan on going to GDC at some point. He gave a lot of good tips on networking at huge events like GDC.

1. Ask Questions
2. Be Confident
3. Talk about yourself and connect with people
4. Socialize
5. Practice Professionalism and Respect
6. Don’t be a Swag whore
7. Don’t Linger and Hover around the same people
8. Don’t be dumbass and piss people off
9. Don’t be Shy
10. And most importantly, Have Fun

Month 11: Structure of Game Production Part 2

This month we finished up our game, Spectrum. It was a long month with many struggles to pull through, but in the end we had an awesome game. Cooperating functionally as a team took some time to get used to, but we were able to work things out and not get hung up on blaming each other.
We encountered some hard to find bugs this month. We had a heap curroption which was caused by releasing a reference to the same object more times than nessesary. We also had installer version errors which was eventually tracked down to an overwritten function that was not declared virtual. During the second week of Sprint 4 we swaped games with another group in order to do testing. We had to write up bug reports for the team we were testing for and fix our own fair share of bugs.

On the last day we held an expo showcaseing our games. This was a great experiance because we knew that there were things wrong with our game but when people sat down to play it they had a lot of fun. A had a great time and learned a lot these last 2 months.