I think this is supposed to be like month 7 or 8 in the program but ill just start now. This month i had Rules of the Game (ROG) and Structure of Game Development (SGD)
ROG -
In ROG we were reintroduced the design aspect of games. We learned about the Game Maker and Unity programs where we designed and created a prototype game using Game Maker. After completing a basic prototype we had several people test our game to improve quality and fun of our game.
SGD -
In SGD we really started to implement the use of states which are basically...well the state of which something is in... ie. resting state, moving state...that sort of stuff but with games...ie Main Menu, Game Play, Options... After the fourth lecture we had to start creating our own 2D game where the only requirements were that it had to have a player, multiple enemies, and projectiles. I ended up creating a game based off of 1942, an old arcade top down shooter. So the details of making my game... i will try to sum it up as much as possible, but i made a series of states for my title screen, main menu, options, how to play, high scores, game play and pause. Other than the wrappers the course directer gave us for the object factory which creates objects (kind of like a car factory), an object manager (kind of like a car dealership) and a bunch of wrappers to handle displaying a single image and playing sounds. What i had to create were the player, enemies, bullets, explosion, texture animations, font among many others. Look, for those that are interested, the following are some links...go to them if you want to play my game...
Latest DirectX:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=0CEF8180-E94A-4F56-B157-5AB8109CB4F5&displaylang=en
2045 Release (My Game):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ec5qqxym8nk809l
So please play my game and tell me what you think! This was the project i turned in after 10 days.
About Me
- James H. Hood II
- Orlando, FL, United States
- Served 4 years in the army and now I'm a student at Full Sail University where I'm pursuing my dream to make video games.
So the final for SGD kinda sucked...basically we were given a broken program the size of the project we just turned in. So basically there were 30+ files with hundreds of lines of code. Our first goal was to get it to compile and run. After that we had to implement a weapon selection/ toggle feature, which was cake...well all an all, the shittiest thing is that we only had 3 hours to figure out WTF our teachers code was doing, and then put the features he wanted into it. The resources were given but absolutely no direction other than what the general feature was supposed to do.
ReplyDeleteThe SGD final was hard, a true test of how capable you are at reading someone else code and work through it. The test could have been improved for sure, but this talent is certainly something we will need. There is never going to be a time that we don't have to sit down and figure out what kind of acid our coworker was on when he wrote a program. All in all though was probably the toughest test we have had
ReplyDeleteyeah i agree, we could have all figured it out if we had a little more time, but i mean looking at 30+ files with only 3 hours is like 6 minutes a file...its hard to figure out hundreds of line of code in 6 minutes haha...it was indeed a good reality booster though
ReplyDeleteDon't complain too much about the test for your class. They only gave you an everyday programming test you might receive while applying to a AAA game studio. The studio will only give you two hours, though.
ReplyDeleteI took SGD in 2005 and have jumped through hoops to get into game companies ever since. Take my advice. If you want to make it, work harder.
- Allan Wright IV
Also, you will be better off posting video of your game playing rather than an executable. Make the video part of your online portfolio. They won't teach you this at Full Sail, even though it's just as important as learning how to make games. Get more advice on GameCareerGuide.com and Sloperama.com.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, thank you for the advice! They didn't tell us about white board problems and entry exams till a couple of months down the road. I did post a post a video of my OpenGL project, but your right, I need to make one of our game as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, after dealing with more complex code, and after really debugging it, I have learned great techniques to figure out why something isn't working. More so than when I was in SGD.