Hello everyone and welcome back, now its been a long time now since my last update this is all in all due to the new routine and new job. I had to finish a lot of University towards the end of may and then quite soon after I started my first day at placement here in Derby no less.

I begun work on the 4th of June so I have been there just over two months, I have learnt a lot over these past 2 months and feel that I shall continue to learn more invaluable lessons as the months go on. I feel much more confident as a programmer and hope to continue to grow in confidence.

During July the team at http://www.bevelstudios.com headed to Brighton for the yearly develop conference, we met lots of great people went to quite a few gatherings and played lots of interesting and enjoyable games while we were there. The weather was fantastic and over all it was a fantastic experience that I hope to enjoy once again next year and in the years beyond.

Currently I am working on a project with Bevel Studios and its great, interesting and challenging just what I need to prepare myself for final year and the industry.

Well that's about all for now, I shall try and get a new post up at least every week.
Thanks
Rob Watling

Hi everyone and welcome back, I know its been a long time but work has been crazy taking up all my time and well I wanted to discuss some of the things I have been working since my last post here.

Firstly I have since completed three assignments, Team Project, Application Development - Data Visualization & Graphics II - 3D Rendering.
I have been hard at work and I still am as I have two more assignments due over the next 1 - 3 weeks, the last stretch before I can finally take 5 and then start placement at Bevel Studios :D 

So as you can see above this is just a small preview of what I have achieved in these modules, I have not added team project to the images as its readily accessible on my website, I will however post a link at the end for those who don't know where to look and for those who maybe want to play our game.

Since last I posted I have finally managed to get a Placement with the Fantastic Guys at Bevel Studios, a new Indie Developer opening in Derby. I look forward to being able to experience a work environment for programming and the games industry, I feel it will be an invaluable lesson.

Finally I have got two more assignments I'm working hard on now and those are Graphics II - Interactivity, essentially we are using Ogre3D Rendering engine to build a Scene that we can interact with.

lastly is the final Application Development assignment where we are tasked to do our data visualization from Assignment 1 but build it using C# & XAML.

Things are coming to a close and I'm excited for what's next, Stay Tuned :D
Thanks

Rob Watling

Its been sometime since I posted last and this is due to the intense workload I currently have and the amount of time I am spending on my studies is pretty much all the time I have right now but hey a quick blog post can't hurt right?

Rob you say studies but what does that mean? What have you been actively working on?
both great questions and I have updated my website to reflect some of these changes and work in progress.
I have been working on Team Project, where me and my team have been producing a 3D Game in Unity3D we have a randomly generated world.

Application Development I have been writing the first essay about business and using intranet applications, I have also started the second assignment which can be seen in the first image below. This is a basic layout of my web development assignment.

Finally Graphics II which I have been developing a 3D Rendering engine in Direct3D 11, I have finally gotten Object loading working along with zBuffering & Normals.

Hopefully more posts soon
Thanks all
Rob

Hi everyone, Today we had our second University Expo where we showed our game that we built at the recent 48hr Gamejam. Second Years & Third years were both showing work for the industry and the public to see, its a great place for us second years to try and get some new industry contacts and to show what we can do.

Speaking of the Gamejam last weekend we begun a 48 hour long coding spree where we started at 17.00 until  17.00 on the Sunday, We used this time to develop games from the ground up and to learn some new languages / techniques. My team used XNA and we built a basic platformer.

What was fun about this was that each team used a website that randomly generated game names and they had to choose 1 of the three names generated to build a game around, We got Horrifying Fun Noodle Psychiatrist and well I think we did pretty well considering the title.

Stick around as for the next few days I will be making multiple posts discussing my last 2 weeks and what's been going on with my programming & university modules.

Thanks
Rob Watling

First week has come to a close and work has been handed out already, Below are the modules and what's been happening this week so far.

• Application Development

Basic Overview of the module, Assignments and Languages, We will be using HTML, CSS, JS & PHP for a     web application for our first assignment and then for our second we will be developing an application for windows 8 using XAML & Probably C# / C++.
    

• Graphics II

We started with looking at different types of graphical features and have been given an assignment to write a paper showing various things between Direct3D and OpenGL. We will then be writing a tech demo that demonstrates what we have developed in either Direct3D or OpenGL which will display our use of graphical features such as lights. Based on this we will finally create a Simulation or a Game with interaction showing further developments in our OpenGL or Direct3D Knowledge.

• Team Project

Team project has been decided we have our team and we have our idea's and implementation has already begun on the 3D Rendering Engine using Direct3D and later on using functions from the DirextX API.
We plan to have an open world that generates randomly around you.


That's this week down but there's plenty of work to come and I look forward to finally being able to code properly again.


Thanks
Rob

So I have had this book for a long time now I've always had time to quickly look over it but never found the time to actually commit and do the exercises. I started this Thursday on the train and obviously using C++ before the first chapter has been painless, but it has also showed me some things I didn't fully understand and how to implement certain things like Enum.

Although I had an idea of how Enums worked I had never implemented one before so this was a great learning experience for me. It might seem simple but sometimes the simple things are what we overlook in programming and getting a refresh and a firm grasp on them can make future programming less painful.

That's all for today I just wanted to share my thoughts so far as I get ready to begin second semester on Monday, I look forward to discussing and posting code examples and problems I have uncounted and how I plan to overcome them. 

The following link is for the third edition I am currently working from the second but this is just the newest iteration.

Learning C++ through game programming (book)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1435457420

Thanks
Rob Watling

Its less than a week until the start of our second semester second year, and I'm excited to get to begin new projects and learning new programming techniques and languages.
With this time off I have been trying to figure out what to do with my spare time project wise, and I have not managed to come up with any idea's I guess just going over old material is good to refresh what I have learnt and what I can do extra next time using the previously learnt techniques.

I can imagine come 2 - 3 week that I will begin to be swamped with work, Application Development, Team Project & Graphics II.
also to add that at the end of week 2 its looking like we will be having a 48 hour game jam that should prove interesting and exciting.

Well that's all for today, I'm going to continue looking at previous material now and get some idea's for some silly little programs.

Thanks for reading:
Rob Watling

Welcome to the first post of this blog and hopefully it will be one of many to come.
Today I received an email from our tutor about some module information for next semester.
This module will teach us to develop applications that can connect to multiple machines and developing mobile applications for windows

This is exciting and I am eagerly looking forward to returning to University and starting my next stage of learning as always I really want to learn more and more on programming and I would like to develop my own applications or games one day.

I will update the blog when I find out more information about this module or any of the other 2 modules we will be studying this semester.