Semester 4, Day 1

In the stead of my usual Monday post, I'm going to write a few posts about life. As of yesterday, I'm back at Champlain with a brand new set of classes, so I think it'll be nice just to write about them instead of the usual stuff. In addition, I'm planning on making a fresh install of my current OS, just to make things a bit cleaner. This makes it a bit of a pain to write a normal game post when I'm busy making backups and figuring out exactly what to reinstall once the dust settles.

Back to the topic at hand, today was the first day of classes. I had the pleasure of acquainting myself with 3 new classes:

Game Architecture

I'd really been looking forward to this one. The general point of the class is to build your own game engine, and it focuses on using C++ and Allegro. Sound familiar? In other words, this class is right up my alley. So far, it seems to be living up to expectations. The only thing I'm not too excited about is needing to include a Visual Studio project file for assignments. However, we're allowed to just create this at the end, as long as the code still works. Sounds like a decent answer.

Heroines and Heroes

This seems like an interesting class. The class centers on various works of fiction, particularly those involving heroic characters, and how they are shaped by the context of the society that creates them and human nature. One of the required books is by Neil Gaiman, an author that I like quite a bit, so that's another nice bonus.

Game Production I

This class is pretty similar to 1st year's Game History and Development. Basically, the point is to work with your peers to develop games as a team, rather than as individuals. I was initially put off by the fact that we're more or less required to use Flash for our games, but it doesn't seem like it'll be too bad. Overall, the class seems to give quite a bit of freedom and the experience is important, so it may not be as bad as expected. In addition, my teammates should be fairly experienced by now so I won't be stuck making everything like last time. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, although I can't say for sure if I'll enjoy it yet.