Volt's Semi-Exciting Adventures at DigiPen

Hey all. You may have noticed... well, if you're cool you would have noticed that I've been gone for the past two weeks. Well, I've been up at the DigiPen University in Redmond, Washington, a video-game programming-centric university literally a step away from the Nintendo of America buildings. I just got back from this amazingly fun place after a day filled with flight delays, stomach aches, and hours of playing Final Fantasy II on my DS. I've got lots of stories to tell, but right now I'm pretty tired and a psuedo-traumatic experience just rocked my life, so I'll update in the morning. For now, I'm glad to be back with all my buds here at PCF. Later.

And we're glad you are back. Didja bring back any new games?

Pygmalion

I did notice. Hopefully being so close to the Nintendo building didn't turn you into a fanboy.

Glad to have you back. Sounds like you had fun!

You bet I brought new games. I'll give you a day by day run down on what happened.

Day -2: I get a fever.

Day -1: I stay in bed all day and throw up all night.

Day 0: We get to DIA and get on the plane. Fortunately, no delays, but the plane sucked. First, they had what must have been the smallest seats I've ever seen in an airplane. I literally couldn't move my legs, and on top of that a very overweight women sat next to me and lifted up my armrest to take over some of my chair space without asking me. I try to sleep the whole way. We get into the the Seattle/Tacoma airport an hour late due to weather and head to baggage claim. We wait for 30 minutes before the things even appear, then head over to get our rental car. Man, let me tell you... most incompetent <name for person who's just supposed to give you the keys> ever. We waited an hour in a line of 3 people. Serious. I just fell asleep against a pillar. We then go get our car and start on our way to Redmond. I had to give directions to my mom, but I doubt I was very helpful given how I fell alseep every 5 seconds. Well, anyway, we get to our hotel, which is an awesome Marriot in the middle of a shopping center. Sweet stuff. Basically I just fell asleep for the rest of the day.

Day 1: The first day at DigiPen. The class I was in was called Game Programming Level 1, and the class was surprisingly large---at least 20 people. We spend most of the day talking about our favorite games and stuff. We breaked for lunch, and a blue haired Indian-sorta-looking guy in my class came up to me. "You said your favorite game was Deus Ex, right?" he asked. We talked the rest of the time about just games and stuff. We went back to class and started working on a screensaver, using DigiPen's programming IDE, ProjectFUN, which is pretty sweet. Nothing really happened teh rest of the day.

Day 2: Man. We just spent this whole day programming a number guessing game in barebones C++. It sucked. Nuff said. However, after "school" there was a Mario Kart: Double Dash tournament in which the winner would get a DS. Already having one, I didn't really care about the prize, but I played anyway. I won one round that got murdered the rest of the time. It was still fun to watch the rest of the guys playing there were some pretty good guys in there.

Day 3: Today we started making a scrolling shooter in ProjectFUN using intuitive guides that they gave everybody. But the main highlight of the day? A tour of the Nintendo buildings. Andrew (the blue haired guy) and I were pretty pumped. Well, the tour didn't turn out as a tour as much as a shopping spree at Nintendo's employee discounted store. Not that I'm complaining. I bought Final Fantasy Tactis Advance, Final Fantasy I & II, and Yoshi's Island for GBA, along with Kirby: Canvas Curse (a surprisingly sweet game) for DS, as well as a GBA SP keychain, a pen with the GameCube logo on it, a Nintendo hat, and a action figure of Mario riding Yoshi for $80. The games alone would have cost $120 any where else.

Day 4: We finish work on the space shooter, and after school there's a Tetris Worlds tournament. I hadn't played Tetris in years, but I figured I'd give it a shot. Well, in the first round, I was murdered by a kid named Danny. This kid may also be referred to as "the annoying kid with a head twice the size of his body and hair twice the size of his head with the squeaky voice. Oh, and he has sausage fingers". Yeah, I ended up ahting that kid, as you'll see later. Well, the tournament was doubel elimination so I still had a chance. I kicked ass in the next round. It was awesome. I think one time I deleted 5 rows at once twice in a row. The next round? The same process. I was feeling good. The next round was the quarter finals. Two of the players were pawns basically, but the other was somewhat of a challenge. In the end I managed to stack lines and lines of blocks on his screen just as he was reaching the top. I ended up going to the semi-finals. Guess who else was there? Big head sausage finger kid. DAMMIT. I had everybody out except him, but he was so damn fast that I couldn't hold on for long. I got eliminated. I then realized I hated that kid. A guy named Pedro ended up winning the tournament.

Day 5: We start work on a platformer game, and unfortunately, one of the T.A.s, a guy named Russ, has to leave. This sucks because he was a really cool guy.

That's the first week. I'll finish up later.

Day 6: We finish the platformer game. Well, after I got my character to not get stuck in walls. We also went on another Nintendo "tour". I bought Zelda: Minish Cap and a few other things. I don't even like Zelda games too much, but this game is sweet.

Day 7: So, this was the first time that we got "turned loose", so to speak, to work on our own independent projects. I spent the entire today making the art for my game, but despite that I finished less than half of what I wanted to have. The concept of my game was simple. It was a platformer called "Ninjas Are So Freakin' Awesome" and the gameplay revolved around using a variety of weapons to take enemies down.

Day 8: I finally start programming on the game. After a few rough spots and some accidental file deletion that wasn't my fault at all ( ), I managed to get the game going.

Day 9: Our last day to work on the project. I stayed for 10 hours, but despite this, I didn't get even half of what I had really wanted in the game into it. This was due to a few mess ups on my part, mainly involving using enemy AI from the previous platformer we had made.

Day 10: At Andrew's suggestion, I made the last minute change of making my enemy a undetailed stick figure that runs around the screen at supersonic speeds and punches you uncontrollably if you get too close. It was sweet. At lunch, I found out I had forgotten my lunch card, so I had to just buy some chips and a soda (after getting my dollar getting eaten by the first machine) from a vending machine. On top of that I forgot my watch. ONO! When we got back, I submitted my game to be burned onto a compilation CD of our entire class's games with a feeling like I botched up big time. My mom coming in and complaining about how I should have made my art "bigger" like "everybody else did" didn't help much (then again, she couldn't read a stop sign without her readng glasses). The day ended with a display of what the teachers of the various classes though were the best games in the class, which I frankly found a bit laughable with the exception of a few. Despite how most things sort of, well, sucked, the whole thing was a pretty sweet experience. I'd recommend it to anyone who has any interest in a career in video game programming at all.

One thing I have to complain about : my game didn't get burned onto the compilation CD. GARG! I contacted my teacher to see if he could get it e-mailed to me, so hopefully I'll be able to show you guys my work. Check back later and maybe I'll have something more than blocks of text to show for myself. Later.

Sounds freakin sweet. I wish I could get games that cheap, and make my own games.

quote:

Originally posted by 088nd I did notice. Hopefully being so close to the Nintendo building didn't turn you into a fanboy.

I'm pretty much sure Nintendo of America is funding that univiersity. A lot of video game developers got their inspirations from Nintendo and I'm sure Volt feels the same way, which is why he's a multiconsole owner. He doesn't choose a side, he gives credit where it's due.

Your visit to Digipen sounds awesome, and I envy the fact that you could do something so few could ever really dream of doing at your age in your youth. Best wishes.

Hmm

A buddy o mine that im goin to school with wants to go to Digipen, pretty sweet...