A Week Away From School

It’s about that time of year again. School is going to be starting up this week for some of us, and with that, so will the club. I realize it’s taken awhile to get an update on this site, but this mostly has been due to the usual reasons around here — lack of time. But no matter, let’s just jump in.

I’d like to take this moment to announce a shout out to a couple of our members. First on the list is Philip Garabedian, a Graphic Design major who has been helping the club out with his artistic talents. Philip has been designing a great template for our fliers, which you will be seeing around campus shortly. He has devoted a good chunk of his time for free just to help us art-handicapped people out. Thank you very much Philip for devoting so much time to the project — it is well appreciated (plus, it just looks damn cool). Our next shout out is to Robert Muller, who will not be joining us this year for our weekly meetings. Robert is a good friend of mine — who helped on our CS499 project PHASE — and he will be out for the majority of this year doing an internship up in northern California. On that same note, Robert will also be contributing to our blog and resources section with updates from his new work, as well adding more tutorials in the Resources section of our website.

Now for some general updates. Along with Robert’s work, other members will be contributing to the resources section as well. We are looking to really bolster the tutorials section with some useful information; however some of the tutorials will be specific in nature. A good example of this is a new upcoming tutorial on writing games for the Zune HD using Microsoft’s XNA framework. We’re also hoping to get some non-programming tutorials up as well. On that note, you are probably starting to notices a general trend — we are severely lacking in writers / presenters / members with non-programming ability regarding game development. If anybody is interested in helping us out with this, please drop us a line on the subject. This includes topics such as modeling, animation, level design, and other things of that nature — you get the point.

There are a few thing to keep in mind event-wise as well for the upcoming year. If you are interested in making a game in a team setting, myself and David Young are going to be taking CS499 during Spring Quarter 2010, and we would highly recommend you taking it as well. Dr. Kerbs runs a very free and fun class, and it is definitely a learning experience creating a game from literally nothing. Our primary advice is to make sure that you are ready for it skillfully and time wise. Dr. Kerbs does not teach in this class, and you are expected to learn everything on your own. Everything. Heed that word. A few of us are also planning to attend the Game Developers Conference this year as well. More details on that later, but basically it’s a great 2 day trip up to San Francisco, filled with games, booze, talking about games, and praying someone will take your resume seriously. Take a look at our photos from last year!

Two final things. Promise. Dr. Craig Rich (our new adviser) is helping us get onto Science Council for this year. What does this mean? Money. What does that mean? Partially paid travel expenses to GDC in March. The details have not been ironed out yet, but this is definitely something that is going to happen. Our site’s forums are working too, so if you have something you would like to discuss, posting topics and replies no longer takes you to a blank page.

Thanks for reading the wall of text guys, next update will probably be centered around a specific list of topics/presentations for the year. And of course, any questions or comments can be directed to our email at cppgamedesign@gmail.com.