My Last In College Post...

... I don't think I want to admit that this is it for College. I've enjoyed my time here and learned so much that I don't want to leave... but this is the way of things. In a few weeks time I will have graduated and begun the incredible journey known as adult life... Are we sure there's no dwarves, elves, or dragons to send me on an epic quest?

Requiem has gone smoothly. I'm in the process of submitting it to Valve to see if they would like to put it up on steam. I'm just waiting for the right build to be hosted on one of our sites so I can send Valve an email and say that the game can be downloaded from there. I would host it myself but....

I'm busy finishing the last two projects I have for college... oh god really? I didn't realize what I was typing until I finished that sentence... Oh well they're good projects. One is a demo reel for my site/the Senior show we're having. There's going to be people, rumor has it, from 38 Studios, Vicarious Visions, Bugtracker, and a few others that escape me at the moment, up here to see us at that time. Which will be awesome! Potential employers are more than welcome to talk to me!

My other project is my level for Advanced Seminar. It's come out ok. I'll need to make it pretty a little more before I can put it up to share but the base mechanics are all there so that should be sweet. I just need to tweak and polish the mechanic a little more is all.

So yeah... My three projects are done/wrapping up, as is my collegiate career. I specifically say collegiate because if I stopped learning I would stop growing and as the name of this blog suggests I am all about growing as an individual.

Also, fate is kinda funny. I started my college production cycle working on a project with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others, and now I'm working on my last group project in college with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others. I find that amusing.

Well enjoy your time till my next post!

Insert Witty Title Here

Sorry about the post name, I just have no idea what to call this update for all of you out there in blog-o-land. So instead of lamenting about it I will just let the unwitty title go and continue with letting everyone know what I'm up to.

I've joined a group in my Senior Team Project Class. I am on Project Requiem. It's a vertical shooter game that is choreographed to Mozart's Requiem and I am the level designer so basically it's up to me to choreograph the game or at least a good chunk of it. The other designers (Producer and Lead Designer) both want to keep working on the levels too. It's actually kind of hard to choreograph enemies to be in beat with the music but on the screen long enough to be shot at by the player I'm really enjoying the challenge of it. This is definitely going to be a portfolio piece for me.

Speaking of my portfolio. It's coming along I was happy with some of the progress I had made but after I went to class on Wednesday and so how professional everyone else's sites were I kinda freaked out so now I have a strong desire to work on mine even more and really get it to look awesome. Which is a good thing, it's part of the whole co-opetion model that everyone loves here at Champlain College. So hopefully in the next couple weeks I will be able to get my site to a workable level and share it with you all.

By the way, I am currently sharing this post with you all from the green room of the Champlain College Theater. I am in the Short Works. Which is a collection of One Act plays and short films. So all you theater geeks out there rejoice that the craft isn't dead I guess. And if you're in the Greater Burlington, Vermont area come check it out! It's FREE!

I'm currently taking a C++ class and we just started talking about classes this past couple weeks and all of my programmer friends are so proud of me now that I've programmed some simple classes. They love to talk about how I programmed the internet, in a flash game, so I think they have a bit of a "younger brother" attitude towards me.

Also in my Advanced Seminar class for this semester I'm working on a level in Unreal Tournament 3. It's specifically a maze that the player has to use a mechanic of turning off lights to discover what are dead ends and what is the right way to go. I was kind of inspired by Scott Roger's talk at MIGS when he was talking about using lights to direct the player in certain directions. I spoke to him at MIGS and wanted to stay in touch with him via email but I couldn't think of anything to say so I still have that email sitting in my client as a draft just waiting to be sent. But something tells me it's a little too late. But I'll leave it there as a reminder to never let these opportunities slip me by again.

Speaking of Scott Rogers he just recently released a book about game design and I really want to get it. Because his panel "Everything I learned about Level Design I learned from Disneyland" was so good and the whole time I was thinking "Oh yeah! That makes perfect sense" and "I knew that!" it was just a great panel to attend. So I'm hoping his book is just as insightful and supportive of what I already know. He has a blog on blogger too. It's over at http://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com. You should check it out.