Prototype 1 :Week 1 Roundup

To start with, being a 'Game Engineer' (ahh, that sounds so badass) I have to take three classes this semester - Game Projects I, Game Engineering I and Game Design I. Now about the EAE program, the people are awesome, the faculty and professors are badass (any other adjective would be an understatement) and the Master Games Studio is as epic as I thought it would be. 

I'm not much of a writer, so let me just give you the highlights of went down this week.

Monday (Game Projects I and Game Engineering I) 

• Our first customer shows up in the first 15 minutes of class itself. Woah! She told us about her company - Beehive Cheese and what her requirements were. We were then split into teams and asked to come up with ideas for a fun mobile game that would sort of promote their product and also educate people about cheese culture, in a subtle way. 

• So in my team, there's me, Triston, Mike and Yuntao. After a lot of brainstorming, we settled with this 2D casual game idea, where in you flick different cheeses at different customers to satisfy them. We also came up a ton of neat features which we thought would greatly help Beehive Cheese promote their brand and educate people about their cheeses.  

• Then, later in the evening I had Game Engineering I, which was awesome too. Since C++ is my favourite programming language I feel this class should be fairly easy. 

Wednesday (Game Projects I and Game Design I)

• Our game pitch turned out to be really cool. Big props to Mike for that. Oh, and I forgot to mention, we decided to call our game Beehive Cheese Rush.

• Game Design was super interesting, and fun (Roger never fails to crack me up!). We talked about modding and the legal and ethical issues surrounding it. I really liked the discussion, since I'm pro-modding and have done my share of modding too.

Rest of the week

• So, about Beehive Cheese Rush, although we had everything figured out on Monday itself things didn't go as smooth as I thought they would. Why? Because working with MOAI is a pain. It's a great engine and the whole idea of making an entire game with Lua sounds cool and all, but it still needs a lot of work. The lack of information, tutorials and comprehensive documentation is getting to me.

• Till now, I've figured out how to compile and deploy MOAI apps on the iPhone using XCode and some general UI stuff -  inputs, coordinate system, buttons, images, etc. 

So to sum up, even though my first week at the U has been awesome I've quickly realized that EAE means business and I better step my game up. That's it for now. Peace out!