Game Design

Maybe a little off track for "coding", but since last weekend I've been really enjoying learning a bit about the world of "game design."

• MIT Open Courseware CMS.608 / CMS.864 "Game Design" with Phillip B. Tan - am listening to lectures despite poor sound quality that reduces the contexts in which I can successfully follow. Currently on lecture 9 of 33. Would be fun to do all the related reading and exercises too... but no time.
• Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber - reading this because it is listed as a text for MIT OCW CMS 608. Tedious textbooky style, but interesting content.
• It's also mentioned in 4 Must-Have Books for Learning Game Designers by Jake Huhn
• Update, 11/22/2014: Finished reading it (though not doing the exercises.) Also subscribed to Gamasutra email list for ongoing taste of game industry talk.
• MIT Open Courseware related courses
• MIT Game Lab 
• I am severely tempted by, but don't think I have time for, edX MITx: 11.126x Introduction to Game Design, happening right now (Oct 22-Dec 3), again with Philip Tan... sigh. The archived lectures are all I can do, I think.
• Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel (MIT Press) - I love this woman. She's my new bisexual superhero.
• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide, by Ryan Henson Creighton - my current "textbook", on the theory that it's useful to see things that can be done with code. Trying to actually do the exercises in this one, "get my hands dirty," instead of only reading. I love the humor of the author. And there is something inherently fun about Unity 3D.
• Twitter is emailing me interesting-looking things to "Follow", more than I can record here.
• Coursera "Video Games and Learning" Oct 3 - Nov 13, 2014, from U. of Wisconsin

The Queerness and Games Conference

Stepped off my beaten path today and spent a few hours at The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon2014) at UC Berkeley. Fun! Was very inspired by keynote speaker Brenda Laurel.

In the morning I went back and attended a game design workshop led by Chelsea Howe-- very fun.

Decided to go ahead and try again to add Twitter to my life. (Last time I looked into it was 2009.)

• http://www.ted.com/speakers/brenda_laurel
• http://tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/
• http://www.qgcon.com/
• https://twitter.com/QGCon
• https://github.com/LiMina/adjective-animal/blob/master/qgcon-notes.txt

Finished Codecademy "Javascript"

Finished the Codecademy Javascript course.

One month to finish "10 hour" course. Sigh. Hard to find the scraps of time.

Progress: having now finished yet another "intro to programming" course, I do feel like the initial "culture shock"/new job/steep learning curve pains of being flooded by new vocabulary and concepts is past. I still lack practice and experience, but I am now at least oriented. I have survived this far :)

I think my next project will be to play with the Unity game engine for a while, using Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton. (I've now read 25% of the book on Kindle, but am still severely lacking in "getting my hands dirty" experience, due to lack of time available to actually sit at a machine and concentrate for longer than a few minutes at once.)

Gender wave

A small wave of articles and conversations on the topic of sexism in computing came through this week. I think it started with the burst of facebook disgust at Mr. Nadella's remarks on women asking for raises at the Grace Hopper conference...

• "... Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had some retro advice for women attending the Grace Hopper Celebration on Thursday [Oct 9] ..."
• And publicity around Walter Isaacson's new book The Innovators triggered commentaries surrounding Ada Lovelace:
• The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech, by Laura Sydell, NPR, October 06, 2014
• When Women Stopped Coding, NPR, October 21
• Plus a Ada Lovelace Day event, October 15 at Thoughtworks
• "GamerGate" --
  • Moral Combat article (10/15/2014) in the East Bay Express featuring an upcoming "Queerness and Games Conference - QGCon" at UC Berkeley: "After enduring a vicious harassment campaign designed to chase women out of the video game industry, local female developers are trying to take back the art form from commercialization."
  • [Twine article in New York Times 10/23/2014, sent to me by my sister.]
• A group of programmer friends at a cafe Oct 21 talked about it and circulated this 2011 Stanford article on how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”

Interesting...

Inching update

Inching onward -- update:

• Codecademy Javascript: 65% complete
• MIT textbook (Introduction to Computation and Programming by John Guttag) on Kindle: 100% read
• MIT CS6.00 lecture series (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming by Prof. John Guttag) : 22 of 25 lectures listened to.
• MIT CMS.611J / 6.073J (Fall 2013) lecture series (Creating Video Games): 4 of 25 lectures listened to. (And I just belatedly found the prerequisite course: CMS.608 / CMS.864, Game Design, Fall 2010. Hm, should I back up?? These video game people seem kind of fun.) (No offense to Prof. Guttag. I like his jokes too. :)

Next Kindle book? Need something to read over lunch...

• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton, followed by 
• Creating eLearning Games with Unity by David Horachek. 
• Or, another temptation: Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Thomas Finnegan.

Or maybe I should just try to start with Al Sweigart's Making Games with Python and Pygame...

DOS extenders, X3J11 C standard committee, and 3-D terrain display...

Feeling a bit inspired by his list of accomplishments:

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=24798972

Inching along

Inching onward:

• Codecademy Javascript: 44% complete
• MIT textbook (Introduction to Computation and Programming by John Guttag) on Kindle: 72% read
• MIT CS6.00 lecture series (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming by Prof. John Guttag) : 18 of 25 lectures listened to

Next ambition:

• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton, followed by 
• Creating eLearning Games with Unity by David Horachek. 
• But these (or any other projects involving actually building something) will require actual working-at-a-computer time, not just reading-during-lunch time...