Leaving Ohio, Heading to Work

Sam Williams,
Senior, Computer Science

Athens, OH 23 April 2013 – It’s down to the wire: we’re all facing the last two weeks of school this year. For me and many others, this is the last stretch of undergrad ever. This is both exhilarating and terrifying. On the one hand we’ll be moving on to bigger and better things, like grad school, jobs, or year-long breaks traveling the world, to name a few. But on the other, we’ll be leaving behind friends and experiences we may not ever have again.

Personally, I’m headed into the workforce. My job search was long, bumbling, and more often than not, hair-fall-out-ingly stressful. I made all the newbie mistakes. I made my portfolio too big, unorganized, made my resume too wordy, and shotgunned out applications with barely enough time to make sure I hadn’t insulted my reader by mixing up company names.

I also did some things right. I started working on my portfolio, resume, and general web presence in October, giving myself plenty of time to attend to mistakes and revise my image based on classmates’ feedback. I also kept all my professional content true to myself and my goals. I didn’t try to be anything I’m not.

After a lot of hard work and mistakes, I finally landed a pleasing offer at Sunstorm Games in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’ve just signed on with them and I’m very excited to start working with them this summer. There, I will be helping their art team make mobile children’s games, a job that will put my major to perfect use! I’m looking forward to having my own place, earning money, and working with a group of people who treat me like a valued friend and comrade.

I’m wishing luck to all other graduates, no matter what their plans may be. OU, Oh Yeah!

Ping Recreation Center and Wallyball

Weston Martin,
Junior, Computer Science

Athens, OH 3 December 2012 – During my time here at Ohio University, I have had stressful times as the pace of courses gets busy. One of the things I do to relieve stress is workout to get my mind off of things. Lately I have been going to the weight rooms in Ping Student Rec Center and when time permits, I jump on the ergs (rowing machines) a few times a week. There are two big weight rooms in Ping and too many cardio machines to count. They also have a whole indoor track on the third floor! I think it’s safe to say that Ping Center is one of the most awesome rec centers I have ever been in.

Apart from just working out, Ping has a rock climbing wall, racquetball courts, basketball courts, squash courts, indoor soccer courts, and just about every type of court you could ever possibly want.

One of my favorite things to do at Ping though is play wallyball. Wallyball is like volleyball but instead of having a huge open court, you play inside a racquetball court with walls all around you. The rules are very similar to volleyball except for my favorite rule; you can hit the ball off the walls. Although I’m rather bad at it, playing wallyball with my friends is something that always refreshes and in a way relaxes me.

Animation Project

Sam Williams,
Senior, Computer Science

Athens, OH dd Month 2012 – As the semester is nearing its final third, a lot of my classes are entering their final project stages. For example, in 2D Animation, we’ve been making traditional animations (using paper, pencil, and a light board) all semester. Now, we are beginning a 5-week project that will run from now until finals week. We get to animate anything we want, using what we learned from the previous projects. The finished product should be at least 30 seconds long. I am very excited to begin working on this. I have decided to take up a project idea I had in high school, but was unable to do, due to my lack of animation knowledge. Now that I know what to do, I think I can achieve that dream that I had such a long time ago. I hope it turns out well!

This semester has been going on for quite a long time. It’s almost the end of the fall quarter I’ve been used to for the past three years, so I’m afraid the coming weeks are going to be a little painful. With five classes instead of four and imbalanced workloads as professors try to figure out how semesters are going to work, I’ve been pretty stressed. Sometimes, when I feel like this, I just need to get away. When I want to get away, I go to the GRID Lab in Scott Quad. Nestled in the basement, the GRID Lab is home to the majority of the game design students’ outside-of-class game-making activity. I can go there to work on fun projects, meet with teammates and friends, or just sit alone for a few hours and play games on one of the TV stations they have set up with several of the latest consoles. It’s cool and dark and usually relatively quiet. It’s the perfect place to go and relax for a while. I’m definitely going to need that as the semester extends into the normal fall quarter’s break.

OU Game Design Association

Weston Martin,
Junior, Computer Science

Athens, OH 27 October 2012 – One of the student organizations I got involved with this year is OUGDA, which stands for Ohio University Game Design Association. OUGDA is an organization for anyone who wants to make video games no matter what major they are. We meet once a week and do some sort of game-design-related activity. For example, this past week there was a charades competition only instead of acting the words out yourself, you animate a 3D model of a person to act them out.

They also have these things called game jams every once in a while. A game jam is an event that lasts all day from early in the morning to late at night. During this time we create a game together from start to finish which includes coming up with the idea/design, doing all the animation and modeling, and doing all the programming.

Other than the different events, OUGDA also has a mentoring program. That means that members can choose to be mentored in one or more of a few different areas (programming, 2D art, 3D modeling, level design, and more!). Then a more experienced member will serve as a mentor in that area. The mentors will give out “homework assignments” that can be completed at your own pace and they also offer advice and answer questions. So far, I have learned a lot from being in OUGDA and I have definitely had a lot of fun doing it. I can’t wait to see what else we do throughout the rest of the year

Digital Game Design

Weston Martin,
Junior, Computer Science

Athens, 22 September 2012 – This semester at Ohio University I am in a total of 6 classes. My AI (artificial intelligence) class is definitely among my favorites and a lot of my friends agree that a course about artificial intelligence sounds pretty awesome. However, many of them are surprised to find out that it is not my favorite class this semester. Many of them ask me “What could possibly be better than a class about creating machines that think and act like humans?” The answer is digital game design.

In the class, we learn about what makes games fun and addicting as well as challenging and rewarding to play. We learn through hands on experience and we actually get into teams and design our own games! The professor both encourages us to think outside of the box and challenges us to not just look at the obvious of what aspects of a game is good or not, but rather to understand why certain parts of the game make us experience different things and why those experiences are good or bad.

And the best thing about the class is that part of our homework is to play video games! We then take the experiences from the game we just played and pick it apart into different pieces and describe those pieces. I have already learned a lot from this class and it has only been four weeks since the class began! Although I enjoy most of my classes, this is one of the few classes that I always look forward to attending no matter what and I am actually excited when the professor hands out assignments. I am very excited to see where the class takes me in the future and I hope to one day use my degree in computer science to do exactly what this class is teaching me to do, design and program video games for everyone to enjoy.