Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

Wow, what a blast. I believe fun was had by all. I now have a urge to cut and paste everything outside the digital domain. It's so fun just allow your subconcious to be free to create without the regulation of the ego. Thanks all.

NOVEMBER 2, 2004
This was taken with my 3650, and has not post effects added.

Sun's still to bright, but nonetheless I was working outside yesterday in an old farm pasture with my dog at 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thanks to everyone, classmates, faculty, and administration that helped to shape this semester. It was a highly educational experience the like of which I would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

Sorry I couldn’t be there for the final reviews today. I make my plans well in advance, according to the syllabi. Will it’s nice to think that the DIM community exists in a classic workshop studio approach; the fact is we are at a University on a semester system, and
I live out-of-state.

Semester 3:

Course(s) review and critique:

Pros:
- Increased diversity in DIM faculty
- Greater Sense of internal community
- New facilities (ZML, EA Game Innovation Lab)
- New equipment
- Hands-on interactive entertainment production
- Relatively open ended assignments
- Engaging discourse

Cons:
- Poor planning
- Week-to-week busy work assignments (532)
- Lack of adherence to the predetermined syllabi
- Ad-hoc teaching methods
- Assignments with little scope
- On a week, off a week faculty
- Lab Technical difficulties

Personal Review and critique:

Pros:
- Increased Enthusiasm
- Better networking
- Real World Interactive Entertainment Experience (WBIE, EA)
- Connected with various industry professionals
- Continued Entrepreneurial pursuits
- Better understanding of personal/professional direction
- Increased personal/artistic independence
- Lack of direction in class has motivated me to be self directed
- Better communication with professors
- A plethora of new ideas (original IP)

Cons:
- Attitude
- Arrogance
- Lack of in class consistency
- Lack of class project driven group integration
- Overall frustration led to decreased ROI

Favorite assignments (class code):
- Spatial Mapping (532)
- Interactive project concept dev (534)
- Interactive project concept refinement (534)
- Mobile Media assignments (532)
- Interactive Entertainment Internship research paper (495)

This project has become a different beast as it has grown. After struggling to get the Pulletry interface (Reed actuated lever switch w/ Basic Stamp interfacing MacBS2 with Flash using FLOSC) to work, I realized that the interface had nothing to do with the work. It was simply a function of an old concept that I was adhering too. What is more important to me, and this project, is the content and it’s meaning from a narratology aspect. What happens when I try to create the impression of user navigated story out of a montage of my Lifelog database? This is the question that interests me most. Ultimately I see this being less fixed and more dynamic, drawing images dynamically from a server, to create montage sequences. I see this as an A/V diary of the dream that is my life.

It's come along way...
Wow, what an awesome f----ng game; Prince of Persia: Warrior Within by Ubisoft is quite a game. It’s incredibly challenging, compelling and beautiful. While I could complain about a number of things, the “alternative” rock sound track for instance, overall the product is so good I would give it a solid 9/10. Play it.
www.princeofpersiagame.com
Ubi's Prince o' Persia Blog

I played EA’s Medal of Honor, Frontline and Rising Sun, today with my 83 year-old grandfather. Born to a farmer in Pennsylvania in 1922, he is a veteran of the Korean War and World War II as are his 4 brothers, during his service as a medic he was decorated 14 times. He was stationed mostly in the pacific, and was the first American soldier in China during WW II, my mother was born while he was stationed in the Philippines.

I wanted him to understand what kinds of things I’ve been working on, video games, and that I had recently interviewed with the MOH at EALA, which in some way means (if I get offered the position) that I would be working to retell his story, and the story of his friends and brothers.

It was such a surreal experience seeing him trying to defend the USS Arizona with a turret gun and calling out in old soldier-slang. He seemed very impressed. He thought a couple of times that the in-game graphics were actual footage. He would call off the facts and numbers as we played, “1100 went down with that ship…we lost most of the pacific fleet that day…” etc.

It gave me this incredible sense of retouching history in a way I have never felt before.