E3 2006

It's almost that time again. E3 is opening its doors this May 10-12 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Online registration ends this Friday, April 28 so if you want to go you better turn up the warp drive.

Here's a little snippet from their website www.e3expo.com :

Hear the industry's top creatives speak about their upcoming games, including Spore designer Will Wright, God of War 2 lead David Jaffe, and Metal Gear Solid 4 creator Hideo Kojima.

Other recognized developers in this program include Doom 3 lead designer Tim Willits, Killer 7 designer Gouichi Suda of grasshopper manufacture, Junction Point founder Warren Spector, Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux, Lumines designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and Tabula Rasa designer Richard Garriott.

The list of creatives is complemented by an equally impressive lineup of corporate and business development strategists including Electronic Arts Senior VP and Managing Director Asia Jon Niermann, Executive Vice President of MTV Networks Music and Logo Enterprise Group Jeff Yapp, and Buena Vista Games Senior VP and General Manager Graham Hopper.

Recent additions to the program include Bethesda Game Studios Executive Producer Todd Howard (Oblivion), Ubisoft Divertissements Creative Director Clint Hocking, and KBC Securities (Japan) analyst Hiroshi Kamide.

This year's program marks the largest group of speakers ever.

Sounds like a great show. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take time off work this year to attend, but I'm looking forward to checking out all the post-show updates.

Layers, Animation and Art, Oh My!

Sorry about the title, I just had to do it ;)

I've found that if you want a really easy and quick way to gain a general idea and understanding of such concepts as layering, animation and timelines, and graphic design (such as masking, transformations, filtering, etc) that you take a look at FLASH and Adobe (any Photoshop x.x or CS2 are fine). Both come with easy to follow lessons that walk you through some of these concepts. Learning the concepts through these 2 technologies allows you to visually perceive what is actually going on. You will learn what such terms as 'masking' and 'skewing' mean and actually see what they're suppose to do.

I've found this to be a very fun way of getting started. Maybe you will to, especially when an integral part of any final game is its graphics and animation.

Another bonus is that once you're done with these lessons, and you've played around with your new learned skills, you'll be able to create amazing art work, banners, and even logos for your websites.

Gamedev.net... Check them out.

For anyone looking to get into game development. Check out Gamedev.net. I have a link to their site on the right. It's a great place to find information and answers to all levels of game development. That's where I started my journey and that's where I tend to continue to refer to throughout it.

Duty calls!

The CEO at my company has just asked me to put something together to assist attendence at our communications meetings. What the CEO asks, the CEO gets. So I'll be putting aside my game programming book for the next month or so. What's asked of me is game/animated related so I'll still be getting the experience I'm looking for. This should be fun.

Wish me luck.

One bump after another

Haven't had much time to move forward over the long weekend. I was pretty busy with some spring cleaning, a birthday, and of course work that never seems to end. Now that i've taken a break from all that I've decided to read another sub chapter or two from the book. But just my luck, when attempting to install the Blitz demo packed with the book I was getting installation errors. Wasn't sure why at first until I took out the cd and flipped it over. What did I find? My brand new cd was cracked! That's right, a large star shaped crack right near the center. So I went to the BlitzBasic site and downloaded the demo from there. I'm not sure what else I may need from the cracked cd. I may have to contact the author and see if he can at least p2p what i need. *fingers crossed*

It seems so far that my experience with game programming has been all but complaints hasn't it? I'm optimistic it will get better. There's no where to go now but up! =).

To Blitz or not to Blitz?

Well after reading the intro chapter for 'Game Programming For Teens' 2nd ED. I've already come to a fork in the road. The author (Maneesh Sethi - shout outs to him by the way, for writing a book at such a young age) uses BlitzPlus to compile his games created in BASIC. Maneesh only adds a demo version of BlitzPlus and you (the reader) are suggested to either purchase the full version or use an older verson BlitzBasic. Now, the question is. Do I run out and buy Blitz?

Oh, for those who aren't aware, demo versions of Blitz are set to run only 30 times before locking up. Yes, Maneesh does state this in the book, but as the reader it would have been great if the full version was packed with the book. In anycase, it looks like if I dont' finish this book before my 30 runs of the Blitz demo, i'm done.

And must ask myself again, to Blitz or not to Blitz?

DAY 1. The Adventure begins!

Hi guys. Well I've finally decided to take a break from playing games to learn how to build them! And what's more fun then to share my travels from the very start with the rest of you?

I've decided to start smart (Well i hope it's the smart thing to do) and start simple. I'm an applications/web developer so programming is nothing new to me, but game programming? That's a whole new world.

Anyhow, after doing some researching I've decided to purchase 'Game Programming For Teens'. It builds games using BASIC, which isnt' exactly what I may be looking for, but from what I've read it gives great intro to many aspects of game developing.

Enough rambling...let the journey begin.