Blogging is for Squares

I quit! So, I guess this documents my first school year in Seattle. Thanks for everyone who has been checking this thing.

Supposedly my family will start up a community blog so we can keep up with all we're doin. Here's hopin!

Later all!

Update: Family blarg is called The Blog That Must Not Be Named. I will be posting there from now on.

Rawk O'Clawk

We presented our game in front of a bunch of other students yesterday and we got a very positive response. People were telling us how cool our idea was. My self-esteem went crazy, and it's pretty healthy anyway. We all compared it to Optimus Prime going super-saiyan (geek jokes). I was pretty lucky to have such kickbutt teammates.

Afterwards, we watched The Forbidden Kingdom, the movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It was kind of a weird movie for either of them, and they each did great. It was kind of in the format of a Chinese folktale, but with lots of action fighting. Parts of the story weren't astonishing, but the overall story concept was still intersting. And it involved the Monkey King, who rawks all sawks. Who watches those movies for story anyway?

I probably won't blog for a couple weeks, as I am coming home for a week before summer school. Speaking of, anyone want to pick me up at the Kansas City airport? It's on April 24th at 6pm. I'll probably fly straight into Springfield from now on, gas prices and all.

Edit: Happy Four Twenty!

Everything Right is Wrong Again

Once again, Happy Friday. So, our game is wrapping up, and it's becoming playable. Though, it seems like it only works with XBox controllers, of which I do not own. I'd still like to find a way for people to play it when I visit home. Anyway, check out the logo I made!



And here's a recent pic. If you can't tell, that piece of ground at the bottom got cut off and is now falling. Pretty neat, eh?

By the way, Digipen has a copyright on those images, so don't use them without permission!

So, the gears are already turning on our next project. It's weird being back at square one, and we have a lot of initial setup to do. This time we're a team of five programmers, and eventually two to four artists. Our team name is probably Team Satan (it wasn't even my idea!). The game is Ronin Duck. Check out some of my sketches! Taken with a crappy camera (hint hint for people who want to buy me a good camera or a scanner).


Some random sketches, including the main character, a samurai duck with a rice hat and bamboo sword. Also, a possible clunky robot boss, a punk robot, and a ghost thing.


The ronin duck hitting several robots in a row! I doodled this in class, so you can kind of see notes through the page.

So, a new Mario Kart is coming out this month. So soon after Brawl, I am barely concerned with it! It's supposed to have good internet functionality though, so it'll be another good game for playing with Missouri people. Also, Okami, a stylish adventure game, is coming out on the Wii. Even though I haven't played it yet, it is one of the inspirations for Ronin Duck's style. I bet I play it over my brief break.

Business as usual

So, according to dad, it's the apocolypse in Missouri? Earthquakes and everything? Please, discuss!

Mom says, visit Remote Control Magic and look at the light heavy chest! At the time of writing, it's featured on the front page. Anyway, they're crafted by none other than master magician, Steve Corbett. Before you do any magic though, make sure you have proper witch or wizard atire. Just a suggestion.

Two weeks left of the semester, and the game is wrapping up nicely. It looks like we'll get to show it to a bunch of people the last week, and maybe some artists too to get some interest for next year's game. Of which, we're already getting excited about. The original concept was one of my ideas, but everyone has some good additions. I won't disclose anything on the webternet, other than it's an adventure game. Feel free to ask for more details. So, four person programming team and probably a team of artists, and we're hoping to get some decent attention. Next year should be pretty fun.

As for this year, I'm done with my graphics class, way ahead of schedule. One last project in math that might be challenging. And Networking is causing me problems, so it may not be perfect by the end. O welz.

Hey, I might come home for a couple weeks when this is all done. I'm going to wait and see when finals are before I order any plane tickets though. We'll see!

I never go to work!

For those of you with kids (or with adults), They Might Be Giants do tons of kids stuff. They have a couple DVDs on ABCs and 123s, a kid's album, and even a book that Alli hasn't read yet. Every Friday they release a Family video podcast, so check em out!







The second song in that last video is actually one of our drinking songs. Anyway, all their podcasts can be found here and probably on iTunes. Disney handles their kids stuff too, so its weird to buy TMBG things from Disney.


To switch to the exact opposite gear, George Carlin had his usual HBO special. Enlightening as usual. He gives some parenting advice, provides some insight into American thinking, WWJD, etc. Don't watch if you don't like bad words or criticism on religion or the US. Otherwise, enjoy.



Man, blogging is easy if I just post things other people make!

I'm a particle man?

I seriously don't have anything to talk about! I'll show some pictures from a few of my projects though. Hey, maybe we should have some kind of community blog for all of us. If I was seeing Seattle more, I'd have more to blog about, but it's hard to blog about homework.


Graphics class:
Ok, this might not seem impressive, but usually when people do graphics programming, they use some graphics tools. In this program, I'm finding the color of each individual pixel on my own. So, lots of lighting, 3D geometry, and algorithms. This class has several projects, but I like the way this one looks.



Networking:
A semester long project to make a networked game. I finished the game pretty quick, it's very simple. The networking part of it has me pulling hair though. Maybe when I finish, we can play via internet!



Our semester game project:
Schizm Fighters! It's a multiplayer battle game where you cut the ground and try to get other people to fall off. I did all the graphics stuff (including the particles). Since it's just a semester game, we probably won't be able to finish it, but we're going to try to have something playable at least.














For next year, it looks like we may be making a Zelda-style adventure game (smaller though, 3 dungeons or so) with cool mouse-gestured-based action system. For yearlong projects, they usually assign some art students to it too, so I think it could be really fun and stylish. We plan to win all the awards.

Happy Pi Day!

It's Pi Day! A very important day of the year for people who like Pi or pie. At the very least, each some pie today, to celebrate a popular number. It also happens to be Einstein's birthday. I myself don't believe this to be a coincidence.

So, as everyone knows, at MS&T (previously known as UMR), St. Pat's is a big deal. This year marks the school's hundredth anniversary celebrating the holiday, so it will be crazy. I predict a few casualties, no joke. Many recent alumni across the country have even migrated to Rolla this week to go crazy. While it was tempting, I am bound to my homeworks. This will actually my first year in a few years that I won't be partying for an entire week with others that understand the holiday. A few of us are at least going out on Saturday, hopefully finding a good drinking establishment, as I haven't found one yet. I will probably share stories of past St. Pat's adventures, possibly inspiring the saint into others. Like St. Pat, most people don't like snakes, so I imagine it will be easy to relate to him.

Also this week I will probably be getting a visit from Sam and Dustin. They are both considering moving to Seattle, so they want to check the place out. I'm planning to power down some work this weekend so I can dedicate some time to them. We will probably visit Downtown Seattle and Pike Place Market, and Sam probably wants to visit the Digipen art campus. If weather permits, we may go hiking. These will be the sort of things I will take all visitors to do, eventually refined into "Kelly's Seattle Visitor Guide For People Who Are Only Here A Few Days". It will be a grand guide of 3 or 4 things, and even some bonus stuff like "Feed Kelly" and "Do Kelly's Homework", and of course "CHORES". It's great to have visitors!

My are Riley fought online, and it was a worthy duel. Dumb as he is, he has a good handle of Sonic, Pit, and ROB. They were good fights, even though he is stinky, fat, ugly, and idiot.

You heard me.

Update: No visitors! Sam got screwed by a teacher or something, so the trip is postponed.

You're either on the bus, or off the bus

So the new Smash Bros is out, and I think I've been talking about it since August or so. It's fun! For those who don't follow games, it's a game featuring lots of Nintendo characters like Mario and Link and Donkey Kong all competing against each other. And it is only a matter of time before I'll be playing on the internet with friends and family in Missouri. So, it is a good thing I'm ahead on my work. Oh yeah, anyone who gets the game, let me know so we can exchange friend codes.

I finally saw the movie Across the Universe, which is a musical with all Beatles songs. They work in the songs so that they fit what's going on too. There were parts of the movie that were pretty weird, but I liked it. I think it might have been allegorical, but I'm not sure. Like, there was a character that seemed like she was supposed to be like Janis Joplin, and another one like Jimi Hendrix. They weren't them of course, they were just similar. And the main characters might have respresented Paul and Linda, and after that I don't know. There was some cameos too, like Bono singing "I am the Walrus", and Eddie Izzard doing "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", and Joe Cocker himself sang "Come Together". Anyway, I imagine it's only for people who like the Beatles, and even then, not for the kind of fan that thinks the Beatles should be left alone. I myself like to see reinterpretations of recognized stuff.

It looks as if my entire month of August will be open, so I will probably be home that whole time. No promises, but that's the plan at the moment. Back to games!

Diseaseweek

Well, I guess one of the things about conferences (especially in February) is that everyone gets sick. I've been battling a cold pretty well, then on Monday I went home with a fever (102.7) that had me in bed all day. By the end of the day though, I was dandy. My cold starting caving too, so I was back on the bike by Thursday.

So, my original plan was to power through my projects this week so I'd have a clean slate when I get Smash Brothers on Wednesday. But school decided that this dream was not to be, as my current projectload is enough to keep me busy for a while, along with a midterm on Monday. Still, I will do what I can. I think I can knock a couple out this weekend, but there's a big one I can only work on at school that might take me a couple more weeks. I'm looking forward to next year when I'll have fewer classes and fewer projects. Projects are stressful, it turns out, especially several at once.

Oh hey, I found a video of me fighting in the Brawl tournament! It's not a very good video, but I'm playing Zelda, the girl in the black dress. The camera guy is rooting for someone else, so it's hard to hear a lot of people rooting for me.



If anyone has extra hours to donate, I will take them. Although GDC was great, that extra week would have been really nice. Oh well, back to work!

Show me your moves!

~Warning~ Most of this is a geek post!

GDC was as fun as snail pie (which is fun)! First, I'll mention what mom saw on the news. There's a new little headset thing that lets you play games with thoughts AND your facial expressions. The one I played was by Emotiv, but I was told there was another one. Anyway, I played a demo where you do things like lift rocks by imagining the rock lifting, repairing a bridge the same way, and eventually conquering a challenging of lifting a mountain. Some people found it challenging, but I RULED. It was very empowering, lifting a mountain with my mind. The demo seemed a little rough around the edges, but it is currently scheduled for Christmas, so I'm sure there will be a lot of hype then.

There was several technology things on display, like motion sensors and new kinds of input. Sony had a thing that could scan parts of a tank you drew on paper and put the tank in a playable game. My favorite games were the independent ones, because they are allowed to do more innovative stuff. Some were featured in the Indepdent Games Festival, including a Digipen one that won best student game. There was also some good ones part of the XNA Community, only featured on XBox Live. They are made with XNA though, which means any ol goober can have a game on XBox Live.

By the way, I was a volunteer at the conference so that I got a free $2000 all access ticket (still had to pay for travel and lodging) for 15 hours of work. The downsides are waking up at 7am everday, not having as much time to look at all the cool stuff and setting up job contacts, and putting up with a bunch of childish weirdos. It was RA-style silliness, where you don't mind the work and even do a little extra, but they treat everyone like kids. Not my thing. But still, completely worth it, and I will probably do it again next year. Just a note, there were a lot of lectures on how to make good music scores and audio stuff too, so if anyone wanted to do this, it'd be worth it for them too (BWILEY).

I was in a Smash Brothers Brawl tournament! I was in the top six out of 160 enthusiastic Brawl fans. It was just a fun tournament, so items and goofy levels were on, but still, it was great to experience the game so early. By the way, the game is a ton of fun to watch! Everyone was going crazy! In the first tournament bracket, I played as Ness, because I assumed he'd be a crowd favorite, and I was right. I got a huge rush out of beating people with hundreds of people cheering "KELROY!" Seriously, I'm not sure if I'll be able to play anymore without an audience. In the final bracket, I chose Zelda, because I win more with her. I was one fight away from the final game, and at first I was winning hard, but then a person I beat in the previous round starting heckling me. People told him to shutup, but he did not. It messed me up because I got a little madder than I should have. I still enjoyed myself a lot, but it is too bad that people like that exist. Anyway, a friend of mine won, so it was still celebratory.

Those were the highlights! I will probably have more to say next time, and maybe pictures and videos.

Cali Steals Your Soul

Or so I'm told!

So, I've been hearing horrible things about Missouri weather being wacky. Seattle weather is actually pretty boring compared to what I'm used to. Temperature doesn't go up and down, just stays about the same. Rarely gets below freezing. And next week I'll be in San Fransisco, which also stays about the same weather all the time.

Hey, the writer's strike is over! YAY. Now maybe they'll start making more new cartoons. Also, that bonus Heroes thing, whatever that is. TV has definately been in a dry spell lately. To be honest, I have not been tuning in to American Gladiator or other "reality television". Ever. Not ever.

So, politics have been hot lately. Things are pretty tight between Bill Clinton and Bob Bop Perama. And on the other side, it seems that Darth Applebee has been pushed into lava by John Wayne. So, between Bill Clinton, Bob Bop Perama, and John Wayne, I don't think we can lose. I am personally going for Bob Bop Perama, because he is mega-honest and recognizes the silly Red vs Blue problem. It'd be cool to have a lady president, but Bill Clinton seems to be another politician that says what we will get her the most votes, so we're not actually sure what we're going to get. I'm sure she'd be great, but I likes me some honesty. And John Wayne is just a swell guy, though it seems like he has extra war plans.

We'll see! brb, California

Code Monkey like Fritos

The musician Jonathan Coulton will be playing at GDC. He is well-liked for writing good geek music, such as Code Monkey (a song for programmers), Re: Your Brains (a song about zombies), and Skullcrusher Mountain (a song about a villain in love). He also made the song at the end of the game Portal, which was a huge game at the end of last year. Also, it was made by former Digipen students.

I really don't have much to talk about. I was barely aware a week even happened. My rendering project calculates light now. We're about done documenting our game and soon to kick it in gear. There's a math project now that I am not excited about. Done with the first step of the network project, and about to start the part that I don't know how to do. I'm going to try to do a ton of stuff this week so I have less to worry about. After all, it's hard to stress out on things I've already finished.

After GDC, I'll probably have a better idea about my summer plans. If there aren't any job prospects I'm interested in, I'll just plan on summer school and working parttime at Nintendo. I'd probably only be interested in a company that makes RPGs (role-playing games, games that are usually big on story and adventure) since that's what I want to make someday.

What's everyone else up to?

The Adventures of Sir Kelroy: Second Quest

Sir Kelroy awoke in the middle of the night to the painful cries of his broken steed, Ol Nimoy. The sting of battle had been especially harsh on Sir Kelroy's faithful motorcycle, especially since Sir Kelroy's blade, Ol Shatner, had been in the shop and he had been using Ol Nimoy as a weapon instead. Sir Kelroy's chest swelled with pity at the moanful cries of his friend and ally. If only there was something he could do to help. Oh well.

"SHUTUP" yelled Sir Kelroy. He was in no mood.

Suddenly, a bright, calming light shone through the window. Sir Kelroy sat up cautiously as he stared, and he reached for the side of his bed where his blade usually rested. Drats! An eerie ball of light crept through the wall. It was like nothing Sir Kelroy had ever seen, at least not that week. It's pulsings seemed to be in unison with the heartbeat of creation. When it spoke, it was with the voice of the angel.

"Hey, I'm your neighbor. Can you shut that motorcycle up? Me and the wife got work in the morning."

"I shall embark on thy quest, strange spirit from beyond. Buteth, I am lacking a weapon. Does thou have one to lend?"

"Ummm... k. Here's a ukulele" said the ball of light, picking up something off of Sir Kelroy's floor.

SIR KELROY HAS ACQUIRED THE LEGENDARY GUITAR BLADE, OL DEFOREST.

So Sir Kelroy went back to sleep, because he was sleepy. In the morning, he dragged Ol Nimoy out of the stable and left for town. From what he gathered from Ye Olde Google, he must gather seven legendary bike parts from seven dangerous dungeons.

Minutes later...

Sir Kelroy looked upon the first dungeon, Montlake Bike Shop. It looked to be full of scum and debacleteers. He gripped his new guitar blade, Ol Deforest. This was perhaps going to be the most difficult challenge he'd ever face, but he would go to the ends of the earth and back in order to shut that bike up.

He approached the counter. "Hey, could you give my bike a tune-up?"

"Sure, it doesn't look too bad. It'll be done Tuesday."

"I WIN. Laters, cretin!" Sir Kelroy laughed as he ran out, slashing at merchandise with his legendary weapon.

THE END.

"Life's a mess, so keep a bucket nearby"

So, it looks like Sam will be visiting in March, if all goes according to plan. I will of course be busy will schoolwork, but I'll give him a list of things to do. If weather permits, there maybe some hiking. If not, I'll give him chores. What's that Sam? You want to see Seattle? Hmm... let's see... fresh out of that. CHORES.

Not much report this week. I do have a lot on my plate already, but I always like to have "more than I can handle" on my to-do list. We're setting up the architecture for our game, and take my word for it, technical documentation is the least fun part of making games. It's like ripping off a band-aid, only the band-aid is 44 pages of boring. I got to write the game design document last week though, which was a lot more fun. It basically describes the entire game. I took it upon myself to do it on my own, because that's the kind of stuff I'm into.

Also, did you know there's going to be a Wii Music? It will be a game my brother will beat me at. HERE:

If you don't know Japanese, he's saying "Riley will beat his stupid brother at this game. He will also beat his stupid sisters. He will beat everyone. Riley will be so great, he will defy the gods themselves at the very music they invented. It's too bad he's so ugly. La la la la. WIIIIIIIIII".

PS. I think they sent my financial aid to my home address, so if you all get the chance, forward it my way. Did this happen last semester?

ZOMG Trains!

So, every year there is a weeklong conference in Cali called GDC (Game Developer's Conference). Important game people talk about the state of the industry, talk about things they're working on, talk about employment opportunites, share ideas and information, and, most importantly, party. Am I going? Yes I'm going. Normally passes are super-expensive, but I got accepted as a volunteer, which means in exchange for having free full-access I have to put in 20 hours of work. But from what I understand, I can request which places I want to work, so I will be able to go to important talks and stuff that'd I'd want to be at anyway.

Although the talks will be awesome (There's one about Smash Brothers, I will try my best to go there), I think the main point for students is to set up connections and talk to potential employers. A lot of companies look for recruits there, so I have to update my resume. Digipen sets up their Spring Break to be the same week as GDC for this very reason. A bunch of us got a train car to go there and back and also share a hotel, so I think it's going be a great adventure. Smash Bros got delayed again, but at least I don't have to take a weeklong Smash break.

Speaking of geek things, I watched a whole bunch of One Piece this week and am caught up with the series completely. One Piece is an action-comedy about pirates, and in my opinion the only good anime still being made. Most anime = craptacular. One Piece = hilariously exciting. So, the episodes I hammered through had amazing story, and we learned a lot about a character I had previously considered boring. Plus, now there's a cyborg. SUPER! There's a total of about 340 episodes thus far, so I wouldn't recommend starting from the beginning, unless you're hardcore.

Caught up on cartoons, so I can plow through my schoolwork. There's a lot on my plate already, so I gotta get crazy. I may be doing some cel-shading for our new game, we'll see.

GO FIGHT WIN.

Round Two

Herro! Back to business. My break was great, caught up with family and friends, and now the semester is up and running. This semester looks to be a little more challenging.

I'm taking another game project class, where we are making a complete game. This time we are throwing out XNA (The game studio we were using before) and making from scratch. This is something we have to do eventually anyway, so while this semester's game might not end up as good because we have to spend more time learning, next YEAR's game (the defining project of our degree) should be that much better.

Also, I am taking a challenging math class (we need computers for this one, what with all the 3D!), a networking class (easy but necessary), and a new graphics class. The graphics class is the sequel to the class we were learning how to render stuff onto the screen. This time, we will be learning lighting, shading, modelling and other things.

I didn't think about it before, but a good game programmer has to be a master of several fields. Not only computer science (some tricky computer science!), but we also have to have a deep understanding of things like physics and lighting, and other things in the natural world that we would want to simulate. This also includes AI, 3D math, and statistics. AND if you want to be a game designer like me, there's even MORE on your plate! I need an understanding of story structure and good characters, of music, art, and obviously fun game mechanics. Then there's optional stuff like history, mythology, and other things that would be specific to games. I will be like Leonardo Da Vinci, except a version that likes girls and isn't interested in helicopters.

There is a lot for me to do. Fortunately, I'm fearless. RAWR.