So it's been a year since I last posted anything on here...
That's bad, I told myself I wouldn't do that. This site was started because it was a requirement for a class, but I realized this would be a good way to document the process of me going through Austin Community College to get a degree in Video Game Design. But I kinda slacked off on it and now here I am 1 year later with no posts.
OK, so here's the missing year as succinctly as possible:
Spring 2012 Semester
After Spring 2012 ended I got my grades and I did pretty good, considering that semester was the very first time I had ever seen/used Photoshop and 3D Studio Max. I really expected to have to drop a class in order to not screw up my grades, but in the end I got 3 A's and a D. Meh, not the best, but not the worst either.
I hate the fact that I got a D, but Video Game Art really frustrated me to no end, so considering the crappy results I was able to produce I think the D was actually generous. I should NOT have tried to take this class before becoming much more familiar with Photoshop & 3D SMax, but I gave it the ol' college try anyway.
The other things that made it an awful experience were the terrible schedule, a Saturday class (the only available seat), and any college class worth more than 1.0 credit that meets once a week is going to run for many hours. And what is the one thing any college student just loves to do with their weekend after they've spent a solid week going to classes & what-not? That's right, blow an entire Saturday that should be spent sleeping and doing jack squat on a class that is a masochistic exercise in frustration! Right?
But let me be clear here, the teacher was awesome, he knew his stuff, but it all boils down to a simple equation of a teacher trying to cram a semester's worth of knowledge, PLUS Photoshop skills, PLUS 3DSMax skills (that the class assumes you already have) into a single semester and the end results were an overwhelmed student and a teacher that was ready to stab me in the eye for "not getting it" faster. Of course he didn't say this, but I can read people and I could tell that deep down he was probably grinding his teeth when he was trying to explain some things to me.
As far as the D is concerned, the program does not accept a D as credit so I have to take the class over anyway, which is something I planned on doing anyway because I really want to get good at the techniques the class goes over. If I can get it to work right, it looks like it would be a lot of fun to do. I'd even take it from the same teacher, but no more Saturday classes. I learned my lesson on that one.
Summer 2012 Semester
This semester was spent on two classes: Game Scripting & Game Design 1.
Game Design 1 was fun, but I felt like so much of the material was rehashed from multiple previous classes. When it was all said and done it was good to go through the process of creating the documentation for game design, but I felt like this class and Intro should be rolled into a single class. But in the end I got an A and moved on to my next semester.
Game Scripting was my first exposure to Unity, and I felt like taking it immediately after taking my C++ classes was a big advantage for me. Yes it was Java but there was a lot of crossover so it worked out well. The downside is that near the middle and toward the end of the semester a medical condition I've had since I was a kid flared up after being dormant for about 5 years and it really started to interfere with my ability to go to class and get stuff done, so I ended up having to take an incomplete on that class and finish it up after the semester was done. I never did go back and check to see what grade I got, I should do that some day.
Fall 2012 Semester
This was an incredibly annoying semester primarily because I was only able to register for a single class. I think I'm going to start bumping into this a lot and I am realizing that this is a fatal flaw in such a small program that is as popular as it is ... too many students, not enough seats! Each classroom is limited by the 14 computers/seats so when they're filled up, that's it ... tough luck, try again next time. Especially in these later classes that seem to be predicated on having taken previous classes. There is a huge demand for them in order to get the degree. That being said that is not the biggest annoyance I encountered. No, the biggest annoyance is that the next class in the chain is Game Design 2; however that class is only offered once a year in the fall. So if you don't get in, you are totally hosed and will have to wait an entire year before trying again. And there's another class in this chain that suffers from the same "better get in or you're hosed for another year" flaw. This is incredibly problematic when someone like me makes plans & saves money for four years so that I can be in school for two years (for a two year program) and it turns into a three, or god-forbid four, year program. I didn't plan finances for an extra year (or two), so that means I'm going to have to do what I said I wouldn't do again and mix a part-time job in with school again. This was such a problem for me at A&M, it kept interfering with my studies and eventually led to me leaving A&M for 2 semesters in order to get a handle on finances before going back. This is going to be rough, and things in Austin are monumentally more expensive than back home in College Station, but I can't afford to sit out semesters this time around ...this situation has me concerned.
So as I said I ended up taking a single class: Game Testing. I liked the teacher, he's a good guy & we can talk about stuff for hours outside of class, but I had really wanted to take it with Vernon Reed. Simply because I dig his teaching style and it was the last class I could take with him. But his classes were full up so it looks like I've taken my last class with Vernon, which bummed me out, but when the classes are so hard to get into you don't really have the luxury of being picky. (On a side note I may talk to Vernon and Gary/Kalani about a Production track and see about a double major or major/minor degree as I think that would be a good set of skills to possess).
The Game Testing class was fun & interesting, but again there was a lot of overlap information that I had seen in previous classes mixed in with the new information. But I got in there, did what I had to do, got the B, and got out.
Spring 2013 Semester
A new year, a new semester, and here we are again dealing with limited seats and too many students. And once again we have another single-class semester; if this keeps up it won't be a big deal getting a part-time job as I'll have the extra time.
This class wasn't in the Game school, it was in the Music school: MIDI. The first thing you should be aware of about the Music school is that they don't seem to like the Game School students too much. The second thing is that their entire operation is on Apple stuff. If you're like me and that last Apple product you ever touched was an Apple IIe back in High School then this adds an additional layer of annoyance on top of the class as you learn the "Mac Way©" to do things.
Side note: Let me go ahead and be honest here, I have never liked Apple. It's more about the culture it breeds and less about the hardware/software, but there it is. The world may love their overpriced products, but I don't, and the average "Mac Person©" with their "It just works" or "Oh ... you don't have an iPhone" attitudes are the kind of thing that make me want to throat punch a person. I think it stems from doing 2 years of networking tech support where 90% of the time I got to deal with normal PC users where I could just help them and go on with my life and then the rest of my time was spent on telling people game consoles don't work on our networks and then dealing with "Mac People". This special breed of users was about the most ignorant I ever dealt with, and the most arrogant. They usually didn't know where anything was or how to operate their own hardware/software and the second you asked them to do something they didn't know ... well of course it was all my fault somehow. I don't have a problem with a person being ignorant of something as long as they understand this and accept the help I'm offering. When you start arguing with me and telling me I don't know what I'm doing and that you're not going to do what I'm telling you to do because you "should not have to do that because it's a Mac and it 'just works'", I'm going to conjure a plague of spiders upon your house ...but I digress /RANT OVER
I didn't hate this class but I didn't particularly enjoy it either. I felt like there was a level of assumed knowledge, not just how to use a Mac but Music knowledge, that made the learning curve steep. When I realized this was going to be a difficult class I asked about a tutor and was given a guy who could help me. Great, I'll just go see him on Monday/Wednesday between my classes. But he could only help me during a very limited set of hours, very limited. Specifically the very same hours I was in class. So no tutor. OK well they have a MIDI lab maybe I can go there and get help. It's a nice idea, but the lab was staffed by people who were nice but not particularly helpful (I got more help from fellow students in the lab). Actually to be completely honest I need to amend that statement there was a particular person on the lab staff falls who I can't say that about. This person was not friendly, in fact they were rude every time I spoke to them, which I could tolerate if they were helpful (rude TAs and Profs at A&M is kind of standard fare, but they still help you) but this person never once successfully answered a single question I had. It got to the point where if I saw this person in the lab I would just leave or not go in if I didn't see anyone else in the lab that I knew could help me. Unfortunately this person was in the lab the majority of the times I stopped by. OK so no tutor, and no help from the lab, what to do? I talked to the prof about a book and found one that was very helpful and combined with the notes from class and the user manual for the software I began to tutor myself. This probably would have been a successful strategy but that medical condition I previously mentioned, the debilitating one that had been dormant so long the doctors were ready to call it basically "cured", it came back with a vengeance and knocked me off my feet for quite a while and put me in the doctor's office. All the while I was missing class and assignments but I trucked on and hung in there until the last possible moment when I had another attack and realized I could not rescue this semester, so I dropped. So there we have it, a whole semester wasted. This is incredibly aggravating particularly because I have to take that class all over again, but here we are and we're moving on.
Summer 2013 Semester
So what's on the agenda for Summer, well I am taking an online Speech class. I hate classes like this, but it's required. And I was trying to get into Video Game Art 1 again to take it over, but it's full up, which might be a good thing since the semester is compressed. So instead I'm taking a drafting class. Yes, that's right it has nothing to do with my degree but it seems interesting and I always thought I would be an architect when I was a kid. Plus I love to draw blueprints, so we'll see how it goes. I'm still on the wait list for VGA1 so there's a tiny snoball's chance in hell I'll actually get in there, but I'm not holding my breath. I need to make sure to register for the Fall the absolute split second I am eligible to do so or else I'm going to miss DC2 all over again and have to wait ANOTHER freakin' year (if that happens I'm not sure what I'll do; I may drop out). I'll also try to get into VGA1 as well and see if there's anything else I can take, but by the end of August 2013 the savings will run out and I'll have to find some income one way or the other and I'm too old to go back to hooking.
