Readings

I've been reading more, lately, and have been particularly interested in the science of business and how to improve my leadership skills. I've already noticed an improvement in my understanding of business and it's more interesting than I might have originally guessed. Here are the books I'm enjoying:


Sun Tzu: Art of War (History and Warfare), by Tzu Sun, Ralph D Sawyer
-Good for understanding Chinese history, also, a good book in general in dealing with business. The lessons can further be applied to game mechanics (and not only those that pertain to war).


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell
-Deals with how people make assumptions and the subconscious mind. This book is great for level designers, since a lot of the time the level designer is trying to gently "push" the player in the right direction, without actually telling them what to do.


Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, by Jim Collins
-Interesting book comparing similar start-up companies and analyzing how the successful counterparts were able to achieve their success. This book is inspiring in that it seems that the most successful businesses are the honest and hard working ones.


The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven R. Covey
-A Life-changing book (if used correctly) that provokes the reader to become a more active and how to work well with others. My personal favorite.

I didn't used to be much of a reader, but enjoy learning, and I will continue to read more books that will help contribute to my overall understanding of how the world works. Also, a lot of this information can be indirectly applied to video games. As Sun-tzu said: "One who speaks deferentially but increases his preparations will advance. One who speaks belligerently and advances hastily will retreat."

Update 4

Although it's been a little while since my last update, I have decided to post my current progress for the MAD mod; I have been simultaneously working on a WWII bomber project and figuring out how to import animations for the German plane model I created. As far as the MAD level, I have been refining anything I could think of that required touching up (in both art and design). I added to the AI so that it can follow the player and then go back to its original patrolling path; the AI script is also more modular now, making it easier to quickly add a new bot to the level by changing four simple variables. I've been working a little bit with creating a logo and having a key icon on the UI when the player picks up a key item. I was noticing that a lot of my textures were skewed on some of my models, so I went ahead and re uv-mapped them. The nuclear base didn't have enough contrast in lighting so I toned down the skylight in my level to almost unnoticeable, and added more dim ambient lights in that area to give it more interest. There also wasn't enough obstacles for the player to duck behind or to occlude the rest of the meshes in that area, so I repeated a lot more of the crate and palette meshes I had going. After lots of research, I've concluded that it will probably require custom Uscripts to import a custom character skeletal mesh as a bot, so I've decided to leave the bots as the default spawners (I've been learning so much already: animation, importing meshes, scripting in kismet, particles, etc.); I feel that if I go into Uscripting it will distract my efforts to what I value the most, which is working on levels and assets. Here are some screenshots of my current progress (I am planning on realeasing the level within the next week):