Name:Jason Country:United States State:New York Birthday:9/2/1987 Gender:Male
Interests:Eating, sleeping, running, coding, reading, gaming, hanging out, building models, anime, and studying japanese
Expertise:C++, 3D and hand drawn art a little, figuring crap out, math, games, and japanese
Occupation:Student Industry:Computers (Software)
God, why was it so hard to get here? Stupid xanga. So yeah. Devin said I should start using xanga again so I guess I will, kind of. Let's just see how it goes for a while.
SO! 21st birthday the other day. It was awesome and terrible at the same time. Let's start with the good stuff right off the bat.
So it's after my first class and my friends and I are starving. We go to this awesome burger place called Kidd Valley. Now, I'm broke from the renter's insurance company taking what remaining money I had to renew our insurance policy for this year. My 3 friends are eating while I'm just sitting there, sustaining myself with thoughts of the food I have at home. Out of nowhere, the cashier comes over and asks, "Want some free food?" I was pretty damn confused so the only thing that came out of my mouth was, "Bleaha?" He went on to explain that the lady that just left forgot to take her change which was 5 bucks. I thought, "AWESOME," and got a free burger. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to eat anything when I got home from the restaurant and ended up getting a massive migraine in the middle of my 3 hour AI class. Around that time, I was invited out for a free meal and a night of Jet Skiing, but my asshole teacher likes to give in class exercises, which are retarded btw, and if you miss it, you miss out on pretty much free points toward your grade. After that nonsense, I went with a few of my friends to this FRIKKIN SWEET BBQ place called Claim Jumper. I'm sure most of you know this already, but when I have a migraine that's in full swing, I get damn nauseous and can barely eat anything till I vomit. This obviously doesn't make sense, since the migraine is brought about by hunger, so pushing up what I don't have shouldn't really make me feel any better. The whole dinner was just torture. There was a full rack of ribs in front of me, with a big pile of mashed potatos, a midori margarita (double strength), and a ginormous plate of onion rings with platter of cheese sauce that was practically a bowl.
I ended up vomiting hardcore when I got home, but I won't go into actually describing that. I woke up the next day and realized there was money in my wallet. I REALLY hate my memory.
I will now be embarking on the terrible journey known as job hunting. Wish me luck my friends.
As a bit of an aside, I'll post any interesting game industry related info I come across. Like how the interviews are, any info I can legally talk about, and about the industry in general. I tend not to talk about the stuff I do when I'm with you guys since I don't want to come off as a douche that thinks he's better than anyone else. Also, thanks to everyone that took the time out of their schedules to hang out with me. I'm sorry I didn't get to see everyone, but I was getting almost no sleep and ended up barely spending time with my own family. Hopefully Christmas vacation goes a little better, though no Jason G. makes me SAD.
Haven't been here in a while. Kinda surprised that it still exists. That's xanga for ya; waste of the interwebs.
Anyway, I had some free time so I figured I'd update after such a long time being away from this place. Plus you people have right to know what I'm up to right? Riiiiight. Moving along...
I'm working in the main office at our school as I was during the summer, even though I'm taking 6 classes. Funny story there; I was actually supposed to work through the month of August, meaning that me going back to NY broke my contract. Mind you, I told my supervisors that I was planning on going back even before I bought the ticket so they had ample time to tell me that I have to work that month as well. But no no, they decide to tell me when I come back for my first day of work in the last week of August. They hired another person to work for August, but I was lucky enough to get my job back. Now I have money to spend on stupid crap.
Speaking of money I finally got a new TV. It even has a blue channel, in addition to the red and green ones. Isn't that awesome? I got this 32" flat panel as well as a stand for $250. My boss was planning on putting it up on Craig's List but once he found out that I needed a tv he decided to give it to me. Lucky me, considering that he bought it for about $800. Only downside is this bitch is HEAVY. I cannot stress enough how frikkin heavy this thing is. We had so much trouble getting from my boss' house to my apartment and we dropped it twice; once in the mud in front of my apartment and once again when we were putting it up on the stand after we reassembled it. I did find out that he's a big Fantasy fan and I got some good book recommendations from him. I'm now reading "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin. Haven't gotten very far since I have a lot of work to do but it's his favorite book so it can't be too bad.
In terms of classes I'm taking a graphics class, a math class (beziers, splines, etc.), a game class as always, an algorith analysis class (why does a for loop work and what is its Big-O growth rate), a 3D modeling class with 3D studio max, and a game design class. The game design class is really awesome. We learn C# and have to make 3 prototype games in Game Studio Express. The cool thing about these games is that they can run on the XBOX360. We got our own dev unit up in here. Well, more like you can just play the games you make in GSE on it for free. If I wanted to do that on my own 360 (and I could) I'd have to pay Microsoft money; a yearly fee to be exact. That's not happening. The other cool thing is that we got this guy from Microsoft that made the old Wing/Mech Commander games. He mostly does XNA work now and is part time teaching at the school. You can't imagine how awesome it is to have this guy out here teaching us stuff, especially when the class is only like 10 people.
That's pretty much what's happened in a nutshell. I notice sometimes that when I tell people about the stuff that I'm doing I get a glazed look, which is something I guess I should expect. I know Riva does as well when she talks about all the different aspects of the languages she's learning (and I seriously think you're doing too much right now, you need to take a load off or else you are going to break). I guess ever since I've been working on the graphics for our game (called Space Bacon) I'm beginning to see all of the ridiculous things I could be doing with it. And since I'm trying to be a game designer, working with graphics is probably one of the best things I could do since I can design around what I can implement into the engine.
Yeah I'm out. Got work in the morning and I need to work on my first prototype for the game design class. Peace out peeps.
P.S.: Has anyone heard from Ayaka? I haven't heard from her after a couple of emails and I was wondering if everything was alright.
What's poppin people? If you didn't already know I'm still out here in Washington. Yeah, I won't be back till August so you'll have to hold out a few more months for some o' dis. I got a confirmation from my parents about the party, so I guess the only problem would be people bitching about coming out to my house. Just think about how long I had to be on the train to get just about anywhere. There's lots of space, a huge grill, a huge backyard, and a basement big enough to fit all of us with a nice, big flat screen.
I'm takin 2 classes out here as well as working in the main office of the school. I'm handling the Admissions stuff so it's mostly just entering crap in the computers, stuffing envelopes, and making a ridiculous amount of copies. It's only a few hours a day and the pay is decent (10 bucks an hour).I'm mostly just glad to have a job. The classes I'm taking are graphics 2 and low level programming. The low level programming class is actually pretty cool. We gotta make a GBC and GBA game before August. GBC is totally in Assembly so it's soo damn straightforward. But I'm pretty sure there are like 3 people who actually care about this stuff.
I haven't been doing anything much other than working and school. I got to play a bit of Odin Sphere which is actually a really good game, slow down aside. The game chugs when like 5 or so enemies are on screen on when certain magic is used. You don't expect this kinda shit from a PS2 game in this day and age but vanillaware pulled it off. Well, if you want atlus to keep bringing these relatively obscure games out (like grimgrimoire and persona 3), pick it up. It's good people.
Yeah, this post is pretty much just to say that I'm still alive. If something happens, you'll hear it here first. Peace people and have fun at your picnic.
Edit: I didn't even think to mention this earlier but if you were curious about what I'm doing out here exactly, here's a link to the game we made over the past 2 semesters: http://www.digipen.edu/main/Gallery_Games_2006#PentaFlux. You gotta enter in some crap before you dl it, just enter some junk and don't worry about it. Comments appreciated but I (in addition to my entire team) thinks it sucks. Well, enjoy.
IT HAPPENED!!!!! SOUL'D OUT DOES THE OPENING FOR THE BOONDOCKS!!!!! AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!
I don't know if some people will get understand why I'm so excited about this video. When a group of us were coming from Jason's house (I believe it was actually during christmas break) we were actually talking about the Boondocks and Japanese music and I jokingly said it would be cool if Diggy Mo did the new opening to the second season. While this actually didn't happen, I got something just as good with this.
I've been meaning to make an actual post sometime soon with some pics of the game we're making so stay tuned. I'll get rid of the background muzak as well.
