The song that inspired the title of this post :)
So, here I go again: not posting for a long while then having a LOT to talk about.
I just got back home for the summer after an extremely eventful semester at The Joe. The last few weeks were jammed full of events. I wasn't busy, per se, I just spent a lot less time in front of my computer.
So far my 3.98 GPA stands strong, which I am quite proud of maintaining throughout 2 years of college. It's insane that I'm already an upperclassman... these 2 years have gone by so fast it's been a massive blur. It seems like just yesterday I was that shy, scared kid on his first day of college. Now I'm a confident, successful 20-year-old Junior who can barely relate to the "me" of two years ago.
It's insane, looking back, just how much happened my Sophomore year. I experienced another relationship, and, although it was a complete failure, I'm not sure I regret it. I learned a lot about myself in the process and who my best friends were during the entire debacle. I learned what it was like to truly love someone who doesn't feel the same way, and I learned to get over it and to look ahead.
I'm happily living the single life now, doing things for myself and myself alone, and taking a step back and waiting for the right person so I can experience those same amazing feelings again, hopefully much more successfully than the past two times.
There have been a few women who have shown clear interest in me, but I've learned from my mistakes and am waiting for one who I am also interested in instead of jumping into something half-heartedly for the wrong reasons. It's depressing sometimes, but then I sit back and realize that I love my current life too much and would only want to change it for the better, and I haven't found anyone yet who looks like they could do that.
Also, I'm not happy enough with myself to do that yet. I've been making small changes in my life. I cut off all my stupid hair and regained the mohawk of 2 years ago. I've decided to start dieting and working out. I'm going to become even more outgoing, no longer afraid of what others think of me. I'm going to work even harder towards my goals, both and work and at school, but also my personal goals.
Speaking of personal goals, work on Sorrowsong has hit the point where it's really hard to work on it. It's so close to completion, but I'm just not happy enough with it to release it. It's so aggravating, when I set a goal for myself but then have to delay it because I'm just not happy with it. I'm my own worst critic, and even though all the code is in place for Sorrowsong I've been making a ton of minor tweaks to the gameplay.
I love to code more than anything else, but balancing and gameplay tweaks require very little, if any actual coding, and this sends me into a downward spiral of hating to work on Sorrowsong, but then I realize that in the end it will all be worth it, because I will have a game I'm proud of and all of the work will have paid off. I'm now hoping for a mid-summer release. I want to give myself enough time to weed out all of the bad aspects of the game to have an extremely polished product under my belt.
Looking at Sorrowsong, it's insane what it's become over the past nine months. I wrote the base OpenGL engine last summer but most of the actual game was made over my Sophomore year in my free time. I've learned so much about programming through this project that even if I never release it it will have been time well spent.
One of the major areas I've improved in is optimization. With a complex OpenGL engine and real-time gameplay (instead of turn-based like Blackfyre) you have to take a lot of aspects into consideration to keep your game running smoothly on every possible machine, and I spent a LOT of time making sure the code runs as quickly as possible. I had to come up with some really inventive techniques to pull it all off and I'm very proud of my optimized engine :D
I have some very big plans for the game and I hope you are excited as I am to see it finally completed!
Now that the game programming class is said and done, I'm quite impressed at my ability to teach. I did a lot of things well, but I also know I did a lot of things incorrectly, which I'm chalking up to a learning experience for myself and learning from those mistakes. In the end, most of the students definitely got something from the class and it was enjoyable for both myself and them. I really hope they'll expand upon what they learned this semester and, if they so chose, enter the industry as I plan to.
Speaking of the industry, I know I've always wanted to work for Blizzard, but after playing through Portal 2 I want to work at Valve just as badly. Portal 2 was such an excellent sequel that it surpassed the original and then some. The puzzles were mind-bending and extremely well designed, the writing, full of dark humor, was top-notch, and the base engine was completely flawless. Listening to the commentary (especially the more technical bits) made me realize just how much work went into programming the game and how I would have loved to have been a part of it. It looks like two companies will now be getting my resume when I graduate :)
Of course, I still have my current job which I am very excited for. My summer project looks like it will involve a lot of awesome things (C++ and OpenGL, a little bit of Objective-C, and a lot of new experiences for myself). Last summer's experience with Spaulding was an amazing learning experience, and I'm really looking forward to expanding my programming repertoire even more!
Man, there's so much to talk about. One of the things that just entered my mind were two assignments for Core that I recently completed. After reading Dante's "Inferno" we were assigned to write our own circle of Hell. I decided to go one step further and use the terza rime rhyme scheme (ABA, BCB, CDC, etc.) for the paper and I managed to pull it off flawlessly. It was pretty damn hard getting the rhythm perfect but I feel I did a good job (and I got a 100/100 on it, so I think I did). Another interesting assignment involved telling a story with a moral in front of the entire class. I decided, again, to challenge myself and not only tell a story, but tell it in song. I ended up playing "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Gary Moore, which I re-arranged for acoustic guitar (and to fit my vocal range). I've never performed in front of more than 3 people and it was definitely a nerve-wracking experience, but the entire class really enjoyed it (even though I made a few mistakes).
In other news: I'll be getting a car this summer! It's been something I've long lacked and am now very excited to finally acquire. It's always been irritating being locked down to destinations only withing walking/biking distance but now I'll be able to have a lot more freedom in that respect :)
On the anime front, things have been rather slow for me. However, I recently watched Eureka Seven (which you'd be able to tell from my AMV two posts down). I was really hesitant going into it (50 episodes is a huge time investment for me), but a few episodes in I was completely hooked and couldn't stop watching. For a mecha, it had a lot of things the stereotypical mecha doesn't have: an engrossing plot, large amounts of character depth and progression, and an engaging romance. It definitely goes somewhere on my top 10 list.
I've also been watching [C] as it's been airing and I'm loving it so far. It's like Shakugan no Shana, except instead of Flame Hazes it's Entrepreneurs. I can't describe exactly what it is about the show that I love so much. Maybe it's because I just love money, or maybe because I can relate with the business aspects of the show, or maybe it's because the music is just so damn awesome:
Speaking of Entrepreneurs, I took an Entrepreneurship class this semester. We had to write an entire business plan for a fictional business. I, however, convinced my group to write a plan for Anarchy Games Software. It was very surreal going through and analyzing all the business aspects that are required for a start-up game company. I also used it to further my knowledge, including the exact process which one goes through to get a game onto Steam (which I will attempt to utilize with Sorrowsong *hinthint*) and just how much work goes into starting a business. For our final we had to present the business plan, and it felt extremely surreal standing there demonstrating our product (I played through some of Blackfyre and Sorrowsong), that might actually be used to start a business someday.
Well, that's all I can think of to talk about for now. There will definitely be more to come once I collect my thoughts even more. Until next time :)
I just got back home for the summer after an extremely eventful semester at The Joe. The last few weeks were jammed full of events. I wasn't busy, per se, I just spent a lot less time in front of my computer.
So far my 3.98 GPA stands strong, which I am quite proud of maintaining throughout 2 years of college. It's insane that I'm already an upperclassman... these 2 years have gone by so fast it's been a massive blur. It seems like just yesterday I was that shy, scared kid on his first day of college. Now I'm a confident, successful 20-year-old Junior who can barely relate to the "me" of two years ago.
It's insane, looking back, just how much happened my Sophomore year. I experienced another relationship, and, although it was a complete failure, I'm not sure I regret it. I learned a lot about myself in the process and who my best friends were during the entire debacle. I learned what it was like to truly love someone who doesn't feel the same way, and I learned to get over it and to look ahead.
I'm happily living the single life now, doing things for myself and myself alone, and taking a step back and waiting for the right person so I can experience those same amazing feelings again, hopefully much more successfully than the past two times.
There have been a few women who have shown clear interest in me, but I've learned from my mistakes and am waiting for one who I am also interested in instead of jumping into something half-heartedly for the wrong reasons. It's depressing sometimes, but then I sit back and realize that I love my current life too much and would only want to change it for the better, and I haven't found anyone yet who looks like they could do that.
Also, I'm not happy enough with myself to do that yet. I've been making small changes in my life. I cut off all my stupid hair and regained the mohawk of 2 years ago. I've decided to start dieting and working out. I'm going to become even more outgoing, no longer afraid of what others think of me. I'm going to work even harder towards my goals, both and work and at school, but also my personal goals.
Speaking of personal goals, work on Sorrowsong has hit the point where it's really hard to work on it. It's so close to completion, but I'm just not happy enough with it to release it. It's so aggravating, when I set a goal for myself but then have to delay it because I'm just not happy with it. I'm my own worst critic, and even though all the code is in place for Sorrowsong I've been making a ton of minor tweaks to the gameplay.
I love to code more than anything else, but balancing and gameplay tweaks require very little, if any actual coding, and this sends me into a downward spiral of hating to work on Sorrowsong, but then I realize that in the end it will all be worth it, because I will have a game I'm proud of and all of the work will have paid off. I'm now hoping for a mid-summer release. I want to give myself enough time to weed out all of the bad aspects of the game to have an extremely polished product under my belt.
Looking at Sorrowsong, it's insane what it's become over the past nine months. I wrote the base OpenGL engine last summer but most of the actual game was made over my Sophomore year in my free time. I've learned so much about programming through this project that even if I never release it it will have been time well spent.
One of the major areas I've improved in is optimization. With a complex OpenGL engine and real-time gameplay (instead of turn-based like Blackfyre) you have to take a lot of aspects into consideration to keep your game running smoothly on every possible machine, and I spent a LOT of time making sure the code runs as quickly as possible. I had to come up with some really inventive techniques to pull it all off and I'm very proud of my optimized engine :D
I have some very big plans for the game and I hope you are excited as I am to see it finally completed!
Now that the game programming class is said and done, I'm quite impressed at my ability to teach. I did a lot of things well, but I also know I did a lot of things incorrectly, which I'm chalking up to a learning experience for myself and learning from those mistakes. In the end, most of the students definitely got something from the class and it was enjoyable for both myself and them. I really hope they'll expand upon what they learned this semester and, if they so chose, enter the industry as I plan to.
Speaking of the industry, I know I've always wanted to work for Blizzard, but after playing through Portal 2 I want to work at Valve just as badly. Portal 2 was such an excellent sequel that it surpassed the original and then some. The puzzles were mind-bending and extremely well designed, the writing, full of dark humor, was top-notch, and the base engine was completely flawless. Listening to the commentary (especially the more technical bits) made me realize just how much work went into programming the game and how I would have loved to have been a part of it. It looks like two companies will now be getting my resume when I graduate :)
Of course, I still have my current job which I am very excited for. My summer project looks like it will involve a lot of awesome things (C++ and OpenGL, a little bit of Objective-C, and a lot of new experiences for myself). Last summer's experience with Spaulding was an amazing learning experience, and I'm really looking forward to expanding my programming repertoire even more!
Man, there's so much to talk about. One of the things that just entered my mind were two assignments for Core that I recently completed. After reading Dante's "Inferno" we were assigned to write our own circle of Hell. I decided to go one step further and use the terza rime rhyme scheme (ABA, BCB, CDC, etc.) for the paper and I managed to pull it off flawlessly. It was pretty damn hard getting the rhythm perfect but I feel I did a good job (and I got a 100/100 on it, so I think I did). Another interesting assignment involved telling a story with a moral in front of the entire class. I decided, again, to challenge myself and not only tell a story, but tell it in song. I ended up playing "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Gary Moore, which I re-arranged for acoustic guitar (and to fit my vocal range). I've never performed in front of more than 3 people and it was definitely a nerve-wracking experience, but the entire class really enjoyed it (even though I made a few mistakes).
In other news: I'll be getting a car this summer! It's been something I've long lacked and am now very excited to finally acquire. It's always been irritating being locked down to destinations only withing walking/biking distance but now I'll be able to have a lot more freedom in that respect :)
On the anime front, things have been rather slow for me. However, I recently watched Eureka Seven (which you'd be able to tell from my AMV two posts down). I was really hesitant going into it (50 episodes is a huge time investment for me), but a few episodes in I was completely hooked and couldn't stop watching. For a mecha, it had a lot of things the stereotypical mecha doesn't have: an engrossing plot, large amounts of character depth and progression, and an engaging romance. It definitely goes somewhere on my top 10 list.
I've also been watching [C] as it's been airing and I'm loving it so far. It's like Shakugan no Shana, except instead of Flame Hazes it's Entrepreneurs. I can't describe exactly what it is about the show that I love so much. Maybe it's because I just love money, or maybe because I can relate with the business aspects of the show, or maybe it's because the music is just so damn awesome:
Speaking of Entrepreneurs, I took an Entrepreneurship class this semester. We had to write an entire business plan for a fictional business. I, however, convinced my group to write a plan for Anarchy Games Software. It was very surreal going through and analyzing all the business aspects that are required for a start-up game company. I also used it to further my knowledge, including the exact process which one goes through to get a game onto Steam (which I will attempt to utilize with Sorrowsong *hinthint*) and just how much work goes into starting a business. For our final we had to present the business plan, and it felt extremely surreal standing there demonstrating our product (I played through some of Blackfyre and Sorrowsong), that might actually be used to start a business someday.
Well, that's all I can think of to talk about for now. There will definitely be more to come once I collect my thoughts even more. Until next time :)
0 comments:
Post a Comment