Digital Dave

Step 5 of 5: Registration Confirmation
You are now registered for Game Developers Conference 2008 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA on February 18-22, 2008.

I’ll be attending the entire conference, experiencing everything it has to offer. I figured, heck, why not? Well, I couldn’t find any excuse not to, so here I come!

For Monday and Tuesday I thought it would be really fun/interesting to attend the Independent Games Summit. Lots of good stuff to experience. The developers of Aquaria will be speaking! *drools* I’m actually using their project for inspiration for a new, unannounced, project that I’ll be starting for an independent study project next semester.

Edit: Note to self… Fix top banner under EGA – 2001 – 2005, when I get home… Looks like I had Iraq on the mind when I put 2003. ;\

In a prior entry, I wrote about a final project for my networking class.  Well, scratch that idea.

I turned the concept into a multiplayer snowball fight.  I figure it would be pretty fun to sling a snowball at your friend for the sake of the holiday season that is fast approaching.   I will be trying to reach a limit of 3 on 3, with anybody over 6 players being in spectator mode, with the ability to join in once a player disconnects.

I redid the artwork and added a few more pieces, finished the input system, and I finished the collision detection system this morning.

Here is an in-progress shot!

Well, up next is some of the networking system. We’ll see how well my systems were designed for a client and server interaction.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who find their way to my website! I hope that you are nice, warm and extremely full from all of the Thanksgiving treats!

I spent the day playing the Wii with nearly everybody, and showing off Super Mario Galaxy to those who hadn’t seen it yet.  Yep, they all had a blast.

I picked up a copy of Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c A Shader Approach yesterday. The book has great reviews, and from what I skimmed over, it looks pretty solid. I hope to start on this soon.  I need to brush up on some Math, and finish a networking project.  I actually took a course a few years back, from the author of the book, at gameinstitute.com.  So the book is very progressive, which is nice.

I thought I’d say something about a blog I have been reading recently.

If you’re independent, you should go over and read a blog Brenda Brathwaite has recently started.  She is an industry veteran, in game design, and has a lot of great things to share about her experiences shipping 22 commercial games.  She’s now a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design so she spends time on her blog writing about various things regarding design.   I just noticed she posted something today, what looks to be another good post, regarding interviews and portfolio.

I ended up getting some inspiration after viewing somebodies portfolio website, and decided to use what I found to, hopefully, better future visitors experiences.

For the games/applications that I developed, I decided to capture a demonstration of going through the gameplay/application, and then I uploaded it up onto YouTube. So you don’t have to mingle your way through my development page, here is a glimpse of what I did. This was more of a pain then I thought it was, so I do hope that you find them semi-interesting to watch!

This should definitely be nice for those that can’t actually download onto the computer that they are using, or if they are curious to see it in action, but don’t really want to take the time to download.

View Demonstration of Breakout Returns on YouTube!

View Demonstration of Ascending Order on YouTube!

View Demonstration of a 2D Map Development Tool on YouTube!

I’m pretty dead set on heading out to California next February for the  annual Game Developers Conference, which is in San Francisco this year.  I’ve got to say that I’m pretty excited about it. I was stationed in southern California, but I’ve always wanted to check out the Silicon Valley/Bay area since I always thought I would enjoy living up there a lot more than the southern part. I’m not incredibly picky on where I live, though California has the best opportunities for development, other than Texas, so it has to be somewhere in that state.

I had a chance to meet with somebody here on campus that has gone to the previous two GDC and he had some great things to say about it.  He didn’t really have anything great to say about the food… But luckily I don’t eat a lot, so that shouldn’t matter.  He said there are plenty of carbonated beverages, and that is alllllll I need right there!

I’m currently in the process of determining if I want to spend an entire week there, or just three days.  He did mention that the final few days are absolutely chaotic, as that is when most people tend to show up.  Though, he did mention that being there for the first couple of days awarded a great opportunity to network in a relatively calm environment.  He never did any of the tutorials, so he couldn’t tell me about that.  I’d be interested to hear about them, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of them look way above my head.  It still may be a great experience though.

He mentioned that they have a week long XNA development contest where teams gather to develop a game in the week.  That really sounds fun.  I don’t know much about XNA, but I might be able to school up on it over the holiday break.  If all else, at least I can watch how other people code, which would be interesting.

He also noted to bring lots of business cards and some resumes.  Well, I already have a fellow gamedev.net contributer working on a business card for me, and my resume has been pretty polished since I started college.  I’ll be sure to bring that stuff just in case somebody finds me interesting enough.   I really want an internship next summer, so this is a prime opportunity to get a leg up on that process.  Though, I’ll probably start sending out resumes a lot earlier than Feb.

In an effort to avoid an extremely large hotel bill, I’m going to try to find a cheap way to live out there.  First, I’m scouring the website couchsurfing.com.  Essentially, this is where people offer their couch to you for those that travel.   This could be a good thing in many ways.  Most of all, the networking (if I can find a local game developer) opportunity.  Local developer.  Knows the area, and likely knows more people… Yeah, sounds like a great idea.  What turned me onto this website is that I have a friend that has couch surfed, and has hosted her couch to others.  She said it was great.

Other than that, If I can’t find somebody to stay with, i’ll turn to my bootcamp days and sleep in a Hostel.

Anyway, I plan to document my adventure to the GDC.  I’m a picture whore, so expect a lot of pictures.

If you’ve got anything to add, in regard to the GDC, please feel free to comment.

Eleven and a half hours later, sixty stars, countless enemies squashed while being pricked with star bits, and a badly beat up Bowser… My God, Mario is back!

Not that you didn’t know that already. Or, if you really didn’t know, you might want to read further.

This is hands down my favorite Mario from the series, and I’ve played every single one while loving every minute… Well, maybe not every minute. I could have done without the frustration through the first couple of Mario games.

But, anyway!

Yesterday, I decided to head on over to buy the new Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii. I sat down, popped in the game disc, and became entranced for the next eleven and a half hours… Hey, I haven’t bought a game for awhile, and those darn gunships looked bad ass. And I couldn’t help but wanting one more star until I got to the point of, “Ooo, 60 stars and I get to whoop up on Bowser…” *plays some more*!!!

The graphics are awesome. This game is one of the best looking games that have come out on the Wii. Go find a video of Bowser in motion. The characters look really darn impressive.

The audio is something that stood out right away. I really never paid too much attention in the past to the audio track, but this one I couldn’t help but notice. The new tracks and how they mix them up were really done well.

The control system is really easy to pick up on. If you are oriented with the N64 version of Mario, then this will be cake. In fact, this has been done much better than the N64 version. The camera controls are incredibly fluid, and the movement is really simple to pick up, even with the wonky environmental effects.

The design of this game was done phenomenally. The level designers went above and beyond the call of duty with this game, which turned out extremely well with the galaxy scenario. There are a ton of levels to crawl through, tons of secrets to find, and many mini-games to fiddle around with.

The difficulty is like any other Mario game these days. There are plenty of lives to go around. They seem to know exactly when the player is going to die several times, because they put a 1UP right before that area. They also have checkpoints that trigger right before those areas as well. So you die, pick up a 1UP, and try again. There was quite a few times where I died probably 5 – 10 times before I got through an area, typically near the end of the stage.

The story is done really well. It’s the sort of story that pulls in you in, and keeps knocking at your door just enough to keep you informed and interested, but not tediously micro-managed with story shoved down your throat.

I tried to find some things I didn’t like about the game while I was playing it. And, I just couldn’t find anything. Anybody that wants to design games should really pick this game up or play it at a friend’s house. Pay special attention to the level design, you can’t miss it.

Have fun! Now that my play time is over, I hope to get some good coding going! Until next time!

There is something special about being a veteran of the armed forces.  You know you have contributed to your country and you don’t need to spend time wondering whether you’ve accomplished much in your life.

We have been at war long enough for people to come into the military, and leave, under one contract.  Thousands are currently serving, and thousands have served in this war.   Regardless of your belief toward our presents in the middle east, you should really stop to thank anybody you cross during your day that has served under this campaign.  They don’t hear it enough, trust me.  If you’ve got some extra cash, think about sending a care package to a random troop overseas.  Nothing spurts up moral more than receiving a box of goodies from people that support your actions.

Thank you to all of you that are currently serving around the world, and those that have served during prior occupation.

I am completely amazed that they even teach this language anymore.  I understand that there is a plethora of code written in this language, and that people don’t want to spend the time/money/energy to update their code, but do they really think that teaching this is worth it?  I mean, I can not imagine any kid growing up, these days, thinking they really want to be a COBOL programmer…  This is a generation of fast cars and bad a… Wait.  Fast computers, rapidly increasing technology, cheaper per $ GB… You would think that people would have their sights on newer tools. I certainly do.

I’m not saying that I hate the language, or that it is difficult to program in, but couldn’t I spend my time in a better ‘required’ class than this?

You know things are bad when your department head agrees with you, and wants to get rid of the class, but says that he can’t because there is still a need for COBOL programmers.

So, I whipped together a project for my networking class today.  All we were required to do was to create a SMTP client that interacts with the mail server on the campus.  I tossed this together in about 30 minutes after I figured out that I couldn’t access the mail server on campus, while I’m NOT on campus.  Boo!

So I am starting to think heavily about the Game Industry lately. Mainly because the year 2008 is a critical year of my growth as a developer. I’ll graduate college in December (2008), and I’ll start my career in January (2009). But, which direction do I REALLY want to go? Do I want to go straight into Game Development? Do I want to start in the Software Sector?

I spent 4 years in the Marine Corps, and now 4 years at College. I’ll graduate at the age of 26. I, personally, do not want to “waste” time in the software side of the house, when all I really think about is the game industry. Hell, I spent a critical amount of time in college following the game industry. Do I have a LOT to show for it? I have a lot of persistence and dedication to show for it. Beta testing software and games, designing and developing very small games, to even bringing out some creativity to write short stories.  Do I necessarily have the programming capabilities to be in the league of AAA development? That’s where I fall in my own trap. Do I know enough to start in the Game Industry?

I’ll be looking for an internship for next summer. I can’t help but think that I want to concentrate on the game development sector before I turn to the software development sector. With any luck, I’ll have an internship that can tell me if I belong in the game industry as a programmer. I’ll get to be around the atmosphere first hand, and I’ll be around AAA programmers (hopefully).

Only time will tell with this journey, but it sure does creep up on the mind pretty often!

That all leads me to think about the Game Development Conference that is coming up in February. Should I go? I’m not concerned with being able to finance a trip, due to getting a scholarship this year. I can’t help but think how well it would benefit me on the networking side of things. Not only that, but being able to talk to programmers will allow me to get some feedback from somebody who is enduring the trip as a game developer.

Crunch time is coming up. I have just less than two months before I actively pursue an internship with somebody… *bites nails rapidly*

I ended up picking up one of the new NVIDIA 8800GT cards that were just released recently.  The card is bad-ass, and I wish I had more time to tinker around with it.  But I hope to play around with it a little more over thanksgiving break. I played the demo to Crysis, and the effects were really neat.  Motion blur when you turn, or while you’re sky diving. The water effects… The lighting… *drools*

I also got a new project in my networking class… It’ll be pretty easy so I’ll end up being able to take full advantage of the time for my multiplayer game.  All I need to do is to program an e-mail client to send an e-mail.  Should take about an hour or so.

And on a side note, I’ve never been following so many games that ended up having a release date all on the same week…  Next week: Super Mario Galaxy, Crysis, Simcity Societies,  and Need for Speed: Pro Street is coming out.