Last day of May
Rocket Lander
I already released my flash game on my last post, but I thought I would start this off by going into the game a little bit more. Rocket Lander is my final project for CS205 Multimedia Programming – well it started as my final project, I have taken it well beyond the scope of the class with online high scores and such.
Rocket Lander is basically a clone of Moon Lander, but made to be much more sinister. In this game you cannot just move the vehicle from side to side, but you must rely on the tilt and rotation caused by using the side thrusters. Additionally, the rocket must land on a special landing zone randomly placed on the ground – some levels contain two, others just one. The challenge is in the way the rocket moves and the specific way it must be landed. Additionally, a few other evil easter eggs have been thrown in to keep things interesting. As a reward for completing all 20 levels you may enter your name to be placed on the high score list. Only the top 20 scores are presented in the game, for the complete list you can go to the Rocket Lander Hall of Fame
The game really began as a continuation of Rocket Launcher, a silly little flash game we went over in class. Dan and I were responsible for the physics engine which I took to the next the level. The physics engine in Rocket Lander has been completely rebuilt without any recognition to the original one I made for Rocket Launcher, but that is were the idea came from.
Berglund Center
For the summer I am working at the Berglund Center for Internet Studies… which happens to be in the cozy basement of the University I graduated from. It is a fun job where I get to hang out with several of my college friends. It is a bit unsettleing though – going to school every day just like when I actually attended it. I guess it also serves to prevent the realization that I’m a graduate now.
Nonetheless today was interesting. Those working on site today rallied up and we toured the new Berglund Center under construction in the… yes you guessed it… in the basement of the new business department building on the edge of campus. I will probably (hopefully?) never see the building in use, but we put on some hard hats and toured the place with an engineer. We made notes of the layout of the new office, the electrical outlets and data lines and ensured things were in order, especially in the new server closet. After that my boss treated us for lunch yay!
New computer
What we have all been waiting for, right? For several months now I have been considering upgrading to a new computer. My desktop has served me well since I purchased it back in December of my freshmen year. I have heard all the horrible things said about Dell, but my computers seem to last just fine… unlike Kevin currently on his fourth hard drive and slowly loosing the keys on his keyboard. My desktop still works, mind you, but the P4 processor is scoring mighty low on the Vista rating system and I can feel it. I am surprised in a way it is not the graphics card grinding to a halt, since for the last few years it has always been a battle to keep my graphics card up to date. I have not decided yet if I will be selling any of my older computers. Ideally, when I move into a place of my own I can begin spreading things out and employ one of the P4 systems as a media center.
But about my new system. For a week I played on DELL’s, Alienware’s, and Toshiba’s sites trying to make a new computer I wanted. I really wanted my next system to be a notebook computer. Moreever, I wanted it to be a capable notebook computer that could be my primary system for some time… unlike the Toshiba I bought after graduating from High School which I had to upgrade far too quickly. I also wanted a gaming rig… easily the hardest thing to fit in my budget. Try as I might I was not able to taylor what I wanted into my price range. So I after much deliberation I purchased what I wanted anyway!
I got a sleak new XPS notebook complete with a 512MB Nvidea 7950GTX graphics card, one of the best cards I could find in a notebook. It hasn’t arrived in the mail yet, but keep your fingers crossed everything works.
The decision to get an XPS was practicarly hard because DELL had an unbelievable 23% off sale on the Inspiron notebooks. Ugg, I hated passing on that oppertunity, but I wanted an XPS 
Hope you’re off to a great summer!