Bloooooggggggggg

       OMG I'VE BLOGGED SO MUCH, 10 game dev blogs, 10 philosophy blogs, Thank you Saad, 5 should be the standard. I have to say, thinking of what to write about is probably gonna take longer than writing this blog. Game engines is a weird hybrid of what I imagine two people debated about us learning. Someone wanted to teach us how to make our own engine, and someone wanted us to use a pre-built one. So they gave us a course where we use a pre-built engine by the guy who made the engine, so we get to have some of the process or ate least the theory of making it. Instead of learning how to make engines, we learn general infrastructure which I would say is a step of a flight of stair for making engines. Otherwise it really feels like Hogue's courses but replace spritelib/openGL with 2Loc. Fingers crossed for the Exam.

      This semester is coming to a close and the game's key components are all in the bag. Next semester is going to be just simple game balancing and content addition. Well of course some networking features as well. There is where the fun is gonna be. Fiddling around with game basic design and mechanics is my favorite part of programming personally. Honestly I use to sit around computers class and just practice making Space invader A.I, and screwing around with how my ship interacts.

    Before that though I have to worry about some homework questions, if all turns out well, I'll  complete the hard versions of the physics, Pong, and solar system questions. The physics question should be no trouble. Simply import 3 models, a car, barrel and bullet. Spawn both cars, cannons position is related to the car, but its rotation is not. Some simple ball launching physics, nothing more complicated that a quadratic formula based on cannon angle and power. from there a simple collision box around both players and that ones pretty much done.

Pong can be seen as a harder one based around the neon glow. I'll also have to change the ball color, but that's an easy one. The only way I know of doing the neon effect is to create some sort of section that renders as glowing ( on a more complicated model you'd do a glow map like a normal map) from there you'd have a render pass just for blurring out the areas that are suppose to glow and have that on top or underneath your final render.

Finally the Solar system is just a lot of little work, having the text show up, selecting the models with your mouse. Nothing overly complicated.

1.5 Years left woooooooo.

The Province of Poutine

     This week I want to talk about MIGS, like I imagine many people in the course are blogging on this week. I want to go over what events I plan on going to and why I'm going to them. Once you see them it will be apparent that I'm avoiding some of the more technical events especially ones involving industry marketing and accounting. 

First thing on the list is Hand-Drawn Animation and Games,being presented by Eric Angelillo early November 10th. Eric is an artist that has worked on a few projects and has a very awesome cartoony art style. His work can be seen here http://www.ericangelillo.com/. I'm personally interested in improving my artistic skills because I've been focusing on programming for so long. Sprite work has been pixel are for a long time now, games that feature vector art are a new craze that a few indie developers have jumped on. I hope things like Ubisoft's 2d art engine are mentioned and things like CupHead are shown.

After that I've decided to go to Intro to Unreal Engine 4 by Zak Parrish, the description sums up why i want to go to this one. "This beginner-level session introduces the toolset and key features of Unreal Engine 4. Attendees will gain a solid understanding of what features of UE4 can best help their games stand out in an increasingly competitive environment. Covered topics include Blueprints, Materials, level construction, and more."- link. Zak is the technical lead Writer of epic games and unreal. Hes pretty well known and this class taught me that learning about an engine from its creator is pretty interesting. Similar to this I also plan to go to the Unity 5 presentation. As much as i understand creating your own engine I feel I handle much better with things like unity. I pick up coding and understanding the workings fairly fast when working with engines. I really want to see what the improvements are and comparing the 2 industry beasts in size, strength and affordability. I actually plan on doing a blog about it sometime after. 

Other than that there are only a few I'd like to reference. The State of PlayStation conference is incredibly interesting to me. I've been a long time customer of Sony, through the ups and downs, and I'd really like to know the direction there going. They are also one of the only large publishers i wouldn't mind working for. They have resonantly gotten a big interest in indie development, there subscription service PlayStation plus has been a way for them to pick out the best of the best indie games and give them to all there users. Level Design and Procedural Generation by Tanya Short, is in the same vain as hand drawn animation, something that has been popularized by indie games that still has endless opportunities. Creating a random game that creates complex movements is a true achievement of game design in my opinion. It helps build immersion but at the same time helps give each player a unique personal experience. I'd love to see some concepts and theories on that topic.

Finally I'd like to go to the Crash Course of The Psychology of Indie Development by Daniel Menard. He is the CEO of Double Stallion games, the company Eric Angelillo works for right now. It seems like most people's plans out of this course is to either look everywhere for jobs or to grab friends met in the course and start indie teams. So having some prep for dealing with true indie development would be nice. I am a big fan of psychology and its theories so I wont be bored through this one. 

I have to say Overall I'm pretty hyped for the whole event, cant wait to see who I meet and what I learn.