Ok, to bring things up to speed, I moved down to Plano, TX (north Dallas) to attend the Guildhall at Southern Methodist University's video game design program to hopefully graduate with a Master's of Interactive Technology and get a dream job making games. Autumn is back home in Ohio working until she gets sick of the job and wants to move down here with me. In the meantime she and I fly back and forth to see each other. Its hard, but the money is too good to pass up, and we'll need it when she goes to Law school while I'm working.

Anyway, our 1-year anniversary is coming up at the end of May...

So yet again, I am reminded that I have the coolest wife on the planet. She called me up back in April for some misc. conversation and finally breached the topic of anniversary gifts. She says she can't hold out any longer and HAS to tell me what she's getting me for our anniversary. She says she has a deposit on a Ducati S4Rs, but she previously had a deposit on a 1098 and wasn't sure which one I wanted! I say I think 1098 but I'll go test ride the S4Rs to be sure. I already have a naked sportbike in the 03 Speed Triple and wouldn't feel right just getting another bike like it. I might one day get a Monster, but it'll have to be after they put the 1098 motor in it. I test rode the S4Rs and didn't love it enough to get it instead of a 1098. I've always wanted a Ducati superbike or monster since I saw my first Ducati. Triumph is in my blood and my great grandfather rode a Harley. I really wish HD/Buell would get their crap together and get with the times technology-wise. I'd actually consider buying a buell if they would update their motors...

SO, we're going to hopefully pick up the bike in mid-June and get through the break-in period. I've got upgrade plans for the bike, but it'll wait until the thing is thoroughly broken in and I'm comfortable on it. Once I have a few K on it, I'll know what I should upgrade first.

Now onto video game design.

I made a small demo game with two classmates for our first big term 1 project. It turned out kind of hack'n'slash, but overall we learned a lot and we poured a lot into it. It was very different than the rest as it was a suicidal clone puzzle game kind of like a cross between lemmings and mario.

This term (term 2) we're working as a full class on a Real Time Strategy mod for the Glest engine. We've had to cut various features and change other things as we learn the limitations of the engine (if we had a lot more time and motivation we could do a lot more), but overall the art, level design, and balancing is going to be completely changed. Tonight is the last night we have to crank it out and we're mostly done aside from more balancing playtesting.

We did a text adventure using C++ as our midterm project, and I plan to add a lot of content to mine as I have time. It is basically a Motorcycle Training Course which teaches the player the basics of how to ride a motorcycle then has an area to set up the bike with various mods and finally a road course the player can experience, making different decisions based on what they learned in order to survive the experience. It was a really fun little project and I'll definitely spend more time on it and host it on my web space when it is done. Its not something I care about making money on. I'd rather use it as a portfolio piece as well as rider/non-rider awareness of all the things which go into surviving a ride on a motorcycle.

Next we're going to start the Unreal2k4 mod prototype and next term we'll make a complete mod. This should be really fun because all the level designers are going through speed modelling/speed mapping and scripting classes for the Unreal2k4 engine. We just learned how to mod weapons and the basics of Unreal Scripting. I completed my shotgun mod in a few hours and am hoping to get a rotary lasMinigun done with the help of the professor. Should be a BUSY but fun summer.