...so I figured that I would start a blog about what I'm doing. Yeah, I'm going to college to be a video game developer. I remember mom telling me when I was younger that I would grow out of gaming. I laughed her off, and look at me now! I also remember that for as long as I've known what college and the real world was, I've wanted to make my living with games somehow. When I learned that it wouldn't be much harder to do than to make a living as an accountant, or an electrician, or whatever it is that normal people do for a living, being a part of the making of games has been my goal.
The first game I ever made is detailed in my other blog, so I won't talk about it much. However, it was just a warm-up for the real deal. I came to Marshall University in West Virginia for its Game Development program. In typical gamer fashion, I chose the cheapest dormitory which, coincidentally, was directly above a dining hall. :3 The first class (relevant to my major) I had was Intro to Programming, taught by the head of the department. He was a hilarious guy, with a great sense of humor, and seemed really fun. I was instantly reassured about my decision to do this.
After a few days of waiting for my books to arrive (damned Amazon!) I started to work. I was slowly but surely introduced to the tedium of programming by such assignments as a fat calculator (which totaled the amount of fat in certain foods), a tax calculator, a shipping calculator, an X calculator, a Y calculator...are you seeing the pattern? I made my way through these programs with what I won't call ease, but what I will call *OOHHH MY GOD THIS FUCKING LOGIC!*. At the end of the class, we were given our final. Big surprise, right? Wrong. The big surprise was that our final was to finally make a friggin' game. Connect Four was what the warden called our electric chair, and my attempts to code it given my limited experience in actually making games was only met with cries of "Dead code walking!". Luckily, I had a pretty good grade in the class, and we would be given 30% for a solid Graphical User Interface, or GUI from now on, so I submitted it for partial credit to pass the class with a B.
Another class I had was called Connections, which for some reason was only about risk. I spent the whole time I was in that class being told not to eat paint chips and that radiation can give you cancer. I'm deadly serious when I say that I learned absolutely nothing from that class. It was about so many things that were common knowledge that it wasn't even necessary for me to open the book more than twice.
I won't mention classes that aren't related to gaming unless something cool or funny happens in them, and I can't remember if anything did in my first semester, so I'll leave them out for now.
At the very end of the semester, my friend Justin and I joined the new Gaming Club as founding members, and we get to meet in what's known as the M.A.G.I.C. Lab, which is the new Gaming and Development lab on campus. It has three HUGE flatscreen TVs, a surround sound system, some two dozen or so computers with dual monitors and a new XBOX 360 for each computer. It lives up to its name. We will have our more advanced classes in that lab in the future, but for now we will only meet in there for the club.
Now, here I am on Christmas break, which is between semesters, waiting. For Christmas, not to go back to school, haha! That pretty much concludes the summary of my first semester as a Game Development major. Further posts will be more detailed, and more about current things happening. I couldn't make a blog about going to college for something if I left out the first semester. Next semester, I start a C++ class, and I have a feeling that it will be a little more game-oriented.
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