Junior Year: Complete!

Yup, I just finished my 3rd year at WPI yesterday. It's strange because I'm glad that it's finally the summer but I miss school already. Having spent so much time in the IMGD Lab working and playing games has made the summer seem empty. Also, knowing that I only have one more term at WPI makes me long for it even more.

I have made a preliminary plan for the month and a half of summer that I have before I ship off to Japan. The idea is that each week will have a theme, and I will focus all my attention on that one theme so that I am actually productive and not just wasting time on the internet. Coincidentally, the themes for each week all start with the letter P. So I guess I can call it my Summer "P"lans. :D Anyway, here's what it looks like so far.

>WEEK 1 (May 5th - May 9th): Planning

It's not a full week, but it's a decent amount of time. This week will begin with unpacking all my stuff and settling in at home. I will then continue to iron out the details of the rest of my summer plans and more specific things I'd like to accomplish.

>WEEK 2 (May 10th - May 16th): Pokémon

I will finally set aside time to build a Pokémon team! I figured I'd get it out of my system early in the summer so that I can get it over with and have something ready for Japan and next year at WPI. I will probably begin the week by finishing up HeartGold and then proceed to actually building the team I planned out a while ago.

>WEEK 3 (May 17th - May 23rd): Portfolio

Since I'll have way too much time on my hands, I really should use it to add stuff to my portfolio. This school year has given me a bunch of stuff to show off, and more importantly a lot of knowledge and skill that I can put towards making more portfolio pieces. Although I am not going to be looking for a summer internship this year because of my Japan trip, I should have a portfolio that I can show off at any time, to potential employers and even just family. I'd also like to make a small game during this week, possibly in collaboration with other WPI IMGD majors.

>WEEK 4 (May 24th - May 30th): Play

What good is a summer vacation if you don't play video games? Although I'll probably be doing this throughout the summer, I thought that having a full week devoted to games would help me clear out my backlog of games. If you're interested in what my backlog looks like, here it is:

PC:

> Mirror's Edge

> Trine

> World of Goo

> Psychonauts

Wii:

> The Conduit

> Excitebots

> Sonic Unleashed

> Super Mario Galaxy 2

VC:

> Kirby's Dreamland 3

> Super Mario RPG

> Cave Story

DS:

> Sonic Chronicles

> Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

> Trace Memory

> Hotel Dusk

> Prof. Layton: Diabolical Box

> Pokémon HeartGold

I'm sure I'm missing some, and more will come out during the summer. Not to mention, there are still some on my wishlist that I haven't picked up and therefore haven't started. Also, Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out on May 23rd (the last day of this week) so I may make this week Week 4 and make something else Week 3. Decided to swap Week 3 and Week 4 since I'm feeling the need to work on my portfolio and thinking that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a great way to start off Week 4.

>WEEK 5 (May 31st - June 6th): Personal

I really couldn't think of another theme, but this one might work. Since it will be my second to last week in the USA I thought having a week to myself (not that the other weeks aren't for myself; they all are :D) to take care of any personal things would be beneficial. This includes hanging out with my girlfriend more, cleaning up my room, spending time with family, etc.

>WEEK 6 (June 7th - June 13th): Packing

On June 15th I leave for Japan and I will be living there for about 4 months (until October 8th). To make sure I don't leave the country without anything, I've devoted a whole week to packing and making sure I'm ready for the trip. I'll be cramming Japanese language, culture, and everything during this week (although I will be studying Japanese over the course of my summer vacation).

So there you have it. A plan for using my free time well for once. And now that it's written down and made public on the internet, I have more incentive to follow it!

D-Term Game Jam

(Just pretend like I posted that PAX East post when it actually happened and this one wasn't written directly afterwards... >.>)

Anyway, the WPI Game Development Club had their final Game Jam of the year this past weekend and it was AWESOME. 48 hours of pure game making and lots of pizza really makes for a great weekend. Technically it was my first ever game jam and I regret not having participated in one in the past. A bunch of guys from 38 Studios came by and were able to play our games and offer advice. I love having contact with the game industry, rather than just being hidden under the wing of game development academia.

Although I am an exec of the Game Development Club and was staffing the event, I set aside the weekend (school work can wait!) and made it my main focus to make a game. And it was sweet. I worked with Elliot Brodzki and Andrew Tremblay making QWERTY Madness, a platforming game where each letter on the keyboard (well, most of them) gives you a different power or ability once, and you have to use all your powers to be able to use them again. Andrew devised the main idea, Elliot did most of the programming, and I made all the art. We used Adam "Atomic" Saltsman's Actionscript 3 library, flixel, to make the game; I used GraphicsGale to make the in-game art, although I used Photoshop to make the menu screens and backgrounds.

I really like using Flash/flixel for several reasons. For one, it's extremely portable; we made it on Windows Vistas machine in the lab and now it can be played in almost every browser. The flixel library also has a ton of game-specific funtions, so even a sub-par programmer like myself can make a game fairly easily. It is also very conducive to iterative design, of which I am a fan. You can run the game at any time to test it, change a few lines of code, and run it again in a matter of seconds. It satiates my need to fix things and then see the results instantly. I plan to fool around with it when I have some free time, probably after the school year is over. I may even try to make a game with it on the plane ride to/from Japan!

Once again, you can play QWERTY Madness right HERE! Play until your keyboard breaks! (But don't blame us!)

PAX East (Just a tad bit late...)

Yeah, so I totally didn't post at all about PAX East during PAX East. It happened almost a month ago... My bad. Instead of relying on my awful short-term memory and trying to remember everything that happened and put them all in a loooooong post, I'm just going to put up links to my Facebook photo albums for all three days and give you a highlight-reel list of things that were awesome. Then I will try to regularly update my blog. Well, I'll get dinner first and then proceed to regularly update my blog.

PAX East was probably the best thing I have ever attended. Ever. There were so many people that all came together for one reason: Because they love video games. Or because they are the parent of someone who loves video games. Or because they were dragged to the event by their significant other who loves video games. But you get the point. Although I won't be able to make it to PAX Prime in September, I will most definitely be attending the next PAX East.

Photos!

> Day 1

> Day 2

> Day 3

Highlights!

> Hung out with fellow WPI mates. Also got to show my sister the wonders of the video game culture that she could only dream about.

> POKéWALKERS! EVERYWHERE! I got between 30-40 people each day, most of them unique encounters. Lots of good items and lots of watts.

> Tried out Picross 3D, WarioWare D.I.Y., and the DSi XL at the Nintendo Booth. I might get Picross 3D (because I loved Picross DS), slightly less might get WarioWare because of the shear depth, and the XL was actually pretty nice.

> Team Fortress 2 Tournament! We won the first round and then were destroyed in the second round...

> Mario Kart DS Tournament! I won first place! It was great.

> Swag! Lots of swag, including 2 Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver drawstring bags (he gave me an extra one on accident).

> Networking and talks/panels: Said hi to Ichiro Lambe from Dejobaan Games. The I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME panel he was on, along with Darius Kazemi (both WPI grads!), was hilarious and very informative. I also enjoyed the Memes and Microcultures talk (seeing as how I'm going to be in Japan in a few months).

> Video Game Orchestra was fantastic, although I had to leave halfway through. Their performance of the Wind Garden theme from Super Mario Galaxy was amazing.

I think that's about it. But, again, I have a terrible short-term memory and only remember the overall experience rather than specific instances. Maybe we should make games that focus less on super-realistic graphics and more on the player's experience... But that's a topic for another post. ;)

Greetings Internet!

Yup, I finally started a blog where I can spew my ideas on video games, game design, art, and whatever else I think up. It is also the first place that I've used my new pseudonym! I figured my previous one, that I had been using for over 6 years, was representative of my younger years and that I needed to find a new one for professional use. (Plus, my old name consisted of a color, a video game character, and a number, which just screams 90's.)

I'll be using this blog in the near future primarily for blogging about my 4-5 month trip to Japan, where I'll post pictures, travel logs, warstories, etc. I'm not sure how much I'll be using it until then, so you may not hear from me for a while. If you need me, I'll be elsewhere on the internet. Here's where you can find me:

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