Happenings

A lot has been going on, so unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to keep up with it here. My apologies. I should most likely change the name of this blog from My Daily Pause over to something a bit more appropriate like, My Maybe Once Quarterly Pause (If You're Lucky). Please though, let us put this lack of attention behind us and carry on shall we?

First of all you should check out the podcast that I take a part in. Our latest, Episode 27, can be found for free here: Nothing too specific, we just chat about games and tech and the usual stuff. If you happen to listen let me know what you think.

Aside from that I have gotten back into working on level design stuff. I'm currently about 40% done with a map for Team Fortress 2. The map is laid out, just have to apply textures and put props into place. It's been a lot of fun so far, can't wait to have it done and playable.













Still a long way to go, and some stuff has already changed, but this should give a general idea of some of the look/feel of the map. If you have any feedback/suggestions I'm always willing to hear them. Can't grow without feedback. Also some of the outdoor pictures are a bit on the bright side, this has already been fixed.

Looking Ahead

So this may very well be the cliché beginning of the year blog post, but I want to take a second and look ahead at what’s going on this year. The biggest thing is that I will be attending my first GDC in March of this year. To say I’m excited would be a terrible understatement. Unfortunately I only have room in my budget to attend as a student, but the career day should be a great opportunity to network and to learn a thing or three.

Being a Game Design student, you hear a lot of tough things about getting into the industry. A quick Google search will probably turn up a number of articles on how to do this, what avenues to take, and personal tales of how many have done it before. Other than school and schoolwork I am trying to immerse myself in a number of projects and pick up extra information outside of the classroom. Ideally I would like to get an entry-level QA position somewhere to not only get some experience, but also have the chance to see how a team operates firsthand. After that I would like to move into a Junior Design position and work my way up.

When I started my Game Design degree, one of the first things I decided to do was to come up with a list of studios that I would like to someday work at. I wanted to do this to be able to better focus my efforts to “break in”, and because it has allowed me to have clearer goals overall. Every time I found a studio I was interested in, I would ask myself a series of questions about the studio to see if it in fact fit on my list, and if so was it high on the list. These questions included location, does the studio put out games I would be proud to have worked on, does the company have goals and standards that align with my own goals and the standards I set for myself, does the studio have high turnover or do they seem to keep people, etc.

As I made this list one studio kept popping up, and not only met my expectations on a lot of things, but more often than not, it far exceeded them. Those of you who know me and have spoken with me recently know that this studio is none other than Insomniac Games. It also turns out that Insomniac Games will have people at the GDC career event. Knowing that I may have a chance to get in front of someone and at least talk to them has put me into overdrive. I know I won’t be the most qualified person they talk to, but I do know I will be the most determined. I am making it a point to be as familiar with the studio and their games as I possibly can before I go in March. Any game they have out that I didn’t already have I went out and picked up. I’ve been playing through them fairly constantly and will probably have over 300 hours in by the time GDC rolls around. I’m also downloading all of the podcasts and listening to them on my way to and from work every day. It makes for a rather hectic schedule on top of school and work, but with any luck my dedication will pay off in some way.

The best part of this is the simple fact that the worst-case scenario is I get to spend a ton of time playing some excellent games and I will game some insight and information if I do get the chance to talk to someone. So I’m rather content in the simple knowledge that I’m going into a no-lose situation.

Learning Hammer

I've started learning Hammer. So far it's been fairly easy to pick up and there is a ton of info online, which is always helpful. After a little bit of fiddling around I've decided to try my hand at making a TF2 map. Here is my progress thus far:












Feedback, tips, and encouragement is of course always welcome!

Extra Life 2010

So I did the Extra Life charity this weekend a long with a bunch of friends and classmates. I did it a day early on Friday due to things going on over the weekend, but it was still a hell of a time. I wanted to start it off with something a little special, so I fired up an NES emulator and played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was never able to get past the level after the dam, so I wanted to finally beat it and be done with it. After putting in a few game genie codes I was ready to go and finally got to see all of the game.

After that I jumped into a personal favorite of mine, Day of Defeat: Source. I've sunk countless hours into this game, and on this occasion I dropped in another 8 hours. I got 3 more steam achievements out of it which was also pretty nice.

Then I hit up the Red Faction Battleground beta as Volition was having a server stress test. The game is quite fun if you're wondering and I recommend you pick it up when it comes out, along with Red Faction Armageddon, which I also have to assume will be fantastic.

Then it was on to Red Dead Redemption to do some co-op with some friends who were also participating in the Extra Life event. Four hours went by here pretty quick I must say.

Next I spent two and a half hours getting my ass handed to me by Resistance 2. That game is unforgiving. Got to do the Chicago level finally though, and there is a moment in it that just worked so well.

Of course the night wouldn't have been complete without some Halo: Reach, and I put five and a half hours into that one. I finished the campaign, got the "If they came to hear me beg" achievement (which took about an hour), and rocked some multiplayer. I also put a rather funny video up from that.

To bring it all home I finished by starting Batman: Arkham Asylum on hard, and also got pretty tore up in that. Might have been due to my severe tiredness though, we'll see when I get back to that.

All around it was a fun time and I can't wait to do it next year. Hope everyone else that participated had as much fun as I did, and thank you to everyone that supported us!

I raised a total of $212 and the team I was on ended up with a total of $571.

Charity Time

So I try and get into doing some kind of charity as often as possible. Some of you who know me may even remember last years Mustache Vs Cancer adventure:




And yes, as a matter of fact I do look that sexy all the time. It's quite a burden. However this year due to my wife's pleading, I will not be growing a stache for cancer research, but if you would like to please check it out here: http://www.mustachesvscancer.org/

So this time I found something a little more my style called Extra Life. You sign up to play video games for 24 hours straight and people donate money to you to do so. The money goes to children's hospitals (you can even choose one in your area).

So if you'd like to donate and support me please go to the site here: https://www.hospitalshelpingkids.org/ExtraLife

Further and Further

Happy to say I made some decent progress on the level today. A few hurdles were overcome and a few new ones popped up. So I'm just smoothing out what I can while I can. I got almost all of the second floor done today. I might change it around a bit to make it look a little better, but so far it's coming along nicely.

I should get a few screenshots tomorrow, and Saturday should see a fairly comprehensive "What I've got" video. For today though just one fairly random bit:



Just about 99% of everything I do starts out on paper at some point, so I thought it would be fun to put this up today instead of a shiny Unity screenshot. This was what I laid out this morning before I actually started moving more things around in Unity to help give myself a little bit more of a sense of space and direction. Worked well for the most part.

Another Quick Update

So not much got added to my level today as I was working in some other areas. One thing I did get done though was adding rain with a particle system. Not sure if I'll keep it in, but I like the way it looks/turned out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NTTx50dyjs