What drove me to take the plunge?
After high school I was very frustrated by the core classes that defined the first two years of a regular University. I was becoming even more frustrated by the partying, and lack of vision most of my friends and peers were only concerned about. I don’t remember what conversation made me remember Full Sail but it was a school I had known about since middle school and I truly felt my passion was in game development. I decided that I want two things out of my career. First interesting and challenging work that would keep me ever interested. Second I wanted to work at a fun place that allowed for creativity. So long story made a little shorter, Full Sail University is one of two schools at the time that might hope to provide for the sort of education that really teaches you the internal workings of making a game. I took the plunge. I packed up everything I owned into my car at the time 1998 Nissan Maxima, and drove it from Philadelphia to Winter Park FL. Thankfully my apartment was ready; I choose to stay at Winter Park Pointe apartments because they were the closest and cheapest in the area. I also decided to not have a roommate after a few disappointing attempts. So for the next few months I slept on nothing but a mattress.
The first three months are crucial at Full Sail; they help separate those who can and cannot handle the program. Odd schedules that have classes end at 1am and start again at 9am the next day. It was interesting trying to adapt to it, and many of us became nocturnal. The next month the schedule changed again. Oh yes, a semester is only a month long and classes are 40 hours a week. The pacing was perfect for me and I really dug all the knowledge. I was excited to be there, and I was just amazed at the different types of people I was surrounded by and all of whom held a strong interest in video games. I bought a PS3, and started playing games a lot more than ever before in my life. At some point along the way I think I lost sight of my goal and what was at stake. After the first three months I felt like I had C++ down solid.
The rest of the year we spent learning MFC, Win32, C#, DirectX, and Design Patterns. Along the way we also had a few general education classes needed for accreditation, but they too were all geared towards Game Development. This included an English course that had us write a full game design document. Math in Linear Algebra, Calculus, and Physics all laid out the foundation for what was to come.
The first game making experience was defined by two classes; Software Game Development and Software Game Production. I feel like both experiences deserve a post mortem but the lessons learned cannot be learned from reading this.
After the half way point it felt like we did something really great. We made a game! A great one at that. I, Casey Flach, and Charlie Prouse put together a 3D top down shooter in a roughly five weeks. Who knew that making a game doesn’t take months but weeks? Well we were hungry for more knowledge and the next few months more than helped satisfy that appetite. We took classes in Artificial Intelligence, Networking, Machine Architecture, OpenGL, Optimization, and Engine Development.
And we finally made it … final project… to be continued….