Reading Week is GREAT

Hello Amazing People,

     This week has been reading week for myself and others in my program. It's been nice so far, I've been able to relax and get some more rest, but I've also spent the majority doing work.

     The funny thing is, I'm not complaining. I've enjoyed sitting at home in a chair nicer than the one I have at school, doing work that I enjoy, and learning/relearning things that I will need to know for midterms.

     In the past week and a half I've made some great progress mentally in my personal understanding of the code that is going into the game we are making. I managed to code two shaders and complete 4 assignments for computer graphics. I went to every possible office hours opportunity that I could and learned how VAOs work (in detail) and how their information is used inside of shaders.
   
     I feel much more confident being able to sit down and create a shader program on my own now. My biggest problems (that I believe everyone is struggling with at this moment) are syntax errors in shaders, but those can be solved by some good amounts of focus and a lot of re-reading on my part.

     Stephen managed to get reflections working on the water in our game. The color requires a little tweaking and some randomness needs to be added as well, but for the most part it's looking great and is working as it should!

     As you can see, the lighter color is the highlights. Yes, they do move, and yes it is a beautiful feeling to have them working now. Also, there is lighting now on the ship model itself (calculated and applied via shaders - and also what I used for an assignment).

     The ship is also being loaded and texture with VAOs as I was talking about previously. This was a struggle for me for a while, but with the help of Dan I managed to get it finished and working perfectly.

     As for me now and going into the next week after the break, I will be continuing to study, and implementing menus (main and pause) as well as hopefully getting the updated HUD back into the game because I'm simply waiting on the artist at this point. 

Thank for checking out the updates,

Brayden. 

A Title to End ALL TItles

Captains log...Week 5.
     It's been an interesting week. After working on VBOs for a good 3 weeks and pulling my hair out over not being able to figure it out, Dan gave me a good amount of assistance to finish it off and I've got to say that I knew I would never come up with that, but it's not very hard. I think I was just getting myself too frustrated. I'll work on that, but coding for a few days on the same thing and having it not work...it's a little frustrating (a little is a huge understatement).

     I've been trying to get my first homework assignment finished for Computer Graphics, but I'm having some troubles figuring out how to get the variables in my game linked with the ones in my shaders. And since Dan's hours are now busy with other people's assignments I won't be able to get in the questions, darn.

     However, that's not too big of a deal because I've been making some great progress on my computer architecture assignment, and I still have some time to finish it, plus it's fairly easy, and I have all of the calculations set up and ready to go, I just need to get the variables/information through to the shaders properly.

     On the more personal side of things, Marc LePage and I might be making a bit of a colaboration on a song. I think that's pretty awesome, and it should be really good. Stay tuned for that, unless you don't care to hear it, in which case ignore this I guess...

Thanks for the read-through, have a great weekend.

Brayden Out!