Updates!

Day 15 – 22th June

Well today my group works towards on our next milestone, The First Runnable. I held a long long meeting for sprint estimation planning which last 3 hours and we still have a part to finish tomorrow. For the estimation planning, basically our group will go through the backlog I had come up with and the respective roles will give an estimated time to finish each task. Spend the most doing estimated planning and sprint tasks up while the rest of the group works on the remaining tasks for the milestone.

Day 16 – 23th June

Today I had weekly producer meeting and nothing for me to share to other producers as my group is doing fine. I then continue to work on the sprint list and backlog for an hour or so. After that I helped my QA with bug testing and assist my group in completing the milestone.

Day 17 – 24th June, Day 18 – 25th June & Day 19 – 26th June

Well, day passes well with nothing much happen. My group submitted our release build for the First Runnable milestone task and started to work on the next milestone: The First Playable. Which needs the game to be running with our core mechanics, my team is progressing quite on track and hopefully I won’t have to cut down features. And on Friday evening, 8 of us, Don; Kenji; Fu Er; Chang You; Jeff; Ben; Jet; and I are going to New York for a short trip over the weekends. Looking forward to New York. New York here I come!

Day 22 – 29th June

New York is FUN! On Friday night, after work, we rushed back to the dorm to take our bags before heading to Chinatown for dinner. We kind of had a rush dinner as we were rushing for our 8pm coach. We reached the bus terminal at 7.45pm but received a bad news. We had to check in 30 mins before 8pm and the bus was fully packed and just left. Well no choice, we stood in the queue for 45 mins for the next bus. We arrived in New York and settled ourselves in our hostel at around 2 plus a.m.! For the 2 days activities, mainly we went sightseeing like went up the Empire State Building; explored Chinatown and Little Italy; went to Wall Street, etc. 8 of us basically walked till our legs were calling for help before is time to go back to Boston. Well I find New York night life much much active than in Boston, could say because we lived in Times Square. But the street of Times Square at around 2am was still crowded.

Well dragged my aching and tired body to work! Today as usually, started with scrum meeting and then we had a half an hour talk on UI design. After that, I went around the group for second round of estimation planning to check if the tasks are able to complete for this coming milestone. After that as I was free, I helped the programmers to do a splash screen and then tried to do multiple music insertions for our game. The splash screen was easy, I finished in 15 mins but I spent like 5 hours to try to do the music insertions but in the end it failed. What a day. After work we had our weekly guest speaker talks and then went to supermarket with a few to get our weekly dinner supplies. That’s all for today.

Week compilation!

June 26

Finally, we had our plans done up and ready to go, really excited for the weekend to go shopping again. There were really some problems to be addressed before moving on and I'm glad that we took the time to draft things out and put it down on paper so that our plans can continue. We should never be blocked by authority issues again. Target problems at matters not people.

A team should stick together.

June 25

The new milestone is really getting to people and something must be done. Although we were always taught that actions speak louder than words? but words can be used to follow up an action to bring the correct message across, that's really important.

June 24

New milstone! Happily passed the previous milestone!

There were 3 teenage testers coming down to test the game today and it was really comforting to know that our game had a positive feedback and looking forward to building to reach out to more positive feedbacks.

June 23

Fruits-buying day! Went down to east campus after to get my hands on fresh fruits from the weekly fruit sellers who would come by every Tuesday to sell fruits outside of east campus. I bought strawberries, raspberries and blueberries at a low cost of $8! They are fresh and sweet. After that, it was off to cook dinner with Snake, Rini and Broy. We had honey soy suace chicken, striy fry vegetables and rice. It was very filling and the after-effect of eating too much is wanting to sleep and growing fat!

We changed alot of stuff!

June 22

Monday blues. It was a very lazy day and no one wanted to get up. It was a nice day to sleep in with the cold weather so it was a good idea to have lamb curry rice during lunch. I have been eating the middle-east food truck which offers chicken, beef, lamb wraps or with rice and the beef is so tender it melts in your mouth. Lunch was my motivation today.

After work, there was a talk by Nick Monfort on "Understanding games on the platform". This is the link to his profile http://nickm.com/. Then, we had dinner and I played some games after and went to bed!

22 June 2009

i found my very first bug today, and the following bug right after. I tried to use my knowledge of Fogbugz and tried sending the bug report to programmer. It was resolved not too long after.

I cook a fried egg today and heat up some frozen food for dinner

23 June 2009

I collected few data and feedback for the current build. Though most of the problems are already known to most of us.

I cooked another fried egg today, however i accidentally poured too much chilly powder and ended up choking a lot of people


24 June 2009

I gather everyone's file today and send it to Perforce. Marleigh and our producer do a last check before approval. We used the sprint card for first time, honestly it wasted a lot of precious time. I skip the last part of sprint backlog as Rik taught me how to use the build machine for the first time. he was still unsure about few stuffs and then will teach the QAs 1 by 1 soon.

Ate free fried rice given by GOOGLE today and watch Shoot Em Up at night, it was a very cool show though with weak story.

25 June 2009

Alright, after the QA meetingwe pass the first milestone... I discussed of what questions I have to put for the open testing with everyone. I also print some questionnaire for the open testing. Rik taught me how to use the build machine today. Open testing is postponed for Friday.

I ate the same pizza as usual and went home right away.

So for today...

Nothing much I guess. We decided on who should do what and how much time we should take up for each task to get the product completed in the most polished way. So yea, I took up the task as a modeler and a rigger and I would be doing that for the most part. Other than that, I was mostly involved in using the tools the programmers created to bring the art assets back and forth in the pipeline to test the algorithm that MIT previously created. Other than that, I drank two cups of hot chocolate today..

After coming back to the dorm, I watched Shoot 'em Up with my friends on the fifth floor. After that, I came back to the dorm to do my packing for my Dallas trip, which I'm looking forward to so much. At least I wouldn't have to blog anything on those two days...

Well, that's all for now. Nothing interesting happened today...

Last day of the week!

June 19

We got the green light to move on into development! It was really exciting to wait for the results and no one failed. The judges showed us some really important points to consider and it should not be overlooked or ignored. The lesson learnt here is to sometimes step back and see from a point of view of others to know what's really the problem, which in this case applies to me the most as Quality Assurance Lead to look at the game from different perspectives.

Oh.. and since I did not blog previously much which is kind of like not acceptable, I thought I'd write something small anyways for the sake of it..

I'm leaving for Texas this Friday. To see my sister and her family. They've been living there for like 6 years now and they just moved house recently. Well, not out of Texas, just another neighborhood or something. So yea.. I'm pretty excited to see them, especially my one year old nephew. The last time I saw him, he was about 8 months I think. Back then, he was only crawling. Now he can walk and run, so I guess it should be fun.

The sad thing is that I'm going there only for a weekend. I'll be back on Sunday night. Oh well..

I really don't know what else to say. I guess I'll type random stuff here as soon as I come up with it.

Okay..

So I was told that I HAVE TO blog on a daily basis, even though I practically don't do anything after work and that I'm not allowed to talk about work. So I'll do what I can I guess. Here goes...

So today, the programmers in my team developed awesome tools for the artists. Again, I guess I can't talk about it. It was basically to make the pipeline better, and I felt as if I was in a company like ILM where the technical director makes custom tools for the CG department to work through the pipeline. Now I really feel that I'm working professionally.

I was tasked to create a few 3D low-poly game-compatible models so I did that. And then my fellow artist, Yue Li, came over and helped me and taught me on how game models should be modeled. The approach is entirely different as opposed to that of modeling for high-quality rendering purposes. I guess it took me a while to understand that technique of modeling through triangles. It will take me some time to master it, but I will definitely do it.

What else happened today... hmm... lets see... oh yea, I drank hot chocolate with lots of cocoa powder and three packets of sugar. It was sweet, but just the way I like it.

Other than that, for a lack of better things to say, I tried showering in a different showering room today, which was kind of small. The good thing was that the water pressure was really high and I enjoyed it. The bad thing was that it was very small and even though I used plastic bags, my towel and clothes got wet. Oh well, there's always compromise in everything.

To conclude, I love the weather here. It always rains and people say its gloomy, I say its awesome. The rain is different here. Small and tiny raindrops which really makes you shiver in a different way. Nice..

Hello..

So here's my third or so weekly post.

Work has been going pretty fine I guess. There's nothing much I can say to that, except for the fact that I'm getting to know my team members really well - personally as well as professionally. I guess its really fun to work with these great guys. So much of sharing of skills and expertise. Nice..

So anyway, I went quite a bit of sightseeing. I went to for a whale watch cruise yesterday. But the weather was stormy, so after going out into the sea for like 40 minutes, we turned back because a lot of people were puking as they were sea sick. But let me tell you something. That boat ride was simply AWESOME!!!!!!!!! I swear it man. Never in my life have I encountered such a thrilling moment. Due to the stormy weather, the sea was really choppy and rough and the ferry was travelling at an awesomely high speed. I went outside at the front of the ship - and my goodness, it was so damn windy. I literally couldn't stand still, even after holding onto a railing or something. It was so great. Afterwards, I went inside the sheltered area to sit down, and whoaaa... it was so awesome inside as well. All the passengers literally jumped off their seats as the boat rocked violently under the water. Seriously man, this was the most fun time of my life. Anyway, the sad thing is that we couldn't see any whales, so we turned back and got a free complimentary ticket. Oh well, at least I can look forward to going back again :D

And then after that, I went to watch Ice Age III in 3D. Another super awesome movie, especially when viewed in 3D. And then after that, I watched The Taking of Pelham 123. That was great too. Enjoyed it.

A couple of time, I went to Burger King, and found out one amazing thing. America totally rules man, in that vegetarians can easily survive here!!! There's so much food! At every single restaurant! I cant get enough of vegetarian food. And I don't mean by vegetables only as how some ignorant people might think that that's the only food vegetarians eat! I mean literally a lot of dishes which don't even look anything close to vegetables. This is one major problem I face in Singapore, and I find it to be so much better here. Anyway, so I realized that Burger King sold BK veggie meal (not just vegetables inside, mind you!) with a veggie patty! What's greater than that!

So today, a few of us gathered in the common kitchen for dinner, and I cooked pasta for everyone. My friend helped to cook omelet. Very awesome dinner, and very filling too.

That's it I guess. I don't do much in weekdays because its purely work and most of the times I'm tired, so I just return back to the dorm to rest or whatsoever.

Sunday

Day 14 – 21th June

Woke up late today and went shopping with a group of people. We went to Prudential Centre for lunch and after that most of the group headed to Game Stop to look for games. Xue Jin, Faizah and I went opposite to another shopping centre as I wished to check out prices for Coach and other brands. Well, not really much of a difference compared to Singapore as now there is GSS. 3 of us went back to Game Stop to regroup first before heading to Filene’s Basement, a shop recommended by Gene for cheap branded labels. However, I find the prices around the same price as in Singapore. After walking for awhile, the group split as Fu Er, Chang You, Jeff and I went to Harvard Square for some gift shops while the rest headed somewhere else. In the end, I bought a coin purse for my girlfriend and some interesting US money notes. I headed back to dorm to cook my dinner. I had bacon, eggs, sausages and fried rice for dinner. AND AFTER DINNER, I WAS LOCKED OUT OF MY ROOM FOR 1HOUR15MINUTES!!! I had to wait till master key came from another department. Going to turn in for an early night as work starts again! Looking forward to tomorrow as actual development is starting.

Weekends

Day 12 – 19th June

Friday! Weekends are coming! Well today as usual, I started the day off with scrum meeting and after that I decided to hold another brain storming session for more fiction ideas as we received some feedbacks about our current fiction being too common. Well, my artist started his / her mood swing again and started crying after her ‘married’ fiction idea was suddenly going to change again. Well, being a producer, I was busy the whole day cause of that artist, having a lot of urgent meetings with Philip, Andrew or Jason. Well, basically I think that the artist is quite stubborn to changes or rather hard to accept new changes. So all the staffs could only advise and encourage to a certain extent, so it will be up to that artist to mature. After this time of crying, some of the team members felt quite uncomfortable working with that artist and expressed their concern to me. Well, if this continuing, Gambit has no choice but to do the extreme way in order not to disturb the team in progression. Anyway I had Andrew and Philip telling me not to let this matter get me down as even experienced manager will encounter this. I had experienced that being a counselor is not an easy job. A lot more to learn or experience during this summer! Handling this matter already spent most of my day and I spend the last hour doing first phase of product backlog. After work, Jet treated me, Kenny, Ben and Snake for dinner at a Chinese restaurant! It was a nice dinner, thanks Mr Jet Lim. After dinner, we headed back to Shaw’s Super Market to buy ice cream back to office to eat while waiting for our trial online conference with our juniors back in TP. Well, during the conference, Kenny and I shared some of our experience here and also Ben and Snake also shared about the artists’ experience and some rough job scope. The conference lasted about an hour and started playing rock band in the office. Anyway, I hoped more of my juniors can come to Gambit next year as this attachment is VERY benefit in learning about game development and its process.

Day 13 – 20th June

Saturday, WEEKEND! Woot. I ended up sleeping till 11am as I meeting a few of the group here to go shop for my shoes! I needed a sport shoes to play basketball here. My jie jie, Fu Er; her bf, Chang You; my QA, Jeff; and Kenji accompanied me to find sport shoes. So nice of them! We started off with Urban Renewal at Harvard Ave but we decided to have lunch just opposite the shop. We ate nice beef noodle with FANASTIC jumbo pan fried soft shell crabs! Nice lunch, after that we headed to Urban Renewal, which is a 2nd hand shop with a lot interesting and cheap stuffs. I did not find my shoes there but Kenji bought a leather coat for only 15 bucks. After that we walked over to Everett Street to find the shop, New Balance. But apparently, the map on Google Map is not really accurate and we did not find the shop at first. However we saw AJ-WRIGHT which was another cheap shopping heaven. We spent a lot of time in there and we bought a lot of stuffs. 5 of us spent nearly $400 inside the shop where most items cost only $5-$20 per item. Imagined how many things we bought! So we carried bags and bags of shopping and decided to head back to dorm to put our things before going for dinner. Anyway we went to Shaw’s to get food to cook back at dorm. Kenji and I we bought fresh fish and French Fries to make fish and chip which was SUPER NICE. We watched Frequency while eating. Going shopping again tomorrow. Tada

After first milestone: Green Light Meeting :)

Day 9 - 16th June

Today I was faced with a hit from the role of producer. 1 of my artist, not mentioning names here, stressed out and started crying. The rough idea of what happened was that game idea the artists were working on was scraped off after the product owner thought that it might be too difficult to finish in the summer. That artist apparently was too ‘married’ to the game idea so much that he/she could not take it after I announced to scrape off the game idea after the scrum. He / She went to the toilet to cry and also cried in the office. This really put me into test on how to handle the situation; firstly I started to try to talk to her. But being stressed out and crying, no one in the world will listen at this point of time. I tried to give her some time to cry all out but when I felt the team morale was going down due to this incident. I seek for help, as my embed staff was in the meeting, I looked for my producer mentor, Rik for assistance. He immediately came over to help me even though he was discussing things with his own team. Thanks Rik! He talked to that artist and also with the help of the whole team encouragements. That artist finally stopped crying and tried to do some work. But that was not the end for me, as Rik and I felt that that artist was not really okay. And as my embed staff, Andrew had finish his meeting, the 3 of us held a mini urgent meeting in this office. Anyway, we felt that the best choice was to get Jason, Art mentor to talk to that artist. And this was I had been doing from morning till lunch. After lunch was producer meeting which helped me a lot as we had a lot of discussion about our team problems. Anyway, all producers’ meetings are to be kept confidential but I received a few tips to try aid the artist to overcome this tough period. However, most tips are not relevant to assist that artist due to that artist personalities and mindset. So is up to me to bring the team and that artist morale up up and up. ‘Welcome to the world’ Quoted to me by Andrew after the mini meeting. Hahaha. Anywhere did not do much work today as busy with team management after 2 meetings. Also learnt one important thing today, DO NOT get too attached with game ideas when brain storming. Learn how to think and trash them away if they are not useful even how brilliant your ideas are. So an advice to juniors or anyone if they are reading this blog, the first or second week of game development are the hardest as you will feel emotionally stressed out due to a lot factors. Don’t give yourselves so much stress! Hopefully I won’t get stressed out! Signed off.

Day 10 – 17th June

Today, my group was kind of rushing tasks for the green light meeting milestone tomorrow. I kicked off the day with the usual scrum meeting, and then assigned tasks for them to prepare for the green light meeting. That artist was feeling better but after some of that artist’s concept arts were given the thumb down to fit into our game idea. I sensed another crying session. OMG, I don’t want that as I am going to be busy monitoring the group progress for the milestone tomorrow. Luckily, it did not happen. Spent the rest of the day polishing up the idea for the green light meeting and the day passed by very fast. Nothing much happened today. Looking forward to green light meeting as I felt my group was almost done and prepared for the meeting.

Day 11 – 18th June

Well today my group was preparing for the green light meeting which was a milestone for us to present out idea to our the staffs in Gambit and also to the product idea. As the name suggested, it is the meeting which the staffs or the product owner will decide whether the idea is good enough to start development or ‘green’. If any group idea was given ‘red’, they have to re think of a better idea or fall back to backup plan if there is any. Luckily the 3 groups that presented today got a ‘green light’ which meant we are ready for production! Backtracked a bit, in the morning, there was a lecture on ‘Estimation’ by Philip. After the talk, I held the scrum meeting with my team and assigned roles to prepare for the green light meeting. Everyone was kind of excited and nervous at the same time for the green light meeting. Artists went ahead to sketch more concept arts; programmers continued with the prototyping; QA, designer and I polished the design document we had to present later. Time passed very fast today as we were actually rushing for time, and we presented the idea smoothly during the green light meeting. After the 20 minutes presentation, the staffs and the product owner went to a room to discuss about our idea, to give a ‘red’ or ‘green light’. Soon being the producer, I was called to the room to receive the comments and result of the discussion. Yes, tada green light! Our idea was commented for having a good level design and good fall back plans for the risks. So our idea was ready for production! Good job guys. But NO for me! I will be having more planning jobs in these upcoming days with my embed staff! Anywhere after the staffs left the room, I got my anxious group into the room to share the good news and share some feedbacks from the staffs. After that, as the day was ending, I decided to spend the rest of the time brain storming for team names. My group kind of decided on one, but will finalize tomorrow. Whee, one milestone over, 9 more to come. But I had learnt that my group was quite fast in finishing up tasks as the current main idea came up only 2 days ago. Well done guys. After work, 6 of us went for a basketball game to relax ourselves after a tired week. When is only the first official work week! After the game, I headed back to the dorm to prepare for dinner. To my surprise, my dorm mate cooked for me and left it in the fridge. Woot thanks for the dinner. I am happy that I had a good team and good dorm mates. Going dragged my tired body to bed. Bye!

Monday, 15 June 2009

Clara came by and commented on our project.

Philip brought us some games to try today. Our producer tried the GameCube ones while I tried the DS. The producer asked me to note the things and basic mechanics into notes. For today, I only tried out 2 games. However, the second games seems promising so I show it to our producer and he liked the mechanics. He motivate me to play mroe games now.


Tuesday, 16 June 2009

The game I tried today has a sort of point and click and able to alter the consequences of choices, whici is promising.

there were some sort of heated disussion and debate today where voice is being raised and all. It was quite scary actually, but I guess I had to get used to it since if 10 people are being squeezed in 1 tiny room and we had little chance to get a turn to talk where everyone keep interupting each other, this will happen.

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Our designer was not feeling well today, so she went to doctor with Marleigh in the noon. She went back soon after.

Our programmer has finished making the digital mock up to show the mock up interface and the game mechanics of realtime. We showed it to the client and she seems satisfied. However we had to postpone our internal mock up as there are not enough preparation.

There were heated discussions again today... it was quite bad today as I did not manage to find correct time to butt in ( I just do not want to be rude, but apparently I think I need to be rude at times to get a turn to speak up). When i finally get my turn, I had waited 15 minutes and forgot half of the things I want to say. But since some of them apologised I was rather satisfied.

Playing those games for research appeared useful, I can use some of the mechanics to be applied for our games. Our producer seems satisfied and encouraged me to play more games.

As for dinner I got some Dunkin Donuts at Galleria, it was too bad we do not have time to shop there as last bus was leaving at 6.40 PM ( we finished dinner at around 6. 25 PM)

Thursday, 18 June 2009

There are some presentation about estimation today from Philip. Just a short lecture to teach us to manage time and to plan better and not to make empty promises/impossible plans.

Our writer finished with the mock up dialogue, so we decided to prototype it today. We discussed on the ways to present it for tomorrow. After some long discussion we decided to just test play it.

Our artist (arist not artists) shown us some promising concept art. The audio person also come with soothing melody which is very nice. I am quite happy that he is pleased with my comments that he think is pretty constructive.

I manage to actually teach one of the artists a very basic tutorial of flash.

We tested our prototype, i apparently seems playable in digital format but not presentable in paper format, so we will scrap that and just show our digital mock up for green light meeting. We will show our dialogue branch if they ask for it.

jet want us to make a second life account for Friday's second life convention meeting. So i used the office computer and borrowed my friend account to use.

there are nothing much today, i just went to buy some marvel comics and thats all.. oh.. and Kids Ben & Jerry ice cream cone for dinner.

Indeed we made had improvements and had meeting with our product owner today. I tested a game of another team and did not quite get what it was, they still have alot of play test to do before implementing a good one. There will be a conference tomorrow with the people from Singapore, I wonder what I should say.

Anyways, back to daily life on east campus, there was a barbecue on 7pm today as well as a movie on the food industry stuff and I initally wanted to go for the barbecue but as no one was there, I got up and got cooking with snake on pasta for dinner.

And then tragedy struck.
I got locked out of my room. Got to wait an hour for the locksmith to come around to open my door before I could be here blogging.

Feeling really sleepy these few days, maybe because of the cold weather. Signing off to sleep.
Night.

Freeze

Very cold today. It's hard to get out of bed this way but it is much better than Singapore with the hot and humid weather. Cold in summer not bad at all.

Progress with the development of the game with my development team is taking shape like a balloon half-blown. There are some loopholes though that may let the air out and re-blowing it again but that is part of prototyping and testing out the game which in this case, more important for me as the QA (Quality Assurance) Lead.

The weekly QA meeting is very helpful and I am in full support of these sessions where different opinions of the same role get to thresh out their problems and solutions. This acts as a third party point of view to check if something is actually good. Seeing things from different perspective always helps. Tomorrow shall be a more productive day than today!

Day 8

Day 8

Argh don’t feel like waking up for work today. Feeling tired and aching all over. Woke up early for breakfast and did some chatting over Skype and msn. As usual reached office at 9 and there was a prototyping lecture by 2 ex-interns from ‘Fire hose’. They show us some demos and different types of prototyping like, paper prototype; web prototype; wizard of the oz prototype, etc. After the talk, went back to our room to further improve on the game ideas we had. I started off with daily scrum meeting and then nailed down 5 ideas into 3 game mechanics. My group will work with 1 mechanic first before going to others as backup plans. However, our first idea hit a major drawback which at the end of the day. I decided to move on to idea 2 as we could not spend more time on idea 1 as Thursday is our Green Light Meeting Milestone. Throughout the day, I spent my time doing up task lists for the milestone sprint, and also improved on the scrum board. I decided to first start using our scrum board from tomorrow onwards to give the team a rough idea first before the actual development starts. And I hope my team can give a solid game idea out by tomorrow as we still have to work on idea 2 and idea 3. After the office hour, there was a talk by Marc Leblanc which I did not attend as went back to have a rest. After the talk, I went to the student center to look for my team as they having dinner there while trying to discuss more about the game idea. What a hardworking team I have, good team! After that I headed back to dorm for my dinner as my dorm mate cooked pasta for me. A nice dinner cooked by him. Thanks Kenji. Slacked off in my room doing administrative work for Garena for awhile and planning to sleep after this. Nights

Picture Gallery

Airport.

Dora at Terminal 3.



In the plane.



The sleepy angmohs.



Above the clouds, behind a window.



Touch down to Boston!



My room's the pink door.



Snake is cold and thirsty.



Snake, Me, Ben, Lidya.



Random statue outside the dorm.



On the grass outside the dorms squirrels and pigeons live happily.



Fooseball at the lounge.



Nice view.



Another nice view.



Sun set nice view.



Random nice building.



Yuanqin, Eunice.



Not M not R but the T.



Gay and Lesbian parade called Pride Parade.



Parade stuff.


Another random nice building.



Playing Rockband at a random department store.



Rini, Xuejin, Broy.



From a D.I.Y store.



There are really too many pictures to post!
Monday blues.

First Weekend

Day 6

Finally don’t have to wake up so early. Woke up at 10 to prepare to go for pride parade 09. A group of us went for the pride parade which was super interesting with a lot of unique things. It was a very long walk of parade with groups of people marching with what they wanted to show or present to the mass. There was like gay rights, lesbian rights etc. This kind of parade would never never be found in Singapore, so was very unique. I also received a few ‘gifts’ from this parade such as a blue ‘necklace’, a blue baseball toy and a few packs of condoms! The people handing out to us were keep saying, ‘Use condoms, play safe’ or ‘Go back and f*ck all you can with this condoms’. This type of culture or thinking was kind of different compared to Singapore and getting used to it. We walked quite long for the parade before proceeding to the movie, ‘UP’. Philip, US Executive Director for Gambit treated those who were interested to watch this show. The movie was very nice and funny, advised people to go watch it. Also one thing about US Movie Theater was that it is free seating and also when you come out of the movie, you would walk passed other movie halls without anyone guarding it. So you could purchase a ticket and then watch a whole day of movies, so is based on your integrity to walk out of the building after you finished your show. After the show, a small group of us went to explore Chinatown area, which was interesting. After Chinatown, we proceeded to Wharf which was a LONG LONG walk there. After that, we headed to Regina Pizza for dinner. It was the best pizza I ever tasted. Strong recommended for the best pizza in the world. Best of all, it cost USD $6.50 after tax and tips. What a nice dinner we had! After dinner, the small group of us went for ice cream which tasted so-so for me. On the way back to dorm, we wanted to get some beers or liquors to celebrate Eunice birthday. But liquors or spirits can only be bought at liquor stores, normal shops won’t sell it. So we only realized that after visiting 7-11, a big supermarket and a long long walk. So in the end, is home sweet home for the tired folks after walking like 5km or more! I went back, bath, play a few rounds of game and then knocked out on my dearest bed.


Day 7

Well, today I woke up like 11 plus to 12 noon. I ate a big bowl of sweet strawberries for a quick breakfast before heading to Prudential Center for lunch and some window shopping. After that, four of us, Don, Kenji, Ben and me went for some sightseeing before walking to Chinatown’s Penang for dinner! Dinner was great as tasted of Singapore’s dishes. After dinner, we went to a sex shop in Chinatown which has 2 storeys of magazines, videos, movies, toys, condoms, gifts, etc. Quite an interesting shop! The four of us bought a thong for Eunice for her birthday present and I bought tiny condoms, dick lollipops and another thong for gifts. Hahaha. Unique gifts for ‘unique’ friends. Headed back to dorm for an early night as there is work tomorrow. Well, Kenny, Broy, Snake gang bought a birthday cake for Eunice but somehow the cake WAS ‘STOLEN’ by people living here. Was quite disappointed with those inconsiderate people! No money buys cake then don’t eat lar! Turning in early. Night!

More photos updated:

Gambit 09 Pics

The perfect Sunday?

Something that just happened.

Today is Eunice's birthday(one of the friends from the programme) and we bought a cake for her yesterday, when we were back today it was gone. Not only that, Don (my producer in my development team) has his stuff eaten from the refrigerator too. Both were labelled. If we find out who did it, he's in for a ride.

The day started out by having brunch and headed out to The Coop (place that sells M.I.T merchandises) to get some jackets but it was closed on Sundays. So the few of us who went to The Coop waited for the others to come to head down to Andrew to see some stuff at "shopping centres" or rather big department stores. Andrew is 5 train stops from Kendall (the place we are staying).

The stores sold mostly stuff that you need such as entertainment, clothes, footwear, household and food. Some of the store names include Target, Marshall, Famous footwear and Old Navy. I didn't buy anything though but some of us got a good bargain.

Then we headed down to the Game Lab to have some fun and games. The day seemed happy but something like people being inconsiderate have to spoil the day.

First week in Cambridge

So one week has passed since my arrival here in Cambridge. It went really really super awesome. So lets see, we started on the first day with Charlie tour, which is basically a 90 min city tour around Cambridge and Boston. This was very very cool for me, because it was so different than Singapore. A completely new sight. Massachusetts is one of the oldest state in the United States and it was first founded by the British. Hence many of the buildings and streets were really really old and AWESOME! I love something with deep historical value.

So anyway, first day of work started. And it was pretty good actually. I love the working environment - each of the teams are given one room to themselves and each of us have one workstation to ourselves. Pretty cool. I enjoy working with my teammates. They're an awesome bunch of people. I learn so much from them. The first few days were brainstorming days, so we had to brainstorm on a variety of ideas for the actual game that we were going to make. For lunch, most of the time I bought Mexican food (burrittos) from food trucks. This was pretty cheap food. I guess I could do with that. Mexican food is really awesome. That's one thing I love about being here - there's not a problem at all for vegetarians. Be it Indian food, or Italian food, or fast food, or food courts, or simply sandwiches, I as a vegetarian has more than enough to eat, not just to survice through meals, but to eat properly as a form of luxury.

The weather here is pretty unpredictable. One moment, its nice and pleasant, the next moment, cold wind blows and it gets really really chilly. So what I do is carry a sweater with me all the time. Saves me in such troublesome times. But seriously, I like the weather here. True, sometimes it gets really cold when it rains. But I can live with that. I like this weather. I'm enjoying myself here. Awesome.

Mostly after work, we would all go out in a group and explore Boston area. It gets pretty fun, but sometimes I get tired so I don't really enjoy. A few times, some of them went shopping, but I returned to the dorm to rest. Guess I hadn't really gotten over my jetleg yet. Two days ago, on Friday, I went to visit my childhood friend and stayed over at his place. He stayed about an hour from where I lived so I took the subway down to the South Station, which is Boston's biggest station, and then I met my friend there. We took the commuter rail, which is different from the subway, and got of at the respective stop, after which my friend drove me from there. He lived in the suburbs, which is really awesome. It was so peaceful and quiet. I enjoyed my time there. There, I got to eat home-made food after like a week. The next day, which was a Saturday, I left for MIT dorm after breakfast. This time, I came back myself on the trains. And by doing this, I learnt a lot about getting myself around in Boston by train.

So on that day itself (Saturday), GAMBIT had organised a movie outing for us (Pixar's UP) so I went to watch that. It was an awesome movie - (DUH! It's Pixar!). Pixar movies never fail to put a smile on my face. I enjoyed myself. After that, we went to explore Chinatown, which was basically nothing much actually.

This morning, I met my sister's sister-in-law. And she took me to have lunch and then we went to watch a sterescopic 3D movie at the IMAX theatre. Then, she took me around Harvard square and we had good dinner there. I had a lot of fun today - basically the most fun in my one week here. I felt at home, being with a relative. I really appreciate the fact that my sister's sister-in-law took the time to bring me out the whole day and show me around.

So basically that's it. I need to wash my clothes, but apparently I procrastinated it. Hopefully I do it tomorrow. Bye for now.

Today all of the people involved in the summer programme went to watched an animation movie by PIXAR named "UP" sponsored by Philip, the Executive Director of the US Lab.

It is a story of the life of a guy named Carl who loved exploring while he was a kid and met this girl named Ellie who share the same interest. They eventually got married and all that was left behind was an unfulfilled promise made - the promise to get to Paradise Falls (some place where they wanted to explore which described as "a land lost in time"). So old man Carl decided to fly his house over to Paradise Falls as his house was built by Ellie and him (as though he was bringing Ellie along). The climax builds as there is the conflict while his time as Paradise Falls which I will not disclose, giving you the chance to find it out yourself by watching it. Trust me, it's an awesome animation movie such that PIXAR has outdone itself again.

After the movie, some of us went to chinatown to see what's in store and it was pretty much a mix of asian restaurants and stuff (not being entirely china).

Photos will be uploaded soon as soon as I get them from friends!

Friday, 12 June 2009

There was nothing i can tell today, basically it is a brainstorming session again, but we also used the opportunity to update Josh who had been missing for 2 days. Apparently, our games undergo several changes again... but it is necessary for this prototype...to basically simplify it for this 8weeks time span

I was given sort of homework for research, however some members asked me to do it on Monday as we should not work at home... I will see hwo it goes, i managed to upload my pics on facebook though

There will be UP movies tomorrow... oh btw the last night alarm was annoying... ruined my stamina and many others for the day

I also spent the whole day playing Rock band today haha...

heres the pics: HERE


hope it works...
Andreas MasOen

First Week ended for Office. Weekends COMING

Day 5

Well, basically a lot of us had not enough sleep. Why? CAUSE THE FREAKING SMOKE DETECTOR went off with no apparent reason at 4am. The whole building was evacuated to the opposite dorm for shelter from the rain. Well, I was still in the sleeping mode when I rushed down stairs and forget to take my jacket! Nice one, with shorts and thin shirt, I shivered all the way from building evacuation till back to my blanket. One US dorm mate mentioned this rarely happened here, so we must be ‘lucky’ enough to hit jackpot on day 5’s morning. However, I was rather impressed with the fire engines and police cars that arrived to our dorm in less than 10 minutes after the alarm went off. I believed most of us were scared or panicked when the alarm went off as basically there was pulse of alarms and the emergency lights in our room or doorway keep flashing. Quite an experience for a fresh start of the day. Back to the office, I was rather tired and also caught a cold due to the evacuation earlier on. But became much better towards the end of the day. So today, I started the team off with a daily scrum meeting, basically I asked the whole team 3 simple questions. “What did they had done yesterday”, “What they plan to do today” and lastly “Is there any problems faced”. After the daily scrum meeting, my team continued with improved prototyping, some concept sketches and I set up my scrum board. Cool all ready to start on development! I ended the day by asking the team to think over weekends on some final ideas to present on Monday before we decided to finalize a few for the green light meeting milestone which is next Thursday. After work, a few of us went to athletic center to play indoor basketball. It was fun; we did not really sweat much due to the temperature. We played till the athletic center closed which was 9pm and headed back to our dorm for dinner. Well, I cooked magi mee for dinner as was tired to cook other stuffs. Hmm, for this weekend, tomorrow; we will be going for a gay parade before heading for the movie ‘UP’. Looking forward to tomorrow, sleeping now as tired after sports. Night!

End of first working week

I just came back from basketball at the MIT athlete centre catered for MIT students with passes to enter. Some friends and I headed to the athlete centre after work to exercise a little after the really fatteningfood we've been having. The centre have quite a few indoor and outdoor basketball courts, swimming pools and a shooting range.

Today was pretty much talking about the ideas and concepts we have to face as well as setting up the "scrum-board" to work on our projects. It is really hard to get consents from people who have different ideas and preference but it might just work somehow.

I wonder if it's relevant but the lunch I had for the past two days were from food trucks which are basically trucks that stop at a certain area selling specific cuisines. The price and food quality is amazingly good. It costs less than 4USD to get a lamb curry with rice and vegetables, enough to feed a big-eater like me. Comparing this to the food court which sells an average of 6-10USD per meal where the quality is pretty much less than average, they are worlds apart.

The weekend is coming and there are places to explore and to shop, I will be updating on my weekends and hopefully to get my hands on some toys and candies.

- Kenny

Saturday, 6 June 2009

At last, it is the day of the flight. I was really excited as it was A380. We were supposed to assemble early at 9 PM to check in our luggage and collect our baording pass. Things went smoothly, except the fact that the clerk forgot to write the gate num ber for the flight.

At around 10 30, we said goodbye to our relatives and friends, and proceeded to waiting area. We were so excited, Neeraj took a lot of photos for the plane itself. The plane flight really excite me, though it was cramped and not as grant as I expected, the games, music and audio was far beyond my expectation.

The foods were incredibly delicious (we even get to choose our food). Most of the games are thsoe games that you have to pay outside. Some of the movies and musics are also rare. Neeraj was so excited that he kept on pestering me to take a walk around the flight. We did that, but apparently the range is quite limited as some areas are only for the business class or suites.

We arrived at London safely, however, some of us had to change the boarding pass again. The 7 hours wait was quite hellish experience for most of us.

To my disappointment, Virgin Atlantic was not as marvellous as I expected. The plane was quite dirty, the games are very old (imagine a 1999-2001 games?! Or playing the 1980s PONG?!!!). The movies are quite old, though luckily I watched a very good movie; “Hotel for Dogs”, I cried while watching it, it is a very good show. The most annoying part was that the entertainment system can only be used after 1-2 hours after boarding the plane (and after the super long advertisements...).

We reached Boston safely, though the Indonesians (and Pakistanis or thsoe with weird names) are arrested (yeah, including me...). We had to go through a secondary custom and after 1-2 hours of “interrogation” we were allowed to enter USA (for real this time). We took a cab to the campus. We were assigned a room each. My room was on the 5th floor (and there was no elevator). So, imagine carrying a 30 kg luggage (and 10 kg backpack) to the 5th floor. We were summoned to meet for dinner and debriefed short after.

Monday, 8 June 2009

We had a breakfast in the morning followed by a briefing and short welcome by Philip Tan. After that, each of the team are allowed to meet with their US counterparts. We were a bit awkward at first (due to cultural shock perhaps). Philip then distributed the city map and Charlie Cards (to take subway and bus; they were expensive, imagine US$2 per trip).

A security officer also gave us short lecture of keeping our safety in Boston. The trip was then followed by a short tour around the campus. Some of the destinations include the food truck, the medical centre, library, lobbies and the student centre.

We then returned to the campus to take our passport to produce our student MIT card.

In the afternoon, we had a 2 hours trolley ride around Boston. The purpose is for us to get a better knowledge of Boston, a short history and perhaps for us to have a better planning for our vacation and shopping areas. We were dismissed shortly after that trip.

There were board games session in the evening, but our group missed that as we have a team dinner session.

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

We started the day with a lecture. The purpose of the lecture is for social games and to make us bond together better. We are supposed to choose a franchinse games and took 20 pictures to describe our games to other audience. Best pictures win.

I can not really tell the games in great detail due to the contract but our team goes with Left 4 Dead. It was very fun and enjoyable experience though unfortunately our planning was very messy and we changed the game (and the initial idea) in the process.

Despite all that, our team still managed to clenche the 2nd position. The prize was a chance to choose a hat to ridicule our producer. Unfortunately we missed the chance to clench the best hat.

After all that, we went to the office. We were given sandwitches for lunch (it was not nice, I assure you). Everyone had to assemble according to their post (QA with QA, artist with artist, and so on). We were briefed about the expectation and the needs of reading the QA handbook. We alo exchanced contact before debriefed.

That was practically the end of our orientation. I made myself busy by trying one of the Rock Band games for 4 players. I was the vocalist (it was my 1st time really), though we did not manage to play for long I am quite impressed that I did not too badly.

We then immersed ourself with a board games session. I played a game I never play before in my life (I do not even know how to spell the game name even now). It was however quite fun and I manage to know other people better in the process.

After that, some of the team 2 members and I took subway for the first time in our life and we went to the next stop (I forgot the name) for dinner at Wendy’s. I tried that before in Indonesia but since most of us haven’t got the taste of it, we tried that.

We went back to the campus to meet with our producer and a kind soul from MIT campus to lead us to a supermart in Andrew (4 stops away). The place was huge (okay, huge as in collosal or humongous). There were various things and I buy myself a hat ( you can get it in Singapore but I was so tempted to get one).

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

We started the day with lectures. It started from a welcoming speech by various speakers to more serious stuffs like Initial Branding (a bit like copyright issue and intellectual property). It was then followed by a lecture by Brenda about serious game designing. It was quite interesting as she brough up a point where the games now are only improving polygons and pretty much nothing else.

After the lectures, we had sandwiches (again...) but this time the lunch session aws with the team. Shortly after the lunch, we get to meet our product owners. She gave us a short recap (and introduction for our USA counterpart) of the conversation games.

After that she asked each of us to share our experience about conversation. Everyone had a fair share, though I had to admit that I am one of the more quiet ones.

We brainstormed a bit of the narrative topics we could go with before we end the day. One of the more outstanding one was a story about ghost. I could not tell the story in great detail (contract...)

We were debriefed at 5 as no overtime is allowed. Our team decided to walk around Harvard square this time. We were finding place to eat before we finally settled at some Chinese restaurant.

After that, we got some ice cream and shop around the Harvard Neighbourhood. I can not resist to buy a book there which unfortunately I found from someone there that Singapore sell those (oh man...) We went back around 9 PM.

Thursday, 11 June 2009

We had a short lecture about brainstorming today, followed by various activities that were supposed to let our brain juice flowing. It was random team in the start and then with our own team for the second ones. We came up with some funny ones (can't tell in detail... as usual..)

We then brainstorm in our team again to have as many ideas as we could come up with and then narrow them down to 3-4 ideas before we present them to our product owners/client. This time I manage to participate better compared to yesterday.

Our product owner is pretty satisfied with one of the ideas. We then tried to prototype it with some toys and playdohs. However, it get messy and getting very complex and the discussion went on. There were some scenario changes though we still keep some of the mechanics. We discussed also on the looks and how it all started.

Jon, our audioman was a great guy. He took the initiative to contact our writer, Josh who was not in the country at the moment. Our discussion could not really go too far as our writer was not present. At around 4, most of us were exhausted and become pretty quiet. Our product owners understand and allowed us to leave earlier.

I played some free arcade games before i leave. I totally forgot how to unleash some of the moves (though I still had some share of wins and losses). After that, we went to Star market for some more shopping.

the stuffs are cheap there, imagine 10 pizzas doe US$10?! or 25 Cents Doritos?! We buy some frozen foods to eat at the campus. In the end, we bought too much and decided to keep ot for another day.

Andreas Mas'oen

that was pretty much all I could remember (and after trying to keep my mouth shut from telling too much work related stuffs I am not supposed to share).

Orientation, prep & arrival

Hello everyone, or whoever is reading this...

This is my first post, so I guess I pretty much have to start from scratch. Okay, so the first two weeks were orientation. I remember coming into the screening room with Andreas and then sitting down with our teams and the first friend I made in my team was Kris, who's apparently the game designer. The first half of the day, it was basically a talk by Chor Guan on what to expect when we arrive at Boston and the different kind of culture that Americans share among themselves that us Singaporeans may find hard to adapt to. such as the famous tipping culture. Well honestly, till now, I have not tipped anyone here in Boston. But I'll get to that bit later once I'm done talking about this orientation week.

So after lunch that day, Clara, the research associate at GAMBIT gave a talk on the essentials of game design. Then we had team building games where we had to make board games in our teams and with different people in a certain time limit. And in this process, I learnt the important of game-testing as it was one phase which really showed the flaws and loop-holes in the game.

So moving on with the orientation week, there basically many many talks. One of which was by Clara on the various research topics. That was when my team got to know our research topic, which I don't think I'm allowed to mention here. Well, I'll probably ask if GAMBIT is fine with it and if they are, I'll probably elaborate it in my further posts. Anyway, I was pretty excited about my team's research topic. It appeared pretty cool to me and I was so eager to get started on it. Awesome.

On the Friday of that first week of orientation, it was industry day. Basically many game companies came down to give a talk such as Ubisoft, nvidia, Lucasfilm, etc. I found the Lucasfilm particularly interesting - they've always been awesome to me! Hats off to them!

On the second week, I was absent on one of the days cos I had bad diarrhea. So then, Marleigh took over and covered the rest of the research topics for the other teams. And then finally, the last day was basically admin stuff and a presentation by Marleigh on what Boston is like and what MIT is like in particular. Sweet..

The next few days, it was just packing. A bit of tension here and there regarding the weight issues and stuff like that, but it went pretty okay and everything was alright in the end. I reached the airport on time with my parents and settled all the check-in. Well actually, I did my check-in online and got good seats with Andreas. My friends had come over to see us off. Here's a picture:

So anyway, our first plane was an A380! I was so excited over this. But it was nothing really. Just like an ordinary aircraft from the inside. The trip was long and I thought that I would get pretty bored and stuff like that, but hey, it wasn't too bad. I watched movies, played games and slept. Well, sleeping was a little uncomfortable, but what can you say? Its the best I could get for economy class :) And then there we were, at London Heathrow. After going thru the baggage checks and new boarding passes, the horrible time of waiting came - 7 to 8 hours! It was hell. So tired and sleepy and we were stuck at the airport. I spent about 8 pounds on 2 wraps! Thats very expensive! But I was so hungry. And the toilets were horrible. I was so happy when the time to board Virgin Atlantic came. I had a very good vegetarian meal on this aircraft after which I slept all the way till landing :) Fantastic.

And then we finally touched down on Boston and fortunately, I had no issues with anything at the airport. I passed through immigration successfully and got straight onto the bus to the dormitory. Andreas and a few others got stuck at secondary issues and baggage checks and things like that.

Below is the link to the photos. Enjoy:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99259&id=506265123&l=c4ce71dd13

After the jet lag

For the past two days, there isn't any progress on actual work yet as people are still experiencing jet lag. The programme has helped in such a way that we do not jump right in into creating the game but we are given lectures tagged with activities to work amongst our development team to create a "product" of the given topic. Such topics include photo storyboarding, branding, IP(Intellectual Property) rights as well as brainstorming.

We were issued ID cards to enter the GAMBIT Game Lab and the developments teams have their own rooms to work with. The working environment is condusive and is well-equipped with the technology needed and relevancy to the game consoles and working style. If not mentioned, we are working on a scrum-like process and would have to submit our builds at the end of every sprint which each sprint is a week. Excluding this week which work would not be must touched on except concepts and ideas, the next 8 weeks would be divided into 8 actual sprints. Each sprint should be a process of many processes of playtesting the game or refining the game. This may vary in the amount of time the processes are carried out in different development teams but everyone has a goal in mind - to create an awesome game in 8 weeks.

The experience for me in the development team is pretty enjoyable so far. Through sessions with the team, I have learnt that my team is a very diverse group of people who has special sets of skills. As a QA(Quality Assurance) Lead in my team, I would hope that the testing of the game runs smoothly but most of the time that wouldn't happen. The point of the scrum-like process is to test many times over to check that everything is working on each test, if not change them.

The team's current goal is to get pass the green light which would be discussed tomorrow on the final concept to work on and we are ready to roll. So till tomorrow, I would have to read up the handout on QA again to get myself prepared.

- Kenny

Orientation days, 7 days compilation

Monday, 25 May 2009

Today was the start of the orientation day. We were supposed to assemble on the Screening Room at 10:00 AM. We were seated according to our newly allocated team. After a short introduction and welcome by Teo Chor Guan, we were then informed briefly about difference in the culture between US and Singapore.

Things were slightly more interesting in the afternoon as there is various ice breaking games for team bonding and to know each other better. Most of the games are fairly simple and yet unique like “baby” and the “bomb”. It was quite difficult to be explained in words, but a player is supposed to be a bomb, another is supposed to be a baby. The player are supposed to be the shield an intercept in such a way that the shield will always be in between the baby and the bomb. Neeraj ( my good friend and classmate from Moving Images [MOI]) and I found a way to exploit the games. If both of us choose the same baby and both of us were the bomb, we were pretty much able to remove anyone from the game. But, this game pretty much depends on integrity.

The last session of the game was perhaps our first approach in creating games. We were put in random groups. After that, each group was given random objects. Each team are then supposed to come up with a multiplayer game with that object in under 15 minutes discussion time. Shortly after, we were debriefed.

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

Things are livelier today as it is pretty much an activity day. We had a short talk by Clara in the morning about Games Design. Clara had also emphasised the importance of play test and game mechanics in this talk. However after that in the afternoon, we have another activity which is really about designing games.

At the start we had to gather in our own team and then we have to create a board and card games for 2-4 players. Our team come up with a game using pipes (which is quite commonly used as there are other two teams beside us who are also using the same ideas). It was then followed by a review and critique session.

After that, we were allocated to a random group and this time had to come up with a card games for 2-4 players. However, there is a catch, as it is a card game, we had to choose an already existing video game for the idea. Our group had decided to use Mario Kart as the idea. It is quite fun activity as we discussed of the various power up cards which is adopted from the game itself. We play-tested it numerous times and personally out of the three games design I enjoyed this the most. It was then followed by another play-test.

Again, we were put into random team. This time we have to create a game that is able to describe our journey throughout the orientation until the departure day in Gambit. Our group had decided to use the idea of packing stuffs (mechanic) for our game. We combined various ideas like the weight limit, the size of stuffs and how heavy it is. The game is quite difficult to be described in words as it is quite complicated but yet it is funny in the same time as we put in various stuffs like packing a barbell, console games, or even pet and parents into the luggage. And yeah it was then followed by another review session. After that we were dismissed.

Thursday, 28 May 2009

As Wednesday was a day off, the schedule was continued again today. Today talk was mostly for producer/scrummaster. The first talk was basically a short overview and description of what producer is supposed to do and how he/she will lead and managed the team and talks to the client and so on. The talk lasted about two hours, however the content itself is quite repetitive as apparently the lecturer is trying to emphasise some of the points numerous times.

The afternoon talk was a short and brief description of three research topics that three teams will be in charge of at the summer camp. One of the most interesting one was the use of auto-rigging program (Pinocchio) in the project “everything comes to life”, I could not talk about it in great detail as I am under a contract but the rigging system was able to auto-rig any 3D objects and this program boast to say that children will also be able to animate using this program.

My team members’ topic was not there and Clara (the lecturer) said that Marleigh (another lecturer) will come by next week to talk about the remaining three topics. Coincidentally, Marleigh will also be embedded staff for our team. We were then dismissed. To sum it up, from now on until next Wednesday there will only be lectures and talks.

Friday, 29 May 2009

Today is the long awaited industry day. It started with a talk by Nabi Studios. Their topic was about strategy and business development. They used an example from their game, Tori Bash, which is frankly enough not quite appealing to me and many other audience. The strategy they used is quite common and not really unique by itself, in fact i found it quite lacking compared to many other games companies.

The next talk was slightly more interesting. The topic was about how to market your games by Microsoft Singapore. It was interesting as the talker brought an actual Xbox 360 for his presentation.

After the lunch break, there is a talk by Ubisoft. There are a lot of interesting topic, yet unfortunately I found the talker is unable to present and express himself well and clearly. The trailer shown is too brief and unable to really show anything to non-Ubisoft fans/followers.

The next talk was from LucasFilm Singapore. They showed a bit of behind the scenes, their works, and many others. It was one of the better talks for the day, sadly I was never a fans of Lucas Film, and never will (though I sill respect their efforts and works).

The last talk was by NVIDIA, and perhaps the one that was the least interesting talk of the day. To start with, the talker was never a good presenter, the trailer he shown was almost the same throughout (with slight changes and modification). I think the talk will suit programmer more, not for the others.

Monday , 1 June 2009

The day started with a short lecture about the usage of Perforce. It is a software to manage and gather all the files from respecting lead positions. This software is apparently to great importance to many, especially producer and programmer roles. The lecture also include basic commands, icons and definitions. There were many different icons and I hardly remember them, fortunately, there is a scroll over function to help new users.

The second talker was absent and thus it is a free time. Chor Guan used this opportunity for a Q&A session and also talk about various places in Boston.

The next lecture was about research topic for one of the particular teams. The lecturer introduced a software said will be able to help character designing. However, many artists including me (though I am not artists) agrees that the talk was very basic and not of great importance to many that already knew it.

The last talk as about audio by Lonce Wyse, a researcher from NUS. This topic is quite interesting as the speaker allowed us to hear many different tones with a utilised software and how to use that sfx in many different aspects. One example was the usage of dentist drilling machine for a car engine in a game.

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Today is another talk day. The first talk was about games testing by Ng Chin Ang. It was of great importance to me as a fellow QA lead. He said that a QA need to pay attention not to find the bugs and whether the game is fun but also to find the art and sound bugs. This seems to be very troublesome for me, I can only hope for the best when the time comes.

The second talk was about IP overview. Basically it is about legal issue. Due to this, I could not include many screenshots about my work. I also need to ask permission from the Mda if I wanted to use a part of this as my portfolio.

Marleigh (our embedded staff) came in the afternoon and joined us for lunch. After that, she gave a lecture about the remaining three topics. Our topic as about conversation. It is interesting but seems difficult apparently. Most games use dialogue branching but there are no games that really allow the player to converse in the games. Thus, our game is trying to create a breakthrough or at least a prototype for such games development.

The last talk of the day was by Allan Simonsen from IGDA (International Games Developers Association). The talk was mostly about the future of game producers in the world, and also the future aspects of each position (artist/QA/producer/etc). It was quite interesting even though the speaker has an accent that is quite unfamiliar for me.

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

The last day was supposedly for a Q&A session and Boston overview, thus all the previous years alumni have returned. Most of the people asked about the places in Boston, though some also asked for the roles and experiences. One of the funnier ones was about racism where some people in Boston may just threw water at you randomly just because we are Asians. There were actually nothing much going on today and we were debriefed after the Q&A session

That is the short summary for our orientation day, I will try to update again.... if I actually have the time for it...
Andreas mas'Oen

Hello! Raj, Andreas, Pin Xun and I have arrived at Boston, MA safely at approximately 7pm (Boston Time) yesterday. We checked in our lugagge into our rooms. A person gets his/her own room located in 3 sections of east campus. The east campus is a 5-storey building with lounges and rooms catered to students or graduates.

A Little Flashback

We transited in London Heathrow at approximately 7am (London Time) and had 6 hours before boarding the flight to Boston. These are some pictures I took while in London.

while checking in to change the boarding pass at Virgin Atlantic



waiting area with shops all around

The trips on the plane were smooth and there's not really much of a jet lag. So far, it has been enjoyable and looking forward to the first day in GAMBIT soon!

P.S. shall update more soon.

- Kenny

Orientation / Jet Lag / Orientation again!

Orientation Week

During the orientation week, we were mostly seated in our development team as a main purpose to break the ‘ice’ among each other. We received talks, advices and information about Boston, MIT or US culture differences by Chor Guan, Clara and other staffs and those previous batches of students. Of course, there were a lot of ice breaking games and also games and activities for us to learn more about game development process such as prototyping. We had to come out with game paper prototype within 30 minutes to present to the whole group.
There were a few talks about piping, scrum process and Gambit scrum-liked process and QA testing process which a lot of us benefited as we at least learnt a bit of development process before flying to MIT to do a real game! Could not wait to start making a real game!!!

TP Students + Jet Lim

My family sending me off to Boston

Friends plus girlfriend that came to send me off

Day 0

Well basically we had a very very long 7th June 09. We took off from Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 at 23 30 on 6th June 09. We boarded the new airbus, Airbus A380 to London Heathrow Airport. During the 13 hours + flight, I watched a few movies like, ‘The Watchmen’, ‘League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen’ etc. Did not sleep as I felt the seat space was rather cramp, thus quite hard to fall asleep. After enduring the long flight, we still had 7 hours at Heathrow for our transit. The first hour was alright as I took a walk around the airport but basically nothing much to see or buy. Pound is so expensive! After walking around the airport, I grabbed a bacon scramble bagel from Bagel Street. It cost 3.95 pound for a small bagel but it was nice, or rather I was feeling very hungry. And the whole group spent the rest of the time trying to sleep or chatting random stuffs or doing stunts. And FINALLY, 1 30 the gate opened! RUSH IN!!! Another 6 hours + flight to Boston! After reaching Boston and getting past US custom, all of us were totally knocked out. We had pizzas for dinner at 8pm; the pizza was huge and was much nicer than those in Singapore. After dinner was OTOT (own time on target), I spent the rest of the night chatting on msn/skype and unpacked a few things from luggage and went to bed at 2 plus am.

Also saw a few US dorm mates, they were quite friendly and would interact with you. A different culture over here in MIT or rather US, most of the people here are super duper friendly.

At London Heathrow Airport

MIT

My dorm for the next 9 weeks. East Campus

My dorm mate! A cute CAT!

Day 1

Well woke up at 6am in the morning to chat with friends and play some games, was rather cold in the morning with my 2 fans blowing at max speed! Is like having my aircon room back at home! Went down for breakfast at 9am, was rather a nice breakfast with assorts of breads and orange juice. After that we had our MIT Campus tour by either MIT staffs or students. Today weather was cold and windy, a nice weather to be walking around campus and exploring. Also went to get out MIT ID card printed, and then catered lunch came. After lunch was the trolley tour! It was interesting. Basically we sit on a tram like bus and we opened up all the windows. The tour took a ride around Cambridge and Boston. IT WAS SUPER DUPER WINDY, thus all of us were freezing whenever we went downhill or drove over the bridge. Notice that Cambridge and Boston buildings are a bit different in styles? One felt modern and the other felt a bit run down. After the tour was OTOT again. I went to a MIT shop where it sells all different kinds of things related to MIT or being used in MIT, ranging from household items to clothes to books to dorm needs. Planning to buy a MIT jacket back to Singapore, but was rather expensive for as it cost around $100 for a jacket. Hope MIT or the school will buy for us a jacket. =) hahaha. Dinner was over at Central Square, Wendy’s. It is a place where it sells fast food, mostly burgers. Had a ¾ lb hamburger but was not very nice. After that we went to Shaw’s / Star supermarket to get our groceries and laundry washing needs. After that went back to dorm, had a bath and here I am typing this. I will be sleeping after this as feeling quite tired from the walking. Going to rent a bicycle this few days to explore Boston. Looking forward to tomorrow orientation as we will be playing games! Kudos

Stata Building

Trolley Tour

Day 2

Woke up for cereal breakfast we bought last evening and also opened up a can of noodle to eat as I was feeling hungry. After breakfast, we walked over to Stata Building for our morning games. It started to rain when we were walking over. With the rain and wind, today weather was 11 degree celsius. COLD! Basically we played a game where each group has to take 20 photos with no wordings for the judges to recognize a game franchise within a timeframe. My group did metal gear solid and it went pretty smooth. My group was the first to go back and summit the photos within the time limit, thus winning a ‘Manly Professional Cosmetics’ set. Cool, something for my girlfriend! Also there were 6 hats/caps for the scrum master aka producer which is my role. The order for the group to pick the hat/cap for the scrum master was determined by the points given by the judges. In the end, I had a cap that is meant for sailor? After the game, we went to Game Lab, which will be our office for the next 8 weeks for lunch. Cool, there were tons and tons of sodas, red bulls, coffee, teas and much more in the lab itself. Each developments teams were issued a room of theirs to work in. The working environment was conducive and well-equipped with software and hardware needed and relevancy to the game consoles and working style. And then there was discipline meeting. And then I went back to our dorm area as there were fresh fruits and vegetables selling outside our dorm every Tuesday. I bought 6 apples and 2 boxes of strawberry for just USD $7. The strawberries are super sweet compared to Singapore. I went back to game lab to play board games. Board game was fun as I was winning! After that, it was OTOT; I went with those living on level 5 dorms and 1 more producer to supermarket again to buy our groceries and my supper cans food! We then go back to our dorm to cook our first dinner. We had soup, tacos and beef pasta. We over cooked a bit, thus all feeling full. We had sweet strawberries after that, and then a few of us stay at the rest area to watch some funny youtubes videos while I started to blog for today. I went over to athletic center with another dorm mate to check out the facilities available. The weather was freezing cold outside with rain mist and strong winds, felt like 8 or 9 degree celsius. Will be sleeping soon after this or walk to the bridge side to take a look. Ciaos

Sweet Strawberries

SODAS and REDBULLSBoard Game

Day 3

Our MIT ID was activated and was given the purple card to tab into the building. I found it quite troublesome as one card is just to tab into the first floor building where our MIT ID is to tab to open doors. Anyway we had a series of lectures in the morning include: Branding; Game Design; Intellectual Property etc. After that we proceeded back to our office for lunch again and meeting with product owner. 2 of our 3 product owners were on a trip in Singapore, so my team only met 1 product owner. He gave us a brief re-introduction of the research topic and showed us a quick example of what the technology the research can go up to. And the day ended quite early as the schedule was rather up to the product owner. However even we ended early, my group was one of the last to end our discussion with product owner due to the complex of our technology used for this research! Headaches days ARE coming! :P I went back to the dorm early to rest as felt quite tired or restless for no reason. I rested awhile in the room before going to the kitchen to cook dinner with a few dorm mates. Was a filling dinner and then went to bed quite early. A short day for me.

Me on roof garden

Day 4

Today was the ‘official’ starts of our work as for the past 3 days, there was no program planned for us to work as to help us get over jet lag ASAP. I think this arrangement was rather good as we won’t feel stressed out to work as soon as we arrived here; we also used this time to get to know our US counterparts. We had a morning lecture about brain storming and after some activities on it; we went back to our development room to start our brain storming on our research topic. Well I started my group with brain storming, we came up with a few brilliant game mechanism ideas and we worked on paper prototyping for those for better illustrations. I had my lunch packed back from the food court downstairs, was rather nice. Towards the end of the day, our embed staff; Andrew Grant was rather surprised that we managed to come out with so many good prototypes. I asked my group to go back and think of more ideas to improve on those prototypes before ending the day. After work, I went downstairs to COOP to buy the MIT jacket which cost me around 80 bucks. Ouch! After that, I went to 1 of athletic center to take a look as my athletic pass was activated earlier today. I saw an indoor swimming pool which I wanted to take a swim in and a few levels of gym. I planned to go jogging with my audio artist along Charles River after dinner. So headed back to dorm for early dinner, my dorm mates cooked steak with mash potatoes. The steak was hard as we defrosted the meat too hasty, so in the end we had to stew the meat. I abandoned the idea to go jog as was feeling tired! Going to sleep after this. Nights.

Anyway now my team is working towards the green light meeting milestone where we have to present our ideas to the product owner for the ‘green light’ to go ahead with the game production.

Also the link for photos taken during this trip:
Gambit 09 Pics