The Full Sail Experience: Part I
Game Design and Development Bachelor of Science Degree
fullsail@ayrik.com
Prologue
Full Sail 101
Instructor: Your's truly
For those of you who don't know what Full Sail is, allow me to explain how things work around here. Each class you will attend is going to be one month to two months long; the ratio of male to female at this school is 8 to 1 (but that doesn't mean we don't party!); and probably the most difficult part is the schedule. Classes are scheduled in blocks and can even be from 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. Trust me, it sounds worse than it really is. Full Sail has several other degrees in entertainment, but I am in the Game Design and Development Bachelor's of Science Degree Program.
This page is a log of my experiences at Full Sail Real World Education, it is not intended to teach you how to design games or to take away business from Full Sail. This page will just inform you of how the school works, how the teachers work, and how to get the best grades. If you require more in depth information, just give me an email at fullsail@ayrik.com and I will gladly tell you the more juicy information.
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Month 1 - July 2004
General Design Fundamentals
Instructor: Michelle Wess
Grade: 89% (B)*
Every Monday at the first of class, we were asked to close our laptops and write for about 15 minutes about whatever came to our minds...luckily we never had to turn them in. The first day of class (which is 4 hours long) we were put into groups of 4 to 5 people and were given a bag with three toys. In our bag was a Sonic (the restaurant) kid's meal toy whose name is Pete and had maracas in each hand, one ketchup and one mustard. Another toy was Tinkerbelle from Peter Pan, and the last toy was a pink purse
hmm
Anyway, our assignment was to conjure up a game from those toys, but we werent required to include all the toys so we quickly threw out the purse. Our game started out as a fighting game, but eventually evolved into a cool platformer. Throughout the class we designed the game, and since its the equivalent as our English class, we had to have good grammar and learned techniques and whatnot. The ultimate goal of the class was to write a complete preliminary game design document (7.49MB) and present it in front of the whole class.
Presentation - 94.5% (best in class)
Design Document - 99% (best in class)
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Behavioral Science
Instructor: Stacy OMara
Grade: 90% (B)*
Nobody liked this class and everybody, including me, thought it was B.S., our instructor even said the only reason they have that class is for the school to be accredited. Most of the stuff you learn is pretty cool, but when I came here I was in the programming and game design mode so I didnt have that good of an attitude. Most classes you have labs every few days that are each 4 hours long, but in this class each lab was a homework assignment, which was cool because you can work on your own time. Throughout the class we had a group and were required to prepare a presentation.
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Month 2 - August 2004
Programming 1
Instructor: Jared Carpenter
Grade: 92% (B)*
Materials: C++ Primer Plus, Fourth Edition
Every day was exactly the same in this class. The instructor got up in front of the class and taught C++ for four hours straight. A good thing about it is that while teaching the class, he was building an ascii based RPG game that will be finished at the end of Programming 2. The only hard part about this class is the way they quiz the students. It's almost as if they tested you on your ability to read questions rather than your knowledge of the subject and that bothered a lot of people. The quizes took place at the end of every lab and were weighted to 66% of your overall grade, while the final test is only 34% of your grade.
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Calculus & Trigonometry
Instructor: Richard Bahin
Grade: 90% (B)*
Materials: Thomas' Calculus, Alternate Edition (9th Edition)
The first day was a joke. The instructor has a sort of French-Jamaican accent and is so hard to understand. After a while you get used to his voice and you can understand more, but not everything, especially when he gets excited about what he's teaching. You can finish the whole class without ever using a calculator because its based on your ability to do math with variables, like for programming. Even with all those complications I was able to get 90% and 95% on the first two tests and 89% on the final.
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Month 3 - September 2004
Programming 2
Instructor: Arthur Johnson
Grade: 87% (B)*
Materials: C++ Primer Plus, Fourth Edition
This class is no different from Programming 1 except that the instructor makes everything really interesting so it's not so boring to learn programming. The daily quizes got easier from the first programming class. I learned maybe three things the first month because I've taken so many years of programming classes, but I only got 87% on the midterm! The test was a joke, it's like they test you on your ability to decipher their poorly written questions.
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Linear Algebra
Instructor: Richard Bahin
Grade: 95% (A)*
Materials: Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics, Second Edition
I really liked this class, it was easy, I learned a lot, and I got a good grade! The best grade yet actually, I finally got an A. The midterm was way easy, mostly just vector manipulation, and I got 105% on it. The final included more matrix manipulation and stuff we didn't cover much so I got 95% on it.
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Month 4 - October 2004
Programming 2 (Month 2, see above)
Physics
Instructor: Dr. Coyne
Grade: 84% (C)*
Materials: Game Physics
The first day of class, the professor asked us who has taken a physics class in college and told them that none means anything in this class. At first it was intimidating and confusing, but after doing the required assignment, I understood most all of it. Overall, this class wasn't really that hard because Dr. Coyne was very generous in grading the quizes.
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Month 5 - November 2004
Data Structures
Instructor: Mike Barknoske
Grade: 93% (B)*
Materials: Data Structures and Problem Solving using C++
This class was by far the most fulfilling class I've taken at this school. We learned more about linked lists and vectors, and were introduced to trees, graphs, and hash tables. Near the end of the month we were taught how to code and impliment huffman compression. I thought the class as a whole was very interesting even though I was taught most of the information before. The tests are pretty hard but are only worth 15% of the final grade so I was able to get an above average grade and that makes me happy :).
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Ethics and Pyschology
Instructor: Pauline Pedersen
Grade: 93% (B)*
Materials: Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market and The Art Speed Reading People
I must start out saying that this class is definitely the most controversial of all the classes I've taken so far. Some of the information taught through the book and the views of the instructor caused some huge discussions to break out, but overall the class is only there to give you ideas of what would be best to include in future game designs. The only part of the class I didn't like was that most of the assignments are based on your own opinion and you're graded for it...which doesn't make sense...All I did was tell her what she wanted to hear, and nothing more. Some lectures included personality types and their archetypes using the MBTI personality test, gender inclusive game design, and methods of designing games to expand your market to it's fullest.
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Month 6 - December 2004
Windows Programming (Month 1)
Instructor: Chuck Rainey
Grade: 97% (A)*
Materials: Programming Windows, Fifth Edition
Although the instructor was rather boring, I learned a great deal about how Windows runs applications and how to create an application in Windows. We learned how to use the built in cards used for games like Solitare, how to draw lines and circles in the client window, the use of enhanced metafiles, and bitmap drawing with masking and rasterize effects.
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Historical Archetypes and Mythology
Instructor: Pauline Pedersen
Grade: 92% (B)*
Materials: World Mythology
Having Pauline teach Ethics and Psychology was fine because she was knowledgable of the subject, but with this class, it seemed, she didn't know much of what she was teaching and she always read straight from the slideshow she created for the lecture. The class was easy, there is a lot of reading and BS'ing (I didn't read one thing we were told to). We learned about myths in all cultures like Egypt, Rome, Greek, New Zeland, etc. We learned about the Celts, the Norse, the persians, and stuff like that.
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Month 7 - January 2005
Windows Programming (Month 2)
Instructor: Chuck Rainey
Grade: 97% (A)*
Materials: Programming Windows, Fifth Edition
Strangely enough, the instructor got less boring throughout the two months. The class as a whole got pretty rough and complex, but overall it was an easy class. This month we learned Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), Document/View Architecture, and Multiple Document Interface (MDI) as well as ActiveX controls and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). Lots of fancy words, but not that tough. There are easy quizzes every day before class and the questions from those quizzes are the exact questions that are on the test...Easy...
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3D Content Creation
Instructor: Shawn Kendall
Grade: 95% (A)*
Materials: Maya Illuminated Games
This class was such a break from programming and stress. We were taught a lot of interesting stuff like lighting, texturing and culling along with the 3D modeling we did during labs with Maya. This has definately been an easy month for me, kind of like a summer break during high school with a job...Though it's clearly not summer when you go outside.
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Game Specific Programming in: Part II
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*Grading Scale
Letter Grade is based on Full Sail's more difficult grading scale
Full Sail Grading Scale
A 95 - 100
B 85 - 94
C 75 - 84
D 70 - 74
F 0 - 69
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U of U CS Grading Scale
A 90 - 100
B 80 - 89
C 70 - 79
D 60 - 69
F 0 - 59
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