Author: Alex Wisdom

Frankfurt and the Hard reset

I woke up at 5 am sneezing like a plague victim. It sucked. While I camped out in the shower I realized I had to put my foot down.

I called down and listed off all the issues and was swiftly given a new room. Everything was fixed except the AC because they literally just don’t have it. Plus I have a bathtub now.

Amanda, Mike, and I went exploring around the area. We did some laundry at a very confusing laundromat. We got some tasty Vietnamese noodles and found a comforting starbucks nearby.

Amanda and I even walked to a super mall a couple blocks away. But as we did so we got a call and had to immediately head back to the hotel because apparently, we had to go to some fancy political dinner a town over. Now I had no idea what he actual plan was but we hopped on a train an headed to a cute german town with winding alleys and a cool breeze from a nearby river. We were perusing the streets and ended up getting ice cream and sitting on some benches in front of the river and near a big castle. We were told to meet back up in 2 hours. So Amanda, Sam, and I went for a walk around the river and to some of the local shops. We took a lot of pictures of flowers and almost fought a swan. Then we met up at a wine bar with some of the other students.

Apparently the town is known for its local white wine (long wine) so I got their local wine cocktail. It was a ling wine cocktail but I’ve had longer.

Suddenly the bells in our minds started ringing and we made our way into the castle. It started as a courtyard and a flower garden but ended when the Mayor of the town appeared. It really caught me off guard because there was no event. He just walked in like “Hey guys lemme show you the castle.”

So we got a private tour of the castle, climbed the tower and got to see some ancient tome. The tour ended with champagne, and fancy pretzels in yet another flower garden. I honestly felt like royalty. A private party in a German castle drinking champagne with the mayor. Never thought I’d do that one before.

More like Frank FART HA

We started this day as we started many. Oversleeping and panic packing all of our stuff. We raced down to the taxis and hoped in just in time. We drove over to the train station we came into Paderborn at and took our seats. While Amanda power napped, I got to see a lot of the german countryside. I still love seeing the turbines in the distance. They’re literally the most aesthetic things. It like oh look at that thing that’s environmentally friendly, futuristic looking, and reassuring to my planetary moral compass. The first 2 hours passed quick, but the second half involved sitting on the floor outside the bathroom of the train which was less fun.

We got to Frankfurt and I was overwhelmed. It was nothing like Paderborn. It felt like I had stepped into a refugee camp. People were crying and yelling and sleeping on the ground and begging for money. It really came out of left field for me. We got to the hotel and I was put in probably the worst hotel room I’ve ever seen. Broken sink, broken toilet, no AC, a view of literally just cigarette butts and dumpsters, and smelled like a cigar took a piss on the walls. It was appalling. Not to mention my allergies absolutely hate this place and my nose was running like a faucet. But I was too tired to complain. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Beat The Boss

The final day of the game jam. I was a little groggy from the night before but only had a couple small tweaks to do before the final submission. I sped up a couple animation loops and UV’d a few more models and suddenly it was 3 o clock and we were lining up to go present our games. I was nervous and excited. I’d never participated in a game jam let alone produced a finished game and I was anxious to see how our game would hold up. And I may be bias but holy crap we blew these games out of the water. Our game was gorgeous and “functional” and most importantly fun. Plus it had 4 player capabilities while some games barely had 1. I was so proud of my team and myself.

Afterward we took a big group picture and said our goodbyes. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see any of these germans again. Maybe if they come visit RIT ill opt in to be one of the guides. We took a big group photo which I’m told will be on the wall of fame in the games lab.

After a tasty burger dinner and some tearful goodbyes we headed back to the hotel to start packing for the next half of our german adventure.

Animation Nation

After finally getting the kinks out of the boss rig I went on an animation power grind. I had to do like 15 movements with all those tentacles moving. It was nuts. But I loved it. I made a couple assets for the rest of the group and animated a walk cycle, a couple attack cycles, idle movement, falling and getting up, the whole shpeel.

Around the time my hands were starting to deteriorate we got to go on a barbecue with the germans to a nearby park. I had so much fun. I don’t know what came over me but something about the fresh air, and my feet in the grass just made me so happy. I found a sharp rock in the grass and I somehow made a hatchet. Like a working one. I’ve never been outdoorsy or crafty, but I was somehow both today. Then we got to play this fun drinking game with the Germans that involved a ball and drinking which was obviously perfect. And we got barbecue schnitzel and burgers which were soooo tasty. I knew I had a lot of work to do so I really didn’t want to go back but eventually things started powering down so I got back on the grind.

Or so I thought. As soon as I stepped into the games lab Tobias and Christina invited some of the americans to go out to this indie night club. Now I haven’t gone clubbing in a long time but I had so much fun dancing and drinking and repeating. The dance floor had a smoke machine and some ceiling lights that offered a fantastic visual effect. Plus the dancing was a great way to not feel like I had been sitting for 9 hours earlier that day. We headed home late into the night and prepared for our last jam day.

THE GRIND

Wake up, quick breakfast, unlucky bird flight patterns, and I’m back in the lab. We started to lock down an idea for the boss and its attack patterns, but I had a lot to do. 3 days to model, rig, texture, and animate 2 characters felt pretty daunting but I was really excited and determined to finish. But first I needed to learn Advanced Skeleton and try to figure out hoe to rig a tentacle (the boss had 6) This task took me most of the day and ended with a modelled 6-armed armadillo ball that was going to face plant his enemies. His rig I could only describe as a functioning car that was on fire. It worked, and it animated, and nothing was that broken but it was most certainly on fire. Unfortunately, I think my lack of rigging skills was starting to bottle neck production, so I needed to finish the boss by tomorrow morning.

I also got to bond more with my teammates, play some melee with passersby’s, got some german Burger King and just generally enjoy the work environment of the games lab. Its super constructive and a truly great learning and working environment.

Hot Damn It’s a Game Jam

Today was the start of the game jam! It was also a national holiday so every business, food store, and campus door was locked. We only realized this after somehow being let into the campus because ewe ended up spending 25 minutes being locked inside the school. There were literally no open doors. No exits. Talk about a fire hazard.

After arriving tactically late we split up into teams to start plotting ideas. I have never participated in a game jam or even had a game design class but with my experience in just playing games I felt somewhat prepared. The magi theme in question was Better Together which implied either multiplayer or a really cool Last of Us type game play but with only 3 days available I jumped on the former. My first idea was about a Ninja that was controlled by two people and could platform through levels. I drew a quick doodle of a ninja and it took off. By the third round of siphoning ideas my ninja idea was in the top 10 out of 25 potential ideas. They were all written on the board when I realized 2 very important things for this game jam. 1. There were very few artists in this room and 2. I just made a game that wouldn’t use 3D. I quickly started talking to Germans to see if any of them needed a 3D artist and luckily Bernie, one of the Germans who we first met, was making a 3D arena game called Beat the Boss. I quickly abandoned my ninja game and joined his team.

By then end of the voting process 6 games remained. Counter strike wannabe, Bloob-game, Point and click adventure, Amanda’s cute otter game, Beat the Boss, and surprisingly my ninja idea. So I got to work on a cool game while the game product of my mind also got to be made. I really liked my team. It was full of talented designers and coders and although I was the only 3D artist, I lucked out in finding a texture artist in the group so I wouldn’t have to do everything. We started mapping out the idea for the boss and how it would work to fight him. I was super excited to be working in my field on my first game.

Spaghetti and Castles; not in that order

We woke up and met up with the Germans at around 10 to hope on a train to Bielefeld which is known by the locals as a town that doesn’t exist. I am still not sure why. This was definitely a bigger city than Paderborn and felt more urban. We walked the streets and window shopped while on our way to see the Sparrenburg Castle. This OLD (800+ year old) castle stands overlooking 3 towns, a valley, countless landmarks, and more than a dozen windmills (I love seeing them all over the place). I learned that it had been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, was owned by a Russian aristocrat a couple times, had “self-healing” defensive walls, and shattered the Geneva convention several times over on multiple occasions. We got a German tour of the whole castle which was so kindly translated by Volker and even got to climb to the top of the highest tower and see over 90km. When we finished our tour we got to do more urban walking and stopped to get ICE CREAM FOR DINNER. But it was no ordinary ice cream. The restaurant put it through a pasta maker and made SPAGHETTI ICE CREAM. It looked so fancy and was super filling. After that ice cream feast, we stopped by a grocery store to stock up for the national holiday the next day and called it a day.

Pader-Born to Ride

Today we woke up at a more reasonable hour. We met up with Volker and bused it over to the Nixdorf museum. It was a really cool museum dedicated to computers, calculators, counting machines, and robots. We got a nice, somewhat quick tour of some pre-industrial counting machines and early computers. Afterward we bused it back over to campus where we got to sit in on a class on A.I which was mindbogglingly interesting. I loved the topic and learned a lot about Basic A.I trees, coding behavior and Neural Nets. It only furthered my budding interest in learning some code. Plus, I feel like I participated well. We then grabbed lunch in the Café and headed back to the hotel for a quick siesta before game night.

Rather than taking the bus we decided to walk to campus this time to learn the route. It was nice day out and only about a mile walk. When we got to campus, we started game night. I got to play more Q and get to know more of the Germans in a couple games of Secret Hitler. We ordered some pizzas for dinner and Amanda and I bused it home to prep to go out. Mike, Amanda, and I went out for drinks and hopped a few bars before meeting up with Penny and Josh. We told a couple riveting tales before heading home to pass out.

I woke up too early.

Yesterday we did some introductions, saw the local tourist stuff, and toured of the Game Lab facilities. We saw some cool German homes and buildings and a huge church followed by a much smaller church. We learned how to use the public transport and cruised over to the main campus. We met some of the German students who are super cool, started learning their names and got to play a couple of their games. I was particularly good at a game they made called Q. They showed us the University Campus and took us to lunch. Most of us were still pretty jet lagged so we stopped by a local mall for an early dinner where I got a German copy of Halo Reach and my first of many German schnitzels. We bused it back to the hotel and I went to sleep real early.

Traveling

Started with a 2 hour Uber ride to JFK. Followed by a 30 minute line in security. We got upgraded on our flight over the Atlantic and got to sit on the second floor on the plane for the 7 hour flight which was awesome. We had a nice long 7 hour layover in Manchester but we were able to get hotel buffet breakfast and a shower. Took a short 1.5 hour flight to Dusseldorf, transferred to a wacky German train for 2 hours, finagled a 20 minute cab to the hotel. 18 hours of travel and the most modes of transportation I’ve ever had to use to get to one place.