GDC and Vinyl stagnation

I just got back from GDC.  It was pretty cool, and I can check it off my list of big gaming conventions I'd like to attend one day.  Just leaves E3 now and I'll have pretty much all the big ones, including TGS.  That said, pretty much no one seemed too interested in hiring interns this year.  I had way more fun just finding triple A studio programmers and asking them questions and picking the other big schools students brains about their programs.  USC, Digipen and RIT were all there in pretty full force.

Next year should be awesome though, since everyone seemed pretty interested in hiring entry level stuff, and Vinyl will be almost complete.  Also, I plan to buy the nice pass and actually go to a bunch of the talks.  I went to one, but it was more about selling their product that automates LODs than talking about how they implemented their software.  Still, looked like a cool product.

Anyways, the reason I mentioned Vinyl stagnation in the title is because sadly, we haven't gotten any real work done on it since the industry panel.  One thing led to another and there just hasn't been any time.  Basically due to delays we didn't even do the industry panel until the week before spring break, when it should have been 3 weeks before.  So by the time the teams were settled we had a week off.  Then a week on again before GDC, and now another week after that where half our team, myself included, will be in Montreal.  That leaves about 3 weeks left in the semester to get into alpha.  Looks like we'll be doing a bit of  summer work.  That's okay though, I'm still more excited about this idea than any of the other projects I'm working on.  They just sadly had to take precedence for the time being.

Speaking of which, the main thing that has been occupying my time lately is the reason we're going to Montreal.  A bunch of us are in a game prototyping competition that Ubisoft Montreal is putting on.  Since we leave on Tuesday we've spent the last two weeks crunching out the end of the prototype.  Last weekend we went from a tech demo with empty levels to basically a full blown game in about 25 hours of work time.  This weekend, shortly after arriving back from SF we polished everything we could and tweaked a few more things.  The game looks amazing now and I can't wait to show it off in Montreal.

Still, I can't help but thinking maybe I put a bit too much on my plate this semester.  4 weeks til summer though, can't wait to just have a job for a few months.