GDC experience

            Blizzcon,E3,GDC... I have dreamed one day that I will have chance to attend these Game Conference since I was on high school. And Golden Gate Bridge is such a mysterious symbol for me until last week. A trip for GDC begin, a journey to San Francisco start.
            Here are some personal experience and judgement about this travel. 

           1 The skills that we learnt in school is still part of  knowledge for game industry. There are huge amounts of  work position offered in game industry and lots of very detailed area may obtain huge success. For instance. I found a company has built its own tools to develop tree model and animation which can be easy load into game engine and gain high efficiency. Also a company developed a small wireless connection device between mobile phone and HID family TV. So people can play mobile phone game on their TV to share happiness on family on a big screen. 
             No matter what kinds of area. Game industry full of opportunity and fortune. Because it changing people's life and bring enjoyment.
             
            2 GDC is awesome and worth to go. 
           (1)  You can meet lots of different people working as different roles for game industry.It is this chance I discover how colorful my future work would be.
          (2)  I should buy conference access tickets next year to gain more advance information about game industry. (I don't know that Expo pass do not include conference this year. I slip in two lecture and they are useful. )
         (3)  Its a good place to get job and internship. 
                 

         
          3 Figure out where you should go is more important than walking to a direction without no doubt. At least its important in game industry, which based on high technology development. What kind of game that player eager for is changing. What kinds of ways they may play is changing. What the purpose drive them to play game may changing too in near future or now.


      4 Small detail
      (1) Game industry in China and Asian is developing in dramatically speed and full of opportunity. (I prefer working on the game based on a culture which I am familiar with)
               
      (2) More and more company are going to publish their own Game Engine. Developing game based on commercial engine or company's own mature engine is future tendency.

     (3) Utah is good place to live and study compare to boisterous San Francisco. I am lucky I had made the right choice.

    (4) We can imagine how life would be hard for the old Chinese generation that came to San Francisco to pursue dream or maybe 
fortune from old photo and building on China town.

    (5) Money on big City like San Francisco is worthless even though you may get high salary on here. So I should insist where I live and work comfortable.

   (6) One famous game can make a once nameless company famous all over the world. And company can take advantage of this to expand its real or unreal fortune.

           

Game Graphic 9

            Finally, got our graphic effects  little advanced :).  
            This assignment asks us to finish both Environment Mapping and Opaque bucket Texture.  For me the principle for these effect are kinds like light effect that we finished on previous assignments. Just like this:
            There is no light on this place, but we imitate how light may effect the result directly on another place. Similarly, imitate how environment may show on the cube or sphere like mirror. Even though, there actually no such environment around us. Not to mention that put the whole Opaque bucket as Texture.

           By understanding this, what we do next is just figure out how to blending color. Just like John said yesterday on class "Graphic is kinds of process computer only care vertexes position and the sequence to building triangles. Finally do lots of blending color work"
          Here are results and screenshot from PIX of Opaque bucket render target used as texture:   

    

                                    

      Another funny part is to do Environment mapping on Sphere.
                               

   Code


 

Summary Preface

             For a long time, that I haven't write down something about my game development experience yet. This semester is super busy. Both of our Game Engine Class and Game Graphic Class ask us to do lots of coding work. Besides, I need working on LeoProject to finish a museum game with Cohort 2 students. At same time, Game project class is moving to final  graduation project now.  
           At first, I join to Rover Rescue try to building a RTS game, which treat "survival" as unique sell point. We do design this game very carefully. Everybody expressed some awesome ideas to make a students'  RTS game fun enough.

              However, our game prototype does not pass the "Gate" which   guarded by industry panel  and professors. So the team had to dismiss and team members have to join other teams which passed the "Gate". 

         Even though this fact is heart breaking. But project have to move on just like life itself. I will do a detail summary on other post to keep in mind some design traps. 

         

         I am working on "Vinyl" team right now, a nice design music game as graduation project. I believe this game have grasped the "Dark Bible" of  what a student game should like. Focus on fun and easy to play. Plus unique Music elements, "Vinyl" should have a great chance to be a excellent game and got published.

           

Game Graphic 8

    Here comes Normal map. Such an amazing technology which has changed computer graphic dramatically. Honestly Speaking, I have no idea that what "map" mean here before this class. So I had do lots of reading to figure it out. But I believe the time I spent on the reading are worth and important. It gives me lots of information beyond class.

    Here is results that "RAISED" raised and "SUNKEN" sunken on cube surface.

  My camera work as rotation effect so I have to change  older transparent entity (close to Camera) to use normal materiel for observe the result. So it ruined transparent effect already created(below). This remind me how important the design process. (My program do not have the function to close to the object at first because I don't know it should have in future.) Or it will cause lots of trouble.
                            

 John's class ask us to do lots of stuff beyond game graphic. It's hard and painful experience to grasp them at first. But once you cut them down one by one(plus new stuff coming and merged). I gradually know why we should do task like this way. And what the benefit to do like this.

Code

Game Graphic 7

    Here is the result that we can see that one partially transparent object closest to the camera, and then another partially transparent object through the closest one , and the through both of them.......... 
  
                           

   I did have some difficulty on understanding "current pix location" on DX document at first. So it turns out I thought BLENDOP.. SRCBLEND.. DESTBLEND was three parameters for one function at same time. ..
   Plus so called "buckets" , our code become more structure expandable and integrated.
  Code

     
  And bellow are PIX screenshots

  Opaque and translucent expand

Game Graphic 6

    Here comes assignment 6.
    This week is unlucky for me. I try this assignment very early because I know that both Maya and Binary files are new to me. However,  I got an eye problem and it make me hard to use computer....

    I want build a nice world at first But my eyes do not support me. Anyway. I had to finish the assignment first. So here just a simple sphere I got it work.
   code
 
 



    When I finish an torus and export it into VS.  I found such a simple polygon  had already contains 400 vertices and 200 faces...... 1809 line code. (Luckily we have Maya, how about the  people finish this when Maya does not exist...)

                                                                       

      I can't imagine how next generation game creating an HDR emulation human face with million polygon. No matter to say the whole game scenes. So may be I should just get a basic understanding of how computer do this for us. And focus on learn game engine  Based on lots of great computer scientist who made powerful engine like Unreal and Cry.

    How to balance my energy to learn Commercial Game Engine and fundamental part of computer science has become a problem now...

   

Game Graphic 5

    Based on Assignment 4

     o_color = diffuse_color*(diffuse_light+float4(g_ambient_color,1.0))+specular_light;

     This is how we do light in computer graphic. Computer science always inspired me in amazing way. Take light here for example. Computer scientist didn't build a source of light(This is what we understood of light and where is light from) in computer, they animate the effect that a point of light, diffuse light, and environment light may caused to a object together to show the graphic.
     They solve the problem on different way, the way usually opposite to us   (at least me). However, it is the unique thinking point that change the world dramatically. Maybe we should keep in mind to try solve difficult problem on different way in daily life. That is the biggest harvest for me.  DX11 may change, shader language  may change or maybe I will change my Job in future. But the knowledge of how to abstract problem to finish it last forever


CODE
Light manual:
 I K J L O P(Z axis)