So I'm having a break through and a set back all at the same time with this animation stuff so i figure now would be a good time for a post. Maybe That will help me sort out my thoughts here.

I've been following the example code provided to us by Keenan. It's been a bit of a life saver as the fbx sdk can be a tough one to get through alive.  I did discover a flaw with Keenan's code however in that it essentially zeroes out anything that doesn't have an animation curve. For all intents and purposes this seems aimed at nuking out the dummy nodes. The problem with this is that a large number of the dummy nodes seem to contain some pre and post rotations that throw everything off a bit. when you zero this out it means your animations turn out wrong.

So now that I've figured this out I've run into a new problem. Every so often during the animation my guy decides to just flail his arm or twist his torso in a weird way. I can't exactly figure out why this is happening and I think It'll take a bit of digging to get it all figured out. I do recall one of my classmates mentioned a possible problem with the quaternions. I'll have to investigate.

So I've been taking a look at what needs to be done before the due date and I'm having second thoughts about my complete revamp.  I'm thinking at this point I'm going to just get the animation up and running so I can hand it in. There's a lot involved here and just not enough time.

I'm continuing to follow Keenan's refactoring path.  It's not so hard to follow but as well saw in class the other day it shouldn't be necessary to actually code a lot of this because I'll likely just end up abandoning it in the end. I'll probably do some quick and dirty work just so that I can understand what is going on here a little bit better. I also think I'm going to have to hijack Keenan's math library, because I'm not so sure mine is working right. Maybe I'll do a few tests just to confirm things.

Lots to do. Lots to do. Hopefully my studying for Algorithms doesn't take too long.

Looking Ahead

So I've officially completed PA1-3 and uploaded all of the necessary files to perforce which means It's time to look ahead to PA4 and the end of game engines. The main focus here is to get some animation data working and it's a tall task. I could focus completely on just getting the animation to work from here on but I think I may be better served if I do a little bit of refactoring first. The engine is feeling pretty bulky right now and it would be nice to clean a few things up.  I also still have yet to add in the game loop like we did in class.

I'm begining to become unhappy with how my objects are being managed by the object manager and I think i'd like to revamp that quickly as well. For some reason i'm not a huge fan of having to create space frigate and then space frigate object. then also adding in warbear and warbear object.  They do exactly the same things except they just have different names and load different data. I feel like getting the PCS tree structure set us is going to be the way to go here. At that point I should be able to set up a more generic object class so I won't have to copy and paste the whole thing with every model I load.

There is a large amount of work to be done in the coming weeks and it's a good thing I've made myself a lot of free time. Time to get started on the big push.

PA1 - PA3. DONE.

So it's probably a little premature to actually call it a wrap, but I've just finished quaternions (all my tests pass at least. I won't be sure they work right till I use them) and as I posted a few minutes ago the archiver and the converter are basically finished. I might do a little tweaking here and there but I think that means it's on to animation. (but first a video game break!) Feels good to be done.

A Quick Diagnostic

So it's about time I get back to working on my engine.  I think now is a good time to review what is left to be done.

I haven;t looked in a little while, but I'm pretty sure my archiver is all done. As I recall all of the unit tests passed and I think it looked pretty good. I'll be sure to double check that before the deadline.

Next up is the FBX model converter. This is looking decent enough. I've been able to take three different models, convert them to my desired binary format and then get them to display on the screen in my engine. I'm pretty happy with this in that that's basically all there is to the assignment, but If there's time I'd like to see if I can clean this up a little bit. I'm using a lot of vertex data in the engine, and I know I can make them a little leaner. Spacefrigate, Warbear, and Astro boy are up an running. I'm also considering throwing a couple of other models in there just for kicks.

Finally is quaternions. This went smoothly enough and I've got the majority of the tests passing just fine. The only thing I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is the direction of flight. I'm just not quite understanding what exactly it is I'm supposed to be returning. I've re-watched Keenan do this from class but I think I'm just going to have to rack my brain and figure it out. I may need to put a forum post up real soon.

That does it for the near deadline and then it's on to animation. There isn't a whole lot of time to get animation flowing so I'll probably try to get a head start on that.

I'm also going to need to make a few edits to my original game engine. I'll get the game loop up and running and just clean things up a bit. Hopefully I can make it easy enough to use when creating games in my spare time.

QUATERNIONS!

So I'm plugging my way through quaternions and I think I'm getting to the point where I should put up a good post.

This Sucks.  I'm glad that this is the type of thing you can do once and then as long as you've done it right you won't really need to come back to it for a long time.   There are a couple of problems I'm having right now.  For one I think my conversion from a matrix to a quaternion isn't correct. I'm not sure why as the math doesn't really seem to be present in the documentation.

Secondly, Keenan has a large number of constructors and set functions with rotations about x, y, and z and here again I'm just not sure how to translate or what exactly he's looking for. I'm getting close to finishing the function's I'm able to and I'm thinking I might need to go see Keenan soon before the deadline so I can sort all of this out.

I moved away from The converter for now.  I have a pretty clear picture in my mind on what needs to be done there, but I just wanted to get as far as possible on quaternions before I jump back in. hopefully I'm not wasting too much time.

-A

MOAR Converter problems.

OK. so now I'm able to get all the right data to print to the screen.  Theoretically it should've meant smooth sailing form there. Not the case. It seems I'm having problems writing the data to the file. It could also be a problem with the data itself but I'm not entirely sure.

Originally I had been allocating structures dynamically  and writing the vert data to these structures, then writing the structures out to file. The dynamic calls were causing problems with my use of sizeof() so in order to get it just to work I hard coded a couple of things in so I can get the structures up there.  I've written this data to file and even been able to parse it on the other side in my graphics manager. I had to create the object in the graphics manager which required a bit of copy and paste work from the pyramid structures. When I compile my graphics engine I can only see half of the frigate and parts of the polys I can see are a bit off. I'm still not sure what's causing the problems. I'll have to keep debugging.

-A

UV problem fixed

Well I discovered my UV problem.  I was printing with %d instead of %f.  WOW.   I really hope these silly problems go away as I gain more experience in programming. But at least it didn't take me long to figure this out. Now I can move on to putting these values into some vectors and structs and seeing how they turn out.

-A

Converter Troubles

So I've walked through what we've done in class. I think I have the general idea but I'm running into problems. If I can get the right values to print out that should mean I can put them in my struct for my VBO. Should be a piece of cake, but I'm having two major problems.

First,  I'm not exactly sure where I should be writing the code to make this happen.  The print statements I'm making are in DisplayMesh, like we did in class but it feels inappropriate to put everything there. I'm thinking about just creating a new .cpp file and doing the work there. I'll have to make sure I use all the same includes and mimic some of the loops and variable initializations.

Second,  I've figured out how to get the control points mapped out so I can get the coordinates and the norms from that.  I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the UV coordinates to print. It looks to me like there is a large switch statement dependant upon a couple of different modes. I'll have to continue to mess around with this until I get it figured out.  I think I'll scour a couple of other blogs and maybe even pose the question on the boards if I don't find anything soon.

back to work!

LIU sucks

more trouble with the archiver.  I had a little skype session with Ben tonight about it and we still couldn';t figure it out. He posted his code up in the common directory to lend me a hand. I just took a good look and I feel like I'm doing the right thing here. It's weird because when I make my FindFirstFile look like his I get squiggled at. I scoured my project settings again just to be sure and I just can't figure it out. I'm turning in for the night. I'll be headed to the lab before class tomorrow to see if maybe my machine is the problem. If so I've spent hours staring at this thing in futility. Let's hope that my lab work tomorrow gets the job done.

-A

YESSS! LOOK WHAT I HAVE CREATED!

So if you can't tell from the video I'm really riding the high of success right now.

It took me quite some time and I ran into many problems but I finally got my VODKA program to pass all of it's tests. A large number of the problems I ran into had to do with the project properties. I feel like I know those things backwards and forward after last quarter, but somehow I still manage to forget one or two almost every time I start back up.  For some reason it also seems that when i move to a new workspace I sometimes lose some of these settings. I'm not sure why this happens.  From here on out I'm going to try and check all of those settings as I start a new project rather than half way through so that I know I'm not missing something.  It might also be handy to come up with some sort of a check list so as not to forget.

Now it's time to move on to LIU.  I feel like I understand this one rather well conceptually so i think I'll be OK. (The famous last words of an over-confident programmer.)  What I think I've learned from VODKA should really work out to my advantage. Create a header, write it to a file and then throw my chunks in there. I'll be using the method we discussed in class to find the appropriate files and away we go.

-A

ugh. i hate running into trouble.

So I've been trying to get started on these programming projects here and I'm hitting barrier after barrier. I really thought I'd be able to just get up and running after last quarter considering we only had a week off.

My biggest trouble to start was with perforce. I wasn't very familiar with how to branch it off and so instead I just set the workspace inside. I've finally got it working and it shouldn't be a problem from here except that because it is inside of my previous workspace I think the folder naming might get confusing.

Now that I've got my files downloaded one of the first things I did was load up the achiever unit test and give it a build.  the build came down without failing any tests, but running it was a different story. Visual studio told me it was unable to start the program. I'm not exactly sure what this means or how to go about fixing it.  I think for now I'm going to try and take a closer look at the unit tests and try to plan out how I'm going to tackle this problem.

I'm a little worried about some of the structure involved here. We talked about our program calling other executables (VODKA and LIU) and I'm not really sure what that's going to require. I'll certainly be asking more about this in class on Thursday.

Back to the grind.

-A

START

And so it begins again.  GAM 575 will take what we've learned in the last class and add a whole new arsenal of tools to our engine.  I'm most excited to jump into adding animation data.

IT IS DONE!!!

There it is. My demo video. I'm happy with the way it's turned out.  I'm looking forward to making improvements next quarter.  See you all again in 2 weeks.

Lookin' Good .... Lookin' Real Good.

Alright then. I'm just about done. I've got everything I wanted to put in my graphics system up and running.   I discovered a flaw in my collision tests once I actually made the cube move (only the sphere was moving before) but I patched that up real quick.  I also added a spin and an orbit to each object's transform matrix. I did a final clean up of all my files as well. I'm happy with where it's at.


The only thing I have left to do is set up and record the Demo.  This might take some handy work but I think it should work out just fine. I'm going to add in a second translation real quick so that I can make a couple of scenes and push them around to create what is essentially the scenes of my demo.   then I'll be able to set up 3 or 4 cameras at that translation.  I might also add in some additional camera controls but I just don't think it's worth it at this point.  Tomorrow should be a piece a cake (except I'll have that paper to write and my other final to study for. Oh, the life of a grad student. )

Good Night

-A

Back on Track

So I got a little bit derailed last night with the Bulls game which means tonight will be a bit of  a crunch time.  I have checked a few more items off the list since the last post so let's talk about those really quickly.

I've got my object culling working pretty well at this point. My sphere has been changing color as it passes through a sphere rather successfully for a while now and I finally got this code transferred over to the sphere object itself. I've inserted a check in the rendering and graphics objects files that essentially looks to see if the collision test passes and draws or doesn't based on the results. The weird thing about this one is that there isn't really an easy way to tell is it's working or not.  I suppose that what the color change function accomplishes.  I've also done some major cleanup on my files. They all had a few artifacts from older generations in terms of what was included and what was externally declared.  I got rid of what wasn't necessary anymore and created a couple of header files to make the includes look nicer. It's looking pretty spiffy. I may need to take a run through my code and beef up some of the comments though.

I've only got a few real requirements left and then it's on to making improvements.  First thing I'm going to tackle is the texture manager. for now I'm just going to get it running and hope for the best so I can get credit for it.  I think if I were to be making my engine available for sale this manager would be virtually unseen to the user. I've been using the object manager to do the same work I'll have the texture manager do (load and delete textures) and I really like that as a simple interface. My object's calls to load or delete a texture will probably call the texture manager which will take care of counts and do the necessary actions and then return a pointer. beyond that I don't really see what it's going to need to do.  It's not very robust and I've had some conversations with Ben (a classmate) about how to make something a little faster/more robust.  He's clearly got a good sense for writing code that isn't going to break down.  That should be the last requirement. I could technically start my demo right from there.

Then it's on to improvements.  I'd like to add in a better means to get transformations applied to objects, or at least additional options. I think I'll make one function that takes a matrix and applies it directly to the object;'s transformation. I also like the options I have on the sphere, so I'll tweak those a bit and copy them over to my other primitives. In the future I could imagine just sticking some of them into the GraphicsObject class so that all future objects have the same basic functionality.

I'll likely improve the User interface to allow for the camera to do more than just pan left, right, forward and backward. but I'm not real sure on that one. This one will be an "if I have time" sort of thing.

This is a longer post but when I get it all written down it doesn't seem like tonight will be nearly as bad as I had originally thought. It's amaizing how far I've come in the last week or so. Let's get crackin'

-A

Sphere VBO

I finally got the sphere vbo up and running.  Things are really starting to come together here. I've still got a lot of work ahead so I'll keep this short.  I owe most of the work to Derek. He posted his sphere VBO data and I used that data for my sphere. It was a bitch to get it running though.  I couldn't get the thing to load for the longest time.  He had some methods that weren't compatible with my system because of his collision testing. I commented out his collisions and will insert my own method for that.  He also was attempting to load a texture that I didn't have saved in my folder and so for a while the object was being rendered and I couldn't see it. I think I'll work on reworking the matrix transformations next.

-A

Collision System

So it took almost a whole day of debugging and trying different things but I finally go the ball and box collision system working.  I thought my math was right, and for the most part it was, but it took me a long time that my local variables weren't initializing the way I thought they were. I was trying to hold the position of the sphere in an object on my SphereObject but this just wasn't working and I didn't know it right away. I was using the debugger to pour through different areas of my code to figure it all out.  so instead I used the object's LocalToWorld matrix to get it's current translation and now we are in business. What a hassle that was!  alright... back to work.

VBO's!

Well it's just about time to call it a night here.  I've gotten through setting up VBO's for the pyramid (this was done for us, so not as impressive) as well as the cube.  This took a good amount of planning.  I had to spend a good amount of time coming up with how to lay out the triangles.  I decided to set up a triangle strip and this ended up being not nearly so bad. I accidentally flipped the last two verts and this took some time to figure out. beyond that it worked out well. I think I'll post my finished product in the common directory for others to check out.  .... I wonder if anyone came up with a good VBO for the sphere.

Big Break Through

So I know it's only been a couple of minutes since the last post but I just had a large breakthrough I thought it was important to post.

One of the main reasons I had been struggling to get past the collision detection was because of opacity. We are supposed to try and get a sphere to pass through a cube and change color as it does using the collision detection math we had in class. The first thing I wanted to do was draw a cube with an object inside of it and make sure I could see the object through the cube.

I got both of the objects to show up on the screen in the right spots but for some reason my cube wasn't see through despite a proper amount of alpha being entered into the shader.  I had gone through our text book and was sure I was doing what I needed but for some reason the cube was still looking solid.  basically what you're supposed to do is draw the "inside" object first and then draw the"see through" object last.  This means that the shader will blend the colors together creating the desired effect.

So I added my pyramid first and then my cube right on top of it, following the logic laid out.  This is where I went wrong. my object manager does not draw the objects they were added to the list. adding the object to the manager pops it on to the front of the list, but then the draw method starts at the beginning and walks through the list. this means I added my pyramid (to the front) and then my box (again, to the front of the list) and when my object manager began it's drawing it started with the box and then the pyramid so no blending was actually done.

now that I have figured this out my collision detection should start to really be much easier to get going on.

-A

BSR - CHECK!

You can already check one of the items off my list.  I've downloaded the BSR recorder and got it running.  I even tested it out with a quick 5 second clip.  It was easy to use and free to download. I recommend you give it a try if you want to make a demo of your own.  What a relief.  Now back to work!

Quick Planning Session

So I had to set engines down for a little while so that I could work on some projects for my AI class.  Of course this means that yet again I am behind and will really need to buckle down this weekend to get the demo all finished up. I had a pretty good start before I set it down so I'm not exactly screwed but let's just say this weekend is going to be rough.  I took the last half hour or so to plan out what is left to be done. I think I'll get it all typed down here on the blog so I feel good about checking things off the list.  I'll also probably make a post as those things get checked off.  

Here's my list of TODO's:
GRAPHICS OBJECTS:

• get one more primitive in there (I've got a box, a pyramid, and a sphere. I'm thinking about tossing the sphere because of the pain the VBO is going to be)
• Turn my primitives into VBO's (I'll likely be taking another look at class for some procedure on this.)
• add some functions to the objects for:
• setting the transformation
• setting or adding OPENGL states (??) (I'm thinking this may have to hacked into some other function)
• setting the rendering state

CAMERA

• I'm going to add in a camera manager. It should be fairly quick and dirty.
• I plan to have the manager create a list that points to each camera, initialize a new camera, and be able to cycle through them
• I'll probably have to use the keyboard for the cycling. I'm contemplating a class or maybe just a .cpp file that handles reading the keyboard.

OBJECT CULLING

• this one has been giving me a tad bit of trouble. I think the main problem is that I was attempting to get to far ahead of myself. I'll start with getting a sphere to sway back and forth through a box, then I'll have it change color as it goes through.
• The math on this one seems fairly straightforward. It's likely going to require that I add in a few variables to my box object so I can have an easier way to call the necessary normals.

RECORDING MY DEMO

• I've never recorded a demo before so this one may be a bit more of a hassle than it should be. I'll have to download BSR (who knows what that is?) as suggested by Keenan and test it out a bit.  I'm hoping this doesn't snag me up too much.

Finally I'll have to decide weather I want to load my objects from a file or create a Texture manager (I'm already going to do a camera manager).  Both of those tasks scare me so I'll probably save them for last. The file thing was laid out in class, but I just don't really have any level of comfort with this. ...maybe it's now or never?


So that's my list of tasks for the weekend. It's a long one but I'm thinking I can pull it off. If I don't have that thousand yard stare by the end of this weekend I don't know what will do it.

-A

Far too long since the last post

As you can see from the title it's been entirely too long since my last post so I better squeeze something in here.  The graphics system has gotten me really behind in terms of getting any actual code cranked out.  I've been doing a lot more of trying to follow Keenan's refactoring.  This has proven to be rather helpful because I think going through the various changes he's making are helping me to understand the changes and know some more about what's happening behind the scenes with this openGL stuff. You really have to dig in and research what some of these functions do before you can try to write a function on your won that does the same thing.

I am finding that while I really am learning a lot there is A LOT left to learn.  I wonder if I were to go to job interview tomorrow how I would stack up. I don't feel good about my answer yet.  I've spoken to Keenan about this and he's been a big help in this area.  He suggested I check out GOTW and purchase a couple of books to brush up on and strengthen my C++.  I'm going to take his advice to heart and get started right away.  I ran over to Amazon and ordered the books he suggested (he suggested them in class too, but I got a better look at them in his office.) and they should be here soon. As soon as finals week finishes up I'll get cracking on the guru exercises.  He's given me a daunting amount of work but I need to remember to baby step through it. One "Guru" a week plus one chapter a week on those books and I'll be a better programmer in no time.

Any who, some more about game engines.  I'm not nearly as concerned as I think I should be about this whole graphics section.   I'm able to follow his refactoring and his lectures pretty easily. I guess we'll see how that goes when I actually put some of this stuff into practice.  Much of this weekend will be spent working on that demo amongst my work for my other class (oh, and going to my real job too).  ugh... I always dread finals week.

-A

Mem: Major Break Through

So I've been working on the Memory system diligently over the last couple of days. I'm racking up a bunch of days in a row where I stay up until 3AM working on it. Thank GOD I switched to part time at work, otherwise I would be no where near as complete as I am. Keenan excused the class from one section of the homework (the file system), and this has really made a difference. I don't think there is any way I would've finished all of it if he hadn't.  It is supposedly the easiest of the four systems. Regardless, I'm going to scour the part he let us off the hook on and make sure I really understand it, because that's the point of learning, right? 

Anyway,  I'm mainly posting today because I had a major break through on the mem system.  There are 40 different tests and for the longest time I had only been able to get 1 of them to pass. It was very frustrating because I was coding and coding and coding and nothing felt like it was making progress. Finally, last night I finished the bare necessities to get a second test to pass and slowly but surely the tests started getting checked off one by one. In some cases I even completed parts that made 3 or more tests pass at once.

 For some reason or another early on in the process I had worked on overloading new and delete. I really should have waited on that and gotten the heaps and global mem systems working, but these overloads are crucial to getting a large number of the tests to pass as that is how your allocations are created.  Something about how I implemented them was making the whole system crash and so I had decided to comment them out and move on. Despite this I had thought the way I implemented them was correct as I had it working on one of my previous experiments. This was validated during class as we walked through the best implementation. When I moved on to other problems, in my head I had decided I was finished with the problem.  As I started cranking through the unit tests I was having a lot of trouble with a couple of info( )'s not coming through correctly.  I scoured through my heap implementations and my mem implementations and my getinfo( ) implementations to try and find the answer to my problem.  as soon as i realized my new[] and delete[] were commented out i had a major facepalm moment. I simply removed the comments and voila!  12 more tests passed instantly.  What a great feeling.   only 3 tests left. I think I'll save them for tomorrow.

On a somewhat related note I bumped into Keenan on the way to my other class and we had a mini-discussion about how this class is going. I told him I'm really enjoying it and I actually meant it when I said it to him.  Don't get me wrong, this class is tough, and I've probably spent more time on homework than in any other class.  But I really am learning so much.  My programming confidence is skyrocketing right now. ... then again I spoke with some of my classmates today in the class I was headed to after talking with Keenan and word on the street is that Game Engines 2 is even harder than this one. Hard to believe at this point in time, but I won't be surprised either.

-Aaron

Math System. Done!

So I've officially finished the math system this evening with my final revisions. all 101 tests are passing, which is great news.  When we first started to talk about the math system I figured it would be a bit of a breeze. I had some difficult math classes back at Marquette and this was a walk in the park comparatively. It still ended up taking me a couple of nights to work out all of the kinks.  the biggest trouble I ran into was on Matrix Inverse.   It's essentially a matter of plugging in the numbers that follow the equation given to us, so there wasn't a ton of thinking it through required. I mostly ran into trouble of translating the numbers correctly. I had to triple check my translation before I got it right. It was only then that I realized I was also calling the wrong determinant. As soon as I had that figured out it was smooth sailing. the unary operators was all that was left and they took a matter of minutes to crank out.

My only other concern on this project is the use of const. It was stressed in class that we should use it wherever we can and in all honesty I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. I really just wanted to pass the tests and then If I have time before the due date I'll go back through and const the heck out of my functions.  they aren't completely missing,  but I'm sure I can add a few more.

A more important priority will be finishing the Memory and File systems. I have a large amount of code written for both systems, but I just don't have any idea if what I'm doing is right. Having those unit tests to help me check it all out would be fantastic. I'm planning to re watch last night class this weekend for some big help on the mem system.  The pictures and the concepts of what we are trying to achieve have all been clear with me for most of the class.  Getting that concept coded onto the screen has been the problem. I feel like I understand it much better now that I've seen some better examples.

I'm almost considering ditching what I have (not completely, but likely a lot of it) now that we've gone over the concepts again. We'll see how I feel about that after I re-watch class with my code in front of me. I hope I can find some good time to work on all of it this weekend.

bottom line at this point: I can't wait to be done with this section.

On a related note I was excited by our discussion at the end of class last night about how to get our code pushed into a library so that we can use it all again later on with other projects. I would like to think it'll make a very nice piece of code, not only to use with my own projects but to include in my portfolio when I go to apply for jobs later on.   This is all a lot of complicated stuff, and as Keenan continues to drive home we're cramming years of experience into a couple of months.  Being able to show that with a little help but essentially from scratch I can code my own game engine gives me a confidence I've been searching for.  I could never have applied for a gaming job with the knowledge set I had before I started DePaul, and after this class alone (assuming I make it alive through to the end, ha ha)  I already feel much more prepared to baby step through any challenge.  It's a great feeling, and I'm excited to complete that thought by the end of this course.

-A

Got rolling on the memory system

I did some more serious work on the memory system last night. Not exactly the way I want to spend a Friday night (or the rest of my Saturday) but I needed that.  I took a look at some of the examples posted online and that really helped me to get rolling.  There are still a couple of problems I'm having. Mainly the problem is having is the interaction between calling a new heap within my global heap container. I haven;t even really gotten into connecting all of the pieces. I think I need to take a step back and make sure I can properly call heap without that connection first.   probably more on this later.

-A

Finally Finished with Homework 1

So I'm extremely behind but I wanted to get a post in seeing as I haven't gotten one down in a while.  I've finally finished Homework 1. I've also finally convinced my boss to let me work part time so I can spend more time on class. (thank God he agreed!)  Homework 1 was a bit of a crazy one.   We're working on creating our own game engine.  The first homework was making a Parent, Child, Sibling tree.  It's a data structure that allows us an easy way to organize the various parts of our game. It's a relief to finally have it finished.

There was one main section I found difficult. (most things weren't too hard.)  The remove function was the toughest one.  It required a little bit of recursion which everyone seems to dislike. The worst part was setting up the base case. There were 3 or 4 different branches to that one. I went in to talk to Keenan about this function because it gave me the most trouble. My main problem was that I had reversed the recursion and base case steps.  I swapped them and everything seemed to work out OK. The debugger and I got along surprisingly well.  It;s a nifty tool if you know how to use it right. I found out what section of code was causing problems rather easily with it.

Now it's on the memory system.  If I'm following the check points I should be trying to have it finished by Wednesday.  I already know this just isn't going to happen. I have no idea where to start.  I'm going to watch the first lecture on the topic and try to do some reading before I really start any coding. This coming weekend is going to have to be a big catch up weekend.  Now that I've got more time at nights I'll have to go at it during the week a little more now too.

-A

Trouble Getting Started

So Kennan suggested that when we're getting frustrated or even when we've accomplished something to get a little post in the blog. I'm not exactly either of those, but I could use a break.

Boy is it tough to get rolling.  I've got to keep in mind that all I need right now are baby steps and before I know it I'll be crossing the finish line. The "What about Bob" clip we saw in class is really ringing true right now.

I've got my class definitions up and running so that's a start, but I still have the next two days to get something substantial to test, so maybe that's where the hold up is. I was really getting used to being able to relax and not hae any homework. 

I also got perforce working correctly (I think) which is a relief.  Now all I need to do is start fleshing out my functions.  There are so many options, I'm not really sure where to start.  I could really use that grading tester to help track my progress.   It would be nice to see a couple of things checked off the list.

That's all for now. Time to get back to work.

-A

The First Class and My First Post.

So I just came home from the first class of the 2012 winter quarter, Game Engine Programming.  One of our first assignments is to start this very blog, so here it goes. 

I'm a little new to blogging, but I definitely understand the benefits in this context. I'll get to put some of my thoughts out there in written word.  I think for me this will help to really break down some of the problems we are trying to solve.  I tend to find that things can often become more clear when you force yourself to articulate them in a paragraph rather then just let the data tumble around in your head.


So, how do I feel about this class? It's a good question and I have mixed feelings.

The word around the water-cooler is that it's going to be a tough one.  There is a lot of work and information to be processed in a very short amount of time.   That rang true today when Keenan (Our professor) told us that realistically, trying to make a game engine in 10 weeks is just crazy and that we'll try to cram years of experience into that short amount of time.  A daunting task indeed.

Despite this, I'm excited.  This is the type of thing I'm here for.  This is my dream. I can't wait to step up to the challenge and find out what I'm capable of. Keenan also offered a comforting notion (at least I see it this way, others may not) that it is when we are under the most pressure that we do our best learning.   I won't have time to second guess myself or to hem and haw over the stupid little things (although I probably will anyhow).  I'll simply have to learn the right methods and execute them into the wee hours.  If I can get used to doing this work will eventually start to come more naturally, as a second nature.  It'll be good practice for future jobs, to be able to endure crunch time.   Easier said than done, I'm sure.


So there it is. My first post. Many more to come.


-A