Archive for the ‘University’ Category

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So What’s Up?

June 10, 2010

Nothing’s up, really. I managed to get all my work handed in for my degree’s final year, so here’s hoping that I pass university (and don’t walk away with nothing, or even better, a HND worth £20,000 and three years of my life). I should be fine, though, as long as I can settle into a routine where I actually have to be a productive member of society. Find a shitty job, beg companies for gaming work, etc. Should be… nah, I’m not even kid that it’s going to be fun. Probably tough, but I’ll look back when I’m a successful developer (har har) and realise that it was worth the effort. I need to clean up all my final year projects, update my portfolio and CV, blog more, and start applying / networking as much as possible.

As a celebration for handing everything in a few weeks ago, me and Morti took a group of ‘special ed’ kids (affectionately known as Anicom) down south for the weekend for the MCM London Expo, and it actually went pretty well. It’s a success if nobody gets fatally wounded, in my book. I spend the weekend getting drunk, laughing at hilariously bad cosplay, and gaming – At DDR:UK‘s stall on Saturday, and at Funland in the Trocadero on Sunday. Boy, the latter place is big, and I wouldn’t mind going back there again the next time I head to the capital. The convention itself was okay, but maybe a little too big for my tastes. I definitely preferred Auchinawa and Kitacon because they feel so small and cosy, and it would be great it we can get some small groups going to other conventions over the coming year.

Wow, James has a lot in his pockets.
Haum, I seem to be going a little hyperlink crazy, but never mind. As for Anicom in general this year… *sigh*. It’s a shame it ended up like this, I was hoping we could have a good year. Several things went wrong – I fucked up the shows at the beginning, we got bad opinions from some of our advertising materials, and I ended up pretty much on my own after Christmas running the society, with the other two dealing with personal issues / work / no motivation to help the society at all. Hopefully an all-new committee should be able to sort things next year (Mole, Mizzy and Alex) and restore Anicom to it’s former glory like it was in my first year. I’ll be sticking around to help the new committee out wherever I can (although does Mole really need help? Probably not.), and no doubt I’ll be lurking around in Middlesbrough until the end of time itself.

Oh and a final note: Other people seem to be writing blogs too, so go and say hi to Allan, Dave, Kai and Emily for me :3

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ExpoTees…

March 26, 2010

…wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. Sure, it helped me to get my final year project finished a little earlier, but wasn’t the job-opportunity-fest everyone was making it out to be. It was nearly all students, parents of students, and the lecturers going round judging stuff. Oh and Greeny from Assyria Games was going around, but that doesn’t really count. Ah well, although there was’t any opportunities from that, it looks like I’ll still have a few projects to work on over the summer :3

I’m posting this from my BlackBerry, by the way – I thought I’d try out the new app and see what it’s like. On a train to Northampton now for Kitacon, so I’ll post when I get back on Monday with a quick report : D

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An Introduction to Fluxx

December 6, 2009

Seeing as one of my projects this year is based on it (even though the actual assessment criteria ain’t been released yet…), I thought I’d do a quick overview of the card game in question. It’s a fun game I was introduced to earlier in the year, and I usually end up carrying a deck with me in my bag all the time, so feel free to ask me for a game.

Fluxx (created by Looney Labs) is, put simply, a card game with changing rules. The basic rules, turn structure and even winning conditions are all determined by the cards currently in play at the time, which makes for a very interesting programming project. It uses a specially-designed deck, and contains several types of cards:

  • Keepers are cards that can be played in front of you, in order to meet goal requirements.
  • Creepers are cards which stop the player from winning, therefore most be passed onto others or discarded to win.
  • Goals define the win conditions of a game, and can be changed at any point. Usually there can only be one active at a time, and requires a pair of specific keepers to win.
  • Action cards can be played in order to change the playing field by re-arranging cards, swapping hands, and all manner of different things.
  • New Rule cards change the base rules themselves, mostly saying how many cards can be drawn and played each turn, but can get more complicated (see below).

It really is an interesting game to design and program, especially with the mutable rules. For example, there’s a New Rule card called ‘Inflation’, which adds +1 to each numerical value on ANY card, which means storing all numbers on cards as variables instead of hard-coding. Constantly checking and modifying rule states and turn structures should be a challenge as well, but it’s not really graphically-intensive. I think it’s a game that would work very well on the GP2X handheld, and that Keith or Richard might appreciate it a little more than the standard broken platformer demos that seem to be on the handhelds in the lab. I’m hoping to get the graphical side of the engine up and running before Christmas (it’s coming along pretty well so far), and allow plenty of time for testing (although that’s probably not gonna happen, hurr).

FluxxMockupTest

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Projects Galore

October 25, 2009

Anicom’s going swimmingly. Plenty of memberships, a good choice of shows (although all Eastern, so we might have to work something out), and we have our Halloween party and another chiptune night hosted by Phil this week. Awesome stuff.

The final year modules seem to have settled in, working on a few things at the moment. Most of my concentration is going to the Games Development module, working with Allan to develop a 2D adventure game engine in XNA by Christmas. The creative guys are bringing some initial assets together well for our presentation in just over a week’s time, so I hope we’ll have something to show from the programming side. The other independent module that I can start working on now is Practical Project, and I’m still not sure what to do for it. Something graphics-wise probably, because I’m not doing any 3D modules and I’d like to learn Direct3D – Tyrone’s my project supervisor, so he’s helping me decided a project. I shoudl e-mail him about it, actually.

Having to learn Java in the Multiplayer Game Development module isn’t too bad, although the course tutoring seems a little rushed from Jean-Luc. For anyone on the module, I’d suggest picking up Core Java Vol. 1 – it’s on the Safari Books website if you’re a student, and it’s helping me tremendously. Games AI is going alright, although I need to read more LISP reference material to understand the syntax. I also need to do more GP2X research.

So… yeah. Busy. But I’m enjoying it, and that’s what counts.

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Final Year. Whee.

October 12, 2009

So here I am, back for my final year studying Computer Games Programming at Teesside University (not University of Teesside), and I’m glad that the summer’s over so I can get back into the swing of things. And although the work should be a lot harder this year, seeing as it’s quite independent, I’m looking forward to the modules I’ve chosen. I’ll be working with the GP2X systems (and maybe the PSP), learning a little Java and networking, AI, and some physics if I keep tagging along to the lectures. My independent projects for this year consist of a 2D adventure game, looking at LOD using DirectX, and on the side, I wanna try and code the card game Fluxx into a DS homebrew application – I think trying to implement all the rules would be pretty fun logic coding.

I’m looking forward to this year because I’m part of Anicom’s committee along with Bob and Morti. And it’s not just about the animu (although I’ve been running around frantically trying to get the show selection sorted the past two weeks) – It’s about making sure the first-years have fun, be social, and make friends. Most people are usually on games courses, meaning that sometimes they can’t be the most social people… so we try and help them along by introducing them to people with similar interests. And the more involved they get with the society, the greater the chance they’ll make more friends – yes, that means you, the fresher reading this. Join in and stuff. You won’t regret it.

The first few weeks of Anicom have gone surprisingly better than last year’s… well, disaster. We drew in plenty of people at during the stall, filled OL7 on the night, and ran a great games day on the Friday. Phil provided a great chiptune night in the second week, and the second session was just as popular as the first. So… yeah. Things are going very well, and I hope it stays this way.

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