Friday, September 30, 2011

Be a good boy and do your homework... lol

Hello to all those reading my blog post!!

I'd have you know that I've vowed to do my homework earlier than normal this year to reduce stress, mostly to avoid the possibility of enduring the pain I did in second year from, you guessed it, putting my work off until last minute.

Like most university students I know, we fail to meet such goals. However at least I started my work earlier this time, it's just... that I took longer to do it.... because..... I have more time.......

ANYHOW

I have a GDW update, and it includes a PICTURE! HUZZAH!!!

You jelly, 4th years?
So basically "S" stands for "starts", and "E" stands for "End". The player has the ability to rotate the stage to move boulders and cross areas. So s/he will have to rotate the room to guide the bolder to hit the black switch, which will create a new platform in place of the area encased within the dotted lines. The player will use that new platform to walk into the left square, and enter a door that leads to the hidden backside of the stage (Hence the door name "B" for "back"). Afterward, the player will enter the right square through the backdoor, and will have to push the giant key-stone into the back through the backdoor, to the left square, outside the left square, and onto the white pedestal. After that, the floating bricks with a white dot in the middle will disappear, allowing the player to cross into the next level. All the little critters with horns are just templates for any placeable enemy.

Yeah, this was all me. Now I have to do my marketing assignment, modeling assignment, AND THEN get started on my Game Engine homework. Also I have to do readings. Joy.

Have a nice day, y'all! =D
P.S. Watch this interesting game design critique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4we8iFk-fY

References:

"CASTLEVANIA 2: SIMON's QUEST by the Angry Nintendo Nerd - Cinemassacre.com." Graphic. James Rolfe. Cinemassacre, 2006. Web. 6 Oct 2011. .

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Good God... why did he have to come back?

GOOD DAY GENTLEMEN!!!!!!! (and ladies if any :p)

I have officially started my third year of study for Game Development and Entrepreneurship at UOIT.
I started this blog again since having such is part of my mark for my new course, "Game Engine Design"; a course which my professor stated right off the bat, "This will be a hard course". So I'm going to do my best to do the best I can. Wait what?...

So far I have installed a game engine called "WildMagic" on my laptop through one of the lab tutorials for the course. What it does it does for me is it gives me functions I can use for this year's GDW project; more specifically nitty gritty functions like rotations, interpolation, physics, path-finding, rendering, sound... pretty much the essential systems one needs to make a game. Last year I had to make my own functions (with help from Graphics system OpenGL, sound system FMOD, and image system DevIL), but this year they are supplied to me. Sounds easier, right? WRONG!

Apparently this year, my class and I will be learning about and programming toolset systems, system wrappers, scene graphs, scripting... lots of stuff!

As for this year's GDW, I decided to join a new group, and we're working on a 3D side-scrolling game. For this semester, it ties into three of my five courses (as two of them are business marketing minor electives); game engine design, modeling, and project management.

So far the only prominent assignment that has arisen from these three courses that is directly related to the GDW, it the first modeling assignment, which is due... TONIGHT!

Oh man, what do I do? I'm already in hot water! :(

Lol I'm actually joking, I already started it, I just have to finish it up. =)

It's about making an outlined sketch of a character to be used in the GDW. My classmates and I are to draw the character's front, top, and side view, so we can use them to make the final 3D model of the character, to be used directly in the GDW game.

So far I've made an rough sketch, but I'm going to redraw a cleaner version by tonight, write up a quick and short character biography, and then submit the assignment to my professor. You can see the picture below:

My side and top drawings of the character aren't that great, since I'm not the best artist. The reason why the front view of the character looks half decent is because I used a picture of young Link from the Legend of Zelda to help guide my drawing for the front of the character. Yes, this was done in Photoshop.

We also are required to submit 10 reference images for inspiration for our characters. You can see my references below:

How do you think these images inspired my character?
So that's all for now! Thanks for reading, and until next week, ciao! :)

P.S. If you're wondering about the game I planned to make over the summer, it unfortunately didn't come to being. Although I did work more on my engine I which came from 2nd year's GDW game. I planned to use my engine to help me through this year of school, but now that I'm using WildMagic, I forced myself to put my own engine to the side, and start working on it again either at the end of this semester, and/or the end of this school year. Last year I continued my summer project from last summer (Happy Culture Shootout) during my 2nd year of school during my free time, but I later learned that was a very bad idea, as it made me fall behind my school work. This year, I'm putting maximum focus on school, so that I hopefully won't have to go through the painful struggle I went though last year (as depicted in my earlier blog posts, lol) So yeah, live and learn! Thanks again for reading!

P.S.S. Listen to this music, it's cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gELhNbDcLE0