Website

http://grantshonkwiler.com/ is officially up. Check it out

Top Music of 2007

Here it is the long awaited list(by me that is). My favorite albums of 2007. This seemed to be a year of British rock, female singers, indie bands who play mostly acoustic, and of course just some more rocking stuff. So here it is the top 13 albums of 2007.

The View- Hats off to the buskers

Feist – The Reminder

Amy Macdonald- This is the life

Artic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare

The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Cloud Cult – The meaning of 8

Eisley- Combinations

Bright Eyes – Cassadaga

The Almost – Southern Weather

The Maccabees – Colour It in

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha

The White Stripes – Icky Thump

J-Roddy Walston and the Business- Hail Mega Boys

Following are some of the other albums I have enjoyed this year but just aren’t great enough to be in the top 13.

Aqualung – Memory Man, Spoon- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, The Thrills – Teenager, Colour – Between Earth & Sky, Anberlin – Cities, Hot Hot Heat – Happiness, The Killers-Sawdust, Mae- Singularity, Justice- Cross, Dashboard Confessional- The Shade of poison trees, Foo Fighters- Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, DJ Tiesto – Elements of Life, The Brothers Martin- The Brothers Martin

There were a few albums I haven’t gotten yet but they just didn’t make it into the cut. I hope to keep finding great cds from last year.

Blog Writing

So I realize I am getting really bad at this blog writing thing so I’m just writing this to let you know that I am still alive and my plans for this blog and a future website. Currently I am in my last month of Full Sail before the five months of final project so I am extremely busy with school. Also I am getting ready for my first GDC which I am extremely excited about. I will be writing about GDC and my experiences there.

Now for the blog I have a few things that I want to write in the next few months first I am going to do my top lists of 2007 including, Movies, Music and games. But right now I am very behind in the movie and game department so it will take me a few weeks to catch up. Also I will be posting a resume soon and hopefully I will have a website up and running in the next few months. Until the next time.

Grant Shonkwiler

Blobula

Go download my friend and classmate Naveen Nattam’s game Blobula its awesome. This is his game for a competition we had here at school. http://nattam.blogspot.com/ Enjoy. And I will be writing more soon

OpenGL project

Here are some pictures of my openGL project from last month. This was an awesome class taught by Richard Wright the author of The OpenGL Super Bible. Along with this class we also had MAR1 a assembly programming class.

Everything in the scene was completely hand modeled and crafted. Including most of the textures.

The front of the level. The Diner inside of a small skybox filled with white fog to set the mood. The windows and door are transparent with textures applied.

 

 

 

A closer look at the front door with the awesome menu banners.

A view of the bar. Things to notice. Bar stools, Foot rest, Pie holder with spinning pies. Singing in the rain poster

Here is where i spent most of my time to get the look of a booth I needed to hand model a curved surface I ended up using a thing in openGL called NURBS ( Non Uniform Rational Basis, or Bézier Spline). This took me a good two days of research and work to figure out how to use. After getting the look I wanted I asked my teacher if there was an easier way he said no but he was in shock that I figured out how to use NURBS. Apparently no one really uses them

Hand modeled table and chairs.

Another shot of the bar. And back room.

Another angle of the whole scene.

Closer shot of the pies.

Also today was the Rugby World Cup Final. Congrats to South Africa on a good win. It was a great world cup. Can’t wait for 2011.

 

 

Article

For those of you who don’t know I recently wrote an article for Game Career Guide www.gamecareerguide.com/features/439/student_testimonial_full_sail_.php it out I’m pretty excited about it. For those of you who found me through there “Welcome”.

I’ll write it eventually.

So I’m planning on uploading some pictures of my openGL project from last month, but I have to get the time which I don’t have. Also I am (more like was) working my way through the AFI(American Film Institutes) top 100 films and I was thinking of writing a little something about that but yea that has to go with that time thingy again. Also I believe I have fixed the installer for my game if someone would download it and let me know if it is or isn’t working that would be awesome(email me at gshonk@fullsail.edu). Ok back to sleep before Machine Architecture 2 tomorrow.

My First group game.

Check out my game.

http://www.udderpunch.com/games/shooter/overload/
Let me know if it works.

End of my first group game project.

Alrighty then so I didn’t post a blog every week like I said I would. I didn’t even make it for once a milestone. My bad but other things are much more important like making a great game. Or at least I think it is a great game because I love playing it. It has been an extremely long and hard two months working on this game. I loved and hated every minute of it. I have finally realized how much I love making games, programming, and working with/leading a team.
Ok lets take it back to where I left off (I am not going to post all of the milestone scores because I don’t remember them all) we worked for two weeks on our engines and tools, this was a completely new experience for all of us since we had never made tools before. I ended up spending a lot of extra time tweaking my editor and engine (for the 2d animations) since Kisor would be using it as much (ended up being more) as me. We ran into some problems with communication and integration during that first month but it was all smoothed out.
During the second month I began working on the AI for the enemies in the game and all of the game sounds. It turns out that we had two of Kisors friends want to make our sounds and soundtrack for us so that was super awesome. The AI was a lot of fun to work on and an interesting experience. And the sounds were just super fun. That was our alpha milestone.
Next was our Beta milestone. I had to write up a tutorial level (which meant that we needed to design a level as a team) and make mini games and do anything else that needed done (that ended up being my job a lot in fact the whole group worked on each others stuff all through out the month this helped in the long run).
The tutorial level was a snap and the mini games were just funny I designed them all off of things in day to day life (sorta) 1. is a baby kicking(more like bouncing game) in which you must keep the baby in the air for so long (this was my producers idea) 2. Was based off the song “99 red balloons” you shoot down red balloons. 3. Was a male bathroom etiquette game (more like a quiz on how to act in the restroom).
After that was just bug testing and polish. So another team took our game (now with 4 levels 3 mini games and a boss [I did the AI for that one too]) and played it till they broke it then wrote down all the problems. Meanwhile we did the same for another team. This was pretty fun because we got to play another game and just break it. We were lucky that most of the bugs in our game were easy to fix. Then we had presentations which was awesome except I talked to long because I got really excited. And that’s about it.
I learned a ton this month mostly how to work with others and bring an idea to fruition.
I tried to keep it short and simple.
I’ve been playing System Shock 2 to recover. How did I miss that game o so many years ago.

Grant

PS The game should be up on UdderPunch.com some time soon.

Outline of first group game (origonal post July 21)

Alright so the point of this new blog series is to keep you dear internet (and anyone who stumbles upon it. future employer *crosses fingers) informed on how my new project is going. Ok so now I am in a class called SGP Structures of Game Production and in this class we have 2 months to document plan design and program a group game. My team is Brown Noise Productions with Me, John, Christopher, Jacob and our associate producer Dave Brown (he is our labby/helper).
Our game. We are making a game called Overload: A coding nightmare. I am going to borrow Christopher’s blog here because he says it best. “
We only had a single day to decide a game idea. We first asked our selves “Well who is our audience?”– other programmers of course! Next we decided on a platformer/shooter genre. We started basing our story off an overworked programmer. He has had a working streak for several days and he finally is on his way home. He is sleepless and tired soo what would any programmer do in this situation? Drink Red Bull. The game takes off from there. You try to get the programmer home before the effects of the red bull wear off. This is where it gets crazy. As the effects of the energy drink go down over time, you begin to see things! instead of people on the street you see classic video game characters! You have to fight your way to your nice comfy bed at home.” end Christopher’s section.
I play the role in this group of Project Officer. Basically I’m in charge of keeping the group on task and getting stuff done right and on time. Other duties include the Animation Engine and a tool to for making animations (aka making the guys move) Ai (O yea artificial intelligence I can’t wait. for real I am excited about this) and integration (getting all the code to work together) and Documenting the project’s progress and everything like that. And I also get to make 3 mini games. I get to yell at people and say it’s my job YES.
This week we worked super hard to perfect our game design document_ This document pretty much explains everything in the game from the story to the code, from the weapons to the menus its all in there. We worked about 8 hrs a day some 12 or more. it was a lot of work but because of it we know everything that is going to go into our game and it should make it easier. Today we met with out our teacher who graded our doc and paper prototype (a paper mock up of a level) I got a 147 out of 150 WOOT so almost perfect.
Now we start coding we are took today of to recuperate (and i read the new Harry Potter YAY it took me 1 day baby) then we are starting to work on our engines on Sunday. We have 2 weeks till our next milestone we have to have all of our engines and tools working. So a lot of work to due we have made our schedules and I think we are all working 8hrs a day plus class. So its gonna be crazy.
Well first week down gonna get crazy from here on out.
Laters all
Grant