Author: Amanda Dellostritto

Day 10:

Today we took the train to Eltville, a small town outside of Frankfurt that was far more beautiful, interesting, and nicer smelling. The architecture was breath taking, and after ice cream we sat by the river that ran through it. Alex nearly fought a swan (which Sam was quoted, “No Alex, you don’t understand. That is the mayor!”) and the water brought a cool breeze on an otherwise hot day. Sampling the local delicacies with Sam and Alex (doner, whatever that meant. I hope it was vegetarian) and completely forgetting my water bottle, Alex and I ended up begging a closed restaurant for water. The man didn’t speak English, but he was kind enough to give us two (2) whole water bottles for free. Wherever you are sir, thank you.

We had arrived quite early, so we met up with enough time for drinks at a riverside bar. I refrained from buying anything, deciding to turn my friends’ drinks into a sampling bar instead. The flowers along the river and near the castle were so beautiful. I was so surprised by how healthy and plentiful they were, it looked like something straight out of r/earthporn.

               We were allowed inside the castle just as it was closing (ooo, exclusive), where we were greeted with ten times the flowers we saw outside. I think I was expecting another simple, stone castle and I didn’t know Eltville was deemed the city of roses, so it was quite the treat to walk through all the gardens. It was a nice, clear day out too; there were plenty of photoshoots. We were greeted by the mayor soon after and he took us into the interior of the castle for our own private tour. The fanciness didn’t stop there though; after the tour we were offered a lovely set up under a canopy of trees with champagne and soft pretzels. While we waited our turns to talk to the mayor, we had started an ‘extra’ photoshoot where we all took pictures looking off to the sunset, champagne in hand; Truly ritzy and ironically pompous photos!

               I was exhausted when I returned to the hotel, so Alex and I turned in early. We again turned in early, but not before another Smash Bros Tournament!

               Day 11:

               Today was a sharp turn from elegancy to cool nerdy stuff. The first studio tour we had was the Nintendo PR office. While it wasn’t a game development studio, we learned a lot about how they published the games in Europe. There was a lot of legal things to go through with rating and language translations, and I was surprised that so many people worked solely on publishing and distribution. We were taken to a lounge where we could take pictures of all the various games and systems they had on display, as well as have an impromptu Smash tournament (big surprise).

               The next visit was Crytek on the other side of the city. We were given a presentation by one of the HR managers on the game’s industry and how to market yourself for positions. After that was a presentation from one of the main develops of the Cryengine. He put a lot of emphasis on visual scripting and how Crytek is working to add more of it within the next few updates. It was especially interesting to Alex and I, who weren’t as familiar with game engine creation. We had a tour after that, though I was disappointed to hear that there weren’t any animators left in the building. Still, the experience excited me for my future career in games.

               We returned to the hotel for a brief break before dinner. Alex and I walked over to the mall but did not have much time to spend there before we joined back up with the group for dinner. We decided on ramen; the walk was long but well worth it. I had a lot of fun with the other students during dinner, and after we finished we returned to the hotel for the night.

               Day 12:

               Today was our journey to Worms. I went to go wake up Alex, who has consistently been unable to sleep due to allergies. I found his sleeping in a hot bath, and he decided that he was going to take the day to rest instead of joining us. I did wake up early to walk over to the bakery down the street to get us breakfast, where I decided that I wasn’t going to ever go out alone again.

We had to take connecting trains to the town where we went to tour Kalyspo Media. I had a really good time at the studio that produced Tropico 6. They gave a presentation on how the company began and the network of independent studios they publish games with. It was a publishing office, but I still was able to see what I was desperate for: artists. Sure, they were graphic design and video artists, but I was still able to relate to them and talk about their jobs. After a tour around the office, we left to walk around the town.

               We had decided to split up after this. Some students went to a Jewish Cemetery, but because of the rain and how tired I was, I decided to go to the town center instead. Mike and I wandered around a lot, trying to find cool looking shops and get gifts for his family. I managed to get Alex a candle holder made from cinnamon bark, but by the lack luster response when I presented it to him, I decided I would give it to his mother instead. The day was rainy, and Mike and I were both starting to feel the adrenaline and excitement of the trip draining out of us. We got ice cream and sat under umbrellas until it was time to leave to go back to the hotel. Excited to see my boyfriend, he and I decided to split off to get dinner together and hang out in the hotel instead of going out. We may have missed out on some good German beer, but we had to rest up for the big day tomorrow.

               Day 13:

               Today was zoo day! Alex had really pushed the zoo while we were planning our itinerary back at RIT, and it became a running joke that it was the one thing he wanted to see. Unfortunately, everyone else opted out from the zoo, but it meant a really nice day together. There we’re a surprisingly good number of exotic animals there. We were able to see the sun bears up close and the gorillas came right up to the glass while Alex was looking through that. I seemed to always catch animals. . . mating . . . I guess it was a pretty romantic day. We got lunch and (you guessed it) ice cream before heading back to the hotel. We had to take an uber there and back; the money was worth not having to walk 40 minutes each way.

               We met up with Mike again to get dinner at an “Authentic Japanese Restaurant” that was quite a walk to get to but totally worth it for more noodles. Both guys didn’t seem that keen on more noodles, but I was SO excited that they indulged me anyway. After dinner was the farewell ice cream meetup, where we officially ended the trip with spaghetti ice cream one more time.

               I don’t know how to put into words how much I enjoyed this trip. It had its ups and downs (more like ups and traveling between destinations), but overall it was a life changing experience. I wish I had another month with the Paderborn students, they were all so nice and intelligent; I learned and was exposed to a lot of new video game knowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten just from RIT. I can only hope that all goes well and they have the games lab running in a year. This trip may not be the last time Paderborn university sees of me!

               Bonus blog because I forgot to post some of the others:

               Alex and I would end up taking a train to Amsterdam for cheaper flights, staying there for a day and a half. We were in a sketchy suburb that was a 20-minute train ride into the city, but the actual AirBnB was in a really nice apartment. Ad you won’t believe what I found there. A HUGE ORANGE MAINCOON CAT! I think if I hadn’t met that cat (the host didn’t speak English, so she never told me his name. I decided on Sven in honor of our Scandinavian trip) I would have imploded from not seeing my cat Indy for three weeks.

               When we arrived in Sweden, we spent a day with his professional chef turned flight attendant uncle (the guy has stories to tell) in the most idyllic apartment ever. I’ll spare you the rant about how nice it was; I guess I watch too much HDTV. The day after we were scheduled to go to his grandmother’s summer house, but before arriving we stopped at a chain restaurant called Max Burger. HOLY CANOLI. Imagine a MacDonalds that’s run by Gorden Ramsey. Hallmark of my entire trip.

               The summer house was more of a summer . . . shed. From what everyone in the family does, I assumed it would be a fancy gold mansion on a private beach. Although it didn’t meet those expectations, I still fell absolutely in love with it. His grandmother was so nice (and I found out where Alex’s mother gets all her quirks) and she took us on a tour around her small property. She was retired, so she is going to spend the entire summer there: planting trees, doing yardwork, taking care of a koi pond, and fixing up the houses. She called the area her little America; the hillside has a lot of these small summer homes where retired and vacationing people spent their time. She liked the diversity of all her neighbors. I got to see where Alex and his many siblings and cousins stayed when they came every year and I heard a lot of nostalgic stories. Part of me wants to come here next summer and spend it helping her fix up the place, though I would miss plumbing a lot.

               Germany had been so hot and summer-y that we hadn’t packed many warm clothes. I didn’t even have a sweatshirt (good going me, losing it in Manchester Airport), so I was cold almost the entire time. There weren’t any showers or much running water, so we just bathed in the lake; I guess it was the norm there. If it had been warmer we would have seen a lot more nude elderly soaping up on the beach; nudity is weirdly different in Sweden. Remember how I said it was really, really cold? Alex said it was easier if you just jumped in, so I went straight off the dock and into bone chilling water. I’m pretty sure all our muscles seized at once. We didn’t stay in long.

               Most of our time was spent on walks or playing video games on our switch. They surprisingly had cable, but there was only one channel, so we watched a lot of Simpsons and Ink Masters. We were lucky enough to catch Alex’s cousin’s high school graduation film viewing. It was comfortingly familiar, just like our screenings back at RIT, and although they were in Swedish I was still able to enjoy all the films. The one weird thing is that they all used going out to have a smoke as an establishment for dialogue scenes; I thought America still had problems with cigarettes, but I guess every 18-year-old smokes here. Although I am pretty far and consistent with Swedish on DuoLingo and have been using it for years, I was still so lost and couldn’t understand a single thing.

Oh, and our flight was delayed for seven hours so we got to spend a lovely 12 hours in Manchester airport. I was so glad to get back to Connecticut and then back home. I missed my cat so much and although I had a great time I was ready to be back and get to work on my summer jobs and personal projects.

Today was largely uneventful. I had planned on getting up at 8am to give myself time to get breakfast and pack, but I ended up snoozing my alarm until 9:38 when I started packing. It was a pretty messy sort and shove kind of job, and in the middle of packing we got the “cabs are here” text that forced us to shove whatever was left into our backpacks and run down to the lobby. Burdened with extra water bottles and a cat mug, we went to the airport where I bought breakfast and yet another cat postcard to assuage my separation anxiety from my cat. Spoiler: the croissant I bought had bacon in it. I lost my appetite after a bite into that. . .

We got on the train and were able to find our assigned seats quite easily. Maybe it’s rude to say it, but it felt nice to be able to kick people out of our seats instead of trying to find anywhere was empty. I slept most of the way while Alex and Mike had a Smash Bros tournament behind me; however, our German friends gave us no warning for which stop we were getting off. I went from having a nice nap to scrambling out the train in about .5 seconds. We were not so lucky on our connecting train, which meant most of us had to stand in a hot cabin for an hour. Alex was nice enough to offer me the seat he was able to find, so I spent the rest of the time sleeping and looking at cat pictures. I miss my cat.

The hotel is . . . something. There is still no air conditioning and breakfast is oddly not included with the rooms. I have a single room because of my narcolepsy, but it smells fainting of urine and the shower curtain doesn’t actually move because the hooks are trapped between the frame and the ceiling. It was difficult trying to take a refreshing, cold shower because it was so small, spilling water onto the floor in concerning amounts, and there were no shelves, so I was trying to not step on the shampoo bottles I had to put on the floor. The good news is my room has a great view of a back alley/parking lot, stained concrete buildings, and some lovely trash cans. Thankfully because it’s a slow day I can take a nap and finally do some laundry that I’ve been putting off for three days.

Today was the end of the game jam and our last day in Paderborn. After the club, Alex and I ended up sleeping in late and arriving at the games lab around 11. I got to see an update of the game that implemented the grappling hook and streams that were going to be part of the puzzle. I finished up the animations and had to go through and fix a lot of the start and end poses. I clearly know nothing about animation blending trees (I didn’t know they were a thing until today) but I am eager to learn how to do it when I have more time. It seems like a pretty integral part of video game animations, so I’m going to start watching tutorials and reading up about it while in Frankfurt next week. After that I tried to bring my rock pile into mudbox to paint, but then I realized I would need to UV the ENTIRE pile of rocks before I could do that. I wanted to add glowing algae to highlight where the otter could enter holes, but after spending a stupid amount of time UVing rocks, I eventually gave up and went back to modeling. I should have been texturing, but I was so tired at that point that I would have rather just kept modeling, and we had so little time anyway that I had to make the decision to finish the game jam doing the thing I love the most. I created corals and sea weeds to add atmospheric aesthetic and used mudbox for the first time since the single lab day we were taught it in the fall semester. It was somewhat like Zbrush so I was able to bring over the fundamental principles of sculpting with a tablet and keyboard, but I was definitely lost with most of the UI and could only create the most basic sculpts. I would also like to learn mudbox more for this kind of occasion; I can only use the school’s licenses of Zbrush so I only had access to the student version of mudbox.

Onto the presentation. I was pretty upset about how it went; I thought the game designers and coders would do a good job of presenting, but they were stumbling over their words, not pointing out important mechanics, not explaining the story correctly, not showing enough of the environment. It was also very dark, which I felt ultimately ruined the whole game. Most of the models I worked on today were not implemented. However, we were able to implement an impressive number of mechanics and all of them worked as intended, even though they were a bit clunky. All the other games were good in concept, but there was only one that I thought was interesting and enjoyable. A lot of the other teams had a lot of infighting and wrote over each other’s code, or there were no artists on the team so they were lacking visually. Ultimately I’m happy with what we were able to do, and plan on continuing the game this fall semester as a sophomore film requirement.

After that we all took a big picture and said our goodbyes. I was really sad to say goodbye to everyone, especially the few people I had gotten really close to over the past few days. We went out for burgers with the professor and two of the German students who we had all grown attached to. I have started to have conversations about returning to Paderborn to work on the game they will be developing my senior year. It’s still just an idea, but the more I talk about it the more I’m already excited to start planning it. If it were up to me I would have spent another week in Paderborn with the students, but we are off to Frankfurt for a very fun week and our German friends can get back to schoolwork and finishing up their semester.

It’s the next day of the game jam and another full day of work. I was mostly animating all day, which meant I wasn’t having very much fun. The space man rig I got didn’t have any controllers, and because I am unfamiliar with rigging I didn’t want to waste time trying to stumble through it. I had to spend a lot of time counter animating and trying to figure out how to create a walk cycle without my character moving forward. Ultimately, I’m not very proud of the animation and I plan to go back, rig the character, and learn how to do the animations properly. Once I’m not under a time crunch I think it will come easier to me.

My teammates continue to work hard and implement impressive mechanics surprisingly fast. Everything feels like it’s coming together, and whenever I need a break from modeling and animating, I can go and see the coders and find something new every time. I’m very happy with my models, I managed to create a ton of stuff to include in my portfolio. Also, with all the work I’m doing I’m starting to feel better about the game that’s waiting for me back home. I have proved to myself in this game jam that I am able to work long and hard for a game I’m passionate about; with all the anxiety I’m feeling towards my future after I graduate, I’m gradually gaining more confidence and this trip has only spurred that onward.

We stopped for a barbeque dinner at a nearby park. I got to catch up with everyone on their progress and relax while eating good food. I learned more about the German students and what their future plans are. I also talked to Stephen and Vulker about studying abroad for a semester in my senior year when I’m completely a full game for my thesis. It would line up really well with the work that I need to do and the process they go through. We also got to play lawn games, including an America vs German drinking game that I got roped into.

I wasn’t much help after the barbeque because of how tired I was, so I decided to leave the lab because I wouldn’t make any progress anyway. Mike and I decided to go get ice cream and stop at a general store for supplies. However, both of us cannot be trusted with directions, so what should have been a five-minute walk back to the hotel ended up being 45 minutes. At least I walked off the ice cream. That wasn’t the end of our night though, as the Germans offered to get us into a small nightclub. Although I was tired from all the walking, the prospect of spending more time with our friends before we had to leave them Monday was enough to convince me to go back out. The club was so much fun and the music they played was so much fun to dance with. I was sore the next day from all the dancing. I got to talk about music and local culture and get a lot closer with some of the Germans. It was an invaluable experience (and the drinks weren’t too bad either).

So there I am, stomach full of pastry and holding a bag of fresh strawberries I had just bought at the bakery, waiting for the bus. Alex and I had a late start this morning and finally found the right bus route to take, hoping that it wouldn’t randomly drop us off across town again. A very loud thud shakes the bus shelter and a woman next to us screams as a bird flaps to the ground. I’m not going to go into detail, mostly because I am still SHOOK, but we had to catch the bus without knowing its fate. I cried the entire bus ride . . . and while walking across campus . . . and again when I had to explain why I looked like I had been crying. I’m reeling. Bird, if you’re out there, I hope you’re okay. And if you’re dead, I hope a friendly neighborhood cat ensures that your death wasn’t a waste.

Anyway . . .

Today was the second day of our game jam and the first full workday. We immediately started working when we arrived, only stopping occasionally to drink soda and chose another YouTube video to watch. I managed to get several models done, including a pile of rocks that will serve as our first otter puzzle. I’m annoyed that it took so long and I had to start over a few times because I didn’t like the look of it, and I’m still nervous that it might not be clear enough and the puzzle will not work. I also finished the grappling hook, force field generator, and various ship parts to scatter around as other wrecked ship. I’m really worried about all the work that is ahead of me and although my passion and motivation is there, I am getting very tired and working slower than I want. I still have models to complete, as well as all the texturing and creating animation cycles for our main character.

However, I am still having a great time and my models are turning out surprisingly well. Because of school and work, I haven’t been able to just sit down and make cool models in a long time. I’ve been watching Game Grumps play Undertale and the time is passing without really making me tired. My team is also still doing fantastic; from talking to my other American friends, apparently, we’re one of the only teams that isn’t constantly fighting and running into language barriers. I’m so excited that I get to work on this game that I’ve been thinking about for nearly a year. My love of maya is reinvigorated after a hard semester making a film and not being able to focus on video games.

Today was finally the day: the start of our game jam!!!! However, it didn’t start off very well as Alex, Mike, and I got on the bus and had to get off a few stops later. Apparently, the holiday meant that it wasn’t going the entire route, so we ended up across the street from the train station – a 30 minute walk to campus. We got a taxi at the station and it dropped us off at the other side of campus, which wouldn’t have been a big deal except that we were walled in by buildings and almost all the doors were locked. To add to that, we thought we could just cross the building and end up in the quad, but one of the two doors we needed to go through was locked. I don’t know why, but there were no other open doors in any of the buildings, so what would be an easy walk ended up a stressful wander through three buildings trying to find an exit until we had to double back.

That aside, we arrived at the game lab only a few minutes late and we quickly got started. The theme of “working better together” was announced and we split up into teams of two and then six to decide on game ideas and narrow down the most interesting ones. We ended up going with my idea – a short film idea I had created for a final project a few semesters ago called “Return to Otter Space.” As it implies, an astronaut crashes onto a water planet and befriends an otter to help him rebuild his ship and return to outer (otter) space. I was nervous when we started voting to narrow down game ideas after they were presented, but my game idea managed to make the cut by last place; a few of my teammates seemed glad that it passed through too.

My team is fantastic. The bomb dot com. I’ve never worked on a team of this size, nor have I been able to work just solely on art. Although I consider myself creative I’m not primarily a game designer, so having other students to come up with the ideas and figure out the finer mechanics and ideas was such a relief. And they’re great at it too. We also have four sound designers, which is something completely new to me. Our IGME program doesn’t teach sound, so it’s usually an afterthought and done by whoever has the time to spare. After taking basic sound recording with SOFA, I realized that sound was a really important and overlooked aspect of games. I think with these students dedicating all of the jam to sound effects and music will give our game more of a professional feel that I wouldn’t have gotten at RIT.

Our programmers are fantastic as well. I was excited when Tobias, a student we have been spending time with earlier in the week, joined us as a programmer. I thought getting the otter to follow the player around would be a nearly impossible task to figure out, but he managed to get a really cute and interesting swimming pattern nearly finished in only a few hours. I was feeling tired after modeling a power cell and power dock, but seeing that has reinvigorated me and I’m really excited to get back to work. Everyone is going back to the hotel early, so I will probably join them, but if no one stopped me I think I could work through the entire night because I’m having such a good time. I am so thankful I had the resources and support to go on this trip, and I look forward to the rest of the game jam this weekend.

Alex and I slept through the morning and ended up missing breakfast again. However, that did lead us to a really cute bakery filled with an endless supply of tasty treats. I bought a cheese Danish that tasted more like a heap of frosting on a very small pastry, and I regret not trying more things. We then caught the train to Bielefeld, a city I was informed was often called “the city that doesn’t exist,” (though I’m not sure why, I actually really liked it there!). We meandered through the town and ran into another fair that was setting up for the weekend.

A long hike uphill brought us to the Sparrenburg Castle, Bielfeld’s most notable landmark. It was a really beautiful day and the sun and breeze made it the perfect temperature to walk around outside. We joined a tour but the guide only spoke German so we had only a summary of the tour from translations. We went down into the underground part of the castle where soldiers would spend their time and man the two cannons when the castle was being attacked. It was very cold so it was hard to focus, but the tour guide brought us into a side room where they used to bake bread for all the soldiers there. I enjoyed that part, and it helped me put into perspective how many people fit in that small basement. I wish we had learned more about the seventeen types of bats that made the castle their home; I always enjoy learning about conservation.

After we were done touring the tower, we went back into town because everyone wanted to get ice cream. And not just any ice cream. SPAGHETTI ice cream. It sounds gross, but it’s actually ice cream that’s been pushed through a tool that made it look like strands of spaghetti, complete with jelly sauce and white chocolate as the “parmesan.” I had a vanilla variation, but I actually found it underwhelming (but don’t mention that to the other students). During the dessert we got into a pretty serious discussion about game design and the various problems with it, and getting the perspective from German game design students was very insightful. We decided that students would be more successful if the culture changed to encourage more team work and supporting fellow classmates.

We took the train back to Paderborn and stopped at a grocery store to stock up on supplies before the national holiday the next day. I was surprised at how seriously they took it; no place in town was going to be open, so we had to make sure we didn’t forget anything. I was also pretty shocked to see the number of cigarettes being sold at the checkout. I expected the regular candy and gum like in the states, but as we waited in line we were faced with the disgusting pictures of damaged lungs and rotten teeth they include on the cigarette packages. I was even more surprised at how casually the person in front of us bought a bulk pack without hesitation. The fact that cigarettes are still so common, enough that they still have cigarette dispensers on the streets, is off putting.

The day began with breakfast at the hotel and then a bus ride over to the Nixdorf Computer Museum. We toured the various floors and went through the history of computers and how they started as simple punch card machines. I had learned about all of these early calculators and computers in my Computer Information Technology course, so I was able to ask more in-depth questions and recognize the most important parts of the machines. As we were walked through the development of the first computer and then the earliest video games, I found a lot of it interestingly applicable to what I have learned in both IGME and the film and animation course. Because I love 3D modeling, I was interested in the art aspect of computers and video games. I was reminded of my first advanced 3D modeling assignment last year that involved finding an old, visually interesting object to model; a lot of the primitive machines and computers would have been great ideas. My affinity for hard surface modeling continued to fill up my phone’s gallery as I went through and took pictures of anything that might be a reference or even inspire new projects. And of course, reference images are only as good as your ability to also take orthographic views, so to a non-animator my photos from the day looked pretty tedious and boring. We ended our tour at a wall of Chinese cat statues hooked up to a board in which people could use basic coding syntax to make them turn and wave in various patterns. It’s a great concept, but I also just really like cats.
We then went back to the university for a talk about AI and the role it plays both inside and outside of video games. I had a really good time asking questions and posing ideas to discuss, so much so that we ran out of time and I had to continue the discussions into lunch. After spending more time hanging out and having great discussions with the German students, we returned to the hotel for a brief rest before returning for game night.
I got a little work done on the current model/animation I’m working on – the bell tower from the recent Game of Thrones finale that I wanted to animate in the same style as the opening credits. We had ordered pizza, but mine was more like the contents of a sub dumped onto a cheese pizza with a couple mushrooms added in. I don’t know who eats pizza with lettuce on it, but they need to re-evaluate their life choices.
I joined some of the students in a couple games of Secret Hitler. Yes, I recognize the irony in that one. I had spent an entire summer playing that game with my friends back home, so I was pretty excited to play it again. The German students had obviously played with each other before, so it was pretty funny to see the crazy ways they would deduce who was a fascist and who was a liberal. Some turns took a very long time as they used logic to decide the best way to win; it was clear they were game developers by the way they thought things through. I just called everyone snakes the entire time.
Alex and I decided to leave the games lab to meet our friend Mike back at the hotel. We hadn’t really checked the bus schedule or looked up the way back before we were already outside and without wifi, so it was a 20-minute wait in the cold as we listened to music in a particularly empty part of town. After meeting up with Mike we headed over to a bar that he had looked up called “Black Sheep.” It was pretty empty and after we each had a drink, we realized the bar was closing. So onward we went to find another open bar, a surprisingly hard task for being in Germany. We stopped at “Globtrotters” bar and had drinks and exchanged wild abroad stories until our friends Penny and Josh joined us. I lost track of the number of drinks I had, but I remember that they were all very tasty. We didn’t want to stay out too late because we had to catch an early train in the morning, so once the bar started clearing out we also left to go back to the hotel.