Introduction To My GDT blog

While this blog's primary audience is fellow university of derby students, and the university of derby Computer Games Programming module leader John Sear, i must also understand that this blog, or developement diary, can be used as part of my final portfolio. As such i feel it is imperitive to describe what this project is about before leaping headfirst into the meat of the matter.

The Project
The Project was assigned in late August of 2008, before the official start of the first semester of my second year at the university of derby. The task set before me (and the other games programming students) was to use the Unreal Engine 2 (through the medium of Unreal Tournament 2004, or UT2004 for short) to create a game based around the "Famous Five" franchise. this game was to be a total conversion for UT2004. The Game was set to be either a point and click adventure game, controlled with the mouse, or an action adventure game controlled primarily by the Xbox 360 pad. We were also informed that extra points may be awarded if we managed to get our games to work on a modified original Xbox.

The Projects are to be based on one of the original "Famous Five" books, utilising the chapter(s) within witch the main characters solve the mystery, find the treasure, or catch the bad guy. the guideline for length of gameplay was a ten minute, or "demo length" slice of a complete game.

Everything that would go into this Tend minute slice of game was to be created by the student working on it (unless existing textures, static meshes, or character models could be used and still seem to fit in). I will freely admit that this prospect, that of modelling, texturing, adding visual content to a project, rather than simply coding it, frightens me. i am not artfully minded, i can barely draw, my skill at colouring ends at "in the lines", and i have never modelled a character before. However, while the prospect does frighten me, it will also give me an opportunity to learn, and broaden my skills, that i might not otherwise get.

I will also freely confess to not ever having read any famous five books, and of having no personal interest to do so at that, my personal distaste for sexism and racism aside, these books were simply not written for those in their late teens and early twenties. Once again, however, i will admit that the simplicity and short length of these works of fiction allow for a much easier understanding of the subject matter, and, it is my hope, a more smooth transition from page to lcd monitor.