75% Complete.

So there is only one year left of college. That’s a little scary. Really exciting as well, but still a little scary. This chapter of my life has been so short but so full of experiences, friends, and ideas – and it’s all coming to an end so abruptly. Thankfully, there’s still one year left, so I am just going to have to make the most of it.

This past semester was pretty great. Learned a good bit about OpenGL and post-processing effects which culminated in a mini-solar system demo. It’ll make its way to my work page soon, just have to get some gifs for it and finish the write up. In Production, my team poured our heart and soul into a multiplayer competitive planking game: 1v3 cop against plankers in a world where planking is illegal. It is in beta right now, and we’re moving forward with working on it over the summer. We’ll see how far we take it. This, too, will reach my portfolio eventually – I implemented the online multiplayer which was no small task.

If you’ve been around here before, obviously I changed the site’s design again (if you haven’t, welcome. I hope you find something interesting here). The new design is definitely more in-line with my design philosophies: less is more. Plus, this ties in more with my resume and business card design (god, what a nerd…), and it allows my content to be the sole focus. I think this design will stay for some time.

Next week, I’ll be attending WWDC 2016 on a student scholarship. I submitted my obstacle avoidance demo, which makes extensive use of SpriteKit, and apparently it was above the bar! Being my first WWDC (and my first time to California), I am more than excited. Hopefully I get some sleep leading up to it, because I don’t want to waste a minute of my time there. I hope to connect with some other Sprite/SceneKit developers – I’d really like to see if any studios use it; that would be my dream job after graduation. I know it is a slim market. My buckshot prediction for this year is Apple introducing its own VR headset. Again, completely out there and super improbable, but I can dream. That would cement Apple’s interest in game developers, rather than seeing them as a side segment to the App Store. I also hope after the release of Swift 3.0 there is some focus on porting it to Windows. Whether that will pave the way for platform agnostic Sprite and SceneKit games I don’t know, but that too would give a more concrete future to those frameworks.

Looking forward, I have one year left at Champlain. These past three have been the best of my (young) life. I am so grateful for the experiences I’ve had and the friendships I’ve made. I really hope to make the best of this last year, academically with my capstone project and classes like Game Physics and Console Programming and with making even more wonderful memories up in Burlington.

But for now, my mind is on WWDC. T-minus 42 hours until I board the plane.