Let’s Play Terraria – Episode 0.1
November 28, 2011 in Uncategorized
Video is coming Soon.
Google Makes Me Smarter
November 22, 2011 in Uncategorized
I have read a few articles claiming that the advent of Google and the internet in general is making people dumber. The reason being that things do not get committed to memory as easily when the person can just do a 1 second search on the internet and get pages and pages of things about the topic that they want. They don’t have to do any of their own research, so people are getting dumber because things aren’t getting committed to memory as much.
I call bullshit on this, at least in my case.
I have grown up with the internet. I have had the internet since I was about 9 (roughly 15 years), and I have found that I learn better and faster from the internet than any other source available. Sound crazy? Well, I have an explanation as to why I think this is the case.
When I was in school things for the most part came relatively easy to me. I learned at a decent pace. I am no genius, but I am at least well learned. However, I never did that great in school. I wasn’t failing it, but I could have been getting a lot better grades than I was. The reason? I just didn’t give a crap. I could only have them try to reteach me the civil war so many times before I stopped caring.
The internet later became a sort of savior when it came to learning for me. You see, as long as I find a subject at least somewhat interesting, I will at least try to find some things out about it. What is the easiest way to do this? Why Google it of course! I can find facts about pretty much any subject on the internet.
But wait, isn’t the internet full of bull crap and unreliable sources? Well sure, that is true, but probably no more so than a person I would ask in the real world who would claim to know a bit about the subject. Heck, the internet is usually more reliable just because people are generally commenting on what the person claims to know about.
Now, I am not saying that the internet is turning me into a genius (God I wish), but it does make it easier and more convenient to find the information on any subject of my choosing. I may not remember everything I read, but I remember about as much as if I read it from most books, so therefore at least from my standpoint I can say that the internet is a useful tool for learning and it has not affected my short term memory any more than any other learning medium.
Now if you will excuse me, I have funny youtube videos to watch.
Operation Steampunk 2.5 – Post 1
November 17, 2011 in Uncategorized
This is the first official post that I will be making on Operation Steampunk 2.5. What is Operation Steampunk you might ask? Simply put, it is my journey to learn programming and build an awesome 2.5D computer game in the next 5 years. This is my goal, and I will be writing about my struggles, my successes, and whatever random other thing I feel is worth writing about.
Today I will be talking about 3D modeling for game design. I have had a years worth of limited instruction on the matter of 3D modeling in the software 3D Studio Max. It is a decent program, and I am torn whether or not I will eventually end up using that or trying to learn the open source program Blender.
I borrowed a few books on the matter of 3D modeling for game design from a former professor of mine. I will be going through those books to see which ones are going to be useful for my process of learning this.
Also today I continued to work with C#. I have had a small amount of programming experience in the past and I understand the basics of it, however, it has been a while since I have worked in a high level language so I started from square one again. I am using a book called Head First C#. You can check it out on amazon.com. I am about 100 pages in and working my way through it at about 20-25 pages a day, so I should be through it in a month or two. Okay enough rambling about programming. On to talking about what some of the plans for the game are.
Steampunk 2.5
This is the game that I will eventually be building. Right now it is mostly in the ideation and brainstorming phase. I will however give a few things that I will eventually be implementing into the game (that is unless if gets changed later).
The game is going to be an action RPG. It will be influenced by games like Diablo. I plan on running it on a local server so that my friends and I can play it together online. I don’t know if I will be able to play it in person with all of my friends in 5 years, so I thought this was the best way to go about it.
The game will have 5-6 classes, male and female models for each, with possibility of some customization. There will be no roles to fill like in WOW. I do not like the idea of a player filling a role (dps, tank, healer), so I am making each of the classes unique but useful. The healing will be done, via potions and regeneration over time.
The world itself will be in a modern/futuristic version of a steampunk setting. It will be heavily Victorian and steam engine influenced. I went with this, because I like the steampunk genre and I have seen very little RPG’s which I would consider to be true steampunk.
Well, I think that is all I am going to release for info on the game right now. I will be back later to give more insight once some of the ideas are set more in stone.
The Love and Hate of Programming
November 15, 2011 in Uncategorized
I have decided to write an article about programming.
It is very geeky in its own nature and I’m sure I will get a few readers that are only interested in this kind of article. Long story short. I am learning C# so that I can eventually get into programming and developing games. I have a long term project that eventually I will be creating, but that is a ways down the road.
First thing is first. I have to learn to program.
I am planning on creating an action RPG that a few of my friends and I can play together on a local server. I plan for this process to take about 5 years. I figure a couple of years to learn programming well, then another 3 to learn the 3D modeling and the game engine Unity well enough to make what I want to do.
The game is going to be in a 2.5D style (think Diablo 2, Torchlight, etc), but instead of using sprites like in Diablo 2, I am going to be using 3D models for the characters, buildings, etc. I will however have to learn some 2D implementation, but it won’t be so much for sprites as it will be for interface design.
I think I am also going to end up using Blender for the 3D modeling because it is free and also it is pretty close to as good as the pay for counterparts.
This will be a long and tiresome journey (project), but it will pay off in the end hopefully. I will be doing regular updates to this site about the process of getting to the 5 year point for this project. I will make sure to keep it as interesting as possible and not bore everyone with the technical aspects of it.
I will call this project: Operation Steampunk 2.5.
Look for more posts on this subject very soon. If the game works out really well, I might even consider selling it for a cheap fun to play game, but that is not something I am even worried about right now.