Up up and away!

Interesting week so far. Mobile app development is going very well. UV issues have been sorted out and I've been able to move on to camera behaviors. I'm currently looking into onscreen sprite text for debug output but I'll definitely write something up for bitmap fonts while I'm at it. I've also had luck in finding a few people who are also interested in mobile development here locally. I look forward to exchanging information with all two of the in the future ^_^;

The project is officially over next week and the end couldn't possibly come any sooner. I'm not too terribly excited for the end result, understandably. The game (if you can call it that at this point) suffers from a number of issues. Some of them could have been avoided early on and others are just the result of lack of experience. Looking forward to moving on!

So agenda for the next week:
Improve upon mobile app
Final presentation
Interview with that company
Try to stay out of group arguments

Doing really well on that last one so far ;)

Camera and perspective

Great success! I finally figured out perspective in Android. Anybody needing help with camera setup in Android should consider using the static function gluPerspective in android.opengl.GLU rather than the GL10.glFrustum member function.

Today I'm working on setting up a camera class for android so that hopefully I can set up touchscreen and accelerometer based camera movement~! ^.^

Android Apps! Woo~!

So I haven't even had this G1 a week and I've written a matrix and vector math library and gotten input working in a simple app ^_^ OpenGL ES has its quirks but I plan to exploit the device's strengths rather than focusing on any inherent weaknesses. Before the end of the week I'm hoping to have texturing, touch screen, and threads down so that I can start working on a proof of concept for a game idea that I've got.

The final project has not changed significantly. Beta was last week and I'm officially over the final project experience. Rather than focusing on the train wreck that is quickly becoming my groups game I've decided to dedicate all of my leisure time to learning new things that could potentially be applied to Android or Java programming. It's no longer worth my time or sanity to contribute to a group that lacks leadership and direction. Hopefully the other guys aren't too proud of their small accomplishments because I'm certain that any potential employers won't be :\

I've got an interview lined up for next month and I'm eager to move on to a project in a true professional environment. It's been rea but it's time to take off the training wheels.

Beta monday

Getting ready for beta turn-in on Monday is slow going. I'm still not too happy with the group situation. Communication is still poor. Things have changed considerably since alpha turn in only a couple of weeks ago. The game is definitely more fun than previous and slowly but surely it's turning into an actual game and not so much a tech-demo. I'm not relaxing quite yet as the real work begins next week with gold right around the corner.

On a side note news of Sony's recent actions regarding LittleBigPlanet as well as future online services has successfully pushed me over the edge. I now officially dislike all of the three major console manufacturers. I never was a big fan of Microsoft. Nintendo fell from my good graces after I took a course on GBA development while simultaneously being disappointed with the poor quality of Wii titles. Now Sony, after cockblocking homebrew programmers left and right and adding "premium" themes to the mix, has managed to get into a political conundrum regarding the Qur'an. I'm not having it any longer. Effective immediately following graduation I plan to focus entirely on mobile device development, abandoning any idea of ever dealing with development on any home console platforms.

I used to find it dificult to imagine a world without console games. I see that day approaching faster now than ever. The demise of the video game industry as we know it brought about not by poor game titles or lack of consumer confidence, but by the fact that the makers of the systems consistently find ways to drive their loyal user base away.

Links:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/littlebigplanet-release-delayed-in-europe
http://ps3.qj.net/New-PSN-terms-of-use-Sony-can-sell-user-content-without-payment-to-user/pg/49/aid/125039

Work possibly?

Good news! I'm in talks with a reputable games company and hopefully I'll have a job coming straight out of school!

Unfortunately my love for the teams final project game has all but diminished. It's gotten to the point where nobody really wants to make a game because they're so pleased by their respective pieces of tech. My hands are dirty too so I'm making some drastic changes but it still saddens me to see the game turn out to be more of a tech demo :(

Alpha was monday and despite a decent presentation the gameplay just was not satisfactory so the whole team is plugging away at a laundry list of tasks to put the title back on track.

Alpha on monday

As the title states quite clearly, Alpha presentations are this coming monday (September 29). Prior to Thursday I wasn't particularly enthusiastic as the game was suffering from a significant lack of... game? Everything appears to be falling into place now with the inclusion of fresh animations and the ability to stomp on enemies and world objects. That last "feature" is entirely the result of the producer's confusion. At our last milestone on Monday he accidentally double jumped near an enemy and thought that he had jumped off of the enemies head. Hopefully the combination of bouncing from enemy to enemy and squishing each enemy will add a bit to the game play experience, but I'm still concerned about the group as a whole focusing on elements outside of the gameplay. Too much time is being spent creating dynamic menus and heads up displays and there still isn't a clear answer as to why these things are even needed in the game. Can't wait for November to roll around :D

Fun times!

GDC Austin was the best career decision I've made in a while. I met some interesting people from various companies and hopefully I've got a job lined up in the Austin area once school is over. God I can't wait for school to be over. I'm presently in lab working on final project because FF2 is due on monday. Tomorrow is my b-day so I had not planned to work on the project but it looks like that might not be the case ~_~

Insomniac was at the even but after speaking with a few indie game devs and actually attending an Austin IGDA event, I'm really not to keen on the idea of working for a large company. I've got my whole life ahead of me after all. Maybe going big is a bit too ambitious. I want to learn and grow as a programmer and a smaller company might actually be able to offer me that opportunity. Only time will tell.

In other news I am on the brink of a nervous breakdown looking through pages of broken code, thousand line long comments, and generally poorly designed systems that is turning out to be my teams final contribution to our school. Aside from the team hiccups I've been getting an awful lot of "your code is broken" from certain individuals even though I have managed to verify to their satisfaction that it is indeed the work of "gremlins" outside of my particular module. Between meeting students from other schools at AGDC and dealing with the students here I expect to find my skills to be a valuable commodity to some very fortunate employer in the near future. Now taking offers.

Insomniac Games at GDC Austin!

I was excited to be going to Austin next week in the first place but now I find out that Insomniac will be making an appearance. Can't wait to shake some hands and meet some people and hopefully learn a bit more about Insomniac along with the other developers.

Feature fragment 1 was ok. I'm sure that we exceeded the expectations of our EP (not even sure what EP means now that I think about it) but we were still lacking in documentation. This has been an ongoing problem mainly due to a lack of communication in the group but the project is coming along smoothly. We meet every day but Sunday so it definitely isn't an issue of getting work done. I just finished incorporating collision with world objects but I'm waiting to upload changes until the meeting tomorrow so that I can address a few observations. This puts me a full week ahead and some days ahead of my projected date of completion so now I've got some time to help others or iron out some old nagging issues. Finally fixed the "phantom bounding volume" issues that I was having as well.

And now to get some sleep. Next update might be a while as I leave for Austin on Saturday.

Feature Fragment 1

It's been a long week. Group meetings from Monday till Sunday aren't fun but the end justifies the means. The game is solid at this point. Everybody is ahead of schedule so we should be well prepared for Feature Fragment 2 two weeks from now. Can't wait to get some assets into the project but it looks like most of that stuff won't be here until after GDC Austin.

Hello world!

Friends, family, prospective employers, I welcome you all on this day, August 29, 2008, to my blog. Great things soon to follow.