Take this, it's dangerous to go alone

Ok, I've been lazy the last few days.

I decided to take a few days off to relax a bit seeing as I was fairly busy in the week leading up to my birthday so I've got no coding done in the past day or two but that will all change starting tomorrow an ill shall keep you all updated.

In other news, look at my cool new sword!

GAME OF THRONES!!!

Yeeeahhhh, didn't get anything done today, but it's the weekend!

What's worse? I'm going to be busy pretty much all tomorrow so i won't have a chance to do any coding. It's not that i don't want to, it's that I'm going to be far too tired after tomorrow to do anything so i think it's going to have to wait until Monday to do any more work.

So not much to report today and i think tomorrow may be the first time in a whole week that i won't be posting anything but we'll see. On the plus side I've got the whole first season of Game of Thrones to watch that i was shown last night and subsequently wanted to watch EVERY EPISODE EVER! I only saw the first two episodes last night but they were AWESOME! So that's tonight's plans, i might play some Pokemon as well 'cause Pokemon is just as awesome.

This picture does no justice to the series....and yes we have a projector in the flat.

Anyway, I'll try and get something posted tomorrow but I'm not going to promise anything at the moment but be sure to check back on Monday when I'll definitely have something for you.

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Lazy Day

First proper day of relaxing, woooooooooooooooo!

So today i told myself that i would get up fairly early and get stuck in to some C#......that never happened. I did start on C# though but didn't get too much done. So far I've started making the required tile engine for the next few tutorials but hit a rough patch when trying to convert some class diagrams into code, hopefully when i come back tomorrow I'll see the problem straight away and get it sorted so i can carry on.

Pretty much got nothing done today....it is Friday though.

Haven't played any games yet apart from Swordigo on my iPhone which is excellent and also free at the moment, its a fantasy adventure game with a few RPG elements and kept me occupied for most of last night when i should have been sleeping.

Swordigo! Recommended!

Also, my watch I'm getting for my birthday arrived yesterday!! So I'll have to go home at some point to collect it and start showing off how awesome and cool it is.

AND, if you haven't noticed yet i got round to finishing off a review last night of Sonic Generations so check it out, especially if you're a fan of Sonic or even just platform games in general.

Hopefully I'll have a bit more to talk about tomorrow when i finish off the tile engine I'm working on, but until then...


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EPIC FUN TIMES! (Seriously this time)

SUMMER TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Exams are now done for the year, although admittedly that last one could go either way depending how my luck holds up. I managed to sleep most of the day away after getting home from the exam which was fortunate given i had about 8 hours sleep spanning the previous 3 days.

Over the next few days I'm going to concentrate on getting a job but, obviously, I'm going to play soooooooo many games, starting with Catherine. Brilliant puzzle game with a great story and I'm looking forward to finishing it off and seeing how it concludes the story, it can be really crazy and over the top at times but its definitely worth a play through if you have the time. Apart from that, as i keep saying, I'm going to start working through C# again tomorrow now that i don't have any revision to do.

Also, if i don't get too caught up with Catherine i might finish off a review seeing as it's been quite a while since i managed to get one posted.

Anyway, time to enjoy the next few months while i don't have anything to worry about except how to spend my birthday.

***UPDATE***
Got round to doing that review i promised, if you want to see my take on Sonic Generations feel free to take a look.


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Heat Wave

I can't wait until 11:30 tomorrow morning.

After tomorrow i will officially be on summer holiday! And more importantly i won't have to study meaning i can get back to working on C#! YAY!!! And in a few weeks when I've gotten round the core concepts and done some experimenting i can start a project to make a game which, fingers crossed, i can have published in some way even if i gave it away for free. Although some money would be nice....

Of course what i would like to happen is to work on my own personal project and work on a group project with the other guys from uni. I loved working in our small group for the Game Jam and although it was much more stressful i still loved working on our group project during the semester. I really can't wait to get started on some form of project during the summer and I'll be posting any developments on any project here for all you lovely people to see.

On another note. Its absolutely boiling in my room. Window wide open, heating off, lying on top of the bed covers. Still boiling. And for once i don't have 5 or 6 different electronic products running and producing massive amounts of heat. At least on the bright side i might lose some weight in this sauna.

Well, that's 5 in a row now (just, seeing as its 23:30), let's hope i can keep this up....if i don't melt in this room.

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EPIC FUN TIMES!

....but not today.

I actually got round to studying today, after catching up on some Family Guy and House. So all in all, around 2 hours of studying. I don't want to waste all my studying energy in one day do i?

So I'm slowly struggling my way through my notes on Algorithms and Data Structures and i think i can maybe just remember all the different types of sorting methods i need to know but it's in knowing all of these that i start to get annoyed. We live in an age where the internet is at your fingertips almost anywhere in the world, why should we still be taking exams on things that are easily accessible to even a child if they wanted to know about it? I personally will have a hard time remembering these 6+ sorting methods after the exam but that doesn't worry me because if i ever need to use one of these methods i can simply search for it and quickly implement it in my code, as long as i have the basic understanding of sorting methods then i shouldn't have a problem searching the internet for the specific one i need and this goes for most of the things being asked for in at least the mock exam papers we've been given. Don't get me wrong, i still think these things should be taught in lectures for the benefit of having an understanding of each method and what each one does and i do think exams are important for some modules/courses but in this specific circumstance where the majority if not all of the people that are taking the module are going to be working in an industry where the internet is constantly available i really think it would be a more accurate "exam" if the students were tested on how well they implement the things that are taught through more coursework rather than testing them on how well they retain information for a day.

Unfortunately i know the way things are and the way students are tested is never going to change, for some reason exams are seen as the perfect way to prove how well a student is doing despite the fact that the majority of people i know are definitely smarter than some exams would show, the combination of stress and having to recite specific parts of various courses within a time limit often puts too much pressure on some and as a result their marks in an exam suffer. I am considered lucky when it comes to exams, although i do study you can see from the last few blogs that i really haven't done much for this exam but my brain tends to swallow up information during exam periods meaning i can usually pass an exam without too much effort but ask me the same questions a week after and i would probably get confused and give you an answer along the lines of "Pub, anyone?".

I know i have another two years of exams left in my life and i am well aware that some jobs that i am going to apply for will ask me to take part in a coding session in which i have to solve a problem within a set time limit. One day though, I'll never have to worry about exams or tests ever again.

Hopefully soon.


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Studying....Sort of

I'm supposed to be studying right now but let's be honest, no one can ever be bothered studying. Ever.

I have an exam on Thursday on Algorithms and Data Structures, still there? Just making sure in case you fell asleep reading that immensely boring title. As much as i know that it is an important subject and there are some parts to it that i do find interesting, most of my studying has resulted in me "checking the internet", I.E. doing this and checking if any of my subscribed channels have uploaded anything on youtube.....they have not.

At this moment i would much rather be going through more C# code and learning some more of that. Although it didn't look like much, i spent 3 hours last night working through a Space Invaders tutorial through which i learned a fair amount from.

A classic!

Like i said, it doesn't look like much and it didn't require quite as much coding as the C++ version that i done earlier in the year but it does look better purely because it has animation in the invaders and a bit more colour to it than just red and blue cubes that were used in the 3D version. I also found it much easier to implement certain parts of the game, such as the control mechanisms but I'm still unsure whether that was because i understood what i was doing a lot better than when i was starting out with C++ or because it was just simpler in C#, i hope it was the former purely because i want to feel like I've learnt something over the last year but i suspect it has something to do with the latter as well.

3D version, I'm sure it would look better if I put some proper models in.

Now I'd better get back to studying.........or a may start writing up a review for something.

Either way, I'll probably be lurking around the internet for a while longer. There's plenty of time to study tomorrow.


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£4.91

Today it finally hit me. I have no money.

Since i left my last job at the start of the year to concentrate on uni a bit more I've been spending a little more than i should have been. I knew this but every time i tried to correct myself something happened....like Mass Effect or Avengers. So now I'm poor and jobless and have no income whatsoever as May is is the last month for my bursary coming through and although i have been looking for jobs on and off for the last month I've had no luck. One of the main reasons for that though is because i don't particularly want to go back into bar work, it's not that i don't enjoy it but i don't feel that i can give uni my full attention when I'm still catching up on sleep because i was working until 4 in the morning.

£4.91 All that I have left.

So now i have just under £5 to last me at least a month (assuming that i get a job and they pay at the end of the month) which of course means that i can't buy any new games. On the plus side though it gives me the motivation to go back and play some games I've been meaning to return to including Catherine, the original Prototype and Red Dead Redemption which I've been meaning to go back to and finish for a long time. And of course this means I'll have more games to review which keeps me busy which stops me eating as much meaning i don't have to spend as much on food which will hopefully mean i can stretch £4.91 to last a whole month.

Fingers Crossed.


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May

It has been a long time since I actually wrote anything for this....

So! The last few months have been fairly hectic, I've had a lot of coursework to get done and of the coursework that needed done I can quite happily say a lot more time was spent on making a working game. For the most part, I was working on the games physics which could be a major pain at points and although i eventually got it working with the help of the other two guys in the group, we unfortunately couldn't get it working in the final build. This was due to me working mainly using separate objects for the walls, floors etc. while testing and the final build using a mesh for the level. Of course, we found out nearly straight after the hand in that there was an easy fix for the problem.

Although this piece of coursework in particular was very stressful and had us working nearly to the last moment before the deadline, I had a great time. Despite all the problems and frustrations and having to run the game and do the same thing over and over again to the point I was running on automatic most of the time, it has made me realise that this is definitely what I want to do for the rest of my life. The satisfaction and happiness achieved just from getting a simple thing to work in your code is unbeatable.

Spurred on by this, I am now working through more tutorials but this time on C# as opposed to C++ and will hopefully have my own fully working game by the end of the summer. Alongside this, our year group may be adventurous enough to try making a game together over the summer, if we don't get too lazy.

In other news, I'm building up a horrendously large collection of games on Steam, much to the dismay of my bank balance. On the plus side it does mean I've had a lot more games to play, and most of them are worth the money. My only regret is that it took me so long to get back into PC gaming, it does mean having to spend a whole lot more on upgrading my PC though.

Anyway, now that I only have one exam left it frees up a lot of time. So alongside personal projects I am hoping to come back to this a bit more as well as the game review side of things, gives you lot something to look forward to, doesn't it.


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