I have discovered something tonight that has scared me more than I have ever been scared in my entire life. It is gut wrenchingly horrible and WILL lead you all to insanity and massive depression. And, best of all, just like a bad M. Night Shama-SoFullOfHimself-lan movie; there’s a surprise ending. This horror upon horror’s, this incarnation of all things holly and despicable, this manifestation of death and petulance and fear YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT NOW!!!!! (and it was created by Al Gore)

THE INTERNET!!! I’ve blindly been using the internet for years, thinking to myself, “Hey, it’s cool. I got pron and emails – and pron emails.” But, I was wrong. I discovered the real internet tonight. The scariest fucking shit I’ve ever seen in my entire life I read tonight. You know it’s possible that being up at 12:00 in the morning the day before the LHC goes off wired out your mind on cookies and coffee is a bad idea. Some people might even say, that in this state you should not post on your website that 5 people in the world actually read which you never update anymore. BUT I DEFY YOU TO NOT SHIT YOUR PANTS!!

End of the world scenario #4 Killdozer!! Ok, so you’re too lazy to read about this thing, here’s the brief synopsis. Dude goes ape shit, balls out, Pink Floyd the Wall crazy. Builds a KILLDOZER!! Steel wrapped around concrete covering a bulldozer with a 50 cal. semi automatic rifle! There are two things about this story that kill me. 1. KILLDOZER!!! and 2. what the FUCK have I been doing with my life. I am NOWHERE near building a Killdozer. It’s so depressing.

End of the world #3 Seriously, potential Zombie apocalypse started by my cat, Dumbass. (I really have a cat named Dumbass, ask Dave Brown if you don’t believe me) I feel so betrayed. Although, I did catch Dumbass giving me the shifty eye last night…

End of the world scenario #2 CYBERDYNE IS REAL!!! This is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard! How do I not know about this? What newsletter do I need to sign up for so I know when Japan has created the end of humanity? Why didn’t I get a phone call? Someone has to answer for this!

End of the world scenario #1 The large hadron collider (LHC) If you don’t know about this already, seriously you are not nearly nerdy enough to read this site, please go away now. The scary thing, no-one has said it’s IMPOSSIBLE that it will create a black hole destroying the Earth. Think about this… My logical not operator is saying that means it’s possible. Meaning, find a mate fast. My personal best case scenario? We all travel to an alternate reality where there is a female version of me that I can have sex with. DON’T QUESTION IT! (lets see if my url gets banned from FullSail for that one)

So, there are the 4 reasons we are all going to die tomorrow. If I am one of the few lucky survivors I might post tomorrow about how I barely survived. Until then, stay on the internet and watch this site.
HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedEarthYet

The hardest thing to do is to not lose control and start yelling at them. There will come a time when someone completely ignorant about the number of hours you’ve worked or the complexity of the piece you’re architecting will say something like, “Why isn’t it done? It should have been done a week ago? This is unacceptable.” I’ve been in many of these situations in the past 2 months, and it’s taken all of my willpower to not deck the person talking. At one point I even said, “I quit” to his comments. Everyone thought it was a joke, but I was dead serious. Don’t let this happen. You have to keep a calm head and slowly tell the boss why it’s taking so long. Don’t take the easy way out and start blaming other people. Your job here is to ensure that the boss understand your commitment to the product. Tell him you’ve put in extra hours, and you will continue to do so until the task is accomplished. Don’t speak programmer jargon, say in plain English that the piece is more complicated than it first appeared to be and it’s taking longer than anticipated to complete it. He will have to believe you.

The worst thing that can happen to you when dealing with a boss like this is for you to lose your confidence. You must be strong and proud when he tries to tell you your work is horrible. Don’t let stupid things ignorant people say convince you you’re something you’re not. Let the boss rant, and when he’s done you list off all the reasons why what he thinks is wrong. All the boss wants is to believe in you. Seriously that’s it. He wants to have faith that he can say to you, “Do this” and you get it done. It is impossible for him to have faith in you if you fail to fight back. You have to be calm, clear, and vocal. If you show confidence in these situations, then the boss IS going to trust you. And, defend the other members of your team even if they don’t really deserve it. If you do this, you will be perceived as the leader. When you’re perceived as the leader you get more trust and more rewards.

FullSail can’t teach you how to function in these environments. All of our teachers are brilliant, understanding, and know programming. It’s impossible for them to pretend to not know how much work/effort you’ve put into a project. This is a lesson you will have to learn in the real world. I hope for your sake that you don’t ever have to. But if you do, hopefully this helped.

Booker

Actually I’m gonna be a little more than that. Getting the necessary screen shots and making installers for them is going to take a bit. I’m used to having that given to me by the students (what can I say, I’m spoiled). Plus I’m taking Ethics & Psychology this month which is …fun…

But I’ll make it up to you with another 3D game that was recently submitted to me, Amoeba Sports. It’s fully shader driven and cell shaded.

Look for it under the SGP section!

As Udderpunch is all about student games, we are holding an open call for the PACE submissions, which will be hosted ad infinitum at no cost to you.

So send those e-mails to: brown@udder(removethiswhenyousend)punch.com. We’ll take links to your site or the actual files themselves, we’re desperate that way.

We’ve already had several people submit games and will be posting them this weekend (read sunday).

P.S. You are cordially invited to enjoy a game that was just posted: ZFighter. It’s actually 3D!! Check it out under the SGP section! I hope you like pretty.

Basically you have to place specialized track pieces to guide a ball into the goal at the end. The game uses Ageia PhysX and even includes achievements! But enough with the bragging.

The Contraption team has just posted an updated version for people to Beta test and you could possibly be included in the credits of their game!

They have a beautiful flash site to compliment the game. Check it out here!

Shout outs to Ben Retan and my relative, Jason Brown!

We’ve got 4 new games up. Arena!, Ereta, Trapped, and Death of a Dragon. Look for them under the SGP section!

And for those of you who don’t know me allow me to introduce myself:

They call me David, last name Brown, recognize game I’ma lay mines down.

Me saying things like this is probably why I don’t have a girlfriend…

More than two weeks ago, when I accepted the job, I had to make a schedule detailing what I’d be working on till March. (March 1st is the launch date) I finished this schedule detailing that I would basically be writing all the game logic on the project. It’s an MMOCC (Massively Multiplayer On-Line Chat Community) so I have to get the players walking, talking, and interacting with the world. My first day was Tuesday of this past week (January,22) and I met the team and started production. Well it just so happens that Friday (January,25) the owner/boss of the company had a big meeting with some potential investors. Because of this, he basically wanted to show off the game in it’s entirety. Problem was that we only have 3 flash developers and all 3 of us just started that day. My goal was basically to code everything I had previously scheduled for a month, in 2 days. Needless to say, all-nighter’s were involved.

As if that isn’t enough, our project manager gets a phone call the night of Tuesday the 22 (my first day) from one of the 3 developers saying, “I took another job, good luck.” So we have to code the game with only 2 developers in 2 days. (it had to be done by noon on Thursday) This also meant that I had to write everything that developer was going to have for the presentation.

Oh, I forgot to mention one little thing. We decided (and this decision should have been made months ago) that we would change all the existing code base from AS2 to AS3. This is similar to if your boss came up to you and said, “Hey I know you’ve got a lot of work done in C#, but you and I both know it will run faster in C++. So, I need you to recode everything you’ve got in C++.” So on top of everything else I have to re-factor existing code bases into a new programming language. (Despite my current bitching, this was the right decision – AS3 is 3 times faster than AS2, I don’t know wtf they were thinking using AS2)

So to sum up, I’ve been with this new company for less than a week and already I’ve had a team member drop out, had to rewrite a code base in a different language, write/fake functionality that should have taken me a month to complete, and pulled all nighters. If this isn’t SGP on crank I don’t know what is. So, stop your bitching and get back to work. The hell we put you through in SGP (including the wheel of misfortune) really happens. So appreciate the experience.

And, in-case you were wondering the other flash developer and I DID get EVERYTHING the boss wanted done (or faked) and his meeting was a success.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the great people I’ve met at this job. This includes all the people that work at FullSail but most importantly you students. I’ve had a tremendously awesome time here working with you, but it’s time for me to move on. You guys have made this an incredible experience for me. Hopefully, you have learned as much from me as I’ve learned from you. I will miss this job, and believe it or not, I will miss you students. (some more than others… maybe some not at all)

So this leaves the question of who will run UdderPunch in my absence. David Brown is now taking the reigns of the Punch and will be steering it through 08. I will still be around posting every now and then and generally getting in the way, but Brown is running the show. You didn’t think I would let UdderPunch die did you?

If you would like to say bye, grab me in the halls before Monday January 10th. Monday is my last day at FullSail. Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me. Something tells me I’ll be making regular trips back to the campus for FullSail events and what-not.

Good luck out there guys, and stay in touch. My UdderPunch email is still going to be in effect.