One Year Down…

Well folks, one year at DigiPen is in the record books.

It’s been a busy year, but a good one.  I’ve learned an incredible amount about programming and design, and seen first hand how much it takes to put together even the smallest game project.  On that note, you can check out a brief trailer video for Skirmish below (video has music and sound – fullscreen suggested):

The game really came together nicely for such a short development cycle with a bunch of people who, honestly, had no idea what they were doing at the start of the semester!  A lot of our players have commented on how fun Skrimish is to play, and if you’re interested in trying it out, you’ll be able to download it at the DigiPen game gallery very soon.

In related news, while I wasn’t working on my own game, I had a chance to help out some friends on their game by doing some voice acting for various messages and notes left to the player.  It was a fun experience, and I’m amazed how quickly and easily the audio guys at DigiPen can mix together voice tracks with music and sound effects.  Something that surely would have taken me weeks was done in the space of a weekend.

And while performing the voice work is fun, listening to yourself afterward is a terrible, terrible experience.  I imagine the only thing worse would be watching yourself act.  The sound guys, who have to listen to themselves all the time, heartily agreed, but told me that I would eventually get over it.  That’s good, because I had enough fun doing the voice work that I wouldn’t mind improving and doing it again.

But now, the semester is finally wrapping up – I can take a moment to breathe and relax.  Sort of.  I’ll be starting training for a job over the summer on Monday, but it’s only a 40-hour workweek, so it should be a nice change of pace!  It’s also not for the entire summer, so I’ll have the chance to spend some time getting caught up on personal projects (like Book III) and starting my game for next year.  Oriented bounding boxes and advanced physics engines, here I come!  I’m looking forward to the break, but I’m certain these first couple weeks will be pretty low-key: just mental recovery.

As one final note on the Book front, one of my close writer friends, Rori Shay, is publishing her first book digitally today.  Please take a moment to check it out and see if you want to pick it up!

And if you haven’t checked out my books yet, or reviewed them, please do!  Book II needs to catch up to Book I in reviews!  As always, I appreciate your honest feedback – no matter what it is!

Well, that does it for me today, folks.  Now its on to recovery mode so that I can hit the ground running in a couple weeks.  See you soon!

Jon

 

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