I was not allowed to post until earlier this week, but I have been awarded the scholarship to attend GDC from the IGDA! Thanks again to Rudy Geronimo and everyone at the IGDA for the opportunity. That is really fantastic news for me and I am now even more excited about going. I have just planned out which sessions I hope to attend when I get there. I can't make it to all of them, so I have had to prioritize my choices. There is a lot in there about Microsoft and the Xbox 360 along with some Sony PS3 and PSP stuff. I have to attend some talks on Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R. too since I love those games so much.
Since I had already booked my hotel, flight and Expo pass I had a nightmare changing things to fit the new schedule, (and it has turned out to be pretty expensive too.) Still, I get all the added bonuses of the trip to EA and having a mentor etc, so I am still really pumped about it. Since I could not return my Expo pass I donated it to my friend Duke who came along last year but wasn't planning on making it this time around.
I mentioned that I get a mentor. I am not so sure about what that entails, but I know I have been paired up with Mike Mika, Studio Head of Backbone Entertainment Emeryville. They are the creators of Death Jr. for the PSP and I can't wait to talk to him. I would like to thank him and the other mentors for giving up their time for us helpless students ;)
What else has happened recently? Well this was our last week of Game Project Preproduction and Game Design Fundamentals 2. The presentations I gave in GDF2 rocked the house and I think the design doc our team produced in GPP came out pretty well. I have started coding out a prototype of the animation system for the game today to see if it would work. I got it going after a few hours and a little debugging help from the team. I just need to modify my Maya Model and Animation Exporter now.
I started playing Condemned during the week and it looks to have a lot of the promise of F.E.A.R., which it should, being from the same company. I picked up EA Sports' Fight Night: Round 3 today too and that game is a hell of a lot of fun. I was playing it at Duke's place last night with a bunch of friends (after losing at Poker,) and it made me want to run out and get it. There is a lot more to it than the demo lets on. I probably would not have gotten it until I saw the full thing, (in HD quality no less!)