Today was our last day together in Germany. It was not as emotional as saying goodbye to my Paderborn friends since I will see most of them again on campus. I didn’t get up until noon and then I went to Starbucks as usual. Near Starbucks, there was a religious event going on and you could get a free massage at the event appeartly. Late afternoon, followed by saying goodbye to my German friends in the lobby, I went shopping. Skyline Plaza is one of the most popular malls in the city which is a 10-15 min walk from the hotel. Half of the stores were American brands interestingly, such as Lush, Hollister, abercrombie& Fitch, etc. And they had a store called American Food Club. They sell some authentic American snacks like Pringles, Sour Patches, Coke Cola(I was surprised, prob cuz the coke here is different), etc. I thought about getting my nails done in the mall but the price for acrylics is 48 euro; it’s usually 35 dollars in the US. My biggest surprise at the mall was Chipotle! It’s the only Chipotle I have found in Germany, wondering if there’s a difference tho. The mall was nice enough to walk around but didn’t have anything special enough to purchase. I might go to this shopping village tomorrow that’s 2 hours train ride away.
There are Chipotle, H&M, and Starbucks in the same picture.
Around 8pm, it got cold suddenly and started pouring. All of us headed over to an ice cream place nearby in replace of a goodbye dinner. I ordered a Banana Split that I made everyone else finish it for me. I have one more day in Frankfurt and then I’m gonna be out. Not ready to be home yet.
Professor Jacobs treated us to some nice ice cream. Thank you Stephen!!!!Sunset
My goal for the day was to get a free copy of Tropico 6 and I didn’t succeed.
Kalypso had a chill environment and everyone was very friendly. The presentation was long since they went over every procedure for publishing and every department, lol, they even had a chart for all employees in the office. Kalypso is a young private publisher for video games. The company has two game studios in Munich and Hamburg, developing Tropico series and some mobile games. As a fan of strategy games, I’m pretty familiar with their IPs like Tropico, Rise of Industry, Railway Empire, Shadow Tactics, etc. We got a full tour of their company and I really liked some of the offices where I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. Almost every department had a person introducing their roles and responsibilities to us, I felt welcomed. Excited for their E3 release!
The hosts indicated two interesting facts in the presentation that I feel like sharing here:
Americans show much less interest in strategy games than Europeans. The biggest gaming market in the US is action games.
Most players for time-consuming strategy games like Tropico are old people. (Betsy and Mark, are you reading??) Which makes sense because they are the people with money and time (the game is 60 bucks).
Tropico Fritz
In the afternoon, we stopped at a Jewish cemetery first. As a person who’s not that into history, I cannot speak that much about the graveyard or the culture. Then, Sam and I took off first for a little walk in the town. Due to the history and title of the town, there are dragon figures every a few blocks. Those are not like the traditional European statues, instead, they are artistic figures decorated by newspapers, plastics, etc. We met up with the group at Vannini ice cream shop where they had many unique flavors including lasagne ice cream. It got colder while we were sitting there and started to rain a bit so we decided to walk towards the train station.
We neutrally decided on a traditional schnitzel place as our last dinner with the German counterpart. The restaurant was old, traditional and cozy but the waiters didn’t really speak English. My German friend ordered a schnitzel with mushrooms for me and I also tried other’s with herb green sauce; it was mild. Schnitzel is a traditional German food that meat is pounded thinly and then deep fried. It tasted a lot like country fried steak which reminded me of Cracker Barrel for some reason.
Missing some Ketchup
The walk back home was beautiful with sun setting. We passed a bridge which was popular for couple’s to hang love locks… I was kinda sad at the bar realizing our trip has come to an end and the Germans were leaving. Hopefully I’ll see them again.
In the morning, we took a tour of Nintendo, Germany. All of us were super excited, yet some were tired(or just me). As a star company, Nintendo is very careful about its information; we were given visitor passes, had to sign in and were only exposed to certain areas. On the 16th floor is the European headquarter of Nintendo where we weren’t allowed to go. In this building, there are no game developers(they are mainly in Japan as we were told), instead, it’s a marketing and localization team for the European market. Very nice and understandable of the organizer, we were treated to some freshly brewed coffee before the tour started. After passing 100 security doors, two PR workers gave us a presentation on the company’s history, values, and leaders. The lady was very patient with us during the question session, however, all of the questions were about marketings rather than game development. Afterward, we had lunch at their cafeteria and I dripped tomato sauce on my white shirt, rip. I think the break room was the highlight of our Nintendo trip where they display the old consoles, Nintendo figures and a bunch of other gears. It was like a Nintendo museum. There was an employee only shop where I bought 2 amiibos, 4 coasters, and a keychain with the host’s help.
Nintendo’s bathroom sign Lunch with evil tomato saucePlayed a couple rounds of SmashCute Mario and cuter PennyHow a smart was parked, thought was funny
Our second stop was Crytek. For those who doesn’t know the company, they were the original developer of FarCry(Ubisoft now owns the IP), Crisis series, RYSE son of Rome, Robinson and their newest game Hunt showdown(still in EA). For their presentation, the HR demonstrated a brief overview of the company and how to get jobs in the interview. After that, Brian gave us a live demo on CryEngine; I can tell he tried really hard to sell us the engine but… In my opinion, CryEngine has a lot of potentials and may be able to compete with Unity or Enreal in 5 years, but for now, it has a lack of functionality. I understand that they made the Engine for Crysis and it’s a side project of the company, yet I just don’t think it’s ready to be popular. For example, Brian showed us how you can add invisible wheels with spring to an empty mesh to create a trampoline without writing scripts, however, you’d have to play with the two values to make the perfect elasticity. First of all, it’s kind of weird to have wheels on random meshes even though they are invisible. Second of all, it takes a lot of time to come up with the perfect values while you don’t have a formula.
Even though the presentations were a little frustrating, I enjoyed Crytek the most out of all companies. Because it was very casual and people actually make games in the office. We got to walk around their studios and talk to people, many of them were catching deadlines for Hunt’s new patch and all QAs were working hard. The whole floor was overheated, no doubt, feeling bad for the game developers. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at all due to upcoming releases.
After the two companies, we headed to a ramen place for dinner. It was a 20 minute walk and I was hangry the entire ride. My day was very fulfilling and I was satisfied with what I saw.
Eltville is a small town an hour away from Frankfurt, known for its wine, sparkling wine (Sekt), and roses. It is a very neat town that reminds me of Stardew Valley, where everyone knows everyone, there’s nothing but peace and relaxation.
I had a slow start this morning since I decided to sleep in. I pretty much just grabbed a drink from Starbucks and then got ready for our little trip. After we arrived at the town, we made our first stop at an ice cafe and I enjoyed a vanilla ice cream coffee. Then, we walked around the town a little bit and chilled by the river for a while. It was a really peaceful moment that I chatted with my friends while staring at the river. Besides boats, there were also people kayaking, crewing, jet skiing and so on. Followed by, we enjoyed some drinks at a bar by the river. It had perfect selfie lighting where I took 100 pictures until we had to leave for the garden.
The garden was absolutely beautiful! We got there at 6:30pm ish which is the time for perfect sunset lighting again!!! I made Sam take i++ pictures for me until he couldn’t bear with me anymore. (poor Sam) The mayor showed up at around 7pm and gave us a tour of the tower which contained a little museum and a small meeting room. In the museum, there was a case full of letters where capital letters are stored on the top rows, thus, they are also called upper case.
Back in the garden, the mayor prepared a little champagne and pretzel ceremony for us. It was so fancy that I have never experienced such in my life. I felt rich. Coming back home wasn’t so hot anymore, the train was actually cool and bearable. Surprising, I did not end my day at a bar again, instead, I wrote blogs with a nice mango colada by my side.
Did not steal anyone’s drink for this picture. Delicious
Today was just a traveling day. I had pretty much packed my suitcase already so my morning was chill. I sat in the cafeteria and drank coffee until our cab was almost here. Which my professor found out later that our breakfast wasn’t free; we drank 500 euros worth of coffee for the past few days.
Unfortunately, our first train was delayed that we couldn’t make it to our connection ride. However, I think the Germans are very experienced with situations like this so we quickly had a backup plan for a different connection. In the first train ride, we did not know where to get off until the very last minute so everyone was panicking to get their suitcases and to rush off the train. Our second ride was quite sick, I would say. First of all, we did not have seats where many of us had to stand for a couple of hours (I was lucky enough to get a seat). Second of all, I was overheating the entire ride!!! Especially when the train stopped for 10min before the final destination, I could not breathe there.
The hotel has a very convenient location that’s just across from the train station. But for the same reason, the hotel is also very aged without AC. I understand that it is a German thing most places don’t have ACs; so I’m trying my best to adapt. After we settled down at the hotel, it started pouring which cooled down that temperature a lot. Then, I popped into Stephen’s cab for dinner where I had caramelized pancakes. It was so delicious that it’s even compatible with my favorite dutch pancakes. I also couldn’t believe that Stephen tricked me to look away so he could steal my pancakes.
It was a very emotional day for me because I had to say goodbye to MY best friends Christina and Tobi.
I forgot that Sunday had a different bus schedule so I missed my stop and had to walk back to campus. It was HOT. My team completed the game a day before so we were just fixing some minor bugs and waiting for the presentation. In my last blog, I briefly talked about what I worked on the project and I will discuss the details below.
First of all, I created a method for the protagonist’s movement which the protagonist walks to wherever my cursor clicks. Secondly, I wrote a script for the camera to follow the player. Initially, I had the camera as a child of the Game Object Player, however, I changed it later so that the camera could stay inside the scope. During the second GameJam day, I encountered the problem that my player could walk out of the background, yet the camera follows it. It should not be difficult to fix it but I didn’t know how to scale an orthographic camera nicely. It either stayed stationary or cut off some of the backgrounds, like I couldn’t freely resize the camera. The problem got solved in the end tho!!! Afterward, I worked on some animations when events were tricked. For example, after the protagonist completes a dialog with the hover dog in the game, the hover dog takes our player outside and moves out of the screen. In the end, when I had some extra time, I developed a menu screen and an options screen for the game. In the options screen, the volume gets adjusted by using an audio mixer which was my first time using it. I was confused for a while about how to hook up the sound with my audio mixer until Phil showed me the way.
We received some feedback at presentation; some people appreciated the humor in the game, yet some think we could develop more to the story and the idea of timeline. The most impressive game from this GameJam was beat the boss due to completion. It’s a game where four players with different skills team up to fight a super difficult boss in an area. I was amazed by how much they completed in 3 days due to art, coding, game play and so on. In my opinion, muti-player 2D platform game Soshi Shinobi has the most potential for publishing.
my gameBeat the Boss
At the end of gamejam, we took a group picture together to fill the last spot on Wall of Fame. Second part of the day was free time, and I decided to hang out with my buddies one last time.
Tobi drove us to his house in a sexy convertible. Since German highway doesn’t have speed limit, I kindly asked him to speed up a little bit while Sam made him race (ik he’s bad). Schloß Neuhaus is a castle that’s surrounded by a beautiful garden and a river that goes through the town. Nowadays, Schloß Neuhaus is no longer a castle, in fact, Christina and Tobi went to high school there. We were lucky enough to witness Schützenfest where townspeople gather around to celebrate the new royalty for the upcoming year. As Christina told me, it’s usually the rich people who get selected for crowns. The four of us shared a currywurst together, add on to my German food experience.
Feeling rich in a convertible I miss them Currywurst
Funny part of the story was that I thought Christina could not join us for dinner so I had a really emotional goodbye with her, while they were invited to dinner. So I had burger with her 20 min later. The place had a 40 euro, 5 patties burger that can get you into wall of fame in the restaurant, which I decided to stay as far away as possible. After dinner, we tried to get ice cream but nothing was open since it was Sunday. Instead, we just walked around the town for the last time and chilled in the park.
In the morning, I walked pass a farmer’s market on my way to the bus stop. The Germans told me there was a farmer’s market every Wednesday and Saturday. It was like what we have in the US plus some flower shops. Besides that, there was a performance going on in the plaza as well. I didn’t stay long enough to figure what was it for, groups of girls danced. Compare to weekdays, downtown Paderborn was fairly busy. I got a mango smoothie for myself and it tasted like strawberry with a pink look.
My mango smoothie
Farmer’s market
By the end of this day, Our game was pretty much finished and all of us attended a BBQ together. The BBQ took place in a park that was 10 min away from the lab. It was a casual and relaxing place where people have picnics, smoke hookah, get a tan, etc. While the organizers were preparing BBQ for us, I tried out two beers, Becks and another beer mixed with sprite. Becks was slighter better compare to the other, but neither of them impressed me that much. It was a very engaging event for us and the Germans; we shared information on different food, movies, music and so on. Unfortunately, the park didn’t contain a bathroom which was a little inconvenient for me.
After the BBQ, I came back to the game lab and wrapped up my work.
At night, Christina dragged me out of my bed to a bar with a club. Since she had a friend work there, I got in for free. They didn’t even ID me, which was weird. In contrast to the bars we went to, this one had really loud music that people had to scream at each other. #relatable Most of the music was German EDM I feel like but they played American pop on occasion such as Uptown Funk, I love It, etc. I was quite drunk at the end.
I think I’ll start this blog by introducing my team. My team consists 3 programmers including me, 2.5 artists, 1.5 musicians, and 3 game designers. Everyone is very nice to me (Markus is special, there’s always the weird one on a team), even though everyone else is German but they try to speak as much English as possible to make me welcomed. After we were dismissed from the lab room, the team leader locked us into a creepy, small, hot, and terrifying room to further discuss the concept of the game. We finally agreed on a point and click adventure game with a cyber western background. It was a totally peaceful discussion without people yelling at each other.
One thing I have to complain is that the lab is soooooooooo hot!!!!!! Around 30+ computers are running Unity, Adobe and rendering at the same time. The heat generated in this room is worse than RIT’s dorm(which you know how those are). Thank God we have 2.5 fridges in the room that are filled with drinks(I promise you, no one hides beer in the lab).
Team Meeing
By the end of the first day, I was already pretty close to my teammates and we have the tasks nicely divided. I was in charge of the character’s movement, main camera, and menu; Sebastion has implemented a dialogs system for the Game Designers to write scripts; Alex worked on an inventory class. The basic game was set up and the next step is to further develop the game logic. Very excited to see what the game turns out to be. I have always been a fan of puzzle games and this is my first time working on a puzzle game. Even though I was mainly programming for the game instead of storytelling, I’m pumped to develop a puzzle adventure game as my side project.
Even though we met up at a reasonable time 10:45 am, I was still tired in the morning…… (like usual) We took a train to a non-existing city Bielefeld, where Sparrenburg castle is located. On the way to the restaurant, we past two McDonalds and a carnival.
Garlic Pasta with a coffee
After lunch, we walked up a hundred hills to the castle. The weather was beautiful and so was the view. Our tour guide gave us a brief introduction about the fortress in German and I totally understood it… Very nice of Volker to translate everything for us. Followed by, we traveled through some underground tunnels and visited several dark rooms including a jail. We finished our short visit by climbing the tower and the view on top was absolutely breathtaking.
Welcome to my house
Best part of the day was ice cream. Sam kept selling this ice cream to us that the whole group was very pumped to try out Spaghetti ice cream. The flavor is the same but the ice cream was formed in the shape of Spaghetti noodles. I also accompanied my ice cream with a cup of coffee. The weird Germans serve hot coffee in a glass with a straw… I burned my mouth….
Not my ice cream, the picture is stolen from Patrick
The second day started too early for me… I was half awake for the museum.
In the morning, we went to Heinz Nixdorf Museum which is donated by Nixdorf(surprise!). The museum combines both old historical machines and some new technolgoies. I was very impressed by a lot of the old chunky computers that you had to manually switch inputs. The high teched robots are attractive as well.
After our trip to the museum, we headed back to the campus for an AI talk. In my opinion, AI is the future for all humans and the question is how would AI work in the gaming industry? Right now, most of the AIs that exist in games are weak AIs, they only work for one specific task and they are based on finite state machines. I think strategy games would be a good start for AI in games.
In the afternoon, I took a nice nap until it was time for board games!!!!! I hung out with the German students and tried out a bunch of board games I never tried. Firstly, I played a game called Circus, it’s a toy building game with some strategies. Basically, you earn points by finishing different constructions, bonus is available if you complete certain tasks. I enjoyed my second board game quite a lot, everyone competes individually, yet you have to collaborate with your neighbors to get points. You map a city with your neighbor and certain combos can earn you points, such as adjacent malls. I was tied for second place in the end. Some of the Germans tried to make us stay by offering wine and beer. LOL.
