So, last week, I had a meeting involving several people from Drexel’s Biomedical Engineering/Science faculty, including the director, as well as the director from Digital Media and others from the College of Media Arts and Design. They discussed a possible curriculum merge for the two disciplines for those interested in pursuing a joint focus.

At the suggestion of the Biomedical Science graduate advisor, I think they’re going to make a concentration of Digital Media as “Biomedical Science”, rather than a joint master’s, to lessen the red tape of Faculty Senate approval and what not (which can take a year plus). So while not as cool as having a Dual M.S. in Digital Media and Biomedical Science, I guess I can think of some cool way to name it. “Master’s of Science in Digital Media with Pseudo-Telekinetic Powers… In a game.”

Also, was suggested some classes that the DIGM’s would find beneficial, such as:

Medical Sciences
Neuro study
Cognitive Psychology
Biomechanics
BCI/Psychology
Brain Imaging
Education

My only problem with their suggestion is that they take the 12 directed electives in the DIGM master’s and turn that into Biomed classes, makes sense, but then they take the New Media Project (9 credits, a “practice” thesis project, if you will) and then the Thesis Development classes (9 credits as well) and turn those into Biomed Classes. I want to have the New Media Project for a chance to synthesize these two fields, as well as get credits for thesis development, as I do not want 3 grad classes on top of a thesis. This plan removes no DIGM classes I find no use for, and removes classes I want to take. So if they’re all about custom-tailoring, then we’ll need to tweak that a bit.

Now I need to sign up for the grad program and then try to get an assistanship somehow, because without that, I don’t know how I’ll be able to afford this. And have been going through a lot of stress, so need to decide if this is what I really want. Them being all about it was really intimidating and sort of an eye-opener of, “Shit, this could really happen.”

Wow, is all I gotsta say.

Only thing I’ve heard about SC4 was that Darth Vadar and Yoda were in it, which kind of left me in a state of, “Oh, well, that’s cool, but what? Why?” I guess I approve now, since it means I can fight in a star destroyer hanging bay. Isn’t that every little boy’s dream?

And this character creator is awesome; I didn’t even know SC4 had this, most likely due to me avoiding gaming news lately to not be pressured to buy (and decide on) a Next-Gen system. But man, I guessed all those characters (minus some X-Men/DC chars) and they look awesome.

Mario scares the piss out of me.

Just had a meeting with the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Adviser and it went pretty well. He suggested I may be better off just pursuing a Biomedical Science degree with some Digital Media classes to augment my studies, rather than a dual master’s in Biomed and Digital Media. He seemed excited about the possibility of someone with my background entering the program, potentially bringing in new ideas, and explained to me some possible avenues that this education would afford me, virtual reality and such.
For a stipend/tuition waiver, I’ll need to talk to someone else and since my GPA is good, but not awesome, I may have to kick myself in the ass for an assistanship and gave me a contact for that, as well as the Biomedical Science advisor.

No concrete updates at this point, but he did his job of advising me and made some suggestions at a possible route to take, as well as the next go-tos. Will let you know!

When I played world of Warcraft, me and my roommates played on an Role-playing PVP (RPPVP) server, which means that 5% of the players are hardcore roleplayers.

The other 95% hate roleplayers and kill them.

Touching two topics briefly that will eventually get their own posts (both roleplaying and PVP), I’ll mention them  briefly in the context here. I don’t understand roleplayers, but if they can recapture the awe and immersion I’ve felt when I first touched games like EQ, EQ and even WoW through a noob-lense, great for them. And while I’m all about freedom, in an MMO setting, this usually means ganktards. I’d love the option to settle a heated score with my sworn nemesis out in an open field of battle, as our fates cross paths, leaving only one bloodied and alive. As epic as that sounds, it usually winds up being, “Oh cool, someone 35 levels higher than me and his friends just bent me over when I was killing some gnolls at half-health.” The nemesis thing also reminds me of another good post in the making (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, BILLJOHN).

Like I said, more on my ideas on RP and PVP in a later post.

Where was I? So anyways, [fuck, I'm going to give a teaser for yet another post] the girlfriend has been trying out Everquest 2 for the past few weeks and I want her to check out WoW to give that a go.. I think she’ll like it more, but we’ll see. So, I’m at Will’s house and he’s showing me his pimp warlock and I told him of my plan to make a character with the girlfriend and level it up along side her to play with her. She levels slow, as she’s a new player, enjoys doing quests, reading stories, picks flowers, etc., so I figure I can easily always catch up to her in a shorter amount of time, effectively throttling my time playing (which is a good thing right now for me).

Anyways, fuck, this post is supposed to be about THIS.

I make a character to play with her and I’m thinking of a name to use. I’ve already used the appropriate names on other characters (Sycophant, Pulse) and the other names I use just wouldn’t fit for an Orc Warlock (Niteflyx, Hypolocrian), so I come up with an awesome alternative.

Orcrobot.

Half-Orc. Half-Robot. As soon as I logged in, I knew I had created greatness. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the painkillers, maybe it was the Orc made out of entirely win, but either way, shit, it happened, and I still can’t think about it without lolin’.

I now understand roleplaying. Roleplaying as an orc who became a robot who knows no feeling, other than regret and despair. Now I gotta come up with a macro that randomly says a few quotes of his.
“run \DPS.exe -t”
“I am programmed only to destroy and regret my decisions.”
“COMMENCE(OrcCopter);”

Now I just hope I don’t get reported for being a bot. Because I’m just roleplaying as one. DON’T RUIN MY IMMERSION.

So for the past month of being part of the college graduate crowd, I’m kind of at a loss on what to do. Ever since I started at Drexel, I knew I wanted to be a part of the gaming industry. As what, I had no idea. After taking some classes, I realized I wanted to animate, and then at a later point, be a more technical artist perhaps. After trying for the last two years or so to be a part of the gaming industry through networking and attending events and such, I’m still having trouble getting in. But ever since Lazybrains caught all this publicity, there was some talk about maybe pursueing a master’s doing that at Drexel. So I’m torn.

The Industry

It’s been hard as balls for me to get into this. It’s really frusterating knowing that I’ve worked my ass off for four years, been doing everything that “I should be doing” and still can’t get in. Attending the IGDA meetings, meeting awesome people in the industry and people who are just interested in development, going to the GDC and all that. I make what I think is a badass portfolio, then see others way better. So maybe I just need to improve it and spend a few months on doing that.

Continuing Education

I’ve been looking at Master’s programs all over the country. Most are CS-oriented gaming degrees (Penn’s Computer Graphics and Gaming Technology, Digipen’s game-focused CS Master’s) but some are more art-technology and theory based (like Drexel’s Digital Media Master’s). Ever since the Lazybrains thing, there has been some talk about a dual-masters in Digital Media and Biomedical Engineering, which would be right up my alley, and I could continue to work towards a degree while making neurogaming prototypes. Awesome.

Problem with this is, it’s more money. I would need to get mad scholarships, stipends and maybe a job on the side. Not that I’m not willing to do that, but still. The stipend would have to sustain me living, plus the awesome debt I’ve racked up on my bachelor’s.

So WAT?

All this, on top of pressure from parents to settle and take a web design job. Frusterating as hell working your ass off for four years, doing everything you needed to do, everything you should’ve done, and then just told to settle for less than what you wanted. It feels too much like giving up. When I think about the dual-master’s in Biomed and DIGM, it seems like an awesome opportunity to become more of something. An entry level position at some game company is one thing, and even if I work my way up, is that what I want? Maybe I could start my own neurogaming studio of the future.

I hate settling for less than the best.

Anyone have any advice?

So, our senior project is still getting more publicity. It seems everytime we get another article about us somewhere, someone else reads it and wants to hop on the Lazybrain-train. Choo-choo!

For those that don’t know about what Lazybrains is, here’s a snippet from my portfolio:

For our Senior Project at Drexel University, myself and four others designed a game engine framework and a fantastical, game-like 3D environment and we explored the influence that new methods of interfacing may have on the user’s immersion in the interactive, virtual world, as well as new elements of game-play. To achieve this, we worked with the school of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, specifically Hasan Ayaz, to bridge the neuroimaging device, the fNIR, into our development environment, essentially giving us the ability to use a player’s cognitive activity as an additional gameplay mechanism.

The week before our senior show, we were interviewed by CBS3 and they told us to expect it in the next few days. Well, we get an email this week saying it’s going to air finally, so we all gathered up at Conor’s to watch Lazybrains’ television PREMIERE.

Although both Aaron and I were taken completely out of context, it was still awesome to watch and see our neurogaming prototype on the news and get so much attention. It definitely garnered more than we would have ever expected. After this airing on CBS3, we got another request for another news publication sometime in the next week or so.

Maybe I’ll be able to work on other new-interfaces like this in the future, who knows. There was some talks about offering us the opportunity to do a dual-masters in Digital Media and Biomedical Engineering (which I’d be all about), but in order to do this, they’d need to offer me mad scholarships as well as some kind of work study thing where I get paid on the side, too. So we’ve all been in talks with the directors of both fields about this and nothing really happened when push came to shove, but Ken’s still talking with them about it, so who knows?

Master of Science in both Biomedical Engineering and Digital Media sounds good, though.

Here are the other articles written about us:
Philadelphia Inquirer
Lebanon Daily News
CBS3

I got no context for this. Neither will you.

I came across a game design blog I haven’t seen before, Lost Garden, with the latest post being a game design challenge. Sweet! I need more stuff to do (or an excuse to not do the stuff I already am doing). I looked through a few posts and liked what I saw; gotta read more, but until then, it’s now on my blogroll. —>

So what really caught my eye was this challenge. I may do it for a nice prototype on my portfolio, as well as proof that I can code stuff. So the basic idea of the game this: Mushrooms are planted on the 2D board and if they’re in the sun for longer than a second, they wither and die. Once the player contacts a mushroom, it uproots and follows the “rugged mushroom farmer”. Over 15 minutes, the day progresses, and thus, the shadows change. The goal is to collect as many mushrooms as you can and return it to the safe spot by the end of the day.

The author of the blog, Danc, is a game designer and he came up with this idea for Shade and sent out this challenge to anyone willing to make a prototype to see if this design concept will stick. Maybe I’ll give it a go in Blade3D, shouldn’t be that bad, mostly coding, since the art is all relatively simple. Who knows?

So, while shopping for pizza dough at the co-op with Shelly, I came across this gem:

Bluebeard’s Original Beard Wash. For you scruffy pirate’s out there (I’m lookin’ at you Will), only $14.00. :O

If you’ve been following Blizzard’s hype the last few days leading up to the Worldwide Invitational, you’ve seen their splash page slowly evolve:

Pretty cool. This stunt had pretty much the entire internet in an uproar about what Blizzard is announcing. Unfortunately for speculators, angled eyes with a furrowed brow is a common trait in several of their characters in all series. Is this Arthas, the Lich King, announcing the open beta for Wrath of the Lich King, WoW’s latest expansion, a Protoss revealing some new information of Starcraft II, or is it the face of the Lord of Terror, Diablo? Not only were all three camps fighting over what information it could possibly be, it didn’t help that the runes embedded into the ice were also from Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo.

So last night, I explain Blizzard’s stunt to my girlfriend and how everyone’s freaking out about it. She’s not familiar with Blizzard, but she’s heard of their games, so I gave her a quick background on them and their development philosophies, and told her that tomorrow they’re announcing something huge, and this splash screen will reach its conclusion and I’m really excited about it. So I close Firefox, boot up Everquest 2 for her (more on that later), and get some sleep.

I hop in the shower in the morning, preparing myself for the day of moving out of our place, meanwhile she checks her emails and Facebook and what have you. I come back into my room as she says, “Blizzard.com is doing something INSANE.” and I rush over, covered with only a towel, jaw-ajar, screaming, “WHAT?!?”

Hell yes. Oh, the sleepless nights I’ve had frost bolting my friends and learning the lessons of meleeing a lightning enchanted fiend. I look forward to you again. I sense a Diablo II night coming up.

Conor expressed dissatisfaction with their art direction, and how it’s more WoW-esque than the prequels, but after giving it a look over, I’m pretty happy with it. While it’s not as gloomy as the originals, it gives the production-flair seen in WoW and Starcraft 2 with insane particle effects and brings Diablo to life with the same techniques seen in WoW without lowering the urgency and dark matters at hand (like destroying the Lord of Terror and his brothers). This is just from the screens I’ve seen, and I’m sure Conor will disagree in a post of his own (who, to be fair, is more of a Diablo fanboy than I am. I just kinda drink the Blizz Kool-Aid).

After watching the ten-minute gameplay trailer, it reminded me of something I heard Rob Pardo, Executive VP of Game Design at Blizzard, say during a presentation at the GDC this year. This guy pretty much had a hand in designing everything that came out of Blizzard after Warcraft II, and he discussed some design challenges facing the MMO behemoth, World of Warcraft. I’m paraphrasing but, one point he brought up was:

You need to make every player feel overpowered, without actually being overpowered.

I took so many notes during that discussion, shit. But the point is, everyone wants to be a badass. After watching this trailer, the crushing sound of destruction combined with the luminous particle effects with each swing of the Barbarian’s axe just gave the illusion of complete annihilation. I’m sure this demo had weaker enemies than one will actually face in combat, but even if the player wasn’t mowing down zombies, the visual and audio feedback from each skill was enough to show the idea that this character is strong. And a badass.

Also, there was a little cutscene featuring an old friend.

Barbarian: Cain… You still live.

Deckard Cain: Ah, there you are! The writings in this place are incredible! Come.. stay awhile and–

Barbarian: It’s time for shedding our enemy’s blood. Not idle talk.

Deckard Cain: Gah… No one ever listens…

We will see what Blizzard has up their sleeve. I’m still waiting for their unannounced MMO.. which better be Universe of Starcraft.

Also announced at the WWI is that Starcraft II won’t be here this year. Sadface. :[