It’s been more than two whole months since I last blogged, for a long time I was swept up in my university work but now I’m back home for the Easter holidays I’ve just been kicking back and relaxing before the flood of work which hits when I return the week after next.

My last semester of video games programming was very enjoyable, if a little challenging in places. For the majority of the semester part of the work consisted of producing one video game prototype a week which led a lot of students into frequent last minute panics and I know I won’t forget the 12 hour Wednesdays I spent on a combination of lectures and getting my games done before the deadline. My full collection of prototypes consisted of a physics engine, a game based around Horton Conway’s Game of Life, a battleships clone, a game based around the themes of gravity and spoons and more.

At this point I’m not sure I can reveal the main coursework piece I’m working on but suffice to say things get a whole lot more complex when you add a target audience and a full design document to the mix. I had once again been worried about the mathematical side of my course because when you are someone who wants to work with computers for a living it can be very daunting to know maths is not one of your strongest subjects, but thankfully the maths for this semester hasn’t been anything I can’t deal with. In addition to all my other work I’ve also made a couple of extra small games on the side and started to dabble in 3D graphics but even after everything else in my last semester the highlight absolutely has to be being in that talk from Peter Molyneux, it was really inspiring stuff.

As for games I’ve been playing, I’ve not oversaturated myself with video games while I’ve been at university but I have had time for the odd game here and there and there was a period where I got back into World of Warcraft again. While I’ve been back for the holidays though I have had the chance to play one game I’ve wanted to try for a long time, albeit it somewhat briefly; Splosion Man! The game has a great sense of character, some fantastic level design and one of the most exceptional experiences I had with the game was first hearing “Donuts, Go Nuts”, it’s amazing such a small studio managed to produce a game of such high quality. My brother has also bought Fallout 3 while I’ve been back and again, I’ve not managed to clock up any great amount of play time on that game but I’ve still enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I had some rather serious gripes with Oblivion but with Fallout 3 Bethesda have come out with a very well-made RPG, kudos to them.

I also need to take this opportunity to thank NinjaDuckie for buying me Dark Void which is a game which really had its moments. The ending felt jarringly abrupt and I can’t say it was a consistently good game because there were places which could have done with rather large improvement but when at its best Dark Void had something pretty awesome to offer. Up until the time I go back to university me and my brother have also given ourselves the somewhat insane goal of trying to complete every song and setlist on the Rock Band 1 world tour, it’s been pretty fun but it’s required a lot of playing and there’s still quite a lot to go.

I think that just about does it for this blog. Thanks for reading and I hope you’ve all enjoyed your time with video games as much as I have these last few weeks. I think it’s only appropriate to leave you with this:

-Gamer_152