Well folks that is it. I’m done, finished. For those who haven’t played it here is the final version of my final project Smashout 1.1. The game ended up being amazing and the presentation was amazing the whole crowd got into it cheering and jumping up and down. It was a great time but now school is over, I graduated last friday and to celebrate I went skydiving (most amazing thing I have ever done).

So what am I up to now, well currently I am sitting in a library in Burlington, Ky because my parents do not have the interent, I will be back home for about three weeks since I have to get my wisdom teeth pulled Wednesday. Then it is off to Philidalphia, PA where I will be working as a game programmer at Merit Entertainment (www.meritgames.com) I am extremly excited and feel like this is the perfect place for me to go. It was a long and crazy path to end up with this job I submited my resume to close to 100 companies and interviewed with four and ended up getting offers from three, but I know I picked right.

For those of you still looking for jobs or are students don’t ever give up and start looking early. I would like to thank Rob Coble from Full Sail for setting me up with the Merit interview. Those of you attending or going to attend Full Sail get to be really good friends with this guy he is awesome.

Now to switch back to the game for a moment. There will be a postmortem at some point and time from me on the blog but currently like I said I do not have the internet at home but it will get done.

Thanks for everyone who has supported me to achieving my dream.

Grant

It is my birthday WOOO. So what am I doing on this fine day, well I think I’ll cut my hair and finish making the high score system for our game. Ya templated Linked lists.

Well it is about time I updated everyone on what I have been up too and how everything is going. So what have I been up to well to sum it up in one word SMASHOUT. Yea that is about all I have done for last two months. It has been awesome so far on the project I have done the scheduling most of the documentation and all of the fun leadership stuff. But I have also got to code a lot which has been awesome so far I have done a Sound system using the FMOD api. , and an effects system that wraps up my sounds and another team members particle effects and makes them all scripted with XML. What I am most proud of so far is the profile system this is something that initially I was not supposed to write but as the project went on we realized that I was two weeks ahead on my schedule and the guy who was supposed to write it had way to much scheduled so I got to do it. It is pretty awesome and stores all of your data and lets you have multiple profiles per game.

Other than work I have been playing rugby with the Orlando Rugby Club and trying to enjoy my last few months of school by taking in as much of Orlando as I can.  A few weeks back me and Matt went and saw Blue Man Group at Universal I highly recommend this to anyone who has a chance to go, it is amazing. Well we have about 17 days left until turn in then just another few weeks till I graduate on the 27th of June It has been a crazy fun ride. I’ll try to update more regularly as the project winds down.

It has been a while dear reader (and internet) since I have blogged my brains out. I should decide on some structure before I begin writing this but whatever I’ll roll with it. Ok this will be a retrospective on the last few months including GDC and the beginning of my final project. There structure.

First off GDC, O man it was so much fun. First off I got accepted as part of the conference associates program, every year 300 people are picked to help work the conference, some how I got picked. This was probably one of the greatest things ever to get picked for this. Not only did they pay for my ticket, they helped get me a hotel for dirt cheap. So what did I do as a CA. Well anything that needed done mostly I worked sessions which meant I went early to a session met the speaker and did anything they need and helped people coming to the session. This was great because I got to meet tons of great people doing this. Now I could go in depth as to what the sessions were but that was a while ago and I can’t really remember most of them. But they were all great.

In all it was a great week I met a ton of awesome people through the CA program and the conference in general. If you get a chance to be a CA at GDC do it.  Also I got to play in a charity poker tournament that lets just say everyone there was way above my pay grade and I did really well.

Since then I have been working my butt of in final project trying to make a great game. You can check the current build out using the link to the right. We have 3 months left to finish up the game and polish it up. Also I finally beat Bioshock after 4 months of playing. It was amazing very well done game, I had a few complaints here and there but in all one of the best games of last year. There are some more sweet things going on which I will write about in a later post. Until then later,

Grant

Hey everyone, As some of you may know I am in my final project at Full Sail, this means I have 5 months to make a game with 4 other guys. So we have a pretty cool idea and we are 2 months into production and just got a very basic demo up.

So here is what this email is all about. We need testers. So what will a tester do: every few weeks we will send out an email with a link to the newest version of our game, in the email we will say specifically what we want people to test for. Then you just play the game and email us back answering the questions. Super easy, Super fun, and super helpful to us.

If you want to go ahead and check out the newest version that we have go to smashbricks.blogspot.com and click on the newest release in the top right corner.

If you are interested just email me back (include your name and email) and I will put you on the list.

Thanks guys,

Grant Shonkwiler
Project Lead
White Board Logic
smashbricks.blogspot.com

PS This is a very early version so it doesn’t look or sound pretty we know

So we have created a new blog for our final project. I will be posting most of my thoughts about it there. Check it out at smashbricks.blogspot.com. Also check out our website whiteboardlogic.com  I will post more soon. I have spring break starting Friday and I will be home to eat my mommy’s good food.

Now back to work.

Here it is my top films of 2007. I could not get it down to 13 so yea there are 17

No Country for old men

Juno

Ratatouille

Once

This is England

Hot Fuzz

I’m Not There

Bourne Ultimatum

The Lookout

Into The Wild

Death at a Funeral

There Will Be Blood

The Kite Runner

The Great Debaters

American Gangster

Charlie Wilson’s War

Persepolis

Honorable Mention list: Sweeney Todd, Michael Clayton, Zodiac, Gone Baby Gone, In The Shadow Of the Moon, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Before the devil knows your dead, The King of Kong, Offside, No End In sight, You Kill Me, 1408, Away From Her, 3:10 to Yuma, Breach, Atonement

Movies I still want to see from 2007: August Rush, The Savages, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Killer of Sheep, Triad Election, Enchanted

So today starts Final Project. Just five months till I finish with a great game (hopefully) and graduate from Full Sail. So today we got our groups. My group is already presented with an interesting challenge because we are the only team that only has 5 team members (all the others have 6) but we are already rising to the challenge. The jobs so far (not 100% set in stone) Me Project Lead, Naveen Nattam (his blog is over there on the right) Technology Lead, Scott Rodda Interface Lead, Franklin Ludgood Gameplay Lead, CP Wilkinson Asset Lead. We have some great initial ideas and have already started researching to see how they will work. All in all I am really excited for the next five months they will be hard but fun I am sure. Well that is all 10 days to GDC I am really excited.

Also my website is now almost completly finished. I have put up more projects, some design docs, and my resume both on the page and for download. Check them out and let me know what you think. grantshonkwiler.com

PS

I am one film away from making my top films of 2007. Should be up this weekend.

So for all 3 of you out there who actually have read my top albums of 2007 AND are interested in my top Games and Films, I just wanted to let you know that I’m still working on my lists. There are still 2 0r 3 games I want to finish first and about 20 movies but I’m burning through those at a good rate. So don’t hold your breath but they should be up in the next o…2 months :).

I realize I have been recommending this blog to most people who have questions about the school. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that if they have any questions about my experiences and feelings about the school feel free to shoot me an email at gshonk@gmail.com and I will try to answer as soon as I can. For those of you who don’t know GDC is just a few weeks off (February 1 and I am doing the work program at the conference so I will be there from Sunday the 17th-24th. I am extremly excited to have been given this opportunity to help out with the conference (and have my ticket paid for ). Hope to see some of you there.

Grant