Month 1 pre-show

So here is the preshow for Month One at Full Sail.

Currently I am in my two "Gen ed" courses. These are Behavorial Science and English Comp. While I'm gonna try to test out of these, they will serve as my "intro" courses to Full Sail.

So I am not too excited about these 2 but it will be a good way to get used to going to school and walking around as well as getting to know some of my fellow students.

Outside of School , I've been trying to keep busy with some pet projects. During the summer, I started to transition from more "scripting" style languaeges (C# primarily) to get into C++ code. So far it has gone very well. The large scripting experience and basic programming knowledge I gathered have helped out immensely.

Since this first month is without getting into code, I've started working on my second big c++ project. The first was a rigid-body simulation using OpenGL for graphics (with GLUT for input and generally making it easy). My second project is going to be something I've always wanted to do: create a 2d side-scrolling game. I am not going to for the BEST solution here, in fact, I find that I learn better if I attempt something new with only the knowledge I currently have. When I get to roadblocks, then I'll start expanding rather then cramming insane amounts of theory into my head and then trying to execute. It is just too hard for me to learn programming that way.

So I do have an idea for the side scroller but I want to stick to my philosophy: design by programming. So my grand idea is shortned to simply: a 2d side scroller where the player can move up, down, left, right. Thats it. My philosophy came from 1 1/2 years of time I spent on a student project at Purdue to develop an educational video game. I pulled these key things out of my experience with the project:

1. Story is the Devil of Student Game projects.
2. Story is not Design.
3. Design never comes before Game Mechanics.
4. Game Mechanics start with Input.
5. Design start with Game Mechanics.

So these rules have forged what I feel "design by programming" stands for. I'll go more into my thoughts later on the subject as a student, but for now I have a player to move in four directions.