Game Bowl 2

Thanks to the flood of comments, E-mails, and carrier pigeons, I know that you have all been waiting to hear about the outcome of the second Collins College Game Bowl. Well, I actually didn't get any such messages, but I'm sure I would have if I hadn't already called most of you to tell you about it. Nonetheless, here are all the vitamin-enriched details.

As before, the competition had three "secret ingredients" that had to be present somewhere in each game in order for the game to be eligible. This time the elements were: a 1980's boom box (you may know it as a "ghetto blaster"), rainbows, and an audio clip of the phrase "say hello to my little friend," (the clip did not necessarily have to be from Scarface, however). To my surprise, I was one of the first people drafted this time around instead of being one of the last as I was before. Like last time, however, I worked with a team that I had never met, with the exception of the instructor whom I actually have for my third class of the day. Being drafted early combined with a win from the previous Game Bowl made me feel pretty confident about the week ahead.

When we met for our pre-planning meeting after the draft, we had 8 people counting myself, but we only had about an hour to plan the entire game that we would spend the next week on. Looking back, I probably should have considered that a bad sign. We had a decently productive meeting and by the end of it I had volunteered for the Producer role, meaning that I recorded everyone's contributions and kept everyone on track. Originally I was not going to do any of the art. Keep that in mind.

One person had already quit the team by my third class the next day, but I had already planned for it so we weren't too worried. Most of the team members met on Skype that night and we had a fairly productive session, although two team members did not attend and one was two hours late. I began to worry at this point, but everyone promised to have assets turned in to me by Sunday night and so I settled for that.

By Monday morning nothing had come and I still had not heard from two of our team members; the one responsible for the bulk of our character design and the one who was solely responsible for our game's levels. At the end of the day I was legitimately stressed out; it was a very different experience from the team I had worked with before. During this time I sent out several E-mails trying to keep everyone together and explained that the majority of the assets had to be done by Wednesday so our programmer could program them into the game.

I had not heard anything by Wednesday afternoon so I panicked a bit and called Abigail to explain the situation and say that I would be staying late to do what I could while I was still at the school. I found some of the people from my team (including the main character artist) and most of them had done essentially nothing, so I persuaded a few artists from another team to come help us out. Don't frown, they were already done (at least for the moment) with the other team's work, and were a huge part in our finishing the game on time. The other important factor was the competence of our sole programmer who had essentially made the entire game using stick figures and squiggles in place of the art!


Once we had put the time into the art, I felt a lot better. I ended up doing the user interface (all of the screens and many of the icons in the game) and created the level that went into the final game. I also recorded the "say hello to my little friend" line, which we then distorted and played whenever the final boss came out. The final boss, by the way, looks like this:


I think one of my artists had a little fun with him. Incidentally, the boombox was used as a weapon by the main character, and rainbows are found in several places including "cassette tape" power-ups. Anyway, the game was due by noon on Saturday and after a long session Friday evening we finished and submitted it a full 13 hours early! Once again the scope was not nearly as much as we envisioned, but I was just happy to be able to turn something in!

A week went by, and we got to look at the other games submitted for the competition. While there were a couple that did not work or were unfinished, there were more quality games this time and I was definitely nervous about one of them. That one took home several awards, but our game, Boom Box Blast, still won the overall competition! I'm not sure if anyone has noticed yet, but I am the only student at the school to have been on the winning teams for both competitions.

Most of the students from Collins will never read this, but I do want to recognize Mike and Carl Potter, two of the artists I borrowed, for their invaluable contribution to our game's success, and a huge thanks to Josh Chilton for being an amazing, hard-working programmer. I know Carl reads this blog on occasion so I definitely wanted to put that out there. Future employers: if you read my blog, hire those guys too!

That's about it for now. We're in week 8 of 10 for the term and then I get a week off, yay!


Scott

So far, so good

Hello Internet, how's it going?

Looks like it's time for another update. Might as well record a few things about my life before the next megaquake knocks California into the ocean and leaves us wide open for Hurricane Griff; which would be the best name ever for a hurricane (for those of us who watched Red Vs Blue).

Since my last post I have completed a term of school and finished week 1 of the term I'm in now. Everything went very well and I managed A's in all of my classes, so that's not too bad. This term I have Drawing 2 (my last drawing class), Digital Imaging (I think it will be 10 weeks of Photoshop training), and Game Theory & Mechanics, where I will learn about creating a game's rules, mechanics, and other attributes and why some choices are more interesting than others. The third class actually belongs in Term 4 or 5, but I have holes in my schedule so I am taking some classes early that do not require prerequisites. If it gets me my degree (and a job) a few months early I'm sure no one will complain!

Much more interesting to me, however, was my participation in the first ever Collins College Game Bowl around week 3-4 of the previous term. During this department-wide competition all students who participated were "drafted" to instructor-led teams and we had 1 week to submit a complete, playable game. Over the next week (it ended up being nearly 2 due to delays), the student body (all departments) had the opportunity to log into our school extranet and play all of the teams' games, then vote for the one they liked best. The teams were also judged by our department head, Joe Ybarra, who awarded additional prizes such as Best Production Value. If that name means nothing to you, go ahead and Google "Joe Ybarra, Madden football." I'll wait.

(doo doo doo...waiting...)

That's right: one of the 2 guys who started Electronic Arts (a gigantic game company) and particularly the Madden football franchise, as well as numerous other accomplishments, was judging my first project. Try to think of someone high up in your company or chosen field who has been highly successful. Now imagine if they were the one conducting your next review at work. It was kind of like that. To be fair, however, Mr. Ybarra is actually very approachable and a pretty nice guy, but the man created arguably the most successful video game franchise of all time. It gave me pause.

The experience of the Game Bowl started off a little bittersweet for me. When we signed up for the competition I listed my skills as "Producer" and "Content," which essentially means I know how to lead/manage a team and I know how to write well. There were many options out there such as 3D art and Programming, but I did not feel skilled enough to apply for anything else. So when I showed up for the draft, I was not surprised that I was one of only 3 people who were only beginning their program, whereas most of the students there were at least halfway through and had some experience. Furthermore, the other 2 beginner students are amazing artists, and as such were drafted in the first round. I was drafted in the very last round and was only picked ahead of 2 people, which was less than fun

After the draft, we were informed of the three rules of the competition: 1) We could not actively sabotage any of the other teams, 2) We had to complete the game and turn it in within 7 days, and 3) We had to include three "mystery ingredients" in every game; although the method used was at our discretion. The mystery ingredients (as chosen by Joe Ybarra) were: a hummingbird, hexagons, and a six-sided die. With the rules explained, we were released to get to work.

The instructor who drafted me (Dave Bell) was excited about the competition because that term would be his last at Collins. Everyone on the team with the exception of myself was someone with whom Dave had already worked or at least had had in his class. We decided to do a side-scrolling shooter where the player controlled the hummingbird and fought bees, wasps, and a hawk. The hexagons were used as power-ups as well as in the user interface, and the dice were used as health power-ups. My role in the project was to type up all of the game literature and to design all of the menu screens (title, credits, options, and instructions) for someone else to put into Photoshop and into the game. It really doesn't sound like much (and it probably wasn't), but it got my name in the credits. Due to time constraints we had to cut our idea from 3+ levels to only one, but the finished product looked and worked very well. After about a week and a half, we finally had an awards ceremony. For most of the people in attendance I'm sure that the highlight was the free ice cream sundaes, but it was memorable for me because not only did my team win the Best Production Value award (the game looked and played the best), but we also won the student vote and thus the overall competition! Our awards were stickers and a badge, but I think the most important takeaway is being able to put it on my resume and in my portfolio.

I definitely learned a lot from my classes and wound up enjoying Environmental Science much more than I thought I would, but being part of a competition and then actually being on the winning team was pretty sweet. That being said, the next Game Bowl starts next week, and I will post the results just as soon as I can!

Scott

Excited

I have an unfortunate tendency to tell the truth when asked a direct question. That doesn't mean I lack social tact or anything; it's just that I have trained myself to be as honest as possible. This makes me valuable in the workplace since I can be trusted, but it tends to create socially awkward situations for me. The most recent example I can give you is when people who know about our baby ask me, "So, are you excited?" I have different responses depending on how well I know the person asking the question, but I have never said, "Yes."

From time to time I have found it necessary to qualify my response, particularly to my mother-in-law, who didn't really know what to say when I told her, "No, not at the moment." I went on to explain that while I was not unhappy about the situation, there were too many things for me to take care of between now and September to be excited. I have said Abigail is excited enough for the both of us (anyone who reads her blog can tell).

So today, I found myself with an unusual amount of free time at work, and I had only gotten about 4-5 hours of sleep last night (which, incidentally, is the amount I have gotten every night for about a week). I was somewhat out of it today, and was fortunate that it was a slow day. As the afternoon wore on and most of my work was finished, I found myself lost in thought.

At some point I started thinking about my daughter, and what she will look like. I wondered what it will be like to teach her things, and if I will ever take her to work with me. I imagined conversations with her. I have the feeling  that she will be really smart; she has good genes. I thought about taking her to her grandparents' houses, and maybe even on a long trip up to Colorado. She has a lot of family there.

Something unusual happened. I stopped being able to concentrate on the work I was doing altogether, and was seized with an urgent desire to get up from my desk, go home, and get to work early on the baby's room (that we're painting tomorrow). I stayed for two more hours (and did get more work done), but the peculiar feeling remained. For just a few moments, I managed to think of my daughter as someone who will be part of my life, and forgot about all of the things we will have to do in the next few months (and for the rest of our lives). I can honestly tell you that yes, now I'm excited. I'm still probably not quite on the level Abigail is, but I'm not sure that's possible.

In a few months, I'm going to be a dad. For a long time, my dad was really the only man I associated with the word. Now I have another one (or Abigail does, anyway, and so he's stuck with me). My brother Phil and my godfather Tim are dads (which is still very strange to me), and now my friends Josh and Travis are having kids too (June and September, respectively). Whenever I have a problem, or whenever I'm excited about something, I always want to tell my dad about it. Someday there's going to be someone who needs me in the same way. Maybe I should learn more about cars, sports, or something dad-like so I'm up to the task.

Behold, the shiny newness!

You have all waited patiently, although some more than others, and now I have unveiled my new creation: the newest incarnation of the Scott Blog! In all seriousness, this has actually taken me a few days to put together, so I hope you like it. Part of the delay was all of the archived postings from my old MySpace blog, which my subscribers may have noticed already. If not, check the Blog Archive on the right side and you will notice 17 "new" posts in addition to this one.

I manipulated the post dates (and times) so they would come out as if they were posted on the day I had posted the original entry on MySpace. You're impressed, I know. The reason for that is I have finally done what I've been saying I'd do all along and deleted my MySpace account. Didn't see any use for it any more so I cut off the dead weight, so to speak. Now all I have is this and Facebook. Some day I may get a Twitter account, but that's not a huge priority right now.

Hopefully someone else appreciates the new game on here as much as I do...it has penguins!!! I didn't get rid of Hangman; it's just on the bottom now. I may put it back on the top but under Conquer Antarctica...any thoughts? I'm really pleased with how this has turned out and I hope you are too. Please be sure to let me know what you think as I've worked hard the last few days.

Lastly, I did run a spell check on the old entries but aside from that they are there just as I wrote them then, so feel free to comment on them. It was a fun treat to go back and look at some of my thoughts during the past couple of years. Unfortunately due to formatting errors with Word I actually lost the very first two or three I made, but oh well; I got most of them.

Treasure trove

One of the nice things about moving is how many things one finds that they have not seen in a long time. Among the more curious things I have discovered was within the past hour, though. I have a room set apart in my house for my own use as an office/study, and so I have been using my desktop computer again. Part of the reason it stopped being used before is that the system files are corrputed and I will eventually have to buy a new Windows disk.

Anyway, I have at least gotten it to work again and will be able to use it as a backup computer for writing, among other things. I also found a bunch of old pictures and documents that I haven't seen since before I got married, so that was kind of fun. They were all old pictures of Abigail and I together and a few of my friends and I (I have a few of you, Andrew), and it made me smile. I am not necessarily nostalgic for my high school days, but there were some good times that I had forgotten, and I also remember having more hair then. :-)

I know it's been a really long time since a proper update, and sadly this will not be it, but I have at least given you something to let you know I'm not dead. I have a project underway to make it all worth it to the four of you who supposedly follow this silly little blog, and maybe I'll even start writing regularly. Who knows anything?

Hope all is well,
~Scott