A Short Diversion

AMAZE is getting put on hold for another week, but there's a great reason: Tonight, a 10-day game jam is starting. I'm doing things a bit differently this time, though. Specifically, I'm not making a game. 

Let's start at the beginning. On Wednesday, after class, my graphics/engine development professor gave me a challenge for Space Douchebag! Since this week's assignment is to implement a particle system, he asked me to make a certain improvement to my particle system. Specifically, he asked me to make a particle effect designer, and setup my system so that the effects were externally loaded and could be changed on the fly. This sounds like a lot of fun.

The EDC, a game dev group at Champlain College, just recently announced an informal game jam, and pretty much said that you could make whatever, as long as whatever you were making wasn't a school project. To me, this seems like the perfect opportunity to develop a neat tool. 

I haven't decided what to do with my schedule during game jams yet. I'm thinking that It'll depend on the jam. I'm going to put off the second programming post this week, but I think I'll still make the usual posts during the jam's duration. When the tool is finished, It'll support both Windows and Linux. I haven't decided whether I'll be making a Mac version yet, but it seems unlikely.