I turned the heat down this semester by only taking two classes. It turns out that was the right call, since those two classes ended up taking almost all of my spare time. Interactive Machinima, a relatively new course to the Computer Science program, had us creating short films using Half-Life 2 and the Source engine. Some of the results were really extraordinary, and many of the finished films are viewable online.

Software Practice II was a continuation of last semester’s course where we learn the principles of software engineering and taking ideas through the design process. We used C# and XNA Game Studio to build games that were eventually deployed on the Xbox 360, which was pretty cool, all things considered. It’s not every day that one can say that he got his custom code running on a modern and very content-restricted platform. For all the flak that Microsoft gets, they got XNA right and it was a lot of fun (and a lot of work).

I got only four and a half hours of sleep last night in preparation for our live game demonstration this morning, and I am awfully tired. Summer, here we come!