Updates, updates, updates

So hey everyone, sorry I haven't been posting on this as much as I should have. 

Spring break just ended and it was amazing I got to spend time over it coding and making my game project look more and more amazing, thanks to my team and the art side. We've now finished the models for the vehicles and I've finished making the A.I. system, so that you feel more of a rush when you're getting chased. Here's a couple of sneaky pictures of it in Beta.

This is the tutorial of the game, where it tells the player how to play and what sort of mechanics are involved.

This shows the basic enemy vehicle circles a rock mound and the player must time it perfectly to evade them or they will be shot at by the enemy.

The final picture here show the base camp to end the tutorial if the player has succeeded in evading the enemy and has not run out of both energy and health.

Hopefully once this game is complete, I will be able to import this over to both the Android and App store, which will mean I'll have my first published app on a mobile platform.

Now on to my other classes you may remember a while ago I was starting to make a head for my 3D modeling class, well here's what I've got now.

 Still not the final product that I'll be happy with. Once I get this into Zbrush, tidy up the ears and mess around with hair styles I think I should be pretty happy to turn this in as my final project. And if I'm still not happy I'll just keep working at it until I'm satisfied.

This is the front, unsmoothed view of my designed head. Each square you can see is a face which can be manipulated to give a different look, then for every face there's 4 edges which can be manipulated (kinda scary to think about it that way). Well like I said above more time spent with this will make it look and feel a heck of a lot better.

Now on to my Web class, for the past few week's we've basically been going over setting up web servers (something makes me think our technicians didn't want to do it, but I joke our technicians are really good guys and they really know their stuff). I decided to set up an SVN server, it's a simple file transfer server that allows the members of my game development team to commit their files to the server so that when other members of the group connect to it they will receive the updated versions of old files and all new files. Luckily this also allows the team to go back to previous builds of the game to see if there was a point in which the game performed better and how the current problem could be changed.

Now for my last but certainly not least class. My Machinima class, for anybody who doesn't know Machinima is a process by which the creators will make a movie inside of a game rather then use real people or places. Yesterday was the hand in date and I am very proud of it. When I have the movie released to me I will upload to here and YouTube for all to see. For now though everyone will have to settle for some small clips from it.

In this scene we see our two protagonists arguing over the internet speed which has been steadily getting slower and slower over the course of the movie. In this shot we see the MMO player.

This is the other side of the argument from the FPS player.

This is a longer video but is shows more of the facial expressions used by the FPS player character.

The entire process of writing the script, making the animatics, building the set, casting the roles, filming and editing took about 9 days. The role of the FPS player was played by myself, the MMO player was played by Rick Blaylock and a couple of other characters (you'll see them when I post the full video, not going to spoil anything but they made me laugh too loud in the library), were played by Tom Kline. The set was built by Shaun Fawson and finally the facial expressions, phoneme creation and editing was done by me.

What I've learnt from this experience is that all members of your team are needed at all times, you never know when you might have to reshoot a scene from goodness know how many different angles.

Now for my extra fun stuff. Recently the GSUU (Gaming Society University of Utah) YouTube page was handed over to me to make more content and give us more presence in both the online and local community. So far we have 19 subscribers and over 1,000 views on our videos.

For this I am proud, we're still small but we're growing. And for once I'm glad I took this huge project it helps me improve my skills with camera work, directing, editing, script writing, researching, meta-dataing and marketing. Being everything behind the camera isn't the hardest job, I would say the hardest job is being in front of the camera and having to put yourself across as being entertaining and informative at the same time which is no mean feat. I would like to thank, Hubert, Yaz, Miki and Erik for being the faces our GSUUtube and I hope to make it bigger and better this semester and beyond.

Now it's video time below I'll post a couple of our videos that I think was our best.

Above is from our recent visit to the newly opened Atomic Arcade at 3939 Highland Drive, Holladay, UT 84124 (plug wasn't necessary but I liked the place and more people should go to it). We were lucky to grab an interview with the owner, Chris, and get to ask him a few questions about the place. Hope you enjoy.

And because I like a bit of promotion in my blog I present the Subscriber drive with Ponies. Yaz decided to take the bullet for us and agree to Rainbow dash her hair, which basically means this. 

Now for my final extra project, I've decided in between all of this and maintaining a table top game every Friday, I'm going to try and squeeze in a new website for GSUU as we currently have nothing. My idea is to take my design from my last website and a couple of key aspects like the new member system and map detail system, pictures will be down below.

So yea, that's all I have to say for now I'll be back on hopefully in the next while to post my Machinima video.

YouTube, first playable and Machinima movie

So it's been yet another while since I last posted on here but I actually have a valid excuse for it this time and I have some proof to back me up.

In the last week I have spent countless hours working on three of my main projects for the semester. Those projects being; getting my game ready for first playable with the client, building sets and actors for my Machinima movie and working on making a YouTube channel for GSUU.

The first playable went better than expected, the client seemed very pleased with everything that was shown to him and soon I'll be able to do a video on it to show everyone.

The Machinima movie is in it final stages the camera work is being done as I type this and then final editing will be completed on Tuesday then just to upload it on Thursday.

On Friday I took over the GSUUtube page and I've started getting content up there and having people with in the club make some videos to promote ourselves a bit more.

Here's a handy dandy link to the channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/GSUUtube

Blog where art thou?

Apart from work I've been playing a bit of League of Legends or LoL. Thanks to LoL my ever growing group of friends have taken over an entire row of desks and power points in the Union building between 12 noon and 8pm that's with breaks for class in between.

Also I started a Vampire: The Masquerade group which has grown up to 10 people and they're currently in a campaign I wrote which is set in Ireland during the troubles. The more hardcore players that play are going to be in a secondary campaign that I'm starting next week. The new campaign will be set in the Mage universe.

Making games, reading comics and Yu-Gi-Oh

It's been about a week since I last posted anything on here, this was mainly due to me gaming, working and sleeping; sometimes they even over lapped. So here is everything that has happened to me in the last 5 days.

On Saturday Aaron and I took a trip into the city for find random cables to make a TV work, we didn't find any. After our disappointment in Radio Shack we went for some lunch at a local restaurant called Chilies. It was awesome, everything was nice and spicy.

It may not look like much from the outside but inside it's amazing.

After filling ourselves to the brim with some spicy chicken we wandered(in a food haze) down the road to Night Flight Comics to pick up a few that we had missed out on  over the last couple of weeks.

 

Looking back over the covers of the last few issues I've bought, there seems to be a pattern with the front cover and what I buy.

So yea that was Saturday. Now on to Sunday, when the ASUU was showing Cowboys and Aliens(fun movie but it jumps the shark way too often). After the movie finished their was a raffle type thing and I won this.

 

That's right a six pack of Coke and 12 cans of Ginger Ale. They're kind to us gamers at U of U.

After all the prizes had been dealt out I wondered out into the night in search of some sleep. This was not to be as I ran into Galen who invited me to Settlers of Catan IN SPACE! So we rounded up a couple of other players, they being Aaron and Nick and we played late into the night in which sleep was the only winner of the game.

The stars of the game, Galen on the right not looking too happy that he's losing. Aaron looking way to happy that's he's winning and Nick in the back playing some LoL and will in the end rage quit the match.

That was pretty much my weekend. This week was a week of hard work and lack of sleep. This week I had to hand in my first assignment for Machinima which went over great at the class viewing. This week was also the finishing up of my hand model.

This is what ended up with, it's not the best picture as I had to lower the poly count to make Maya be a little more relaxed on my laptop.

 Here's the hand viewed from the side of the thumb. I wasn't happy with the thumb in the end as it looked like it was broken and kinda like a toe.

Here's the hand from the opposite side, as you can see the thumb looks really off and not part of the hand. I'll be spending some time this weekend going over it and trying to improve it as much as I can.

The hand took up most of my free time which I was actually awake for. The rest of my free time was spent around starting the VGDS game, the UU games development class(thank you Daryl for making that available) and the Games Development class game which are all due in May. I look forward to doing all of this during Finals.

After a long week of work and no sleep I received a little something from back home. That's right, Yu-Gi-Oh cards and the new set to boot. It was a good set and I have a Tour Bus if anyone wants to buy it.

And one final note on this long blog, watch epiclyod's Dis Raps For Hire show on YouTube.

Games, jobs and game jobs

Not much has happened in the past few days, I've been spending most of my time on coding and making a 3D model of a hand(which takes forever!) but I know that by the end of the whole process I will be able to walk into an interview with who ever takes me on and some them my mad modelling skills.

The only interesting thing to happen to me really happened during the mid-week was when I took a couple hours of rest to go and watch The Help. Turned out to be an amazing movie, props to the people who made it.

Apart from that I applied for 12 new jobs with amazing cover letters and a new an improves CV. All I can do now is wait and see.

For anyone that's interested these are the jobs I went for.

EA:

• Co-op- Associate Software Engineer- Origin.
• Software Engineer Intern - Madden Austin.
• Co-op - Web Content Manager - EA Sports Online.
• EA SPORTS Internship - Game Design.
• Co-op Game Client Programmer - Playfish.
• Co-op - Associate Software Engineer - FIFA.
• Co-op - Associate Software Engineer - EA Sports Online.
• EA SPORTS Internship - Software Engineer.
• Co-op - Associate Software Engineer - TABU.

Gameloft:

• Game design intern

Riot Games:

• Web QA Analyst

Rockstar North:

• Junior IT Desktop Support

The job market will not know what hit it come the morning.

Image showcase. The new promo poster for Bioshock: Infinite

Free weekends means creation

So I had the weekend off and not very much to do and I decided to take on of our homework's from Machinima a step forward in difficulty. 

The homework was to create a room, fill it with a couple of characters and make them do something using Hammer.

For the room I did this:

This is the lower part of the WEB building I take classes in(I made the picture a bit larger as there is a lot going on it). This shows the 3D mesh version of the building.

This is it with some textures and details. To the side you will see a top down view of the building as well as side and back views.

This is the inside, when I took these screen shots the I hadn't decide on what texture to use for the walls, floor and ceiling.

This is the entrance to the building with fully operational doors.

This is the main seating area with a mini-staircase and wheelchair ramp.

This is basic classroom with some textures but no desk or seats. The purple rectangles at the back are the movable doors and the orange rectangles are the non-movable doors.

I created multiple classrooms and decided to make my video in one of them.

This is that classroom. In this I have 11 NPC's all acting with each other using the predefined script I had written. The pink rectangle is a set sequence that will perform an action that I have chosen. The red rectangle on the floor was me selecting it and choosing the texture.

I know the scene isn't that good but it's a first try and all first tries are meant to suck so you can improve upon them. Besides I prefer building the world rather than animating its contents.

Now it's time for RANDOM PICTURES FROM THE WEEKEND!

Like the look of this cookie? You should, it's brought to you by the fine bakers of U of U. This cookie is no ordinary cookie. It's double chocolate chipped, 4" across and 1.36cm in height(Yes i know it's sad that I measured the cookie).

Disappointment will only be brought to those from the UK if they think this is a NORMAL Milky Way, which it isn't! It's just two snack size Mars bars put together.

Oh yea we got an awesome snow storm on Saturday. This was taken about 16:47(properties on  digital photos are getting very detailed). Seems pretty light for a snow storm only a couple of inches.

This was but an hour later(about 17:58). This was all cleared after I took the last picture, now it's about 6" in depth. The snow carried on for about 3 more hours, giving us 1 foot of snow! Needless to say this progressed into a mass snowball fight between floors. Some floors may have been at an advantage, knowing one of the guys who was snow plowing in a mini-tractor. Having a lot of snow dumped on you, not so fun as I found out. With the tractor now in the game my floor calling it a day and retired back to the safety and warmth of our dorm rooms.

So that was my weekend, the snow is still here and I had 3D modelling at 7pm(01/23/2012). Time to do some washing I think.

In keeping with my last post I bring you two different Fus Ro Dah videos.

And

NDA's and GSUU

Well it's been a very, very interesting couple of days since I last posted. As I mentioned in a previous blog I had a presentation to give on a product I had only known about 2 days before hand. The result of that presentation? A*. Looks like the amount of research and studying I did on our product and brainstorming ways to improve turned out to be the best thing to do.

Now, here's the best part of the class, our Professor, Marty, told the class that one team of games developers would be signing a NDA(Non-Disclosure Agreement). Turns out it was my team! Let's just say after we found out it was us there was an Anchorman moment.

It may not be the same topic but we had our Yea! moment.

Due to the NDA I cannot discuss the content of the project but what I can say is I am finally doing what I want to do for a living.

Now on to GSUU. Being a new member and wanting to improve things I have been in talks with the Presodent Roger, trying to get different tournaments and things running, trying to get VGDS more involved with GSUU and all round fleshing out of the society. This is going very well, I've submitted a slue of ideas that could be used and hopefully enable Glitch(miss you guys) and GSUU to have some sort of international relationship.

Just to end this off, the one video that is now circulating my classes(This has nothing to do with me constantly playing it and laughing way too loudly).

Who said reinventing the dishwasher would be easy?

It's been a couple days since I posted last, this is mainly due to the work load that has just fallen into my lap, mainly because I chose to take it on with out knowing what I was getting into.

The work load may be large but my willingness to do it is larger because these are classes I actually want to do rather than having to learn Octal and 2's compliment which so far have not benefited me in any roles I have applied for in the games industry.

So what does the actual work load entail? Well for Machinima we have to design our own level and have characters do something interesting. This project is then shown in front of the entire class and criticized. This is due next Thursday. As I mentioned in previous blog we have to use Hammer which is a world editor associated with the Source engine from Valve.

The second class adding on to my work load is Video Game Design and Development. I only joined the class on Tuesday(01/18/2012) as it was previously full up and I was lucky enough to know someone who was dropping it as they had nor coding or artistic knowledge to help with the big project(this being a marketing game to be shown to retailers a la Dragons Den style). So the work that I had to pick up on was a mini-project the team I was joining had been working on for over a month of class time. As you can probably work out from the title the team had to reinvent the dishwasher. This is due on Thursday(01/19/2012) and will be presented in front of the class. I've got a lot of reading still to do.

Luckily I have my three favorite drinks to help me study the noted and research.

*note: There is no such thing as semi-skimmed over here only 2% reduced fat. This upsets me slightly.

On the funner side of the workload I started a Yu-Gi-Oh mini-league within the GSUU and there's about 15 people in it so that's good and I started my own table top gaming group from the GSUU members. I'm slightly nervous about this as I don't have that much experience being a DM or storyteller, but hopefully I've picked up a few things from Zakk and I can make this work.

For VGDS now being the only programmer is tough as I have to implement the crazy stuff we want to be in the game but I'm loving every moment of it as I know that the effort I put in now will make the game even better and I will be proud to say that I had a major hand in creating this game. It also doesn't hurt that I can put this on a resume to future employers to show I am capable and doing not one but 2 full gaming projects in the space of 4 months.

In other news the ever so lovely Nokia that I was using as my mobile broke and I promptly got a new phone and it only cost me £53.97.

So that's all that has happened to me in the last few days, apart from Martin Luther King Jr day which was on Monday(01/16/2012), but I just slept through this as I was worn out from coding.

Thought I'd throw in a picture of the bridge I have to cross to get to and from class every day.

The times, they are a blogging

It's been a couple of days since my last post and a lot has happened since then.

So Friday started with coding which was pretty good to get back into doing in a school environment rather than on my own time.

The afternoon rolled round and it was time for VGDS(Video Game Development Society), we spent about two hours brainstorming ideas for the game and what engine we should be using or if we would have to code most of it by hand(which made me scream in my internal monologue). 

After that was done, it was time for GSUU(Gaming Society University of Utah), this actually turned out to be a disappointment considering that there's a Microsoft Arcade downstairs in the union. In response to this I decided to take it upon myself to create events such as a card game tournament and a DnD game or two just to get everyone up and interacting with each other rather moping in the corners playing League of Legends. Furthermore I emailed off to the president of the society asking to meet with him next week and to try and see if I can help in anyway to raise interest both inside and outside of the society with the current members.

So that was Friday, Saturday was a better day as I had no class and it was the beginning of the long weekend(Martin Luther King Jr day is on Monday(1/16/2012)). I started out by heading to a sneak peek event out in West Valley City, it's about a 50 minute journey via Trax and I get on free so everything was nice. Turned out I was late and couldn't get into the sneak peek, I was livid, but no matter.

So I went back into SLC and called up a couple of guys I know from class and clubs(Roger, Nick, Pat and Aaron) and we went to lunch at The Pie. Apparently this is the best place for students to get pizza for uber cheap prices and free refills, later on in the day I find out that they actually sell pizzas and send them internationally(crazy I know but true).

 This is just a small number of awards they have received from various awarding bodies.

This is where you order, behind me is the door so the ordering area is small.

If you're wondering why the walls are covered in writing, the management encourages the customers to do it. The main space also acts as a club for new bands and band competitions.

After lunch we wondered about aimlessly for a while, riding the Trax to random places like Sandy and Daybreak.

This just so happens to be the West Valley City station that I ended up back in.

This is the front of the Utes Football Stadium.

Later on at night the Late Night Programmers club put on Real Steel.

It was an OK movie, it passed the time with some mediocre fight scenes but the best scene had to be the American from the deep south trying to be black.

With the night over I headed back to my dorm room but not with out "borrowing" some of the posters I've seen about the place.

Now my room has some content bar the amount of socks that I need to wash WHOO!

Thursdays just aren't the same without more than one class

Yup as you guessed it, I only had one class today and it was Machinima. Very relaxed and light hearted class as always(even though there has only been two classes).

In the class we discussed using Hammer, which is the map builder that uses the Source engine from Valve. We also covered Face poser, this is the lip and facial sync tool that comes with Hammer. The best part of the class had to be the homework for Tuesday, we have to download and play Half-Life 2 Episode 2 to get a feel for the source engine. This weekend will be good!

Nothing much happened after class I grabbed some lunch in the Union, took a couple of photo's from the pathway beside the WEB building.

 This is the WEB building, it may look big but in fact there are only two floors above ground level and everything else is basement.

 This was a picture I took by doing a 180 degree turn. It's not very clear in this picture but you can catch a glimpse of Salt Lake City Center and City Hall.

Here's a better one of City Center that I zoomed in for.

Finally, here's City Hall with the airport and what I think is the Salt Lake flats right behind it. Also that grey/blue you see behind all of the buildings? That's low lying clouds coming in towards the valley from the mountains.

After my sight seeing was done for the day I went to the Campus Store and all I can say is "Wow!". The shop had two floors, it's own computer section, a clothing shop, book shop, just about everything that a Student could possibly want during the school year.

Think that's too much for on store? Here's the link:

http://www.bookstore.utah.edu/utah/home.aspx

And here's an image of it

So that was my day, after I was done at the store I came back and started coding, getting ready for my next adventure with the VGDS tomorrow and I start my new class that I'm taking instead of Film so rock on Friday, gaming and coding.