Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Things are going well, considering that I managed to do three IGF interviews over the course of two days this past week, with at least two (hopefully) going off this week as well. I already have the draft of one back in my hands from review by the interviewees so that will be posted up on Monday over at GDNet. So stay tuned!

Today was New Jersey’s bi-monthly IGDA chapter meeting and since this is the last meeting before GDC, like last year I gave my lecture on attending GDC – how to ake the best of the conference and how best to leverage the networking opportunities that abound. For anyone reading this who’s looking to be in the industry and hasn’t attended GDC yet, then let me officially tell you to get started and plan for next year, because you must go. I can’t stress enough how important this conference can be for your career. I know it’s expensive, and I discuss ways to mitigate the cost in my lecture which, by the way, you can download off the NJ IGDA’s website here. I’m also going to be giving this lecture as a free event over at Game Institute once a week all next month, so check it out if you want the whole enchilada – the presentation and the chance to grill me about GDC.

Speaking of Game Institute, we’re still looking for more people to come out and speak with us. Again, you are compensated for your time ($50 – $150 depending on the length of your seminar) and you are not obligated to speak more than once. If you do want to speak more than once, you are also not obligated to follow any sort of set schedule or time guidelines. We won’t tell you “well, you have to present at such-and-such time because that’s what’s best for our users”. No. You speak at a time that is good for you, and whoever can attend will do so. We have more than enough students around the world that you will always get people. My seminars have been around 8-9 people on average. While that may not seem like much, we can’t have too many since the VoIP quality quickly breaks down. Contact me if you’re interested in teaching people a few things and earning some cash while you’re at it. We’re looking for any game development topic, preferably beginner-level.

So yea, I finally got myself a PS2. I’ve been a devout Nintendo fan ever since I started playing consoles (tho I did like Atari during that short age for me) but Sony finally won my heart over with DDR and Guitar Hero. Actually Guitar Hero was what really swayed me, DDR I’ve just always liked too. A friend of mine moved out to China to do stuntwork, and so he let me have his guitar and copy of Guitar Hero, so I went out on Friday and bought a PS2. Now, I had also gotten my Hauppage 250 PVR card on Wednesday, and this one worked awesome (unlike my failed attempt at the Hauppage 500). I had hoped to play my consoles through this and BeyondTV, but I didn’t take into account the time-shifting properties of BTV and thus, there’s about a two-second lag between my inputs and what appears on the screen. At first I thought I had a busted used PS2 on my hands but then I tried it with my GameCube and got the same results. So I had to dig out my Viewsonic N5 (on bottom) and use that again. Bonus however is that I was able to finally find a use for this gimonguos 17″ CRT I’ve had sitting in a box in the hall outside my room for a long while:

I’m probably going to get a TV at some point, but for now it works. There are speakers hidden in the shot behind the monitor too. Yup. Ghetto game playing. Awesome.

Hrmmmm…. yup, I think that’s about it for now. Guess I’m gonna go jam out some more. Rock on!