Software Architecture

Ok so a few words about the software architecture course here at Full Sail. This class has some extremely useful information, however, you will only start to see how useful it is once you start getting into designing larger projects. Even now I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of some of the ideas taught here.

For instance one of the major focuses of the class is to teach design patterns, I'm using those same patterns where I can to implement my code for final project. However it seems that the more intimate knowledge of the design patters I have the more simple and easier to maintain my code becomes but the patterns have a lot of depth, you can't learn them in one sitting, it takes lots of practice - they might not seem directly applicable to you (in this class) other than using them to finish the labs - but put extra effort and time into understanding and using them!

Do a little side project and force yourself to use the observer pattern, the state pattern, the command pattern, and the Model-View pattern. Just these alone will make the projects you do here at Full Sail that much easier because there is nothing more time consuming than backtracking in your work because of poor design choices. This class will help you to avoid those mistakes, but you have to apply yourself - as always - and use it or lose it!

Is this my blog?

Hello internet people - its been a long time. I'm doing fine I graduate in Febuary next year. Got real busy and kinda fell off the blog wagon, but I want this thing to be complete so I'm not letting go completely just yet.

I see that I left off with Windows 2, which means DirectX is the next class I took along side Software Architecture or SWA.

What to say about DirectX - when I took this several months back Wendy Jones had just started teaching, it was her second month. Wendy has a few DirectX books out there and she knows her stuff for sure.

This was a pretty tough class with her, lots to do and little time to do it in, the main mistakes I kept making in this class were copy and paste mistakes (were copied code compiles fine but creates a bug). This type of mistake is really common, I don't want to say don't do it, just get good at it. In this class you will learn lighting, particles, 3D sound, rendering 3D models and 2D sprites.

Overall the course is just a start into DirectX it will teach how to use Direct3D, Direct Input, and Direct Sound which is just a small part of making a game (but important).

Things that have changed:
Today this course is fully shader driven so you will learn how to implement 3D graphics using what the industry uses - shaders. (Shaders use custom scripting/code that give you near complete control over what gets put on the screen). Another big change is that now you read in 3D models from Maya using a custom exporter that you write a month prior to this class in 3DCC (3d Content and Creation)

Windows Programming 2

This class is exclusively in C#, which is cool but by the time you get out and have to propram in C++ you feel a bit rusty.

Chuck teaches this class, you meet him in WP1 for a couple of class. He is a very organized teacher and is pretty easy to follow but he is probably the fastest typer to this point so it can be a challenge to keep up. I downloaded the previous months content so I was able to copy and paste from that when I start to fall behind.

So this class teaches you alot of the .Net framework stuff, it will be used in later months to create tools for your games. C# is a cinch, so it makes since to use it for anything that doesn't need to run super fast. Actually let me say that C# can get really advanced but its easy to figure out, things are intuitive and the intellisense that compiler has is make it easy to see what the language has to offer.

The main objective of the class is to create a tile editor, which is good to know, I actually used this to create my game in The Structure Of Game Design, overall this class was not to challeneging and requires little effort to stay on top of. This class is taken accross from 3D Content and Creation, which is also an easy (but really cool) class. So that makes for a pretty easy month, enjoy it cause I think thats the last time you will see a full 8 hours of sleep, seriously things get tough after this point so be ready!

Windows Programming 1 (Pong)

Ok so windows programming marks the beginning of life outside of the command console, you learn some cool Win32 stuff, actually you learn the basic win32 stuff for most of the class then you learn how to use DLL's, static Libraries, Multi-threading, and some neat tricks like have a command console and window running together. This class was really packed with good stuff, the Multi-Threading, DLL's, and Static libraries are covered again in more depth.

One of the first things we did was create tic-tac-toe, this takes up the first half of the class, the other half is used to your very own version of pong.

I used my little math library to create the ball and paddles in 3D, but I ended up just using them in a 2D fashion. Z-buffering was becoming a problem and win32 does not have a simple fix for this.

Anyhow, this was a good class with some really good knowledge to be had.

I will try to post the game once I get ftp access to my road runner site again, apparently they thought it best to only allow uploading of music and picture files through their main interface.

HAM: AKA Historical Archetypes of Myth and Mythology

OK so how about a quick update

Hysterical Archetypes of Mythology - ;)

I was excited about this class because Mythology is pretty cool subject. It does have some interesting content such as Celtic, and Norse mythology with their totally trippy creation myths (I think out of all the creation myths the Cherokee's is by far the weirdest). But overall it seemed like we kinda just blew by the mythology and focused more on the Hero Cycle - which was somewhat formalized by mythological scholar Joseph Campbell and merchandising genius George Lucas (may he and Spielberg never make another movie again for what they did to Indiana Jones - completely unforgivable). We did talk a bit about what made the original star wars movies so different from the prequels, our instructor pointed out that George strayed from Campbell's formula and thus made some lacking films.

So the Hero Cycle has been around a long time, even since the oldest known piece of literature: Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian myth and about the search for immortality, all the way through Egyptian, Greek, and Indian mythology to today. It can be easily seen in Tolkien's work and more modern books, I read a lot of Dean Koontz he brings his own spin to it. Pretty much every movie I have seen since this class I see the Cycle unfolding, its kinda distracting. So Joseph Campbell didn't really invent the Cycle he just discovered pattern and gave form to it.

So the main things I took away from this class were the Hero Cycle and color symbolism and how they relate to video games, which is... meh - loosely. Color symbolism seems to have a greater impact than the Hero cycle; the cycle is still there its just bit harder to pinpoint in games, but all the great games seem to follow it. So that's about all I have to report, I'll have much more to say about Windows Programming 1 so stay tuned...

And now for something completely different

So how are things in Florida and whats it like living the in a city where the average IQ of a person drops from 120 to.... I-dunno about 2 when they slide behind the wheel of their brand new Chevy Bumper Car, or Dodge Ram-the-guy-in-front-of-you-cause-he-looks-funny-and-waited-two-seconds-to-long-after-the-green-light-and-man-that-pisses-me-off-i-have-no-patience-for-people-maybe-I'm-Cuban-i-don't-know-all-i-know-is-I'm-totally-$*%&#-nuts-when-I-get-in-a-car

So in case you didn't catch the subtleties of my hints that elude to that fact that there may be something in the water here and it maybe turn people into totally insane, rude, unethical dare devils on the highway let me say it again. The drivers in Orlando SUUUUUCKKKK! And I truly mean that from depths of my heart, with great passion and vigor. Now I'm used to bad traffic, bumper to bumper sitting around for 30 minutes to an hour, but where I'm from (Austin, Texas) people are generally considerate and mindful of other people, at the very least they grasp the concept that there in fact ARE other people. Now you may be thinking, he is exaggerating its really not that bad, and I will tell you; no its actually worse words just fail to describe. I digress... what I was going to say was: the traffic is not bad here its just the drivers. Example: there was an intersection, 4 lanes for both intersecting roads, they light at the road started flashing red. In "normal people land" this means 4-way stop, stop, look make sure there is not, I dunno, a huge car in front of you before you proceed into the intersection. However, in "crazy people land aka Orlando Florida" this means everyone stop at the same time, so far so good, and then everybody go at the same time (nooooooo!) get to the middle and stop because there is no more road left to drive on that isn't occupied :( and somewhere in that pea brain is a little voice that says.... no not really it doesn't say anything.

Ok so that's my rant about the drivers here, and it truly is a singular experience driving the roads of Orlando, its probably the most talked about topic at Full Sail (about 95% of students there are not from Florida)

Next rant - the weather: HOLY COW the weather here sucks, all it does is rain - maybe that's cause there is a hurricane - pssshhh - like that would cause a lot of rain. At first the rain is nice, I generally like the rain but seriously 2 weeks of straight rain? My dog is going nuts from being inside all the time. Now that we got one hurricane done another is forming, ughhhh, the joys of living on the southern Atlantic coast, I can't wait to move. Everything gets so wet, then the water sits and huge swarms of mosquitoes as thick as molasses chase you down and try to suck you dry. After while the water starts to stink, a thick miasma hangs in the air, smells like pooh and sulfur - I know - pleasant. But everybody says the winter months are great - if you can make it!

So I have been asked for pictures and stuff, no pictures of Full Sail yet - and not much to see of hurricane Fay just lots of rain but I did take this one picture on my phone that I think is pretty comical

In other news...

Tammy started brushing Charlies teethe with an electric tooth brush check out this little video

Data Structures - this one will keep you busy

Data structures is nothing to sneeze at, this is first class that has really made me work, and by work I mean 20 hour days, staying up till 3AM creating little console based games that uses really awesome data structures, then studying for a midterm, or quiz, or trying to read up on the next days topic so you don't get left in the dust.

We covered a lot of data structures, these are structures you will not get in a normal data structs class. I think that goes for just about every class here, they are geared toward game development and games are made to be fun but there are tons of very advanced programming techniques and mathematics that come together to create that game.

Sooo the topics we covered

• singly linked lists
• doubly linked lists
• dynamic arrays
• hash tables
• Binary Search trees - (do yourself a favor and learn this one before you get here)
• Insertion sort and Binary Search
• Graphs and finite state machines
• Huffman Compression

Each of these topics was introduced, then in 4 hours we had to build the entire workings on the data structure from scratch, most days we used the entire 4 hours. Some days, like Binary Search Tree day, we couldn't get it completed in lab. And since you a graded on your lab work in this class that's not something you want to do. So read and ahead, and you should be ok.

This was a great class overall, the data structures we learned are the bread and butter of video game development, they are very interesting to learn about, and really cool to program from scratch, definitely challenging, but that's a good thing right?

So we had 3 projects in this class, a data driven menu system, a dictionary Word Scramble game, and a turn based strategy game. All DOS based games, the focus is on the data structures here not the interface (that's next month: Windows Programming 1). I enjoyed them all thoroughly I tried to build in as much polish and pizazz as possible in a short amount of time (short being 3 - 5 days). I ended up getting a 100 on all of these but I had a lot of sleepless nights, I may have gone a tad bit overboard on some things which caused those sleepless nights, but in the end I think it was worth it.