Sunday, 2 March 2014

Ideas, University and No Smoking



Business Launch Pad
Last semester I took part in this http://businesslaunchpad.ulster.ac.uk/about.html where you are meant to come up with a business idea and then proceed to flesh it out to get to a point where you are able to pitch this to future investors. I still feel that I would love to follow through on this but I need to spend a good week on it to really get all the areas fully fleshed out. If I am unable to get this sorted out before the end of the semester and get counted for university credits I will continue= this and get it finished.
Been enjoying the Blue Swede after watching the Guardians of the Galaxy and hearing the song Hooked on a Feelin’ (linked below)

Current Video Plans
Hearthstone; Mediacore Opinions; Black Slate Production Game Update; University Related Videos; Mediacore Pre-Generations; Mediacore Current Opinions News’ish
So this is not a comprehensive list of what I plan on getting sorted or what I think I will get sorted just a glimpse of what I am currently thinking about. 
Hearthstone – this will be me playing arena mode and having a bit of fun. I am thinking I may need an intro for this but really not necessary. 
Mediacore Opinions – This will serve as the reviewing section for myself really to illustrate the current positives and negatives that I have seen in the game and not attempting a critique of the way I think it should be done. Again it is called Mediacore Opinions for a reason. 
Black Slate Production Game Update – Within my university course a team that I am heading are making a game idea and I think that this could be documented quite well, may be interesting. 
University Related Videos – where I was thinking that this would be fantastic for me to do revision with producing these shows, this will show my knowledge of the topic while helping that knowledge to spread to others while reinforcing it in my head as well. 
Mediacore Pre-Generations -  where we will start of a generation (e.g. NES) and just go through it at the same pace as the current generation and draw comparisons, with a review of games of that generation and (like retronoobz) to see if they will hold up. 
Mediacore Current Opinions News’ish – or something to that effect. :P


Electronic Cig
I have to fully thank the Electronic Cigarette for getting me completely off both the normal cigarettes and nicotine for about 7 months now. I will probably be making a bigger post about this or a video but just wanted to pay thanks to the company that helped. This isn’t really what they are intended for but I felt they were a great help.


New Pages on Blogger
OOOOHHhhhh I have went all fancy, I am now using the pages on the blogger. I will be putting all my online contact details and such things like twitter on the same page. This will have the added benefit that if I want to put all the contact details on a description, for instance, they will be prepared all in the same place. I will also be using the blogger where I will put all the content through and then I will have a paste of this where I can paste it into all the parts of moltile, where all get updated at once. I can also create new pages for different things like a gifts page on steam or content that I am working on for example.

Hearthstone & University

Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft
My goodness I have finally found my card game. Online where I don't have to sink all the monies into it and it seems to be generally balanced well and the 3 different modes present a different challenge to myself keeping it fresh. I highly recommend it as it is free and you don't have to spend real money on it if you don't want to. Whenever I do get a better cash flow after the student life I will hopefully be able to spend some real world money to basically say "yes keep this up blizzard".

Episode 3 of Moltile plays Hearthstone Arena



Moltile plays Hearthstone Arena Episode 3
Card Overview:  00:30 to 02:20
Play 1 02:49 to 15:23
Play 2 16:04 to 32:39
Play 3 33:15 to 40:05
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I had seen the company NineDotStudio on extra credits a while back and they seemed like a great company fighting for an improvement in the game development lifestyle. Then I saw their game that they are working on and my jaw hit the floor of how beautiful the assets were for the game. I do plan on getting the game and hopefully doing a video for it as well. This is their URL http://ninedotsstudio.com/
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=134884522



Current University Life
The travel is long but the work is hard.
Firstly I wouldn't trade where I am, what I am doing and where I think I am going but it doesn't stop me from feeling the strain of the workload on top of the hard travel. I am in class only 3 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday) but I usually need to go in another 1 or 2 days each week. This is again due to the workload and the type of work. Travel consists of leaving the house at 5am to walk a couple of miles to get my first bus. This takes me near the Belfast bus station where I get the 6:30am bus to Derry/Londonderry to get me in for 8:30am. Then it is a quick 20min walk to the uni after that. Coming home is the same distance, obviously, but not the same timing. On the commute home I roll the dice whenever I get my work done, if I get the Derry/Londonderry bus back to Belfast at 5pm I only have to wait 20min in the bus station for my next bus. Otherwise if I get the 5:30pm bus I will have to wait in the bus station for over an hour.

The work is, overall, very hard, and it isn't the work itself generally it is just the large amount of it that needs to be done in such a short time frame. All the while we are meant to be working on personal projects, making a portfolio and revising for the tests that are littered through out the semester. Oh well, if things go according to plan I will have a game with one level done, a placement for next year, exams finished, portfolio looking awesome and a new computer screen all sorted by end of May. Still, as of writing, I have yet to buy my tablet to do more work on the bus but I have been a bit busy. :P

The other main gripe with university is the course I picked has a 1 Year in the Game Developing Industry Placement, which basically means I work for a company for a bit less than their usual staff and they get help, in the form of money, to train me. I thought as this was an essential part of the course that the university would be set up to assist me in finding this. As I have found out this was a massive, NO! Really they are set up only for their Computer Science students and even at that they are not perfect on this front either. With the earlier time constraints that I mentioned earlier there are the additional hindrances of no help and no direction on how to go about securing a placement. I will be attempting to get this years students to feed back into the placement so that future students will have a fighting chance but not before I get my own placement sorted out.


Saturday, 25 January 2014

Its been so long and...

*I GOT SO FAR, IN THE END IT* seems to been quite enjoyable. It really has been an age since I have made a post. I have now moved again to Belfast and went through Semester 1 of my Second Year in University. The modules were not great but I have enjoyed the time spent in university all the same. I really do wonder if anyone is doing the whole "drink, drugs, slacking and uni" thing because I have yet to find 3 within my year (I say 3 because I have found 2 but unsure if they would be doing anything else in any other circumstances).

That semester had a massive portion of it dedicated to travel. When I took the bus it was, for the whole day, 5 hours and 50 min which does not include waiting times between buses. With the train we add on one more hour but I did decide on this on some days because I was able to work on the laptop rather than just notepads. As you can imagine working on a computer is quite a bit better for me as I am programming. I have now been trying to decide on a tablet because I think that this will allow me to work on the but and not have to sacrifice that extra hour a day on just pure travel. Started to see what would be available to me on the contract that I already have as I have an upgrade coming up but it seemed that of the ones available I would be paying more that £45 a month for a decent one. So now my decision is to go pay as you go on the phone (and pick up a new phone another time) and get tablet through a different contract directly for the product that I want. This also seems to be the cheaper of the options as well as I can pick up the same length of contract for about 1/3 of the price. The current struggle is 1) between android and windows 2)Stylus or No Stylus 3)Keyboard hard or soft? So because of this below are the current ideas that I am mulling with.

Asus Vivo Tablet PC TF810C, Intel Atom Z2760, 2GB RAM, 64GB Flash, 11.6" HD Touch, 2 Cameras, Bluetooth, Windows 8 

Asus Vivo Tablet PC - £449.99 - Link
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Asus TF701T Transformer Tablet PC, NVIDIA Tegra 4 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC, 10.1" Touch, Wifi, 2 Cameras, Bluetooth, Android JellyBean 4.2
Asus TF701T Transformer Tablet PC - £429.00 - Link
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Acer Iconia W700p Tablet PC, Intel Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, 128GB Flash, 11.6" Touch, Camera, Wifi, Bluetooth, Windows 8 Pro - Includes Keyboard Case
Acer Iconia W700p Tablet PC - £680.99 - Link
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Samsung Galaxy Note - £356.00 - Link
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Samsung Galaxy Note, Big Core 1.9GHz Quad + Little core 1.3GHz, 16GB Flash, 3GB RAM, 10.1" Touch, Wifi, Bluetooth, 2 Cameras, Android - 2014 Ed
Samsung Galaxy Note 2014 - £422.50 - Link
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Tablet PC, Dual Core CPU 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 16GB HDD, 10.1" Touch, 2 Camera, Wifi, Bluetooth, Android 4.2
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 - £303.10 - Link 
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 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, Dual Core CPU 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 16GB Flash, 10.1" Touch, Wifi, Bluetooth, 2 Cameras, Android 4.2
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 - £280.49 - Link
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