Shanes Devry GSP Blog

Update!

2011-08-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, just want to give a quick update on what I've been up too. Currently I am working as a software engineer at a laboratory, making laboratory management software, websites, and even games! Its a really sweet job, and I have been learning a lot since ove been here. I am currently working in PHP, Visual Basic, C# (silverlight), and SQL. One of the most challenging tasks I have had while here has been taking an old QuikBasic program, and converting it into Visual Basic, which is like taking a knight from the dark ages and throwing him into today's New York and telling him to work haha. I pretty much have the freedom to complete projects however I want, using the language of my choice. This is awesome because it gives me a lot of flexibility. My current project has me making a game for one of our marketing sites. WE decided on Silverlight, so I have been making a "Space Invaders" clone so i can familiarize myself with the language. Its almost finished, only a few more things to do, so I wanted to post a screen shot of what I have. Yes its Halloween themed ;)

XNA Game - FIGHT!

2011-01-18T15:01:00.000-08:00

So after years of wanting to do this, but not knowing how to start, me and my friend are finaly going to be building our super secret XNA puzzle game. Problem before was I didnt know how to build the puzzle board but using the awesome info from:

http://www.packtpub.com/article/building-complete-board-based-puzzle-game-microsoft-xna-40

By the way the author of that article also made a really good XNA 4.0 book, you should check it out. I was able to use bits and pieces and tailor it to give me a great starting point to the game. As of now its just gonna be a prototype to get the basic gameplay mechanics working. No pretty graphics yet.

Graduation Coming!

2010-12-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

Well Its been a long road, but my time at Devry is ending. Ill be graduation on December 17th 2010 with my Bachelors of Science and Game and Computer Simulation! However even though my time at school is over im still building up my knowledge in software engineering and game design. Companys usually want more than just college smarts as their requirements for postions so I have been working on stuff like ASP.NET, Android, PHP, XHTML, CSS, XML, and many other technical skills.

I think this is something that everyone should practice while they are in and out of school! Do your own research outside of homework, it really pays off! Also for anyone who is also doing the GSP program understand that it really tough to land a game industry job outside of college other than maybe interships. If you have the chance to intern do it! As for me im looking into software engineering postions, web programming positions using C#, ASP.NET etc, as well as internships.

Adjacency Matrix

2010-04-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Last lab was a little tough but with some pointers from the professor I finished it. I had to write a new member function "degree" for the Wtgraph C++ class given. The "degree" function should determine and output how many even degree vertices there are and how many odd degree vertices, and then calculate the weight of them all. The trouble I was having was that instead of my for loop adding up each row and doing the odd/even check it did the check for each vertex. All I had to do though was move the check outside of the for loop for "j" and add a row/column counter. Doh!

Discrete Mathmatics

2010-03-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

-Ask the user for the required number of initial values.

-Determine the next 19 values according to the given recurrence relation.

-Output the resulting 19 values along with the values for the two representative functions provided

Recursive functions are useful when you cannot decide which route to take with a particular problem, you can save time by testing different results with recursive functions. Although they can be memory hogs becuase they call themselves until the problem is solved.

This took a lot of planning out on paper in order to visualize correctly on how the program would flow. What i had a real hard time grasping was how i would take the user input which was in an array, and plug it into my function that executed the recursive algorithm. From there i also had to print out the appropiate number to the screen, which was another toughy. I used a for loop and incremented the number n to 18. Each cycle would print out and execute the algorithms.

Comming along

2010-03-08T08:41:00.000-08:00

Just finished Calculus, and now I am taking Discrete Mathmatics. Sounds like something you could get arrested for right? It actually a pretty cool class where you solve logic based math puzzles, and put them into C++ form. First ILab had me make a C++ console app that ran through a truth table. There were two problems that were kinda like this:

A says B is lying
B says A is telling the truth

User put in input whether or not A and Bare telling the truth using "T" or "F".

They way i checked for consistancy though could of been more effecient though:

//Checking for true and false values. Probably not the most efficient way
if (p == "T" && q == "T")
{
varA = "FALSE";
varB = "FALSE";
}
if (p == "T" && q == "F")
{
varA = "TRUE";
varB = "FALSE";
}
if (p == "F" && q == "T")
{
varA = "TRUE";
varB = "TRUE";
}
if (p == "F" && q == "F")
{
varA = "FALSE";
varB = "FALSE";
}

But it works!

MeteorX

2009-11-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

Ive got a new XNA game in the works! Its a planet defence game, in the year 30XX, where you defend planet X from meteors and other space like things in via "Weapon X". Notice a trend? My cousin josh has made some badass music for it already, and ive been writting out the requirements and some concept art. This will be the official spot for the game and updates as time passes. So...audience...stay tuned for screen shots and such!

2009-08-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sup everyone! Its been a min, but ive been busy working on a text adventure game. The engine itself was build using the 3d buzz tutorials. I am now taking it a step further and revamping the engine. It is going to be a zombie like text adventure, with an atmospheric feel like silent hill. Right now i am working on a Random Battle algorithm so that you can fight enemies. So far ive got the screen to switch to a battle screen every (RandomNumber) steps. If i can pull this off, this will be sweeeet.

Portfoilio Website

2009-07-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Well ive done alot of work on my portfoilio website, and its turning a out great. Its not finished yet, but at least ive got some work on there:) Im going to finish it up soon hopefully.
http://sites.google.com/site/shanenelsonproject/

2009-07-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to make a post to show off my Sephiroth tattoo. RPG's are hands down my most favorite genre of gaming. I just love how you can get lost on these worlds, and assume the role of someone else. The stories in RPG's are always emmersive. Well i love tattoos, when they are done right, so im going for a gaming theme. Sephiroth imo is a hands down badass, and one of the most momorable, and legendary game/villain characters in gaming. Enjoy!

Hey there

2009-07-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

WHats going on, its been a long time :P Well ive been busy with school work and such, and recently got back from a vacation. I am making plans to make an online portfolio to serve as a place i can put all my work for peopleto see and download. Lately though, aside from whatever crap the school has me doing, ive been focusing alot on XNA. Right now im going through the video tutorials from the guys at 3D buzz http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_home.php. Hands down these are the best tutorials for XNA, and for anyone who wants to learn programming.

Right now i am enroled in GSP-420, which is supposed to be a game engine prgramming class. However, AGAIN, the school changed the format at the last min, and it turned into another Torque Game Engine class. Oh i hate torque, and im really disapointed we wont be making our own game engine, and instead we are editing torques SDK. I mean, this is all good practice, but i dont really care about torque. Oh well.

First weeks assignments were easy, i just had to set up TGE in Visual studio.

Well ill keep you all updated on my new website comming up. Hopefully i will get it up tonight!

Picked a new book

2008-12-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Aside from what im learning in school, i would like to do some aditional learning on the side. I have become kind of a book freak lately, so i pick up a neat book called "Microsoft® XNA™ Game Studio 2.0: Learn Programming Now!". Its really cool, and it has tons of great examples. You even make your own little mini games, and then you can move it over to the xbox to test it out. Im a big fan of community games, and XNA. One of my goals is to make games for xbox lives community games. Indie games are very important, its what fuels this industry now adays. When i am done with finals, i am going to read this over my christmas break. Its gonna be great becuase i am trying to get all the expirience i can.

Under taking some projects

2008-12-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well i have a couple oppertunities to get some nice hands of expirience working in a group and making some games:)

First one is through the school, Devry. It is a contest with GSP students to make a game design document, and then making a game out of it. The game doesnt need to be perfect, in fact it should be in the "Alpha" stage of development. The winning group gets a trip to San Fran to the Game Developers Conference. Awesome!

The Second is a "hobby" Project, that has nothing to do with Devry. However one of my instructers is in this group, it is in no way affiliated with Devry. I made a post saying i am interested, hopefully ill get a chance to be on this team. I'll update on this when more news comes.

Visual and Design Fundamentals with Lab

2008-12-08T16:15:00.001-08:00

Thought id share some screens of the work i did with 3ds max in this class. Its nothing awesome. but its still decent for a beginner :) These are intended to be representations of "levels" that correspond to the game idea i had to make in the beginning of the class.

Hello! First Blog

2008-12-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Never thought i would ever want to make a blog, but i thought it would be cool blog my my gaming design journeys here at Devry University. Ive been going to Devry for about 3 years now, and should be graduating about a year. Its been a long journey though. Ive taken numerous C++classes, as well as C# classes. Ive learned about the gaming industry and its in's and out's. All of this has been a fun expirience, and i look forward to learning more everyday. Recently im taking a game audio and visual class that deal with using 3ds max for creating game worlds, as well as audio for games. I am also taking Game Math programming II, which deal with lots of physics and using he C++ language. I love the math class becuase i get to give life to virtual objects. My most recent Lab was where i had to use the physics formula for reflection, and useit on a ball to make it bounce off of the plane, while also it being affected by gravity.

So the purose of this blog is to share all my game creations, and C++ programming examples for all to see. I think it would be good for reference. I wont post Devry HW solutions though, since i do not want to give out answers, this blog is just mainly record my activities. Mainly just pictures.

This comming term i will finnaly be taking two classes where ill finnaly get to put my knowledge to the test, and make actual games, and mods for games. Im really looking forward to this! These are the classes that inspired this blog.