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For various reasons, I’ve decided to take the Sun Certified Java Programmer for Java 5 certification in the fall. There is another, new certification called the Sun Certified Associate for Java and it’s geared towards “entry level Java programmers, students studying to become Java programmers, project or program managers working with Java technology in the software development industry.”

I’ve been studying the SCJP for Java 5 Study Guide written by Katherine Sierra and Bert Bates (ISBN 0072253606). It covers exam 310-055, which is the SCJP for Java 5 (as opposed to Java 1.4 or the upgrade from Java 1.4 to Java 5). First off: It’s a monster. It’s about 850 pages, and the pages aren’t small.

I figure that while I am doing Java for my day job, that’s a perfect time to study off the clock, since I’m basically practicing what I’ve learned the rest of the day. So my plan is to do a chapter a week through the summer. I won’t take the practice tests, even thought it’s very tempting, because I don’t want to memorize the answers instead of learn the way to find the answers.

For 2 – 8 July, I am on schedule, having completed chapter 1, Declarations and Access Control. For 15 July, the goal is chapter 2, Object Orientation.

After fooling around exploring the GameDev.net 4 Elements competition, I found a few other active competitions. I’ve yet to enter one, and I’d really like to, but it’s tough finding them before they’re already over. So here’s a couple that I’ve found:

Eurographics’ Graphics Meets Games competition, deadline: 28 August 2006

It seems to be open to everyone, and its focus is creating an original 3D graphics effect and incorporating into a small game or demo. I really have no place entering such a contest, as I’m not a graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I am looking forward to see the entries!

GameDev.net’s Four Elements competition, deadline: 30 November 2006
GameDev.net is running an (apparently) annual contest that is based around the design of the game, rather than the technology, mechanics or graphics (gasp!). I really like the idea. After all, the world’s best programmers don’t necessarily make the best games unless they also happen to be/have a good designer. So this contest is based on four elements:

• Emotion
• Economics
• Emblem
• Europe

Each of these elements must play a significant role in the game. Other than that, as long as the game runs on the test machine, all technology, genres, libraries, etc. are allowed. The contest ends 30 November 2006. So although I’m a full month behind even knowing about it, this might be a nice goal for my new project-that’s-not-a-project of learning a game library. Certainly more reasonable than the IGF 2007, whose deadline is 8 September 2006.

I seriously doubt my time committment to a contest due mere days before finals period, but any serious entry gets some sort of video recording software… which I don’t really need anyways. So, no good reason yet to enter other than the love of programming. But this would be a nice compromise between a game with no discernible “finished” deadline, and an intensive 48 hour game development competition like Ludum Dare. 5 months is a good amount of time to get something substantial done, but not get lost in a giant endless project.

Also, there’s a small mailing list that tracks the intensive game competitions, gamecompo.com. It actively tracks Ludum Dare and 72h GDC and sends out emails when they’re starting.

And just today I discovered a very similar post over at Theoretical Games about upcoming contests. That’s a much better list of the current contests.
I think my goal for this year (now through May 2007) is to enter and complete a game development competition. An intensive 72- or 48-hour one, and/or a longer, more substantial one.

I love Indigo Prophecy. I love that game like I love Fable, Ico, Beyond Good and Evil, and many others I just won’t ever stop loving. And I love them for good reason – they excite me, they challenge me, and they allow me to empathize.

But Indigo Prophecy had the worst ending I’ve ever seen in any media. Ever. So I am adding my two cents to The Rampant Coyote’s post about Bad Game Endings.

David Cage, the creator of Indigo Prophecy, wrote a nice, long postmortem about the game over at Gamasutra. It was very fun reading, but the first time I read it through, I skipped right to What Went Wrong: The Story.

End-game spoiler following.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not officially calling this a project because it’s as much an exploration as a project. But I’ve been looking into some tools to help me make a game. I’ve got a few vague ideas for games, and some things I know would be fun to write. I’m also easy to please – just about anything with a story, a moderate challenge, stat bonuses and upgrades will suit me just fine. That in itself is a bit odd because I’m such a huge fan of genre-bending games and I absolutely adore the idea of thematic categories rather than gameplay mechanic categories like shooter, RPG, simulation, etc.

But I digress. I’m looking to create nothing particularly special. So I set out looking for some tools to help me with nothing really in mind other than I don’t want to do everything myself. But I don’t even know how much I want to do myself, so I’m really a blank slate. Early on, I realized there was a big difference between game libraries and game engines. Seems obvious, but it had never occured to me.

A game library is exactly what it sounds like. It holds pieces of information that could be useful to you, but makes no attempt to pull it together and, in the metaphor of a library, write your essay for you. A game engine on the other hand already does a lot of the grunt work, not just the boring display/network/audio set up stuff, but collision detection, movement and animation algorithms, timers, and even event handlers and such.

So I figured, “Where’s the fun in that?” and decided to stop looking at game engines, and just look at game libraries. Now here’s the rub: I do Java. I have a lot of interest in C, and a bit of interest in C++, but I am also studying to take the Sun Certified Java Programmer certification in the fall. So now’s not the best time to jump ship and join the C/C++ crowd. So I need a Java game library.

I found a decent game library listing on the Game Programming Wiki, although there are very few Java libraries included. Of the few that I found, only the Lightweight Java Game Library seemed to be what I was looking for (and I found that just by poking around some search engines). So, I guess that does it for me. I’ll try out LWJGL, and we’ll see how it goes. I’ve never worked in 3D before, and was actually hoping for 2D, so I might choose to use Java2D or find another library.

Now, to figure out what, exactly, LWJGL does (and doesn’t do)…

I think my all time favorite TV show is Futurama. The comedy is brilliant, the stories are original and the characters are incredibly well developed. It also has the kind of fan loyalty to the universe created in the show that I’ve only really seen in fans of Stargate SG-1. The consistency of the world of Futurama and the shared history of the characters really makes a different in the later seasons because there is so much substance on which the characters can build.

So, to my delight, Slashdot managed to get Futurama’s Billy West to answer some Slashdotters’ questions. The most involved answers mostly center around the voice actors and their talent, but he also touches upon downloading shows from the internet. In response to a question about whether downloading shows from the internet instead of being bombarded by ads on TV:

… But you will ALWAYS have to buy SOMETHING no matter how you feel about it. Unless you’re just a dyed in the wool crook. I always hope everyone finds their happiness in a way that hurts no one…

Interesting answer. Before this, he mentions that he was also pretty much poor but was raised to pay for things he wanted. And I think there is a part of this that is generational differences as well; when Billy West was growing up, digital copies were not an option. So if you wanted an album, you would have to have the physical item (be it record or cassette or CD). If your friend had it, you’d have to steal it outright to get one for yourself. Or you’d buy it from the store. But now, if you copy it, you’re not actually stealing in the sense that it hurts your friend. Instead you’re affecting the supply side of the retail chain.

So maybe that’s part of the problem: I think everyone would agree that stealing something is wrong, and usually it’s because you’re taking it away from someone else. But with digital replicas, the notions of crime or ethics are different, because it’s not your friend you’re hurting, but rather the folks who run a business that supplies the product to you.

It’s a shift away from the physical product you’re receiving, and towards the value of the content to you. And with that shift, new notions of ethics have to be explored and then incorporated into society. It seems obvious to me that some of the misguided attempts to protect digital content are overzealous, but those will fall by the wayside as the producers and the consumers can come to agreement in the years to come. And with that agreement, I strongly believe that the price should be reconsidered. After all, if you’re selling a physical CD with case, inserts, jacket art and all, part of that $20 goes towards design, manufacture, packaging, shipping and brick-and-mortar store costs like rent and heating. But if you’re offering a download of the same CD, I fully expect the price to be at least halved because of the significantly reduced cost of production.

The focus of Billy’s interview is indeed not digital rights and copy protection (he almost entirely evaded the question, actually), but I thought it was an interesting snippet of thought he put out there.