Here come the test results: You are a horrible person. That’s what it says. Horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that.

Poster Day for the project seemed to go well, especially when you bribe your examiners with whisky samples. A few guys from a local company also attended the session and seemed fairly impressed with my work. They offered me the chance to attend an interview day they were holding, which could have led to a job, however I decided not to submit my CV because apparently they build all their websites in perl…

Quite why you would do that, I'm not exactly sure. They said it gets them "deep down" into the hardware, increasing performance, but I don't really believe them. It appears to me that their first developer knew perl and everyone else was forced to continue using it. The same argument could be made for writing everything in machine code, which I have little desire to do either.

In my last post I showed an early version of the flash game we had to build as a group. The game is now finished, however because its a two player game requiring a server, I can't put it online like I did my first one. Instead I have produced this overly dramatic video demonstrating it.

We worked as a team to create the game. My major contributions to the project were the tank controls, timers and turn switching, the start and end sequences and conceptual designs. Other team members produced the assets (graphics and sound, which are far superior to my previous effort), collision detection, random rock layout and the server side work. We had planned to have other weapon types, but ran out of time. I'm really happy with how it came out though, and its surprisingly fun to play.

With that handed in I have officially completed all the coursework for my degree. All that is left is a couple hand written exams next month. Exciting stuff!

In the meantime I've been getting back into the swing of completing video games. I completed Portal 2 twice (with and without commentary) just after my project. The game is without question a must play, and if you didn't play the original you should play both of them immediately. The writing and humour is some of the best video games has to offer, and the puzzles are perfectly play tested. Valve added so many new unique twists to the original concept that I often sound myself banging my head against a puzzle I couldn't solve, and then remembering that I had a portal gun…

I also went back and completed Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Back at the start of the year I played and completed the first two games back to back after getting a PS3 at Christmas, however I stopped playing Brotherhood only a few hours into it after getting some fatigue. While improved, Brotherhood is very much a second act of AC2, so its perhaps not wise to play them consecutively. I did really enjoy the entire game though (I don't think the mechanics of scaling rooftops and assassinating will ever get old), and the ending is as unpredictable as the first two. If your new to the series as I was, and want to catch up, I recommend reading the wikipedia article and watching some YouTube videos for the first game, before skipping it and playing the sequel. While you need to know the story to play AC2, the gameplay in AC1 is incredibly repetitive and frustrating and one of those rare occasions where the sequel is 100% better.

With Brotherhood out the way I'm now enjoying L.A. Noire, Rockstar's mix of Grand Theft Auto and Phoenix Wright. So far I'm enjoying it immensely.

Comments

[Andie]

I'm finding LA Noire to be more of a mix between Mafia 2 and Heavy Rain.

[Josh Marketis]

Heavy Rain is next on my backlog. :)