Heroes and Happenings

Well my third Fall semester as a graduate student began last week. It was a little depressing, because I shoul dhave been done with my degree already. But it was also a little refreshing, because for the first time in a year I felt like a real student again. I'm taking one class, Advanced Computer Architecture, which so far has been great. It feels good to be studying the subject that I came to this university for in the first place, and for once I'm in the correct state-of-mind to absorb this knowledge. Its been a ton of reading so far though, which is a weak point for me. I also went back to work today after my 3-week hiatus. My return was celebrated by my co-workers by mutating my cube with all transparent panels, putting in trees and signs to try to pass me off as an "animal exhibit", and other quips such as a large sign that said "Don't feed the intern". Is this what they call tough love? (-_-)

Anyway my plan this semester is to stay on campus all day Tuesday and Thursday to attend lecture, study, and work on my thesis (in theory anyway), and also to exercise and work out more. MWF I'll be working at Freescale. It looks like I might have a more sane schedule this term (at least that's what I'm hoping), so I'm going to try and enjoy my last semester instead of living in a world of hurt like I have for the past two years. Part of me is really reluctant to graduate though: it wants me to remain a student and pursue a PhD, while the other part of me feels exactly the opposite. So I'm really torn in two these days.

Allacrost has seen incredible things in the past week as well, with a new website, new content, and new screenshots released (shown below). Actually most of these things we've had for a long time, but we kept them under the covers until we were ready to bust out. Actually we were originally planning to release our first playable demo along with the new site + screenshots, but some of the key people that we needed to deliver for this release to happen were unavailable for one reason or another, so finally the team decided to release what we have and recruit more people so that the release can become a reality. We've had a lot of programmer applications in the past few days, but only one artist application, which is upsetting to me. Its so hard to find artists, even when our game looks as good and viable as it is. Actually I'm a little concerned now that people have really high expectations for the demo after seeing those screenshots (based on all of the things they have said), so now I'm a little apprehensive about releasing the demo in the state that it's in and failing to meet those expectations. Not that we're going to let that stop us from releasing the demo though. The demo is coming closer and closer to being ready though, so I hope that we can see it released very soon. :)