Where Did February Go?

Happy Black History Month!

Hopefully, you know more than you previously did about how awesome people come from all backgrounds and how we should all be learning about the full history of humanity and our how past effects the present and the future, if we don't learn from previous missteps.
Don't forget these lessons!
//If you've forgotten or was never made to not be ignorant on peace, love, and historical knowledge, comment/email me and I can send you some links to enlighten you!!

Anyway, I've been sick, interviewing for jobs, coordinating clubs and trying to attend class (whoops), and doing homework. Nary any time to get into the nitty gritty on my projects... To make up for this, I'll update with a post on my different organizational obligations (Game Club, WOO!) and another post on how things are going with my app team on Qwest later on tonight, before or after meeting with the .

Till then

Fight the power!

TSU Game Programming Club

Edit: This post should have happened weeks ago... anyway, Happy Belated!

The Game Programming Club is a newly formed club in Tennessee State University's Computer Science Department by Professor Erdemir. During fall semester, students joined groups and worked together to learn and create using the Unity3D game engine.  The club and students are all energized and hopefully we'll be on a good footing to having a great and sustainable resource for the student body!

Here are some of the pictures from the final meeting of the Club at Tennessee State University back in December.

Some introductions of new members

A bowling game presentation

Pirate Island Themed Bowling Game

Most members, pre-meeting

My team member, Blake presenting our Battle Zone Remake

Jeff and team member(sorry) presenting their bowling game Razz

Jeff' gave a post game presentation on what he learned over the first semester working with Unity.

Global Game Jam 2014!

Alright, I'm done!

GGJ14 was a (personal) success!

You can try the game out via the page link above or here.

This year was my first ever Global Game Jam event. I jammed out with the awesome people of Nashville Game Developers! I think the jam continues until tonight (Sunday at 10) or so, but I'm dying from being at it for most of the day.

Theme: "We see things not as they are, but as we are"

This theme led to ideas that were very meta and even mindbendingly complicated to break down to a bare game mechanic sensibly.  It's something that we've already seen in games time and time again in games where different characters/character features give the player different in game reactions. After thinking on it during our brainstorm friday night, and most of Saturday morning, and even as I was in Franklin crafting this idea, I settled the evolved version of my one of my original ideas: a maze.

It's pretty simple, except it's not... Travel into the depths of your memories and maybe you can reflect on yourself and how you see things!

We Dared to Be Brilliant!

Brilliantly satirical, that is!

I'm speaking of my comrades Kyle and Khoa, who, along with myself, attempted to game the idea of the theme of Ludum Dare 28.  The theme was You Only Get One. With that, we embarked on creating a game in which You can Only Get One new game a year. So you pick one game, play it for an imaginary year, and then the next year, you can get something new!  You can read more on the idea and was accomplished before our magnificent project swan dived to a post compo/jam finish at  Kyle's Ludum Dare Blog Posts.

Here's my screenshot for the Fighter component of the game.

And here is a link if you want to try out the madness yourself:

I'll be back sometime this week with end of semester updates!

TGIBT (Thank God It's Break Time)

?It is day what?

Alrightey then.
November has been a weird month with a topsy turvy schedule. Since I was with you last, I've finished contributions to the Alpha Build of Project Bala with the implementation of 2 enemy types and a few enemy enemy behaviors; started up a remake of Battle Zone with a movable tank and have begun setting up the project framework through my quick lessons from most honorable leader Kyle Bolton; created an ugly, but functioning (enough) trombone; and made a few strides with Round The Block when other matters weren't pressing my brain to mush.

By the end of the year, I'll be done with Round the Block by virtue of not spending forever to release something.  I just need to add in power ups that change the ball speed, sounds, and slight design touch ups. The trombone is in a phase of interface modification and fixing the screen layout for Android.

I'll try to come back again for a good semester wrap up post within the next two weeks.

Happy Holidays!

WORKING, Working, working

Ok, so this week's post is pretty much a quick rundown of the ideas, ventures I'm currently undertaking:

> Round the Block has reached a few quick milestones this week following my take-over of library computers as my own work station. With the quick implementation of 3 of my proposed 7 or so power ups for the game, I feel I'm making steady progress amid the myriad of other responsibilities I have going on. Stay tuned for this one. It began as a small stepping stone, and with all the experience I'm gaining through this and by working with Kyle Bolton on Bala, I think I'll be able to make this a bit better than my original scope intended.. but then there's the RELEASE SOMETHING stigma that is constantly haunting and drumming through my mind! D:

> This week began with the goal of making the Fire Demon for Project Bala. The character is one of the various enemy types for the games and generally works as a living, angry fireball. Pour water on it, it dies; blow air on it, it grows! The creation and testing of this character has been pretty fun so far. For the coming week, I'll be refining and tweaking the Fire Demon ever closer to perfection and also implement the menacing Tu Spooky.

> Tennessee State University now has a game club simply titled "TSU Game Programming Club". I'm about the only senior level student participating as faculty and club adviser Dr. Erdemir has taken to establish it with mostly freshmen to promote longevity, involvement and commitment to the group. Since I am more experienced, I'm taking a leadership role with the Game Club by being lead developer in the A level group. Our game for the semester is a recreation of Battlezone in the Unity3D game engine. I'll be posting more updates with that as time goes on. After meeting up to discuss our first milestones and project set up, I'm setting up the Framework that our codebase for the game will follow by learning and working from Kyle's example.

> I've been in conversation with some guys about how to go about developing a "shmup" (SHoot eM UP - Space Invaders - Galaga - etc.) game. The idea was thrown around for using Unity, C#, or C++.  I really want to get the experience and knowledge of getting closer to fully programming a game without a pre-built engine so this small game, might be something that is doable in C++ with a two man team. We'd have a bit of learning and prep to do, so we'll see where this pipedream goes...

> Employment! How do you even do that??
I've been looking for Developer/Programmer, QA, general tech support jobs in the greater area of Nashville, TN.  I've been sort of freaking out from the anxiety of the real world and finding employment, so I've been searching and casting my net... So far, no bites or catches or whatever fisherman analogy fits here. This article, however, lifted my spirits slightly if most of my competition are incompetent non-programmers. This search of monetary gain and self preservation has also landed me on a few freelancer websites and the wealth of jobs that I could do (given the time, because if you're reading this, you clearly see I have TONS of time lying around. I'M STILL A COLLEGE STUDENT).
So, I'll definitely at least be a freelance developer! I still have street performing sax player as a fall back and cardboard house artist as a fall back to that.

To wrap up this post, I bid you good readers to ponder this question that's inspired from the esteemed artist, Big Boi:
Do you have a #BackUpPlanToTheBackUpPlanToBackUpTheBackUpPlan ?

Back to Reality...

Last week was #TSUHC2K13 or Tennessee State University Homecoming Week of 2013 for the hashtag impaired. Now that the madness has ended, I have to catch up on a bit of uneducational and pointless student duties that may have gone undone in the calamity.

In the realm, of the accomplished, I contributed to the enemy firing mechanic in Project Bala. You can follow that blog here for all the latest with that project from all team members (eventually). This is latest post more or less covers what the game is and where it will be for this first quarter target build.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled news, I've got a background working for the levels. Need to lower the opacity or overlay it with some layer that fades it... Advice is ALWAYS welcome.

I have goal points to get to, but I haven't been accurate in estimating times for hitting these.:

• PowerUps - Detailed/Unimplemented
• Main Levels - Detailed/Drawn Out/Unimplemented (Waiting to make everything function for Level so I can just duplicate and rearrange level layouts. Should be a quick step!)
• Sounds - Haven't thought to much about
• Finalized Designs - Still waiting till everything else is done.

Deadlines.. How do they work???
I'll update the playable build once I fix the background (and implement at least one of the powerups) by Wednesday night.

Random Tech Link of the Post: This post right here explained Genetic Algorithms way more than a certain professor did... Check out UK Developer Lee Jacobson. Follow his Twitter. and follow mine!

I'm Outy 5000!