I always kind of took for granted the incredible easiness of making games with Game Maker before I went to DigiPen to make games the 'Real Way'. I mean, you can drag and drop your way to a potentially fun game within a day and call yourself an awesome game developer, right? Having been a naive teenager at some point (hell, I probably still am) I sure felt overwhelming confidence after my first game. Then after coding for a while in GM, I naturally assumed that programming wasn't that hard (you must be laughing right now.)
Well, after getting a thorough ass-kicking with follow-up face smashing at DP, I can never appreciate enough just how easy it is to make games with GM. Building a game engine from scratch, working with the annoyance that is DirectX9 (openGL has its faults too), figuring out how to implement and use good architecture, coding a physics engine, and pretty much like everything else ever - it's actually really hard!
Just to throw the icing on the cake, it's either C or C++ for our games. Memory management, how I took that for granted as well.
I'm just kind of glad we're not obligated to create our own 3D graphics pipeline to use for our games. Performance issues would be clearly seen here, since everything would be software based. But we'll actually have to code one for a class in the junior year. So all that fun stuff with reflective 3D objects and soft shadows and other crazy things that I don't know anything about yet. At DP we're expected to re-invent the wheel before we can use it. So it'll be like making my own directx, which sounds quite scary. Also sounds very math-intensive.
Speaking of math, doing everything from scratch also requires a good understanding of a variety of maths and physics, which I was never really good at. Fortunately, the threat of doing horribly on exams and not being able to make a game engine because I don't understand something keeps me going.
So, I think back to Game Maker and I'm like, damn, this thing made it really easy for me. I guess the positive side is that I can just make my own GM at this point, but still... damn.
Kairos' blog
Oct '10
15
Comments
Oct '10
15
there's something i've always been curious about regarding digipen (ever since i considered enrolling there for college way back in my crusty days). now that i'm in touch with a real person who's enrolled there, perhaps my curiosity can be quelled:
i assume that digipen does attempt to educate in game design, and not only in software engineering for video games (i.e. the stuff you're talking about in your blog entry); but, does digipen offer an education option in only game design (or do all students also have to take courses in software engineering for video games)?
enlighten me, good sir, pretty please and thanks :)
(some time in the future, it'd also be rad to get a break down on just how they go about teaching game design there...)
i assume that digipen does attempt to educate in game design, and not only in software engineering for video games (i.e. the stuff you're talking about in your blog entry); but, does digipen offer an education option in only game design (or do all students also have to take courses in software engineering for video games)?
enlighten me, good sir, pretty please and thanks :)
(some time in the future, it'd also be rad to get a break down on just how they go about teaching game design there...)
Oct '10
15
I'm in the RTIS program (computer science) but we do have a game class that we need to take each year. This is where we form a team to work on our yearly projects, and we do get lectures on team dynamics and game design.
However DP has two actual design-focused programs, offering a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts in game design. These programs probably focus a lot more on game design, but the thing to note here is that if you do, for example, take the BSGD program, you still need to take some of the core programming classes, and I believe my fellow BSGD classmates are still taking the same programming classes as I am (I'm a sophomore).
Of course the art oriented design program would focus on the art side. There's no program that focuses solely on game design, because it's extremely important that a designer understand how programmers and artists work - and not be a designer that demands things to be changed on a daily basis without understanding how it might be hard or impossible from the programmer or artist's point of view.
However DP has two actual design-focused programs, offering a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts in game design. These programs probably focus a lot more on game design, but the thing to note here is that if you do, for example, take the BSGD program, you still need to take some of the core programming classes, and I believe my fellow BSGD classmates are still taking the same programming classes as I am (I'm a sophomore).
Of course the art oriented design program would focus on the art side. There's no program that focuses solely on game design, because it's extremely important that a designer understand how programmers and artists work - and not be a designer that demands things to be changed on a daily basis without understanding how it might be hard or impossible from the programmer or artist's point of view.
Oct '10
15
I feel your pain, man.
Oct '10
16
However DP has two actual design-focused programs, offering a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts in game design. These programs probably focus a lot more on game design, but the thing to note here is that if you do, for example, take the BSGD program, you still need to take some of the core programming classes, and I believe my fellow BSGD classmates are still taking the same programming classes as I am (I'm a sophomore).
Of course the art oriented design program would focus on the art side. There's no program that focuses solely on game design, because it's extremely important that a designer understand how programmers and artists work - and not be a designer that demands things to be changed on a daily basis without understanding how it might be hard or impossible from the programmer or artist's point of view.
Sounds very much like the program I attended here in Sweden. Didn't stop the occasional comment from a designer like "our game would have been good if we had pixel-perfect collision"...Of course the art oriented design program would focus on the art side. There's no program that focuses solely on game design, because it's extremely important that a designer understand how programmers and artists work - and not be a designer that demands things to be changed on a daily basis without understanding how it might be hard or impossible from the programmer or artist's point of view.
Jan '11
9
I'm taking a more traditional Bachelor of Science, heheh.
Still in the early courses so it's less about application and more about understanding how to take a problem and write good code to solve it.
I don't really get how you can teach creativity but hey, I've never done it.
Still in the early courses so it's less about application and more about understanding how to take a problem and write good code to solve it.
I don't really get how you can teach creativity but hey, I've never done it.
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