Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

An interview that Kevin Flick of Microsoft (aka Fhearl of HILYMI), conducted with me a few weeks back. He’s going to conduct a series of interviews with gamers for his blog with the sneaky and underhanded goal of helping to demonstrate that gaming is just like any other hobby we may engage in. The interview of me was the first of the series of interviews. He’s not to great with post production work, but it’s a greater interview. http://blogs.technet.com/immerse/archive/2007/10/19/gamer-interview-1-victor-f-laurence-aka-livistos-aka-soriathus.aspx

The interview itself covers my history in gaming and about half of it covers my leadership of the guild Hit it like you mean it. We really went into a lot of high level philosophical stuff in there and really put somethings I do for the guild in perspective. Sometimes I’m too humble about all the work I do.

Brain juices flowing, that’s what!

After succefully surviving another session at DeVry with all A’s while going to PAX during final’s week and being inundated into gaming culture in a way I never have before, I’ve decided along with Vitor, Chindako, DaveUK, Kerrie, and Mike to make a game. I’ve got a good team pulled together, I’ve setup the project management resources, and *GASP* I bought a top of the line laptop for school and development. Vitor has a unique combat system in mind. Brian has the brains and contacts to work out a good story and get us published. DaveUK has unique sound. Kerrie has unqiue art. Mike is going to help with coding and focus testing. I have the project management skills to pull it all together (along with coding). We’ve got a game in mind and if it takes us 2 years to get it out of the door so be it, but we’re going to make a really awesome game.

Did some more reading on the Garage Games Forums on Inde development and the industry as a whole. It’s kinda of neat because they have a whole section on “Game in a Day” which is dedicated to games people have written in a day. Makes me think of what kind of GID’s I want to develop to showcase my skills. I dunno, I think I might be more interested in coding some adventure game. It might take longer to code, but something longer term, something DND style. Something that takes me back to the 286 days of DND dungeons that were all about the adventure not the graphics. My brain is so filled with ideas I could sit back all day and just run the code through my head and not code anything at all and still feel like I’ve been productive. I think I might want to start putting my ideas on paper.

Today someone told me that instead of finding one’s purpose to figure out what you need to be doing find the purpose in what you’re doing, and if you can’t find the purpose then you’re not doing the right thing. So with that in mind, I went through a little exercise…

1. Ask Yourself “Who Am I?”

I’m a creator. In everything I’ve ever done my greatest joy comes from the creation of something. Whether it’s creating music, art, code, applications, communities, guilds, I’m a creator. I love creating something that changes people’s lives, either at work or at play.

2. Ask Yourself “What Do I Love To Do?”

Code. I’m a coder. Regardless of what I’ve done I’ve always looked for a software solution to make it even better. I strive on the creation through code or in some cases implementing other people’s code.

3. Ask Yourself “What Experiences In Life Were Really Fulfilling For Me?”

A. Creating Progressive Fitness’ software B. Creating Obsidian C. Creating HILYMI. To my knowledge the software I made over 8 years ago still to this day runs the business Progressive Fitness. Having created something that is running a business and changing lives is so fulfilling. The act of creating Obsidian was a very large process of not just creating a world, but a unique concept of a world (though based on UO), scripting monsters, loot tables, balancing economies, and launching that world and watching it grow. Creating HILYMI has been a large undertaking and continues to be a struggle but every small achievement is fulfilling in it’s own way as I see the guild grow and become a more cohesive community of friends/players.

4. Ask Yourself “What Is My Purpose In Life?”

I think I’m meant to be a game developer or a developer of some piece of software that changes people’s lives. I’m destined to be part of something big, something important. I’ve never failed in creating something I put my mind to. Maybe due to elements outside of my control I created something that didn’t succeed in the end, but I’ve always followed through with something even if I didn’t have the know-how before going into the project.

5. Ask Yourself “What Am I Afraid Of?”

What does this change mean to the long term affect on my life. Am I going to have to move? How is it going to affect my social life, my family life, my overall view and plans of the future? I do always have the nagging sensation in my mind, “can I do it”, but I need to remind myself I’ve never failed at something I put my mind to. Is all of this change worth it in the end and worth the sacrifice of the changes to my life and goals?

6. Ask Yourself “Who Can I Tell?”

I can tell anyone. My life is an open book. Can I tell my boss, I kind of did today which was weird and uncomfortable, but it is what it is. I can and have told my friends and family, of whom all are supportive.

7. Ask Yourself “How Do I Put My Purpose In Place?”

I’m going to start fulfilling my destiny. I’m going to school again at one of the top 5 colleges for game programming. I’ve got connection in my guild who can give me industry contacts and I can start building a network and networking with people in the industry and getting myself known. I plan on writing some sample games showing off my skills.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts on my mind. I’ve gone from nothing to a lot in very little time with my recent studies on the subject of game programming. Am I pushing myself too hard to not hard enough? Or maybe I’m pushing myself the right amount but I have no direction? I think that’s the real question. Maybe I am pushing myself at the right speed, self teaching and getting going on the fast track, but maybe I need a little more direction. Maybe I need to get involved in an actual Inde project with a group of people who have a design and direction. Right now my biggest stumbling block is how to apply what I’m learning. Maybe I just need to do it, anything, but it feels unfocused. I need focus and the lack there of is frustrating. I’m going to take the rest of the weekend as advice from Kerrie and my folks gaming and not thinking about it and refocus my head on Monday or Tuesday.

And thus end the overall functionality of the game is done. It’s actually a playable game now and if I must stay it’s got a decent difficult to it. I need to work on some of my code and make sure I’m not doing anything that’s memory intensive. It seems like it gets a little choppy at times but that might be because of the debugger. Overall I’m pretty pleased and looking forward to a few days off. When I pick it up next I’ll work on jumping code.

- Added HitBoxes to Megaman, Shots, and Eyeballs
- Added Collision code for hitboxes
- Killed eyeball on collision with bullet or Megaman
- Incremented kill count on bullet/eyeball collision
- Decreased life on eyeball/Megaman collision
- Paused music when pausing the game
- Corrected music looping bug
- Added a “score” system
- Killing an eyeball is 1 point, killing when it is attacking 5 points
- Added code so every so many kills of eyeballs you get a bonus life
- Added a survival timer and survival bonus
- If you don’t take damage for survival time, you get bonus
- Added “Bonus In” message at the top of the screen
- Converted all times from using GameLoop int increments to GameTime float values in seconds. That way timers can be in exact seconds
- Fixed “Bonus In” message to display in whole seconds till bonus
- Added “Game Over” message
- Added game reset code when starting again after a game over
- Added an increasing difficulty scale
- Added Level counter, goes up in level every time you survive for 30 seconds
- Tweaked the LevelUp scale and overall difficulty

Next on the todo list:
- Added jump animation
- Added jump physics & reaction to the A button
- Added jump shooting animation
- Added jump shoot code

Talked with my folks tonight and it sound like they are cool with helping me with / paying for my schooling of choice (http://www.devry.edu/programs/game_and_simulation_programming/about.jsp). This is pretty excited I was kind of worried I’d have to sell them on it and why it was the best choice over any of the Oregon schooling options. They need a few days to figure out the financing and whether it really is the best choice or not, but until then I’m pushing forward on talking to a counselor and studying my brain off on these training courses from DigiPen Institute of Technology / Microsoft.
- Learned how to add multi-platform sound to my project
- Added “shot” sound to Megaman’s shots
- Found a good tool for converting MP3’s to WAV’s
- Added music to the game
- Added a weird sound to the eyeball’s spawning
- Moved the attack timer from the main routine to the eyeballs so each eyeball has it’s own attack timer, so they attack more consistantly
- Added a death timer so if an eyeball lives a long time w/o being killed it suicides. Added this code mostly to test death animation/sound
- Added the death animation to the eyeballs
- Added “blurp” sound to eyeballs dying
- Added a semi-transparent HUD to the top left (for lifebar and kill counter)
- Implimented some sample code I found for drawing text (since apparently that’s not in the XNA framework yet)
- Added a Megaman style lifebar aka [||||||||||||]
- Added a kill counter for killing the eyeballs (all though ability to kill them is not there)

My third day was even more productive than my 1st and 2nd combined although it feels like I coded less hours than on Day 2. I’m especially happy with how today went because of the state switching between 2 animated states that line up and maintaining smooth animation (standing & standing while shooting or running & running while shooting).
- Created a 2D sprite of an eyeball rotating
- Added spawn code that spawns the animated eyeball in a random location on the screen in timed intervals
- Added spawn code to limit the number of eyeballs to spawn
- Limited spawn area to top portion of the screen
- Added “bounce” code to eyeball’s movement on spawn
- Added attack code so after a timed interval, one of the spawned eyeballs will attack Megaman by flying directly at him
- Added tint code to the attack code so the eyball changes color when attacking so the player can visually tell when an eyeball wants to kill him
- Created a 2D sprite of Megaman running & shooting
- Created a 2D texture for the shot
- Added shot code so he shoots with the X button
- Added press/release code so he doesn’t rapid fire
- Added state switching between the animated states
- Even if button is released quickly the shoot animation state lasts for a set number of animation frames for look and feel
- Put a limit on the number of shots Megaman can shoot
- Accelerated the timing on the bullets
- Created a 2D sprite of Megaman jumping (jump code to be added later)

My second day was filled with animation. This day was exciting because I was not only learning new coding techniques but also how to constructa proper usable sprite based upon the code I was writing.
- Created a 2D sprite of Megaman running right
- Animated the 2D texture as Megaman
- Added 3 layers of background
- Animated the mid layer to scroll continuously
- Placed Megaman on the foreground layer
- Coded Megaman to use run animation when moving left and right only and to use a standing animation when not moving
- Added horizontal flip code to the sprite so he stands left and runs left vs stands right and runs right

My first day learning to be a true game developer, learning the basics. Interestingly the videos are on C# and ManagedDirectX. I’m coding C# and XNA, so a lot of this stuff I have to learn myself and only take their instruction as a basis of what order I should be learning techniques.
- Changed default background color
- Added a background image
- Added a 2D texture
- Added passive “bounce” motion to texture
- Added simple texture movement with D-pad
- Added simple texture movement with thumstick
- Added pause/unpause code