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.

Month 10: Operating Systems and Structure of Game Production Part1

This month we had a lot of work. First in OPS, Gary Miller taught us how operating systems are designed and structured. He also introduced us to multithreaded programming. In SGP1 we began design and production on a group game called Spectrum. John O’Leske, Rob Martinez, Ron Powell and Sean Hathaway all lead us through industry standard production cycles while we put together this game from scratch.

In OPS, we learned about operating systems and how they use multithreaded programming in order to have seamless functionality and user interfaces. During Lecture Gary told us of the old ways computers functioned as well as their evolution and his experiences in the industry over the years. The book was a little hard to understand at times but the more you read the more it makes sense and the more ready you will be for the weekly quizzes and the final. In lab we tackled classic multithreaded problems which had Gary’s own modern twists. The “Dining-Philosophers” problem became the “Not Enough Alcohol at the Party” problem. We even got to work on Pong again except this time we set up multithreaded simulations of variable amounts of players and games.

In SGP1, we split up into groups of 4-5 people to work on games we prototyped in ROG. The class is broken up into sprints (2 weeks) were each team member is assigned user stories that they are responsible for getting down on time, the amount of user stories accomplished as well as effort determines how much money (fictional, represents grade) your team gets in the end of the sprint. The first 2 weeks were designing and documenting everything we wanted in our game. We had to be extremely descriptive using other products as examples. These documents ended up being more than 100 pages long which means we had little sleep during that sprint. The next 2 weeks were building tools we would use to create assets for our game. For Spectrum we had, Albert Jen doing the Tile Editor, Tyler Berry doing the Animation Editor, yours truly working on the Particle Editor and Mac Reichelt working in the code base to get our game up and running. We also had to spin the wheel of misfortune (a tool used to inject chaos into the class). We spun Dev Blog and Dress Code which meant that we had to keep a daily blog of our progress and now have to dress professionally when we show up for class. Other possible spins include Localization (to a foreign country) and Team Swap, switching a random team member with another team for the sprint.

I am looking forward to this month were we only have to worry about SGP it will be a lot of work and many hours not sleeping but I think we will have an awesome game when all is said and done.

Here are some pix of my Particle Editor:

Month 9: Rules of the Game and Structure of Game Design

This month we got to make two games, one by ourselves in SGD and another with a group in ROG. We learned a great of what makes up a game including ways to increase the fun factor. In ROG Steve Vanzandt showed us how to use Game Maker to make prototypes and introduced us to Unity. In SGD David Brown (worked on the menu system in 50-Cent Bulletproof) showed us how to make professional games including menus, installers and a variety of other features.


In ROG I got put on a group with Vincent Biancardi and Kahran Ghosalkar. We all worked really hard all Month to make our game, Infestation. We split up the tasks evenly and remained as organized as possible. We had lots of chances to test our game on different groups of people to see the areas that we needed to focus on. We even got a chance to present our game and do postmortem at the end of the month. Two weeks into production Valve released Alien Swarm, we noticed how our game held many similarities to it and laughed about it the rest of the month. The game takes place in a radioactive town infested with giant insects. The player must maneuver their squad and use various weapons and formations to battle through hordes of insects. They must slaughter all to find a way out.

Paper Model

In SGD I had a chance to make a game on my own (with help from friends and instructors). I was inspired by the old Terminator Midway arcade game as well as The Matrix. So I made The Terminatrix (Terminator + The Matrix). Only at the end of the month did I bother to Google Terminatrix and found that the name had been taken by a Japanese soft-core porn movie about a robot dominatrix killing machine (Terminator + Dominatrix). Had I know that at the beginning of development I would have changed the name. So my advice is Google early, Google often. My game is a top-down shooter where you can search, shoot and blast your way through waves of enemies and obtain powerups along the way.

3 of My Favorite Games and Why I Enjoyed Them

Final Fantasy Tactics:

1. Micromanaging formation gives the player full control on the challenges increasing emersion.

2. Leveling up, learning abilities and mastering jobs rewards the player and keeps them wanting more.

3. Very extensive gameplay (50-80hrs) keeps them playing for a while.

4. Very cool and powerful characters reward the player’s hard work with rare items and attributes.

       5. Multiple strategies allows for the player to play through using and strategy they want.

Psychonauts:

1. Funny characters and story keep the player entertained and wanting more.

2. Cool powers and abilities give control and power to the player.

3. Exploring various worlds in peoples’ minds immerses the player and gives a wide variety of levels and challenges.

    4. Just-right balance of difficulty allows for any one, young or old, to play through the whole game without  losing interest.

5. Surreal themes with extreme colors give eye candy to the player and control their emotions while developing the theme.

Grand Theft Auto:

 1. Max freedom, min consequences gives the player absolute freedom and enjoyment.

2. Adult content and issues make the game feel more like real life, increasing emersion.

3. Variety of vehicles and weaponry allow for maximum fun and choices on what the player can use.

4. Mini-games / Side missions give the player extra quests to undertake if they wish.

5. Mission/Area variety keeps ever mission fresh and exciting and keeps them playing.

Month 8: DirectX & Software Architecture

I just got done with my eight month here at Full Sail. This month I had DirectX and Software Architecture. DirectX was hard but we learned a great deal. In Software Arch we began looking at whole systems and how to plan out our code. It seems as though the heat is being turned up from here on out and now the classes will get really intense.


In DirectX we learned to use the computer’s devices directly. Wendy taught us to implement sound, graphics and input. We learned how to get input from controllers, render mesh and terrain with lighting using shaders. The class was pretty difficult compared to our past classes but in turn we learned a lot more from the mistakes we made. Remembering physics and linear algebra will help out a lot. The midterm and finals are difficult but it’s important not to get discouraged. I came to realize that some of the things I was doing wrong came from the same mistakes so I learned to check a few things first whenever something went awry. Now I always ask myself “Is the syntax right?” “Is it spelled correctly?” “Is it being called?” and “What is it filled with? (Garbage? Null?)” whenever I start debugging.

In Software Arch Frosty taught us design patterns and how to make UML diagrams. We used Visual Paradigm to make UML diagrams such as class, sequence and case. We also learned design patterns like Singleton, Composite and Factory Method. We implemented these in lab by applying them to game code. We also learned about the different ways of developing a game like Waterfall, eXtreme and SCRUM.