Senior Project: Done, DeVry University: Done

Another two months have rolled on by real quickly! After next week I will officially be done with DeVry University’s Game and Simulation Programming major and I will have my BS in Computer Science. At this moment I am developing a web page for my fellow senior project comrades to host the game we been working on for the last 4 months. Working on this project was quite a struggle and it has taken its toll on all of us. This was first time the GSP major was separated from the rest of the other majors in senior project. We were our own independent entity (we were indie), which allowed us to be open to anything we can work on.


In the senior project team which comprised of myself (Dieppa), Leo, Dex, Jevon, Nick, and Magda to work on this project called Chimera Sanctum. I worked as Team Lead and Lead Game Designer while I had Nick and Leo on Audio Programming, Dex as Lead Programmer, Jevon and I worked as Programmers, and Magda worked on Art and Programming. I came up with the name of our mock company which was known as 9.81 Game Studios (if you know your physics then you would get the pun). We worked together as a team kept cohesion, communication, and diligence to make this game happen.

This led to the final build of our game; it may not be perfect but we did it with the functionality we wanted. You can read all about the trials and tribulations of Chimera Sanctum’s development cycle on GamaSutra (A link will be provided at the bottom for those who want to read it). The presentation of the game will be held at DeVry University Orlando Campus at 5:00 PM EST (06/16/2010). As of now we are setting up a website to host Chimera Sanctum for public downloading to be played on the PC. Which brings me to my next exciting news: I have purchased the domain name Enigmaticbrainmind.net on GoDaddy.com. Now it is official Enigmatic Brain Mind will be a website soon hosting the projects I will be working on (me or with a team). As always I want to thank my readers for stopping by my Web Log  You guys help keep me going!

PS I would also like to thank David J. Sushil for being my mentor throughout my career at DeVry University. He was the first professor I had in my first class and he was the last professor in my last class at DeVry.

PPS I would like to thank Joseph Adams at Adam Jones Productions for allowing the opportunities and understanding as I went through all the stress of college J

PPPS As of June 14,2010 links are provided below, so you readers can now visit the website where the game is being hosted, as well as visit Sushil's website, and read the postmortem on GamaSutra J

Links:

Enigmatic Brain Mind

Visit David J. Sushil

The Postmortem

Senior Project; AJP; Creative Writing!

Being allowed to live up here and grow up as my own person is quite a benefit. I am learning more and more about myself with each passing period of time. Recently I had finished the first half of my senior project at DeVry University. Even though I got a B in the class my group received a 68/100 on the alpha build of the project.

Starting Senior Project II with Professor Sushil as the instructor of the class opened my eyes. This was of course after Sushil scolded me for performing as a weak leadership. However, my team supported me giving positive that I was doing a decent job. I was given advice by Sushil that I now have to really be on top of everybody in senior project to the point that no one will like me when I give them a direct task with a deadline.

Now seeing that I am close to graduation at DeVry with only two months left; I am absolutely ecstatic. Even though I lack the physical prowess to express the emotion; I assure you the reader I am very much content. Graduating DeVry will give me time to work more at Adam Jones Productions with whatever projects I am assigned.

Speaking of Adam Jones Productions I have been assigned to do some audio engineering for one of the projects they are currently working on. Alongside with me as always is Jordan Card who of course is my collaborator for our upcoming comic Clarington City Blues. This will give me the chance to write more short stories that connect to the Clarington City Blues storyline.

Been a While and a Lot Has Happened

Quick Catch Up

It has been quite a while since I have done a post on my web log. The reason why is that I have been busy at work, school, and my internship at Adam Jones Productions. Recently I finished up a class on engineering an entire game engine with three other people. I was working on the physics and math modules for it, and the others worked on the other modules. I ended up passing the class with flying colors.

Looking Forward to What is Ahead

Now that I am finished with this game engine class I am now moved onto my final three classes as DeVry University. I am now enrolled and attending Senior Project, but they are doing it differently now than in the past semester. Instead of the Game and Simulation Programming (GSP) students working with the other disciplines on a mock company. We, the GSP students, are now are own independent group, so this allows the freedom to make whatever we want. As of now they are in the concept stages of our project details will follow on another post :)

I have been doing some thinking for the last few weeks and I realized I been going to school nonstop for the last 19 years of my life. As opposed to going into the FIEA program at UCF after I graduate; I am going to take on a full time position at Adam Jones Productions after graduation. I think this a good move for me because this will allow me free time to focus on getting experience in the industry while building up a respectable portfolio. I will most likely apply to FIEA next year in 2011 for now I am want to take it slow and concentrate on some other things. Such as creative writing because just recently I finished up a short story I wrote one night when I could not sleep last weekend. I wrote the story based on a dream I had a day prior to the night I wrote it story. I am looking for anyone who would like to give their constructive criticism on the literature.

Here is the link to the story

http://www.mediafire.com/?zyqzzozwdvw

Postmortem: Adam Jones Productions’ Word Builder

Introduction

With the recent release of the Flash game Sandbagz: Medeval! here at Adam JonesProductions we want to keep the momentum going by releasing another game wedeveloped. This brings us to the game WordBuilder and in many ways it is largely different from Sandbagz. Even though WordBuilder has little in common with our previous game it was still done bythe same team that worked on Sandbagz;with exception of the artist. At Adam Jones Productions we like to makeourselves varied in the genres we tackle from action, puzzle, adventure, and soon. The company wants to show that we are capable of going from one side of thespectrum to the other without any hiccups. Without further ado, here is asummary of development of Word Builder.



What Went Right?

ActionScript Programming

Jordan was the lead, main,and only programmer on Word Builder’s development time. Overall the developmentof Word Builder went smoothly. Since the game takes place by dropping tiles onto a grid, Jordan startedby building a functional grid system for the each wordblock’s placement. Also he was able to gothrough and build the overallfunctionality of the game with moderate ease. While he did hit some bumps inthe road he was able to solve the problem quickly and move on to the next partof the project.



The Audio & Art Assets

Here at Adam JonesProductions we pride ourselves on the quality of the games we release for eachgame we produce. When programming a sophisticatedpuzzle game we in turn want art and an interface that reflected that look. Incomes Roa to design and create all the art assets for the game. Roa has hasa unique style that sets himapart from other artists. Every piece of art asset was able to reflect thesophistication of Word Builder’s persona.

Since Word Builder wasdifferent from Sandbagz the music had to reflect that idea; ergo no beatboxingfor the soundtrack. As much as we wanted it this game had to contain an audiotrack that would let the player think calmly to execute words in Word Builder.Dieppa, who did the audio for Sandbagz, came onto the project with an audiotrack that was a good fit into Word Builder. Using Sony Acid Pro Dieppa wasable to engineer an audio track that featured pianos playing in the background.A looping song with a nice, smooth, calming air aimed to encourage the playerto slow down and think while creating words.






What Went Wrong?

Functionality in ActionScript

At first we created a grid and then created the tiles, and originally wewould have the tiles drag-and-dropped onto the grid itself. However, twoproblems arose. One: having the tilesreference the grid location was a challenge. Two: the layering itself with sometitles appearing behind other tiles regardless of the z-loc. The way we fixedthis problem was by using a sleight of hand technique where the tiles wouldrepresent a trigger that would change the grid square from being an emptysquare to a square with a letter in it according to the tile dropped. Thissolved the layering issue as well as the referencing problem.

The Differences from Sandbagz and Word Builder

It is quite obvious that WordBuilder is on the opposite side of spectrum from Sandbagz as a game. Sandbagz was an action game and WordBuilder being a puzzle game, respectively. Programming a straight forwardsimple action game can coincide with how a programmer can code the base syntaxlogic. However, programming a puzzle game brings a lot more complexity to thelogic; e.g. as we stated before referencing the grid locations was a difficultfeat to overcome.



Conclusion

Overall, working on WordBuilder was a different experience for the team at Adam Jones Productions.The approach to programming the game was more complex, and the music was a bitmore sophisticated. Here at Adam Jones Productions we believe we were able toshow off that we are not just programming action games all the time; we candefinitely develop a variety of genres.


Credits

Programmer – Jordan Card

Artist – Michael Roa

Audio – Andrew Dieppa

QA Lead – Andrew Dieppa

QA Testers – Matthew Santiago, Mike Albanese, Claudia Rolle

Producer/Game Designer – Adam Jones


Programs Used

Adobe Flash 4

Sony Acid Pro

Adobe Photoshop 4


Links

http://www.adamjonesproductions.com

http://www.andrewdieppa.blogspot.com

http://www.mochimedia.com/games/word-builder/

New Year's Eve with a Blue Moon, and Rolling into 2010 with new Opportunities

Reflection in the Year of 2009

It is New Year's Eve today I take this time to reflect on the events that happened to me this year. All that was set in motion that led up to this Final Day of the Year. I am excited today that when the clock strikes 00:00 ringing in January 1, 2010 there will be a Blue Moon. I want to see it and think, reflect, and move on with my life. . Near the end of last year I was laid off from my job, and then I was given a job at Paychex in January of 2009. This year I was able to meet a gentleman that gave me the opportunity to work in the independent video game development.

Moving onto 2010

Near the end of the 2009 I was given the opportunity by Adams to take on a design position at Adam Jones Productions. Also, the last two weeks I had received an e-mail from a gentleman who is an Marketing Research Executive from Packt's Publishing. He saw that I was interested in developing Unity Game Engine and approached me to review his company's book that was made to teach Unity which was aptly named Unity Game Development Essentials.

I am really excited to read this book and to gain the knowledge necessary to develop in Unity. This book is written by Will Goldstone who also has a website with video tutorials on working in Unity. The book it self is written with the purpose to expand on techniques from the video tutorials from the website.

Conclusion

All these opportunities coming my way makes me think heavily and reflect on this year. 2009 has been an quite experience in my life. These thoughts run through my head as everything seems to be falling into place for me at this point in my life. I am looking forward to 2010, graduation, interning at AJP, working at Paychex, working in Unity with the aid of the book, the GRE, and hopefully FIEA in the Fall of 2010.

Links

Unity Game Development Essentials:

http://www.packtpub.com/unity-game-development-essentials?utm_source=andrewdieppa.blogspot.com&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001943

Sample Chapter from Unity Game Development Essentials:

http://www.packtpub.com/files/8181-unity-game-development-essentials-sample-chapter-4-interactions.pdf

Postmortem: Sandbagz, Writing, and Reading

Sandbagz Production

Recently at my internship at Adam Jones Productions they have released a flash game called Sandbagz: Medeval! to be played on a browser. The game was released just yesterday and was able to make it to the front page of GamePro's Free Games page. Needless to say my boss is very ecstatic over that and the number of hits we been getting. My involvement of the game was being the quality assurance administrator. In other words I was in charge of the testing and who tested the game. We were able to get a lot of positive feedback on the game as well as some suggestions for the sequel of the game. I was also involved with managing the sound effects and the soundtrack of the game. Joe Adams and I did a lot of the sound effects using our vocal cords, and at one point I took a punch to the leg to get an effect of someone getting hit.

Writing and Reading

Lately in my life I have finally been able to read books for pleasure now other than just for educational purposes. I picked up three books that I have read in the course of the last two months. I read the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff which is about the explanation of Taoism with the use of Winnie-the-Pooh. I also read Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters which was an excellent novel. A model with a prominent career and a great husband ruined after her lower jaw was shot off. Currently I am reading Crooked Little Vein and Unity Game Development Essentials to learn more about the Unity Engine.

For the last part Jordan and I have been collaborating to develop a comic book that takes place during the 1930s, but it is set in a cyberpunk universe. I am writing the main story line and Jordan is doing all the art. Right now we are currently in the development stage where I am writing character bios, timelines, and Jordan is doing some character art based off of what I wrote. Hopefully we can get a lot done in the course of the next months.

Links

Here is a link to the recently released flash game Sandbagz: Medeval!

http://www.davigames.com/games.php?id=9760

Here is a link to the postmortem for Sandbagz

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrewDieppa/20091218/3864/Postmortem_Sandbagz_Medeval.php

Assigned a New Task

I am an intern at the company Adam Jones Productions. I was first hired on as a content provider for fiction for a game that is being developed. After a while though I was assigned to QA administering for their game which granted me the power to have people test the game after they have signed an NDA. My friend Jordan Card went from being an intern at the company to a full time worker programming games in Flash for Adam Jones Productions.

A few weeks ago the project manager at the company asked me to do some XNA programming for a couple of mini games to be released on Xbox Live Indie Games. However, upon a meeting with Joe Adams (producer, and owner) and Jordan Card at the CoLab I took it upon myself to start learning the Unity Engine. When Joe Adams was observing me learning and familiarizing myself with the interface of Unity, he asked me if I should develop the mini games on Unity rather than XNA. I would like to learn and develop on the Unity Engine, but I would have to discuss it with the project manager to see if he would be all right with me learning a brand new engine I am starting to learn or keep going with XNA which I have used in the past.