CSC 426 ΓÇô Research Methods and Practice in Computing
CSC 478 ΓÇô Programming Machine Learning Applications
CSC 594 ΓÇô Topics in Artificial Intelligence: Natural Language Processing
CSC 435 – Distributed Systems I
CSC 577 – Recommender Systems
SE 450 – Object-Oriented Software Development
My schedule included
CSC 421 – Applied Algorithms and Structures
CSC 447 – Concepts of Programming Language
CSC 453 – Database Technologies
But that’s not the interesting part.
What’s interesting is that I took these courses online and collected data on how long I spent watching each lecture. This let me optimize my study habits and see which courses I needed to devote the most time to. The color corresponds to the color above.
Right off the bat, I knew that CSC 421 will be taking a majority of my time. A very heavy course: algorithm analysis, design, implementation, NP-completeness, and the like – things which I know I can get better at.
Overall, for the other two courses, I was saving 80-90% versus being in-class. The materials covered in these courses were not new to me, so I could get by by watching the “interesting” parts of the lecture, reading the book, and looking at the slides.
I wound up with an A and an A-, for CSC 447 and CSC 453, respectively.
CSC 421 was one of those courses that is really tough, but you where you learn so much. I probably could have benefited taking this course in-person, but I still managed to save some time. Since this is the first time I’ve ever recorded data like this, it’ll be interesting to compare to next quarter (where I am taking an in-person course). All said and done, I wound up with a C+ in CSC 421, bringing my GPA for the quarter to a not-too-shabby 3.33.
Last year I posted about Winter Quarter courses I was about to take and stated that I would explain my consideration to switch majors. A year later, I’ll now explain my thought process and where I am today. I hope to also discuss the classes I took during this quarter and the work and projects completed during this time.
The future is scary. Who knows what it holds? So why not try to make it as concrete as possible for yourself and choose a path that will most likely lead to whatever it is you desire? That was my thinking when I was considering switching from Computer Game Development to Computer Science.
If one were to evaluate a Computer Game Development degree just by its name, it would be reasonable to assume that the end goal is to just make video games. In fact, that was one of my fears when I was thinking about switching to CS. Working alongside engineers that have degrees in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and more at my internship with a local engineering consulting company, I felt that their degrees would be considered more thoroughly than mine would.
Shortly after, I started researching what it would take to switch my course plan from game dev to CS. Unfortunately, because I had taken so many major courses already, I wouldn’t have been able to complete my degree in the same time frame. I was bummed – what was I going to do now? I’m stuck.
As I entered my second quarter of my Junior year, I was enrolled in CSC 395 – Research Colloquium. As I described in an earlier post, it’s a course where every week a new speaker presents their research to the class. Going in, I hadn’t realized how influential this course would be to me. Not once was I disinterested in a topic, no matter how difficult it was to grasp or how I couldn’t understand the title. The presentation of these ideas interested me and motivated me to start thinking about graduate school.
That leads me to where I am today. I am still pursuing a degree in Computer Game Development, but I no longer feel like Computer Science or any other degree would be more worthwhile. I’m not pigeonholed into just making video games. Still at the same internship, I’ve been able to work on a lot of cool projects and get a good taste of the professional world. But I am still compelled by the idea of academia. Therefore, I am applying to graduate schools for Master’s programs in Computer Science.
This has been in my drafts for a few days now. So I guess I’ll post this and give each course a separate post in the coming days.
Walking to class this morning is the first time I’ve ever actually felt college-y. I don’t know what’s different this morning, but the brisk air, morning sun, and overall atmosphere seems… Different.
Maybe it’s the realization that this path isn’t what everyone chooses. I see so many people from when I was younger choosing one of the billions of other paths there are and I believe I’ve chosen the best one for me.
For the first two years of college (I’m a junior now), I only took it semi-seriously. To me, it was just something I had to do, not something I wanted to do. I felt most of the classes I had been taking were pointless, and that the idea that college finally lets someone explore the things they are most interested in was false.
I understand now that one cannot look at it as black and white as that. College is a place where, yes, you learn about certain specific things you’re interested in, but it also shows you that there’s a world where there’s so much more to learn, understand, and contemplate that it doesn’t make sense to ignore it.
I was in MAT 140 – Discrete Mathematics last quarter and I found that the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is super interesting. When the professor was speaking about it, I asked if it was the base for PGP encryption and it turned out it was. I had an inkling for this, because I previously heard that PGP generates super large numbers and that’s where the security lies.
I’m kind of skeptical. Sure, with the current state of computing these cryptography keys are nearly impossible to crack, but the fact is that they still are possible to crack. I’m betting on sooner rather than later.
Well, I’ll be looking into how this works in greater detail whenever I have time.
Anyone know some places to learn more?
Alright so I’m finally going to discuss the new courses I’m taking now.
CSC 395 – Research Colloquium – I’m pretty excited about this course. It’s completely online and every week there will be a lecture by a guest speaker on new work in areas of computing. Hopefully there are some talks relevant to my interests, but nonetheless I love TED talks, so this should be similar.
GAM 341 – Introduction to Level Design – Since I’m majoring in Computer Game Development and focusing on the programming portion of it, I figured I should also get a little more experience in the non-programming parts. We’re going to be using Unreal Engine 4, which I’m pretty stoked about!
GAM 376 – AI for Computer Games – I’ve always been interested in artificial intelligence. Actually, in the class I’ll describe next we’re discussing AI through a philosophical perspective. I’ll probably post more on this later. As for this course, I hope we don’t just use some already-implemented AI algorithms and we can actually write our own. I doubt it though.
PHL 242 – Philosophy & Technology – We’re discussing what technology actually is. Admittedly, when asked this question I thought it was going to be easy to define. I was horribly wrong. While it isn’t required, I may read the recommended material, “War in the Age of Intelligent Machines” by Manuel De Landa. We read the first chapter and thinking about how a robot historian would describe its history is something that made me extremely intrigued.
SOC 281 – Sociology of Rock Music – This is kind of weird, yes, and I know that. It fulfills some requirement that I needed to complete, so hey why not? We’re going to trace Rock Music from the beginning to now, and I’m thinking I’ll learn a lot. The professor asked in the first day of class what we knew about rock. While I do know some stuff, and I listen to rock all the time, I wrote that I had no knowledge of rock. I think this will benefit me because starting with a blank-ish slate should be fun.
Anyhow, I wasn’t going to take these classes and considered switching majors. I’ll explain why in the next post.
In this class we created a ray tracer from the ground up. I by “we” I mean our professor wrote most of the code and we had to fill in certain class functions. It was pretty terrible, but overall the end result was good. Oh and we had to zip our source code and send it in, instead of simply using something like GitHub or Bitbucket. The midterm and final SUCKED, simply because it’s 2015 (well, it was 2014) and written exams for programming finals are absurd. Writing code on paper completely lacks the feel of typing it out using an IDE. Plus, come on, who doesn’t use IntelliSense, Resharper, Visual Assist X, or some kind of code-completion tool? A fool! And that’s exactly what we are when we write code by hand.
Anyhow, here are some screenshots from the course.
First we simply had to get rays working and detecting collisions.
Then we had to ray-trace our first object, a sphere. This is because it’s pretty simple to represent in math.
Then we had to add some shading to that sphere. I know,Γö¼├íit isn’t 100% correct. Spot the error!
Next came shadows. These are awesome.
Next was reflections. Super easy thanks to how ray-tracing works.
Then we had to create a checkerboard pattern.
Finally we were to implement Fresnel equations to properly simulate glass. I didn’t finish this one fully.
And that was the end of the course. This course was online only, which probably had an impact on my view of it. The course notes weren’t that great. I repeatedly found myself Googling things that were phrased in strange ways to figure out how to implement them. And variable names like V, N, n1, n2, etc. used throughout the given code made things unnecessarily complex.
Oh well, it’s over and done with!
Well I totally forgot to update this during class, but that’s okay.
IT IS TIME FOR UPDATES.
The class was about Maya so it was recommended that we download Maya 2015. I was a bit too lazy and decided that my installation of Maya 2014 would have to do. Here are a few of the things we had to make.
So our first homework was simple, but introduced us to Maya. We made a fan.
It had limitations, so it really looks bad. Luckily this is a course about low-poly modeling, so super-detailed isn’t what we aimed for.
Second homework was to model some animals, again with limitations.
I chose to model a snail, a T-Rex, a kiwi, and a human. I think improvements can be seen!
Next up was a shoe, and a lot of revisions.
Somehow turned into this after a lot of messing around:
Then I chose to model a guitar capo which proved an interesting challenge:
Skip a few and we arrive at our toy store assignment. It was pretty simple, with a animated camera flying around.
First revision:
Second revision:
Final revision:
Jump ahead to the final assignment:
GIMP was difficult to get working properly with the PSDs Maya exported, but it kind of worked. Oh well. That was the end of that class and I learned a lot about low-poly modeling. Nice!
Obviously I haven’t posted anything in a while. But it’s time for a change – and change is good!
I am now currently in three courses that are at least semi-relevant to this blog.
In ANI 230, we’re learning Maya 2015. Starting with low-poly and now (it’s about midterms time) we’re onto animation with keyframes. I’m particularly interested in ray tracing, because we are building our very own in C++ in GPH 321.
As for CSC 298, it basically runs alongside the internship that I already have. Here, I’ve been working with a ton of Java stuff lately interfacing with a USB HID. Through this, I’ve learned to use Maven – let me just say it’s awesome.
Anyhow, I’ll be posting some images of the stuff I’ve been working on soon.
Also, I may move this entire blog to a domain/host I pay for now. Or maybe even use GitHub Pages and Jekyll, those look fun.
Oh and I read a few Android books, great stuff. Loving Android dev.
Well, I chose to turn in exactly what you see in that last blog post. Everything that was required for the assignment was there and it earned me a 95%.
I am now focusing my efforts into work with a near-full-time schedule of 38 hours a week. I will be posting stuff about happenings relating to that from here on out.
I’m also working on an Android app, so there will be some Java tossed in.
And last but not least, my love for C++ is growing as I discover C++11 features. There’s a little code I wrote to test out the functionality of some of the new stuff if you read on.
Continue reading →Azul doesn’t support real collision, so I have to check the position of stuff. It kinda sucks. Hopefully there will be improvements on the physics components, along with collision in Azul.
It’s coming together, but the code isn’t pretty.
Instead of cloning Tanks! I’m actually going to create a two player tank battle game. It won’t be the best, because of time constraints, but it will have one player control a tank with the keyboard (WASD + Arrow keys to rotate turret) and the other player using a controller.
Added bullets. Pretty simple really.
I’ve finally done some work on this and got the player tank working. Azul doesn’t handle mouse input very well (I’m spoiled by Unity), so it’s all keyboard controls.
WASD controls the tank movement
LEFT/RIGHT control the turret
I’m thinking the up arrow will fire a shell and the down arrow will lay a landmine.
Screenshot taken with Greenshot.
Today marks the first day I’ve started working on the final project for my GAM 374: Fundamentals of Game Programming I class. I’ve decided to recreate Tank – well actually, the Wii Play version called “Tanks!“.
We’re using the DePaul game engine called Azul – which I think could definitely use an engine overhaul since it’s based on the singleton design pattern. Gross.
