3 months since last update! That's been a while! I've had family issues and moving from one apartment to another and boring stuff that I'm glad is partly over. On the other hand, I've been working with my minigame Army of One (working title), that I originally started building with the help of a tutorial series on Youtube. That was during summer when I thought that my programming skills still sucked and I had to do something about it. Feeling a bit more comfortable with programming, I developed it and added stuff like score counter and timer.
One day I got email from my university, saying that they will show students' work during Gamex 2010, the biggest game convension in Scandinavia. I first hesitated to participate but two weeks later I signed up! It was really a fun and inspiring experience but I had to work really hard to make my game-ish prototype really playable and worth to show. I added better graphics (but still a programmer's art really...), made a highscore list, changed the environment and the whole menu design, added sound effects and more eye candy. I'm really pleased with what I've achieved during such a short time, and don't feel like a noob anymore :P
The evening before Gamex, I got an email from the responsible saying that my game isn't working properly!! I panicked and a started to try and fix stuff, the problem lied within the frame update because of the processor. I had from the beginning programmed all movements so they won't be frame dependant, but the problem now was that since it was lagging, the avatar leaped through the small level and even if that's fair in a racing game, it's totally unneccessary in my game. Then everything was different - what went fast on my computer went really slowly on the other computer, so I really had to customize the code for that computer from distance, fixing problems I couldn't see :S
Late at night I received the awated email, saying that it works, the character isn't as fast as it should be but it's still playable and working pretty well. Rest assured, I fell on sleep and the next 4 days, 4th-7th of November, I spent on Gamex LIVING the game industry :P
Gamex was the best thing happening to me during 2010, I slept a little, I didn't eat while there, and because of the high volume on everything, I screamed my voice off during the conversations. But I loved it, I really felt "this is my home" and enjoyed every minute being there - so much that the guard had to come get me when I and my friend was playing Marvel vs Capcom 3 after closing time! XD
I've also started "studying" in a distance based 1 year long course! During this year, until June 2011, I'll be working on a game project, and I decided to remake Army of One and really develop it to be a proper game to publish, this time also in Unity game engine. It's so exciting and I get great advice from different tutors and teachers, and I'm putting my soul into this one. Right now I'm on the conceptualization phase and not everything is set, but after two meetings with my tutor, my head is soon exploding from all the inspiration!
But I still need a few more people to work with me, I'm doing this project with my brother who's the producer, but I'm the director and need atleast one or two more to help me with the programming and with the design/concept arting. If things goes well, the production phase will start during January 2011.
I'll blog more about my progress so stay tuned! But right now I really have to wash the dishes!
Cheers
/Kweiko
10 nov. 2010
14 aug. 2010
Ramathan Kareem
Today is the second day of Ramathan. This year, in Scandinavia the fasting goes on for 20 hours and I thought that I would die of hunger but after two days of fasting my body has amazingly allready adjusted to the new food schedule *level up*
I really love the family atmosphere during Ramathan. Usually everyone is busy with school or work or with life itself, not spending time with the family like in good old days, but when Ramathan comes, we all appreciate each other for helping each other out (everyone acts too lazy, and when one of us really do something besides lying on the bed or crashing on the sofa, he or she will be seen as a hero). Everyone tends to gather in the living room and just be together, watch TV or a movie together and we just LOVE everything that is served to us. Dad is the one who fill the plates and he really cook awesome food, but when Ramathan comes he's like an artist with food!! Atleast that's what it seems like, because that's how much we appreciate everything :P
I use to compare Ramathan with Christmas, living in Sweden I know how cozy and special Christmas is (even though Swedes aren't as Christmas lovers as the Americans) and I recognize the feeling in the air, everyone's happy faces and the dark, cozy days that makes you think coming back home to the family is just too wonderful... that's what Ramathan feels like. :)
Meanwhile, we're moving to my sister's appartment temporarily, so it's going to be really tight for a while! Nevertheless, I think for that mere reason, it's going to be even more cozy and family-ish when all the girls sleep next to each other, like we used to do when we were kids. The little room is filled with girlish stuff à la our family: PS1, PS2 and the PS3 :P Unfortunately, the 360 will be in my brother's room (well it is his after all...). 90% of the time, my little sister is going to have kidnapped the TV to Nickelodeon-land, while I and my other sister will have our laptops to do our work, study or spend our freetime by enjoying TV-series and anime episodes. My other little sister will surely have the floor for herself - she likes dancing! So yeah, it's going to be tight like hell, but we finally get to spend a lot of time with each other like before. That's what Ramathan is for, isn't it? :)
So, Ramathan Kareem, people!
I really love the family atmosphere during Ramathan. Usually everyone is busy with school or work or with life itself, not spending time with the family like in good old days, but when Ramathan comes, we all appreciate each other for helping each other out (everyone acts too lazy, and when one of us really do something besides lying on the bed or crashing on the sofa, he or she will be seen as a hero). Everyone tends to gather in the living room and just be together, watch TV or a movie together and we just LOVE everything that is served to us. Dad is the one who fill the plates and he really cook awesome food, but when Ramathan comes he's like an artist with food!! Atleast that's what it seems like, because that's how much we appreciate everything :P
I use to compare Ramathan with Christmas, living in Sweden I know how cozy and special Christmas is (even though Swedes aren't as Christmas lovers as the Americans) and I recognize the feeling in the air, everyone's happy faces and the dark, cozy days that makes you think coming back home to the family is just too wonderful... that's what Ramathan feels like. :)
Meanwhile, we're moving to my sister's appartment temporarily, so it's going to be really tight for a while! Nevertheless, I think for that mere reason, it's going to be even more cozy and family-ish when all the girls sleep next to each other, like we used to do when we were kids. The little room is filled with girlish stuff à la our family: PS1, PS2 and the PS3 :P Unfortunately, the 360 will be in my brother's room (well it is his after all...). 90% of the time, my little sister is going to have kidnapped the TV to Nickelodeon-land, while I and my other sister will have our laptops to do our work, study or spend our freetime by enjoying TV-series and anime episodes. My other little sister will surely have the floor for herself - she likes dancing! So yeah, it's going to be tight like hell, but we finally get to spend a lot of time with each other like before. That's what Ramathan is for, isn't it? :)
So, Ramathan Kareem, people!
9 aug. 2010
Final project
Ok, I'll keep the long story short. My project course... I still haven't get a grade on it, the teacher seems to have gone for a vacation and still haven't returned yet :(
But after a huge hassle with the hassle we managed to get an almost-a-game done in Unity3D. The last month of the course, half the group were inactive and we must have looked like Crusoe after all those years on an island, but what's important is that the teacher bought it. We could have done it more smoothly though. Here are three of, what I think, were our biggest problems:
Communication: We weren't synched with each other, there was always someone missing, people were too busy/lazy/sad to come to the meetings so half the group was always behind in the updates. We had MSN-meeting to enhance the whole thing, but some of us simply didn't take it seriously.
Effort: The more time passed, the less motivated everyone became. This was partially due to the lack of good communication, but also the lack of remarkable progress. We weren't experienced enough to do things right from the start, so there were a lot of "walking in cirkles" scripting until we, 3 months later, finally got a hang of Unity3D, C# and scripting in general. I think that's normal but back then we were allready tired of not having a constant, fine work flow. Most of our group simply gave up after that third month.
Production overview: Firstly I have to say that we had an extreme luck to have someone in our group who really knew the whole process of making a game. The rest of us were kind of aping around and guessing what's next to do. But because of the minority of experienced people - and NO tutoring at all - we often made wrong decisions and focused on the wrong things. Of course, I am really happy about learning everything and have gotten a great experience from it, but the learning curve never seemed to become to our advantage. We seriously needed to step back and look at where we really are heading, but I guess "young and naïve" works in this context as well.
But what's done is done. I'm still waiting for those last five points to appear in my uni account, so that I can officially graduate and have my bachelor's degree. I really need to get them soon, because of things happening at home right now. But more on that in a later blog!
Until then - take care!
But after a huge hassle with the hassle we managed to get an almost-a-game done in Unity3D. The last month of the course, half the group were inactive and we must have looked like Crusoe after all those years on an island, but what's important is that the teacher bought it. We could have done it more smoothly though. Here are three of, what I think, were our biggest problems:
Communication: We weren't synched with each other, there was always someone missing, people were too busy/lazy/sad to come to the meetings so half the group was always behind in the updates. We had MSN-meeting to enhance the whole thing, but some of us simply didn't take it seriously.
Effort: The more time passed, the less motivated everyone became. This was partially due to the lack of good communication, but also the lack of remarkable progress. We weren't experienced enough to do things right from the start, so there were a lot of "walking in cirkles" scripting until we, 3 months later, finally got a hang of Unity3D, C# and scripting in general. I think that's normal but back then we were allready tired of not having a constant, fine work flow. Most of our group simply gave up after that third month.
Production overview: Firstly I have to say that we had an extreme luck to have someone in our group who really knew the whole process of making a game. The rest of us were kind of aping around and guessing what's next to do. But because of the minority of experienced people - and NO tutoring at all - we often made wrong decisions and focused on the wrong things. Of course, I am really happy about learning everything and have gotten a great experience from it, but the learning curve never seemed to become to our advantage. We seriously needed to step back and look at where we really are heading, but I guess "young and naïve" works in this context as well.
But what's done is done. I'm still waiting for those last five points to appear in my uni account, so that I can officially graduate and have my bachelor's degree. I really need to get them soon, because of things happening at home right now. But more on that in a later blog!
Until then - take care!
22 juni 2010
The dissertation
Wah.. it's been a while since I wrote something here. Ok some update:
I have been having problems with my friend with whome I wrote the dissertation, because she's been post-poning things and giving up on other things. This continued until a few days after my previews blog here, which was on May 8th if I remember correctly. I really tried all I could to motivate her, to make her work a little more, because honestly the main reason I teamed up with her was that she is a close friend of mine and that I knew she lack discipline enough to make it through all this alone, I knew it from the beginning and just wanted to help her. Even though I was painfully tired of everything.
Four days before the deadline for our submission of the last part and she still hadn't written the intro and although I was furious and totally disappointed at her I managed to keep myself calm and reason with her. Things didn't get better and we only had less than a month until the final submission had to be done if we were to graduate this year. So what I did is tell her to rest or something, she obviously had given up on everything and that is inacceptable for me. Ofcourse I was damn hurt by being forced to have such patience without being rewarded with a positive outcome, but there never was included in my plans to fail, not now when I'm so close to my graduation. What did I do? I continued alone ofcourse. I talked to the supervisor and he thought that I have to rethink everything and see what really matters, what I reallt wanted to write about, if it was fun. I had three weeks to compensate for 5 months and write a complete dissertation. Not to forget that I still had the final project to work with and my friend was a member of that group too and didn't work on that project either. She wasn't the only one. By that time two of six members were working fulltime on the project, me and the level designer who also did all the graphics except for the avatar.
My tasks were those that were my own plus those that should have been done by the other two programmers, but since they didn't do them, I had to. All my other friends tried to persuade me not to overload myself like that, after all I've done my part and would certainly pass the course. But I just can't handle undone things, I'm a perfectionist when it comes to calling things complete - I can't stop until I've reached a certain level of completion, which most often is set to flawless or something, resulting in me being "almost" satisfied with my work.
Anyway, I started aaaall over with the dissertation, searching for a smaller but clearer subject. I still wanted to write about AI in games because that's what I really want to work with in the future, and since one of my parts was about waypoints I've been watching a lot of youtube-videos revolving aroung waypoint systems and game AI, and one of them gave me the inspiration that helped me through the rest of May. The video was about the AI in Half Life 2, it's actually a really fun clip, watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DZX-Fq5N0I :D
I thought about it and rethought about it and all this during during the holidays. I started to search for references and everything I could get my hands on and whops! I found Lars Lidén's article about "Strategic and Tactical Reasoning With Waypoints", check it out: http://liden.cc/lars/WEB/Resume/Papers/2002_AIWisdom.pdf
Lidén is talking about how to calculate tactical and strategic positions and ways by using visibility tests between static waypoints.
That was my cure :) I surely had to reread it many times to understand all of it but I was very happy to have chosen the Logics course last year instead of going to the Narration-course, which I had been waiting for for two years! And so I started to write about it and about the analysis and all the background information needed. Ofcourse I had to read a lot of other references but that article became my main source of wisdom. During the following three weeks I woke up very early (8, 9 o'clock, and if you knew me the slightest you would know how early that is to me!) and studied all the time except when rapidly eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and slept around 5 o'clock. Everyday! Oh I forgot, my mom forced me to take a shower once in a while.
But hey I managed to write an awesome, complete dissertation that even I, who's such a perfectionist, am satisfied with. :D :D
My supervisor must have looked surprised to receive my dissertation because time we talked I had three weeks and still nothing to finish, odds were kind of small to complete anything, whether it be the dissertation or the final project, to be honest.
I was allowed to make my presentation and "defend" it from all the critiques (which only could be done if my work was considered complete), and so did I. The examinator liked it and said it was ambitious and the opponents who critisized it said it was very interesting and well written. Of course I had to fix somethings, for example I was talking about tactics all the time, but never explained what "tactics" or "strategy" was :P I've fixed that and a few more things and now I'm totally satisfied with the paper, I really can't think of more things to add, change or remove from it. I've resent it and am waiting for the degree. Judjing from the initial points I got during the presentation I will get atleast a C, and now I'm excitingly waiting for the final degree - what will I get??? :D
Next blog I'm planning to write about how it went with the final project, but until then: take care!
I have been having problems with my friend with whome I wrote the dissertation, because she's been post-poning things and giving up on other things. This continued until a few days after my previews blog here, which was on May 8th if I remember correctly. I really tried all I could to motivate her, to make her work a little more, because honestly the main reason I teamed up with her was that she is a close friend of mine and that I knew she lack discipline enough to make it through all this alone, I knew it from the beginning and just wanted to help her. Even though I was painfully tired of everything.
Four days before the deadline for our submission of the last part and she still hadn't written the intro and although I was furious and totally disappointed at her I managed to keep myself calm and reason with her. Things didn't get better and we only had less than a month until the final submission had to be done if we were to graduate this year. So what I did is tell her to rest or something, she obviously had given up on everything and that is inacceptable for me. Ofcourse I was damn hurt by being forced to have such patience without being rewarded with a positive outcome, but there never was included in my plans to fail, not now when I'm so close to my graduation. What did I do? I continued alone ofcourse. I talked to the supervisor and he thought that I have to rethink everything and see what really matters, what I reallt wanted to write about, if it was fun. I had three weeks to compensate for 5 months and write a complete dissertation. Not to forget that I still had the final project to work with and my friend was a member of that group too and didn't work on that project either. She wasn't the only one. By that time two of six members were working fulltime on the project, me and the level designer who also did all the graphics except for the avatar.
My tasks were those that were my own plus those that should have been done by the other two programmers, but since they didn't do them, I had to. All my other friends tried to persuade me not to overload myself like that, after all I've done my part and would certainly pass the course. But I just can't handle undone things, I'm a perfectionist when it comes to calling things complete - I can't stop until I've reached a certain level of completion, which most often is set to flawless or something, resulting in me being "almost" satisfied with my work.
Anyway, I started aaaall over with the dissertation, searching for a smaller but clearer subject. I still wanted to write about AI in games because that's what I really want to work with in the future, and since one of my parts was about waypoints I've been watching a lot of youtube-videos revolving aroung waypoint systems and game AI, and one of them gave me the inspiration that helped me through the rest of May. The video was about the AI in Half Life 2, it's actually a really fun clip, watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DZX-Fq5N0I :D
I thought about it and rethought about it and all this during during the holidays. I started to search for references and everything I could get my hands on and whops! I found Lars Lidén's article about "Strategic and Tactical Reasoning With Waypoints", check it out: http://liden.cc/lars/WEB/Resume/Papers/2002_AIWisdom.pdf
Lidén is talking about how to calculate tactical and strategic positions and ways by using visibility tests between static waypoints.
That was my cure :) I surely had to reread it many times to understand all of it but I was very happy to have chosen the Logics course last year instead of going to the Narration-course, which I had been waiting for for two years! And so I started to write about it and about the analysis and all the background information needed. Ofcourse I had to read a lot of other references but that article became my main source of wisdom. During the following three weeks I woke up very early (8, 9 o'clock, and if you knew me the slightest you would know how early that is to me!) and studied all the time except when rapidly eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and slept around 5 o'clock. Everyday! Oh I forgot, my mom forced me to take a shower once in a while.
But hey I managed to write an awesome, complete dissertation that even I, who's such a perfectionist, am satisfied with. :D :D
My supervisor must have looked surprised to receive my dissertation because time we talked I had three weeks and still nothing to finish, odds were kind of small to complete anything, whether it be the dissertation or the final project, to be honest.
I was allowed to make my presentation and "defend" it from all the critiques (which only could be done if my work was considered complete), and so did I. The examinator liked it and said it was ambitious and the opponents who critisized it said it was very interesting and well written. Of course I had to fix somethings, for example I was talking about tactics all the time, but never explained what "tactics" or "strategy" was :P I've fixed that and a few more things and now I'm totally satisfied with the paper, I really can't think of more things to add, change or remove from it. I've resent it and am waiting for the degree. Judjing from the initial points I got during the presentation I will get atleast a C, and now I'm excitingly waiting for the final degree - what will I get??? :D
Next blog I'm planning to write about how it went with the final project, but until then: take care!
8 maj 2010
Discipline ftw!
Mom's back! Finally! She's been through so many troubles, that she's weaker now than when she left, but I'm so happy she's back - the housewifey version of me has been put on the shelf [NOT] once and for all.
As for the final project, the major changes has been on the level design, we've now got two tutorial levels with colliders, textures and lighting and the first real level is designed and being implemented right now. There are traps (spears traps and steam traps) set and ready to be used. I've become the one handling all interactions with the props and items in the world, and it's very fun, except that there are not a few naughty bugs in the physics implementations.
We now have a somewhat playable tutorial level, but now the real battle begins with the fun factor - we need better guidance for the player. For the real level we also need to make the pace faster by putting in more challenges, and I have to implement the scoreboard! The portals that is supposed to teleport you between rooms is working, but we need to place them in the game. Although it's very simple, it needs to be done. The GUI system is nothing near done, but much of it depends on whether we'll use achievements/collectibles/timers and stuff, and in which level we'll use them, but much of the implementation is done allready.
Our biggest problem right now is to point all undone tasks - which is my duty - and make people work - which should be their own duty! Two students in the team, who tragically are the two of three programmers in the team, seem to have taken vacation or something, they don't answer on email, or when I call or send them an sms. One of them has been like that since the beginning, the second has been like that for a couple of weeks, which really was bad timing since we had a presentation last Wednesday.
But we're still up and running! And I won't quit until I get my PASS on this course (and of course, as good a demo as possible), or die trying. Discipline ftw!
As for the final project, the major changes has been on the level design, we've now got two tutorial levels with colliders, textures and lighting and the first real level is designed and being implemented right now. There are traps (spears traps and steam traps) set and ready to be used. I've become the one handling all interactions with the props and items in the world, and it's very fun, except that there are not a few naughty bugs in the physics implementations.
We now have a somewhat playable tutorial level, but now the real battle begins with the fun factor - we need better guidance for the player. For the real level we also need to make the pace faster by putting in more challenges, and I have to implement the scoreboard! The portals that is supposed to teleport you between rooms is working, but we need to place them in the game. Although it's very simple, it needs to be done. The GUI system is nothing near done, but much of it depends on whether we'll use achievements/collectibles/timers and stuff, and in which level we'll use them, but much of the implementation is done allready.
Our biggest problem right now is to point all undone tasks - which is my duty - and make people work - which should be their own duty! Two students in the team, who tragically are the two of three programmers in the team, seem to have taken vacation or something, they don't answer on email, or when I call or send them an sms. One of them has been like that since the beginning, the second has been like that for a couple of weeks, which really was bad timing since we had a presentation last Wednesday.
But we're still up and running! And I won't quit until I get my PASS on this course (and of course, as good a demo as possible), or die trying. Discipline ftw!
22 apr. 2010
Are you Chilling?
There's that extremely helpful guy who overheard someone talking in his phone: "Where are you chilling? You don't know the place? Ok, I'll try to find you!", and so he felt the urge to help and started to ask people around "Are you Chilling? No? Excuse me, are you Chilling? Hello, are you Chilling?"
A couple of hours later he found himself being on the beach. "Hi, are you Chilling?" he asked somebody sunbathing, who grinned back and answered "yepp!!". The exhausted man gave him a slap and yelled "Then what are you doing here?! People are looking for you!"
The first (and only) time I heard this joke was in high school, but somehow I remembered it while thinking about myself right now. I'm the producer of our team and have to plan a lot of things, I have important stuff to program, I have the GUI design and implementation to do, the dissertation to work on and the individual projekt to atleast START with. And what am I doing? Chilling!
Things are looking better, I have to admit that. Our level designer seems to be hyped by the fact that he gets to do the tutorial levels too and plan everything - good for him, really. But not all the team members are as optimistic as him and I really can feel the team power meter getting lower and lower. Have to do something!! My fellow programmer have worked her hands off and the designer seems to have given up on this project being fun to play. Our artist feels like hell's upon him and the third programmer in the team... well he disappeared again! He's been doing that all the time, but I thought I had him this time. Even the hands off-programmer tends to hide nowadays. Things that were supposed to be designed this week seems to be unfinished, but according to our plans, this sprint (which lasts until Sunday) is the last production-sprint and there will be no more drastic changes and new inputs. Next Monday it's feature stop!
Yet I'm still chilling. Is that ok? Am I still sane? I hope my optimism is not due to me loosing all my adrenaline. Maybe, my brain is being I Don't Care-ish, but my conscious doesn't get it.
Either way I think our game will be fun to play. I've seen the level design, it's not finished yet but our level designer seems to have some talent hidden under the hoods. At least enough for this project. I like the way he thinks and solve stuff, so I'm leaving that up to him. I myself am trying to get the GUI system up and running, but GUI design is harder than I thought. I'm not aiming at a complex system with lots of stuff to see and chose, but the look and feel of everything is so hard to determine! Why is it so hard to determine where to put a simple little button? Or how it should look. Does it even matter that much? I'll only push it to play the actual game for God's sake!! Am I missing something here? I definitely do, with my over-optimistic attitude and everything...
Let's take a look at another side of my life: my post apocalyptus, aka. after graduation. I have no clue what will happen, and since I'm such a planning freak, it freaks me out even more!!
Thing is, mom can't stand it anymore, she wants to live in our home country, so everyone is working to fulfill that wish. My poor parents have gotten through and sacrificed a lot of things for the sake of protecting us - now is our turn to return the favor! What that has to do with my post apocalyptus? Well, the initial idea was to study here in Sweden, but then mom persuaded me to rest for one year before continuing with the Master's degree. Then my brother persuaded me to go to London and do my Master there (he's living there now). But then mom got very ill and she went to Kuwait and now she refuses to continue living in Sweden. Understandible, I must say. But, now my brother is doing his best to get into business in Kuwait so that he gets a residence permit and buy an appartment or house where he and my parents can live. Eventually they will get an rp too. And now they try to persuade me to study in Kuwait. I can't find any Masters on computer games programming in Kuwait!! What I think that I've decided is to take distance classes while tagging along the family to Kuwait. But now I have to check for which requirements there are on courses to be counted as advanced enough for the Master's degree. With that approach I can manage to put up my own Master! Handy eh? And exhausting... But honestly, regaining harmony into the family spirit is priority #1 right now, so I can end up being anywhere on this lovely planet with neither a school nor a job to go to.
Jee, I'm really talented at WHINING! Gosh, I'll stop. You know what? let's turn this plate over to a better side:
I want to go indie! I think that suits me very well. Flexible, minding my own business, working at my own pace... I can have another job on the side, as long as I get to make my own games. I think it goes great with the post apocalyptus planless days - if there is no work to do, I'll make up work to do!
There are a few persons I already know I'd like to work with. Maybe I'm being naïve now, but I really look forward to work with people overseas, people from other countries, to get a mix of ways of thinking and percepting things. Also, there is atleast one competition I plan to participate in and I hope to find out more. I also plan to do some experiments in my games, I want to compare different styles of programming, different styles of games and even different graphics to see what it provides for the gameplay. I'm sure the answers are obvious but in this way I feel like making the game developing process only more interesting. Come summer and sweep me away!
A couple of hours later he found himself being on the beach. "Hi, are you Chilling?" he asked somebody sunbathing, who grinned back and answered "yepp!!". The exhausted man gave him a slap and yelled "Then what are you doing here?! People are looking for you!"
The first (and only) time I heard this joke was in high school, but somehow I remembered it while thinking about myself right now. I'm the producer of our team and have to plan a lot of things, I have important stuff to program, I have the GUI design and implementation to do, the dissertation to work on and the individual projekt to atleast START with. And what am I doing? Chilling!
Things are looking better, I have to admit that. Our level designer seems to be hyped by the fact that he gets to do the tutorial levels too and plan everything - good for him, really. But not all the team members are as optimistic as him and I really can feel the team power meter getting lower and lower. Have to do something!! My fellow programmer have worked her hands off and the designer seems to have given up on this project being fun to play. Our artist feels like hell's upon him and the third programmer in the team... well he disappeared again! He's been doing that all the time, but I thought I had him this time. Even the hands off-programmer tends to hide nowadays. Things that were supposed to be designed this week seems to be unfinished, but according to our plans, this sprint (which lasts until Sunday) is the last production-sprint and there will be no more drastic changes and new inputs. Next Monday it's feature stop!
Yet I'm still chilling. Is that ok? Am I still sane? I hope my optimism is not due to me loosing all my adrenaline. Maybe, my brain is being I Don't Care-ish, but my conscious doesn't get it.
Either way I think our game will be fun to play. I've seen the level design, it's not finished yet but our level designer seems to have some talent hidden under the hoods. At least enough for this project. I like the way he thinks and solve stuff, so I'm leaving that up to him. I myself am trying to get the GUI system up and running, but GUI design is harder than I thought. I'm not aiming at a complex system with lots of stuff to see and chose, but the look and feel of everything is so hard to determine! Why is it so hard to determine where to put a simple little button? Or how it should look. Does it even matter that much? I'll only push it to play the actual game for God's sake!! Am I missing something here? I definitely do, with my over-optimistic attitude and everything...
Let's take a look at another side of my life: my post apocalyptus, aka. after graduation. I have no clue what will happen, and since I'm such a planning freak, it freaks me out even more!!
Thing is, mom can't stand it anymore, she wants to live in our home country, so everyone is working to fulfill that wish. My poor parents have gotten through and sacrificed a lot of things for the sake of protecting us - now is our turn to return the favor! What that has to do with my post apocalyptus? Well, the initial idea was to study here in Sweden, but then mom persuaded me to rest for one year before continuing with the Master's degree. Then my brother persuaded me to go to London and do my Master there (he's living there now). But then mom got very ill and she went to Kuwait and now she refuses to continue living in Sweden. Understandible, I must say. But, now my brother is doing his best to get into business in Kuwait so that he gets a residence permit and buy an appartment or house where he and my parents can live. Eventually they will get an rp too. And now they try to persuade me to study in Kuwait. I can't find any Masters on computer games programming in Kuwait!! What I think that I've decided is to take distance classes while tagging along the family to Kuwait. But now I have to check for which requirements there are on courses to be counted as advanced enough for the Master's degree. With that approach I can manage to put up my own Master! Handy eh? And exhausting... But honestly, regaining harmony into the family spirit is priority #1 right now, so I can end up being anywhere on this lovely planet with neither a school nor a job to go to.
Jee, I'm really talented at WHINING! Gosh, I'll stop. You know what? let's turn this plate over to a better side:
I want to go indie! I think that suits me very well. Flexible, minding my own business, working at my own pace... I can have another job on the side, as long as I get to make my own games. I think it goes great with the post apocalyptus planless days - if there is no work to do, I'll make up work to do!
There are a few persons I already know I'd like to work with. Maybe I'm being naïve now, but I really look forward to work with people overseas, people from other countries, to get a mix of ways of thinking and percepting things. Also, there is atleast one competition I plan to participate in and I hope to find out more. I also plan to do some experiments in my games, I want to compare different styles of programming, different styles of games and even different graphics to see what it provides for the gameplay. I'm sure the answers are obvious but in this way I feel like making the game developing process only more interesting. Come summer and sweep me away!
15 apr. 2010
I'm le tired
[Note: This was originally written on March 29th but I just realized that I never published it lol]
Two months left and I drag my feet along the time, trying to do my best in everything I'm asked to do. It's been really hectic, these days. Only things we (the programmers) have heard from the other team members are negative things and sarcastic looks and stuff like that, it's so sickening! Yesterday, the other programmer, my best friend, couldn't take it anymore, she was so furious and mad and I could only agree with her. Not only were we beginners in this bransch, in Unity3D and in programming, we don't even have a tutor, someone physically present to show the code to and ask for help from. And all we get is crap. I don't think the others understand how much effort we put into this, how hard we try to make things work. If there's no desirable result, then they consider it as if there wasn't effort enough. I've started to wonder if this is some kind of an intro to my life as a programmer, if I'll be treated like this until I become senior or something.
Today we had a meeting and I could barely hold back my anger. I don't know if I made it clear that I can't take their attitude anymore, but after a while of my bitterness, they seemed to rethink a bit and talk to me with more respect.
I made them show more examples on what they want and told them over and over that they should take into account the team's competence, and that this and that will be hard for us to figure out because we've been trying to solve it for some time.
I really hope things will get better soon. They chose me to be the producer for the rest of the course and even though it made me happy that they believed in me, I knew it only meant more work. What's worse is that I didn't even get as little as a comment from previews producers about how things are going, how they were planning things, and stuff. Our backlogs were so dated and everything was so falling apart in disorder, that I think they chose me as the last producer just to blame everything on me later on.
Oh Jee, I feel the emoness embrace me. No, actually, what they said was that I'm the most administrative one and the group need that right now. I hope I'll be able to fix that part atleast. I'll do my best in everything I'm asked to do.
Two months left and I drag my feet along the time, trying to do my best in everything I'm asked to do. It's been really hectic, these days. Only things we (the programmers) have heard from the other team members are negative things and sarcastic looks and stuff like that, it's so sickening! Yesterday, the other programmer, my best friend, couldn't take it anymore, she was so furious and mad and I could only agree with her. Not only were we beginners in this bransch, in Unity3D and in programming, we don't even have a tutor, someone physically present to show the code to and ask for help from. And all we get is crap. I don't think the others understand how much effort we put into this, how hard we try to make things work. If there's no desirable result, then they consider it as if there wasn't effort enough. I've started to wonder if this is some kind of an intro to my life as a programmer, if I'll be treated like this until I become senior or something.
Today we had a meeting and I could barely hold back my anger. I don't know if I made it clear that I can't take their attitude anymore, but after a while of my bitterness, they seemed to rethink a bit and talk to me with more respect.
I made them show more examples on what they want and told them over and over that they should take into account the team's competence, and that this and that will be hard for us to figure out because we've been trying to solve it for some time.
I really hope things will get better soon. They chose me to be the producer for the rest of the course and even though it made me happy that they believed in me, I knew it only meant more work. What's worse is that I didn't even get as little as a comment from previews producers about how things are going, how they were planning things, and stuff. Our backlogs were so dated and everything was so falling apart in disorder, that I think they chose me as the last producer just to blame everything on me later on.
Oh Jee, I feel the emoness embrace me. No, actually, what they said was that I'm the most administrative one and the group need that right now. I hope I'll be able to fix that part atleast. I'll do my best in everything I'm asked to do.
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