Marks and Distinctions

Well i got my marks from the previous semester and scored two distinctions (C++ and real-time computer graphics). The average is also still a distinction luckily :P.
C++ Programming and Design = 76 / 100
Game Development Architecture = 59 / 100
Real-Time Graphics = 79 / 100
Average 71.3 / 100
So all the hard work has paid off luckily.

So we'r back

I have been in the UK for a week and a half again, I just couldn't find time to post earlier. Preparing for an exam i had took up most of my time.
About the exam I am not so sure if I passed it I hope I will because it was kind of a strange exam. The problem is in how i wrote stuff down, it's kinda hard to structure your answers in a different language when you have a time constraint for writing it.
Ice hockey has started again, today was the first practice and it was a good one. I was kinda dreading on going there but I had a really good time so I am glad I joined the team. We are going to enter a league here so that means I am going to play competitions in a lot of places in the UK. Finally I am going to see something from the UK, without having to do too much effort for it.
Last night was the first party like night, drank too much vodka there but that's what you get when you go drinking with Polish people. Tomorrow is the first house party of the year and I am looking forward to it.
Now I only have to write two reports, do a presentation and design a poster and next semester will begin again. Which will probably mean I'll be talking about coding again and party's, oh I will also keep track of how we do in the league here.

First Shader

We had a lab on shaders this morning, although only vertex shaders. They are nice to work with if you use version 2 or higher, the assembler ones are horrible. They do give nice effects but to program in assembler is just not nice especially if you compare them with GLSL or HLSL. It's like comparing asm to C++, I like the higher ones more. Here is an example of a vertex shader and it's output.
//c0 = matrix
//c4 = colour
//c5 = lightpos
//c6 = another color
//c7 = lightpos
//c9 = scalar constants

vs.1.1 // version instruction

dcl_position v0 // declare register data
dcl_normal v4 // v0 is position, v4 is normal
dcl_texcoord0 v8 // v8 is texture coordinates

mov oD0, c4
//mov oPos, v0


m3x3 r0, v4, c0 //transform normal

mul r6, v4, c7.x
add r6, v0, r6
m4x4 oPos, r6, c0

//m3x3 r1, c5, c0 //transform light pos
dp3 r1, r0, -c5 //dot product
mul r2, r1, c4 //multiply dot product with lightcolor

dp3 r3, r0, -c7
mul r4, r3, c4
mul r5, r2, r4
mov oD1, r5 //move to output

m4x4 r7, v0, c0
mul r7, r7, c9
mov oT0, r7

As you can see they are not nice to look at although the outcome does look nice. This shader transforms and lights and does a texture map for the skull mesh.

Again bursary

Just found out that I have to go to Bradford on Thursday to comply with this bursary thing. Next week I will finally get my money :), that means the next day or so I'll probably buy my macbook pro. Finally got a pc that works here lol.

Bursary continued

I accepted the bursary, so I'll be here until christmas '08. The nice thing about this is it will give me a place to work at. I hope it's at some high end game studio so I can get some real experience in how these guys go about there stuff.

Bursary

I have just been offered a bursary for my studies. If I accept it the games companies in this area are gonna give me £3000. The only catch about it is that my dissertation needs to be done at one of those companies. And it will be longer I need to stay in Hull until next Christmas for this. Then again this isn't even that big of a catch because they are gonna pay me during my dissertation stage.

I have to let my supervisor know what I'll do about before Monday but it think I am going to do this. It solves a lot of cash flow problems that might arise this year.

Second and third lecture and first lab

Well i had to lectures yesterday one was in C++ programming and Desgin, the other was in Real Time Computer Graphics.
In the first lecture the prof basicly introduced use to all the basic elements of C++. Wasn't that hard but he warned it was gonna be in a few weeks. He also asked who felt like a good programmer at the start of the lecture. Most of us put there hands up, at the end of the lecture he asked the same question and almost none of us put there hands up. This had more to do with respect for the teacher and feeling we couldn't match his knowledge, than beeing humiliated.
The second lecture was about Graphics, this was actually a pretty cool lecture because he showed us a lot of game trailers. He also told us what the project was going to be for these two courses.

We have to write a spaceflight simulator that's going to destroy a spacestation.

The tutorials we get are hard but good because we are getting up to speed really fast so we can start our projects. The 5 C++ tutorial was a bitshift one which is not that easy to understand.
The OpenGL ones are a bit nicer and go a bit slower.

First Lecture

Just had my first lecture about game development and architecture.
Basicly it was just a layout of how our course is going to be and what we can expect of it. During the lecture the teacher showed us some of the projects people did in the previous years.
They actually look really professional, so I'm wondering what my skill set will be at the end of this course. I hope I can managed it all because I think it's gonna be really demanding of me.

Wel tomorrow is the next lecture it will be about C++, lets see how good I really am at it.