Shmidland

Did some work on the canyon game, worked on some scholarship applications, not too much.

I’m thinking about getting some of those little succulent plants to stick in the windowsill or on the table.  We need plants in here.

IT IS DONE.

I spent all day throwing together some more UI stuff like stats and options, fixed up some annoying bugs, and added sounds and music.

It was close to noon by the time I finished.  I uploaded the final product to GitHub....well, I tried.  It took A VERY LONG TIME TO UPLOAD.  I’m talking maybe 30 minutes.

Then when I was done I found that it started up on the wrong level and I had to upload it again.  By the time I was done the lunch speaker was about to start.

Then I stayed late for another meeting for the VR project that we haven’t really done anything with yet and went home to no D&D. :/

VIGOROUS WORKING ON WIZARD ASSESSMENT GAME.  Over the weekend I added more spells, tried figuring out how to make focus spells like lightning and healing work, made a basic enemy spawner (but no AI).

MONDAY: Spent most all day figuring out how to make AI.  Then put together a quick damage system that lets my spells kill enemies in one hit.

TUESDAY: Added an area-of-effect ‘blast’ spell that kills everything immediately around you.  Also added mana system, some UI, a main menu, and a death menu.

I went to another one of those VR meetups today.  Same place as last time, pretty much the same thing.  Tonight a bunch of artists came by to show off their VR art things that they’d made.  There was also Tilt Brush for people to make things.

I was volunteering at the single non-art station.  I was demoing Superhot VR, a shooter where time only moves when you move.  The concept is that the player will be able to stop moving and assess their situation before continuing.  The combat is really dynamic, too.  You can grab guns out of people’s hands, swat bullets out of the air, and throw bottles and cups and anything else lying around.

It’s one of those games where you get pulled into it and can forget you’re in VR and nothing you’re seeing is actually there.  When I was trying it out, I tried leaning against a desk and fell over.  Later, when I was demoing, I stood too close to someone and got punched in the nose.

THE PROMISED DAY HAS ARRIVED.  I walked into class to see this on the screen:

That’s right boys we got taught Unreal Engine today.  I’ve been waiting for this all year.

Well, it wasn’t everything we did all day.  Terry just did a rudimentary crash course in Unreal and then we worked on our assessments for the rest of the day.  As it turns out, there were a couple of people who were using Unreal.  This means I’m not the only one. :)

wow look a daily post.  Also I’m skipping day 75 (Thursday) because nothing happened.

Wait now that I think about it one thing happened: I made a quick website for the Canyon Game.  It’s actually a site for the game dev team (we call ourselves Chakram Studios), but I made it primarily as a dev blog for the game.  Here is link.

Anyway here’s today:

Dad stopped by today to give me my optional computer glasses that are supposed to help protect my eyes.  Then we did a bunch of stuff.

After sitting around awkwardly for a while, we decided to go to the Pink Floyd laser show at the Pacific Science Center.  But that was at 9:15 and it was around 4:30 when we got the tickets.  Since we had some time to kill we jumped in the car and went to places just to check them out.

First we went downtown and checked out the Top Pot donut shop on 1st ave.  It’s pretty small and modern and there is no bookshelf like in the other two.  I had my first maple bacon donut (YES I HAVE NEVER HAD ONE UNTIL TODAY) and I can kinda see what all the hype is all about.  Bacon definitely goes well with bacon.  Not a donut I’d have all the time, though.

Then we went up to University Village to check out the Microsoft Store that I’m trying to get a job at. It’s exactly like the one in Bellevue, right down to the Vive testing place to the right of the entrance.  The only difference is that when you go out the doors you’re outside instead of in Bellevue mall.

After wandering around looking at all the super expensive laptops and giant tablets (the $800 Vive was far from the most expensive thing there), we went back home and dad made a sandwich and I spent a while trying to get the printer to print out the tickets and then we walked to the science center in the rain.

This laser show was a lot less bass-y than the Daft Punk one I saw during the game jam.  That was good.  Overall I’d rate pretty cool/10 with a ‘super trippy’ warning.

Then we walked home in the rain.  The rain had gotten rainier while we we in the laser dome.  It was at this time that I found out that my puffy warm coat that I had worn was not as waterproof as I thought it was.  We hadn’t left the Seattle Center before my shoulders started getting damp.

Over the six-block walk home, I believe I went through the five stages of grief.

Denial: I told myself that the dampness would not spread and that the jacket would keep most of it out.

Anger: When I realized that my coat would not hold out, I started to get mad at it and internally grumbled about how I should have worn the definitely-waterproof coat instead.

Bargaining: I told myself that there would be enough awnings over the sidewalk to keep me dry for most of the way home.

Depression: I soon realized that there weren’t many awnings at all on the walk home and that I would most definitely become more cold and damp.  This made me sad.

Acceptance: About a block from my house I realized that the dampness wasn’t too bad.  I even took off my hood for the final bit of the walk.

Wow look it was 20 days again.  I really have not been wanting to write about my life even though some interesting stuff has happened.  Here we go:

Did the Spring Break

Went to the eye doctor and I’m gonna get some optional computer-ing glasses for if my eyes hurt after staring at computer all day.

Played me some catan

Was gonna do a hike but then it rained

Finally went to this hippie spiritual gem shop sarah’s been wanting to take me to and got some cool looking minerals.

Did lots of stuff for the Canyon Game.  Gonna put up a website/blog in the next couple of days. The whole team (especially Conrad) has been making some cool stuff and I wanna show it off. 

Finished up my assessment.  I ran out of time on this one and wasn’t able to make all the stuff I wanted. :/

Went to a hiring event for Microsoft and applied to some Microsoft Stores around Seattle.  No job yet, still waiting on a response from them.

Formally started the work-study thing.  It’s not really a work-study, it’s a contract the school made with a vr studio where the students develop stuff for them.  I call it work study because I’ll be working on it mainly during class time.

James held a one-shot D&D campaign at our place.  It was weird seeing all the furniture moved around and all the chairs assembled around our one little table.  We fought evil Terry.  It was fun.

Was brutally reminded Daylight Savings Time was a thing that existed when I spent all of Sunday worried about how late I would be Monday and then not being able to sleep and waking up Monday really sleepy.

Started FINALLY making stuff with Unity and C#, which is miles easier than using pure C++ with Esme’s drawing library.

Even better, I’m using UNREAL for my next assessment.  I am highly excited.

Moved the bike that was up against the wall back into the entry and now the living room looks REALLY empty.  I think I should get a bookshelf or a desk/table.

Didn’t make any pizzas. :(

I LIVE AGAIN.  I’m not gonna cover each day individually, just go over the highlights.  So here’s the stuff I did over the past 20 days:

Finished LOST

Started a school assessment where I have to make a game using a weird component-entity system which basically means EVERYTHING is a single ‘entity’ which then gets a bunch of individual things added to it like an image or a physics thing or a position in space.  I’m making a simple fighting game called Tuxedo Lightsaber Battle.  The mechanics are pretty self-explanatory.

Met up with my ol’ buddy Henry Winslow (aka Hank) who was in Seattle for a dancing school audition.  I am glad he is dancing because if he wasn’t he would be mutating Mega-Risk into an even more complex beast than it already it.

Met up with my ol’ buddy Spencer at UW and talked about all the physics he is doing.  He is doing a lot of physics, including biophysics.  Yes, biophysics is a thing that exists.

Failed to get in a single day of work.  I’m starting to think the Thursday-Saturday shifts have disappeared entirely.

That’s okay because I’m going to a Microsoft hiring event in early march and maybe I’ll get a new job there.

Got my buddy Guy to make some paintings for the canyon game.  They are awesome.

Started going to those meetup things Cami’s always pushing us to go to...

First meetup was at Wizards of the Coast (Magic/D&D makers) down in Renton.  Some people from Unity gave a little presentation about Collaborate, which is their built-in source control.  After that everyone chatted about game dev stuff.  Some AIE people were there so I wasn’t hopelessly alone.  I chatted with a freelance programmer who was a Wednesday speaker at AIE a while ago and also a student dude who does 3d modelling and would potentially be interested in making models for any projects I have (Canyon Game).  He was also really into the concept of Mega-Risk.

Second meetup was tonight at some VR place in Ballard.  It was basically just demoing a bunch of VR art stuff like Tilt Brush and other unknown thingies.  I volunteered there because Cami wanted volunteers.  I worked a demo for Masterpiece VR, which is a 3d sculpting app.  It’s really weird and crude but everyone seemed to like it. :D  After my shift was over I got to try out a Hololens because some guy brought one.  It was kind of like those interactive projector things on mall floors, but in front of your face and confined to a little square of your vision.  Kinda weird and not too impressive. :/

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I’m gonna be joining a work-study thing at school where some of us will be helping a vr studio make a vr kid’s book.

well i didn’t get work because on sunday when i was going to call in i got really scared of the prospect of taking the bus in and decided to look for another job this week instead.  The one good thing about this job is that you can not do it.

Also, last week during the speaker we were told about a scholarship that we should all go do right now.  It’s an essay contest about whether or not you think virtual reality will succeed.  So I spent some time looking up old essays and doing some initial research into the state of VR and basically preparing myself for....Essay Writing.

Eventually Conrad appeared and showed me this game where you run around through MC Escher-style geometry and rotate the map so that it looks like it creates a solid walkway from one point to the next even though it very well shouldn’t but it does anyway because screw physics and screw our perception of reality.

We spent some time talking about this and then another thing and etc. and etc.  By the time he left I had forgotten what I was doing and took a break to draw up a potential map for the canyon game and then spin around in my chair for a while thinking of lore and stuff.

Terry said that Esme was starting to feel better but still would not be coming in today.  I’m not sure if that’s true or he’s just saying that to put out any rumors that he is sabotaging her or making her build a death ray for him.

So today was particles.  We already had our object pools, and we still had all the stuff from the last game we made, so we just stuck to pools into the game engine and it was done.  This took a lot longer than I made it sound, but we still had about an hour to make another attempt at this old binary file-reading test we tried to do a few months ago.  No one gets it still.

Here we are on the final day of January.  Esme is nowhere to be seen.  I am beginning to suspect Terry usurped her so that he could have permanent supreme control over the programmers.

Anyway, today was more Object Pools.  All of it.  No one understood these things except for Aaron, who always understands everything.  Terry even had to get out the whiteboard and draw out a little diagram for us.  That helped a little.

We FINALLY started to get it sometime after lunch.  For the final hour or two Terry decided he would reveal the true purpose behind us learning object pools: we were going to create a particle system.

oh boy data structures.

Today Terry continued his domination over us all.  All hail Lord Terry.  Terry taught us about Stacks, which are like stacks of pancakes.  Something is put into the stack and then another thing and another thing etc etc. and the last thing to be put on top of the stack is the first thing that gets taken off of it, so that if you want to get to the first thing you put in you first have to take out all the other things.

Then we learned Queues, which are like lines (the kind that you wait in).  The first thing to go into the queue is the first to come out and nothing behind the front thing can be accessed until it has left the queue.

Then our Lord Terry gave us Object Pool, and we wept tears of anguish and sorrow.  And we thanked him for it.

 Now that I fully understand the things, Object Pools aren’t so hard to understand.  A single pool basically reserves a chunk of memory for a bunch of things to quickly be created and destroyed, like bullets or particles.  This is necessary because by default memory manages itself horribly and you’ll run out of it if you try to just continuously create and destroy a bunch of stuff at once.

So object pools exist so that you can crate a big virtual pool full of the maximum amount of things you’ll be using.  Whenever you need one of these objects you can take it out of the pool, do what you need to do, and put it back in the pool.  Then, when you’re done, you can destroy the entire pool all at once and the memory is happy and nothing catches on fire.

But I didn’t know that at the time.  Back in the olden days of Monday I had been in class for about 6 hours and my brain was slipping away.  So was everyone else’s.  So, the final 2 hours of class were spent with everyone sitting in their chairs slack-jawed trying to figure out how object pools worked, why they worked that way, and how to code one.

wednesday woo

I woke up before 8:00 today, and had time to heat up the oven, bake my pizza, take the pizza out, and lose track of time on Quora for a while before realizing it’s past 8:00 and tossing stuff in the backpack and popping out the door.

Esme was still sick so we were all in for another day of Terry.  Today we learned more about data structures and has maps.  I soon realized that all of these were used as inventory types in Homestuck and that I already knew all of this.  

After a half-day of data structures, we all dispersed to eat pizza and then gather in the room where the weekly speaker speaks words at us.

THIS WEEK, a writer-turned VR produced talked about how cool VR is and how it’s an untapped, unknown frontier as far as storytelling goes and that Seattle is a global VR hub and we should all be using it because it’s cool.  This all just made me want a Vive even more.

then d&d.  James left after mumbling something about guitars, our turtle-cook had to make up hours because he was sick for a few days so we were left with me, the goblin-cook, and the cat-man meme master.  Oh, and the two NPCs who both a lot more important and interesting.

Today, we ran very far away from the robot-infested city and made our way to a cave-fortress with a couple more clockwork robots crawling around inside.  Fortunately, they were really weak and were taken down easily.

We explored around for a while, with me checking every nook and cranny for explosive-making supplies (I had run out).  We soon found a giant cavern with a fallen tower, several side-rooms, and a giant metal door with a minotaur’s face on it.  While the rest of the party searched the side-rooms for supplies, Mr. Meme Master jumped right into the room and blew his airhorn.

The doors sealed themselves shut behind him and he was soon knocked unconscious by a giant clockwork-cyborg minotaur who used elemental magic in his punches.

Once he fell, the doors opened and we all dashed in for a boss battle.  It took quite a while to whittle the thing’s health down.  It was connected to some kind of crystal egg at the back of the room that kept attacking us and overcharging the minotaurs attacks.  I eventually killed it with my final explosive and we got some nice loot off of it.

At the end of the battle, the thing dropped a grief seed, tying into the Madoka theme.  I assume there will be a lot more fights like these.

AND THEN I went home, woke up my computer and, on cue, encountered a Conrad ready for more Age of Empires.  So we started up another gold-wall map and were preparing for an epic showdown when I realized that Conrad left the game on standard mode and that I could just build a wonder in the back of my walled-off area and wait for a few minutes and then I win.

And now it is Tuesday.  Esme was sick today so Terry taught class.

Unfortunately I was too tired to appreciate this rare opportunity to watch Terry do two jobs at once: teaching stuff and then running around helping people with their code.

Today we did math.  Specifically, we did math where you convert between different number systems, like binary and decimal(normal) and hexidecimal.  I do not want to do this math make me sad this is what calculators are for.

After a few hours of mental torture, we were told the purpose behind this math: using bits and bytes(which are series of binary numbers) to effectively store memory.  This led to the true purpose of the day: learning how to use hash tables, which are things that fundamentally use bits and binaries to effectively store large amounts of data.