My Creative Cogbox.

Eurogamer

Slightly late on writing this up but I attended eurogamer last Saturday and what a day, I wish I’d gone to the Sunday as well, unfortunately we didn’t get to any of the developer conferences but I plan to next year.

I went with my older brother Axcel and his friend Nick luckily we were all into the same kind of games and the day started with a test play of Skyrim, to be truthful 15/20 minutes wasn’t long enough to play it, but what we did play was amazing, I decided to steal a horse and explore as much as I could in the time limit, the combat has been improved but melee wasn’t vastly better from oblivion par the dual wielding you can do now, bear in mind I didn’t look into the melee skills you can get. My favourite improvement was the gui, it worked fantastically.

We also played Battlefield 3, COD MW 3, SW TOR, Counterstrike, Final fantasy 13-2, Rage and a few others which I can’t think of at this moment, my favourite of the day had to be Battlefield 3, I’m a huge fan of that series and where I’m disappointed that they have nerfed the destruction it played fantastically and I will no doubt be stuck on the beta nonstop.

So all in all I had a fantastic time and came away on such a high, you can definitely count me in for next year ;).

More training

I still haven’t come across a job yet, I have however signed up for a free ‘Introduction to AI’ course, its an online course based at Stanford University which I’m very excited about and am hoping will expand an area that I’m already very interested in.

I have also been going through the flex tutorial series ‘Learn flex in a week’ and experimenting with C++ projects in visual studio. So I have kept busy also not to mention I picked up Dead rising 2 which presently may be taking up a bit more of my time then I would like :P.

I am now officially no longer a student!

It already feels strange to be out of education, I haven’t had a break since primary school (since nursery if that can be counted :)). Of course thousands of people are the same, a lot even carry on to do masters and so forth but it does make me wonder what they might be thinking at the point of leaving the system, for me I have grown accustomed to the student life so the thought of everything changing now is almost scary, there’s a lot I’m looking forward to like a job, new challenges, making my mark in the world, moving to a new area but there will be so much I miss as well like the people I have met these last few years, the social life, the studying and being able walk around in pyjamas all day eating baked beans from the tin.

The graduation ceremony was amazing, we had it in Canterbury cathedral and I won’t lie walking down the cloisters in my robes made me feel like I was at Hogwarts :), it was fantastic. I also got the chance to meet the chancellor of the university and as I got first class honours, I was allowed to briefly talk with him about plans for the future. My parents and partner were in the crowd watching and we took hundreds of photos after which was really nice, although they did make me throw my hat into the air… which may have been fine except I was doing it by myself with no one around me but I get embarrassed very easily :P.

Which leaves me here now, still applying for jobs however there is a position in Guildford that looks really promising and I am very excited about, I am waiting to hear back today and answer a few more questions then hopefully get an interview. Getting that job would be amazing, to work in the games industry has been my dream since I was a kid and just to be shown interest by a company has really made me feel like this is my purpose in life.

Philosophy of AI

It’s been a while since I last blogged so thought I would create one about the new book I received today, as you can probably guess it’s about the philosophy of AI, an area I’ve never really read into detail about, Its always briefly mentioned in other books and tutorials to give you an idea of what to do but I wanted to know a bit more.

The books only basic to get me started but it covers areas such as: Behaviourism, Human vs computer reasoning, different systems and neural networking which is an area I really want to learn and have researched before.

So to say the least I’m looking forward to the read.

Archenemy

The term Archenemy always makes me think of Gary and that blasted Bulbasaur…

That said I’m actually referring to Magic The Gathering and their new game mode which I cannot stop thinking about. At first it seemed over powered, but once you get past that you realize its one of the best add-ons ever made, of course it still has the tactics from which MTG is famous for, but the added team work and strategy elements just take it to the next level.

I’m only a casual player myself and love 2 v 2 matches, I use a blue control deck so teaming with another lets me focus on my magic and not worry about defence too much. That said my deck can take care of most players in 1 v 1’s as well, just needs some fine tuning in areas before I take it into tourney play.

Grades, Projects, Jobs & Celebrations!

Celebrating my results; Nyall, Me, Paul and Gabby :)

Its to a great relief that I can officially say… I’m a First grade student in Multimedia Technology and Design Bsc, a feat that has put me in a great starting position for job searching, which admittedly I’ve yet to start.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being lazy (or so i tell myself ;)). I have just been taking a short break before starting my next venture, especially as I have been away from my family the past 3 years, coming back and being able to relax without the worry of deadlines has been such a joy - one which I want to make the most of! Plus I have been keeping myself busy, taking the time to fine tune my programming especially in C++ and working on several small projects, none of which worth mentioning… Yet!

What’s keeping me busy…

I have been focusing on a couple of things recently, the first being a small college project for a friend who’s been tasked with making a short game level. Although he’s been advised to use the UDK, he’s going that extra bit further and has asked me to give him some introductory tutorials to the fundamentals of Unity, which I will also be doing the programming for. The chosen design is an oblivion style within a small village and a boss at the end. Coding wise I only have the enemy AI and a simple music player to finish, so expect some screenshots soon.

Another project, slightly larger then the above is a remake of a ‘Warcraft III’ custom map called ‘Jurassic park survival’. As the name suggest you have to survive an onslaught of dinosaurs, but its more about building a base and maintaining defence rather than the more frequently seen FPS. Im working on this project with a Modellor and some other friends have also shown interest. It’s still in early development and we are currently running performance tests to ensure it will run on low spec machines as we plan for it to be played across a network with up to 10 players per match.

The only other thing is some rather large freelance work which has popped up, but I can’t go into that ;).  

Career

Now that I’ve finished university I’ve been researching potential jobs, filtering out the ones I plan on applying for. For people who don’t know me I’m completely obsessed with the idea of working in the games industry and have been since roughly the age of 8, whether it’s as a game designer or more likely a programmer, I have no doubt that it’s what I will do!! 

As time goes on I will keep you posted in this area :).

Anyway, that’s the context out of the way!

Mike

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

-Scott Adams