Here’s to hoping that 2010 affords me with more time to update this blog!

Doubtless my fans (all three of you!) have been worried about my 2+ month absence from the interwebs. Since about mid-May I’ve been swamped with work — homework, tests, obligations from my student group, etc — and have had very little time to log in and read Iris’s forums, much less the time to write any posts of substance (or even lack of substance).

Where I’ve been

The big project I completed recently was making a DS game. Like, a real one and not just a “Look at the pretty collision detection!” homework assignment. Well, I consider it to be a completed alpha version. There are a couple bugs and the interface is crappy, but the main game runs properly. It’s a Tower Defense genre game called “Flower Defense”, in which the towers are flowers and the enemies are bugs. I don’t have any screen shots but if I ever burn it onto a ROM I’ll take some shots of it running from my DS. I intend to continue working on it over the next few years because I would like to use it in my portfolio.

I also submitted a “beta” version of an arkanoid game for my DirectX class and have to submit a “finished” version (with scores, sounds, and animations) by Thursday, but it’s actually a lot more rough than my DS game. Of course, the expectations were different and I spent a lot less time on this than I did on my DS. I’ll be glad to get it over with, because it really is crap.

Where I’m going

Today we decided the groups for this year’s Hal Event Week (HEW) project, which for us is to make a DS game. Our class is 32 people, which divided into 6 groups (4 five-people groups and 2 six-people groups). When deciding who would become the leaders, Masuda-sensei (our teacher) asked for volunteers and we ended up with exactly 6 people volunteering, myself included. So, I’m the leader of a five-person team for HEW.

I’m excited because, despite not getting all my first choices, I have a solid group of smart, dependable people and as long as I don’t drop the ball I think we’ll end up with a good end product. I really, really want to place in the competition this year, especially since I didn’t last year. Winning the gold would rock, but I’ll be happy as long as we win something. Of course, if we can make a really good game, we’ll get a chance to enter it in the Tokyo Game Show competition next June, which would just make me die of happiness.

So, what all that means is that my life for the next 6+ months is going to be devoted to working with my team to make the best damned game ever. We have our first official meeting on Wednesday, where I need to have the tentative Coding Guidelines written up as well as a tentative schedule worked out. This, of course, with me still having to finish my DirectX game and Flash game, as well as write up a one page report on the DS game I finished.

In summary, it’s probably going to be a long time before I update again. But I’ll try to keep a presence on the forums and not let e-mails pile up too badly. Wish me luck!

Due to a swine flu scare, school is out at least until Saturday. One would think I would be like, “Sweet, no school!” but no. For the first time in my life I was like, “Nooooooooooooo!”

Not just because school is awesome, but because it meant that I had to reschedule two meetings that were planned this week (one is going to be over MSN, the other at my house). I also can’t do any DS programming while school is closed. And with an extra week to work on a programming assignment that we get marked on, it means that I have to make it THAT MUCH BETTER because I don’t have the excuse of having no time.

Thanks, swine flu.

I know what you’re all thinking, “We hear nothing from her in like a month and then it’s three posts in a row! WTF?!” Gimme a break, I’ve been busy! Plus, what better way to procrastinate studying for the Fundamental Information exam tomorrow than to do some housecleaning?

In addition to the two posts I just wrote, I:

• Updated the HAL FAQ
• Created a Visa FAQ
• Answered a few e-mails (this is a major achievement for me, believe me)

Anyway, just a quick update: I just finished my first week of my second year. It’s already shaping up to be even more busy than last year, but I’m really excited about my classes. I get to study DS programming! And DirectX! I’m nervous about the computer graphics class, though, because it’s mostly going to be about learning and understanding the math behind graphics and animation. But, hey, if I can learn that then I’ll have overcome one of the hurdles that’s plagued me since high school: my inability to do math.

Now that I’m in my second year of school and have a better idea of how everything works, I figured it would be a good idea to write up a more detailed description of HAL’s curriculum. I’ll explain the basics first and then get into a more detailed description after the cut.

The Basics

The first thing you should understand about HAL’s approach to teaching is that it is focused on ensuring that all students are able to get a job. It might not necessarily be in their desired field (especially in regards to video games; only about 40% of students in the game programming course and 30% in the planning course go on to get employment in the gaming industry), but almost everyone does get a job in the IT industry.

What this means in practical terms is that the curriculum focuses not only on teaching you how to program/design/whatever but also on helping you pass various certification exams that will make you attractive to potential companies. The last year of both the two-year and four-year programs is less about actual study and more about securing employment. Third year students also do a 3 month internship at a company (obviously limited to those in the four-year program only).

In terms of the curriculum for the video game tracks, the two-year program offers programming and game design (ie. graphic design) focuses. The four-year program has programming, game design, and game development focuses. The four-year program’s music course also offers a game music focus. For the four-year students, most of the first year programs cover the same material although that begins to change in the second half of the first year. After that, the exact curriculum varies depending on your focus and what year you’re in.

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Note: This information is based on the Japanese gaming industry.

I’m sure most people who play games have contemplated at one point or another what it would be like to be one of the people making the game instead of just playing it. But for those serious about breaking into the industry, it’s a long step between “I want to make games!” and actually doing so. Before anything else, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with what kinds of jobs are available.

Here is a simple breakdown of the basic jobs you can get at a gaming company:

The most widely-known jobs are the programming and graphic design ones, but what about a “game designer”? There isn’t actually a “game designer” position; the term usually refers to the job of a game planner, but can also cover that of a director or producer.

Programmer, graphic designer, and sound engineer are all entry level jobs. Planning is on the cusp; it’s possible to get a planning job without any prior work experience in the industry, but it’s less likely. Director and producer jobs are usually earned through promotion.

For those interested in producing and directing, planning seems like the obvious track for promotion, but the reality is that programmers and graphic designers are just as likely to be promoted to those jobs. For example, the basic promotion track for a programmer looks something like this:

Ultimately, for those serious about getting into the industry it’s a good idea to do as much research as possible into the industry and to then work towards getting the job that seems to fit you the best.

So, first off since I forgot to update, I passed level 2 of the J-Ken Practical Information test (no shock there; it was bleedingly easy).

In February 2008 I took the J-Ken Systems Information exam, which is actually 3 separate exams that make up one certification. I thought I was only going to pass the programming skills portion, but I actually passed the fundamental skills one as well. The only one I failed was the systems design, which I thought I didn’t have a prayer of passing.

Except… except… I failed by one point. ONE. POINT. Passing was 65/100 and I got 64. ONE QUESTION AND I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO TAKE THIS BLOODY TEST AGAIN. At least the only one I have to take next time is the systems design one; that’s one feature of the J-ken I really, really like. Passing one exam rolls it over to the next try, so you only have to keep bashing your head against the wall retaking the tests you haven’t passed.

I’ll see you in the fall, systems design exam!

“Although preventing harassment is an admirable goal, a requirement that LGBT people remain invisible and silent is not an acceptable means of reaching that goal.”

- Lambda Legal¹

It wasn’t so long ago that games, especially console games, were primarily offline forms of entertainment. Over the years, however, that has changed and these days online communities — from MMOs to official chat services offered by gaming companies — are a booming industry. With the change in the way players interact has come a need for game companies to define what is, and is not, acceptable behavior. While all companies that deal with online communities will have various policies in place to help them police their players, the truth is that most of these policies do little to curb the harassment that many players face. In addition to the usual problems with harassment, there have been a few notable cases where the policy has reinforced discrimination against an already discriminated-against group.

In this post I will be examining two of the most well-known cases of this problem. The first is a case from 2006 involving Blizzard regarding a woman named Sara Andrews being threatened with expulsion from WoW for advertising her gay-friendly guild; the second is a recent and ongoing case involving Microsoft regarding the suspension of an Xbox Live account of a woman known as Teresa because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile². Both these incidents involved gay women — who, I would like to point out, are parts of groups targeted for harassment not only because of their sexual orientation but their gender identification as well — and both of them involved policy wording that appeared to be equal opportunity but in reality only negatively impacts non-heterosexuals. (more…)

HEW 2008 – Level 3 (Unfinished)

Current Deadline: Finish game by March 2
Current Progress: Finished: basic game ; Working on: explanatory text, story text

Things are officially going well. Starting last week most of our classes became devoted to finishing our HEW projects. This enabled me to meet the basic gameplay deadline one day early (whoo!).

HEW 2008 – Level 2 (Unfinished)

I had a spot of trouble trying to implement the guard moving independently from the player. I used kbhit() so that the game would only try to read a character if a key was pressed, but I didn’t think to reinitialize the variable I was using so once an arrow key was pressed once it would keep trying to read the direction of the arrow key even though there was no input. Once I got over that hump, though, it was smooth sailing.

The other “problem” I ran into was that my random labyrinth generator sucked. I did some looking into algorithms that I could adapt, but ultimately decided to go with a fixed board. It makes the game a lot easier, but most people won’t play it more than once so whatever.

I actually have two other end of the year assignments (my WB homework is to create a page using javascript, css, and HTML; my CT homework is to do a 1 to 2 page report on a product of my choice), but things seem to be going well. I’m almost done with my CT and can probably get my WB finished today in class, which leaves the text for my game. Which I’m dreading because, well, WRITING IN JAPANESE. It’s the bane of my existence, I swear. But I’ll get it done. Somehow. Probably with the help of my friends.

HEW 2008 – Level 1 (Unfinished)

Current Deadline: Finish basic gameplay by February 19
Current Progress: Start room and level 1 finished

Not sure if things are going better than expected, or worse. On the one hand, I’ve spent a lot of time procrastinating (or taking care of other things). I got sidetracked by an assignment to code a SameGame, which ate up about a week of class time. Then, this week (literally the day after I finished it, of course) my teacher said we no longer had to turn it (people complained that they didn’t have time to do their HEW project). Getting the display to work like I want it to always seems to take twice, or three times, the amount of time I expected it to. And don’t get me started on debugging.

But, I have some time tomorrow during my AS work shift to start on level 2. Since the basic game mechanics are the same as the start room I’ll have a solid base to work with, so that’s a plus. Level 3 is a labyrinth game that I coded for an assignment (that, if I recall correctly, we didn’t actually turn in). I want to make some modifications to it (clean up the board creation algorithms and add guards who move about the labyrinth randomly) but absolute worst case scenario I can do with simply porting it.

Assuming I make the March 19 deadline (ie. have all my levels coded and debugged), that gives me about a week to add the storyline and other text (explanation of the rules, controls, etc). The only problem is that everyone is going to be busy with their HEW assignment so I might not be able to get my friends to proofread my Japanese… which will undoubtedly result in hilarity when my senpai come and play the game. Hilarity for them, that is. Naturally, I will want to crawl under a rock and die.

Even if it does have cringe worthy awesome Japanese mistakes, though, my game is going to rock. Well, as much as a game coded for the console API can rock, that is.

PS. The game has a name: 『魔女の館』 (“The Witch’s Mansion”)! I wanted it to be “The Sorceress’ Tower”, but that didn’t sound right in Japanese.