/digipen/ - DigiPenitentiary

Nice! I posted this on the original SYAD hateblog back when that was relevant but I had lost it since. Glad to see it's still around.

Good read, I only showered once every two days, will be amending that now

Also they used to make freshman games in the terminal?

I'd much rather write from scratch than use zero, especially given that there is no CS120 lab anymore so a lot of people don't get nearly enough practice in C compared to how it used to be, from what I understand.

>>3088

We've looked into the CS 120 no labs thing, they still have the important part of the labs, which is the lab assignments and quizzes. Mead has replaced the lab time with extra lecture time where he takes more questions.

He's also added practice assignments that students are free to do or not do, which will add a small amount (I think is an extra point) to your final exam grade for each one. They're graded like the lab assignments and are done at any time.

Statistically, freshman are doing better this year than they have before, but we think this may be a cohort quality bump as it's also been seen in at least one other class that to our knowledge has not had any significant changes..So, and it's early to draw conclusions, it seems like these changes have been a neutral/slightly positive change. But we'll need more data to determine that for sure.

When we first heard about this issue we too thought it might be a problem, but so far it seems like this is actually a net improvement, the only downside being that students don't get a specific time to work on their lab assignments. Not an especially impossible task to work around, but certainly an added stress to the freshman populace.

As for the GAM150 Zero/C/Terminal game question, it's currently out of our hands. We need to spend some time investigating what to do for this. There are issues with every approach, though the worst seems to be Zero by all accounts.

no, newbies shouldn't read that. It's horribly outdated, and a lot of it is just false. I have a better GPA than that guy, I've banged more girls, and I can honestly say he's wrong on so many points.

Ok, first of all, going to clubs is a terrible way to get girls. That's a huge waste of time, and if you really care about spending your time effectively (as you should at DigiPen) you are much better off pounding escorts or prostitutes. "BUT WAIT I CAN"T AFFORD THOSE", yes you can, if you are paying 15k+ tuition per semester, and you don't have to pay for alcohol, gas, or spend time. Not to mention, 90% of guys can't get girls from clubs anyways. Clear statistical survivorship and confirmation biases going on with his storytelling.

Also, why is he using "retarded" as a derogatory term? Kill yourself. I bet he hates gays and trans people too LOL.

3rd, he acts like the girls at digipen aren't attractive. That's actually not true, and if you checked some of their instagrams you would see they have thousands of white knights just like tons of other girls. Bottom line, if you have a vagina, you will get approached, and you are attractive in today's world. He probably says they aren't attractive because he was a loser who couldn't bang them. Chad thundercock wins here boys.

4th, Funny how he says you need to love making videogames to be here. I came here (and once again, I have a better GPA than him, lol) and I don't love that. I just wanted to open my mind, which I see as the purpose of university. Newsflash: lots of people that graduate from Digipen don't end up making games, and they are ok or happy with that. There's more than games.

I would email him but I know he just won't respond and use terms like "autistic" wrongly so there's no point.

"You’re going to be making Mary Kate and

Ashley-Olsen’s Barbie Horse Adventures for Prepubescent kids with

Downs Syndrome for the rest of your life."

I could keep going forever, but the amount of ignorance is just too overwhelming and stupid, so no thanks. Hopefully for his sake I never encounter this "joseph ktach" in real life.

>>3092

Is this trolling? I can't really tell anymore

>>3090

From my experiences + observations as a current student (and because you sound like someone in administration given your prose) I would have to say the following:

>CS 120

With that class most of the students who don't pass didn't care to learn to begin with. But from what I've seen Mead knows what he's doing and the class is (still) efficient at introducing C.

>Statistically, freshman are doing better this year than they have before

More because their classes have been made easier rather than them being taught better (especially for the GDs). ""That"" is one of a number of things that led to the current troubles with GAM 200, GAT 240, et cetera.

I won't say that those students are "bad" or anything, because they're not. But having freshman level classes no longer teach all that is necessary for the (largely unchanged in expectations) sophomore level classes is making it harder for them than it needs to be.

>As for the GAM150 Zero/C/Terminal game question, it's currently out of our hands.

That's too bad because it's one of the biggest problems with the GD programs right now especially with the BAGDs, since it seems like they're expected to learn a lot about Ziltch from 2nd semester GAM even though there's actual coders in the same class/level and everyone assumes "well, I'm studying for game design, so they want the coders to do the coding, right?" And with what freshman level GAM & GAT teach them, I can't blame them.

>There are issues with every approach, though the worst seems to be Zero by all accounts.

ABSOLUTELY YES. I'm sure it wouldn't be simple, but using Alpha Engine in GAM 150 could work a lot better so long as CS 230 is fixed to actually be a useful class (which would be the hard part). When I took it, it was a rehash of MAT 140 combined with random engine stuff we'd have to have figured out on our own 2-3 weeks earlier to have any hope of passing GAM 150. Make CS 230 a direct, to-the-point class about using Alpha Engine and nothing else, and THEN teach how it relates to game engines, and it'll probably help everyone out.

If you're in any position to fix the course sequences, then I wish you the best of luck.

>>3093

Either that or "trigger" angst. The guide has sharp language, but that doesn't make it wrong. It could just use wording that gets in the way less.

Neither does a different standard for potential dates, or not knowing what being poor is.

Never mind the lack of complaining about the actual guide to DigiPen.

Hm, the more I type the more I think it could be a troll as well. Or stupidity. Meh.

>>3096

I'm not trolling. Do the math. You can get a minimum wage job (or even less) and make enough money to bang a prostitute (200 dollars or less) faster than going to the club trying to "pickup" girls. If you don't believe me go out and try it yourself. Unless you are pretty good looking, extroverted, and in the right place at the right time, most guys at bars and clubs DO NOT GET LAID. It is more expensive not just in time, but money as well (once you factor in "dates", drinks, gas, fashion, car maintenance, insurance, bullshit like that).

Seriously, if you can get laid so easy from a club, post pictures. I bet you can't.

>>3088

You would probably want to at least use the Alpha Engine (which is what they used to use for GAM 150). GAM 100 is really just a weed-out class that's meant to teach you that you'll pretty much never complete everything you want to put in a game. GAM 150 is the real first game, and GAM 20X is (supposed to be) when you know what you're doing and can start making portfolio-grade work and all Alpha Engine is is graphics & sound implementation, leaving the rest to you. Beyond the freshmen GAM classes they basically give you a semester to make a full engine and demo it, there's no way they would expect the freshman to make an entire game in that time from scratch so Alpha Engine is just the hardest parts of the engine done for you so that they can teach you about those things sophomore year.

GAM 150 should switch back to Alpha Engine, but they should make Alpha Engine not a pile of dogshit first. They should clean it up, actually document it, remove the random #ifdefs for Android support (????????), and make it super modular. Like, you should be able to copy and paste a few lines of code that call some functions and get a basic game loop going and a sprite spinning on the screen or something. Then, over the course of CS 230, which should be entirely revamped from the ground-up, you should learn how to replace each part of it except for the graphics system with your own code. Like… I could code this in my spare time in a month or so; any full-time R&D employee should be able to make it over the summer, from scratch, no sweat. It's not fucking hard, and it would go a long way to making DigiPen a place where you actually learn how to build a game engine instead of wading through shit-ass half-baked C code in Alpha Engine and attending GAM 150 Club so upperclassmen can tell you everything you're not learning in CS 230.

The entire way GAM 150/CS 230 was handled was the first indicator that DigiPen didn't give a fuck and wasn't a school worth attending. Some facet of Alpha Engine didn't even work at the start of the semester until I complained about it.

Maybe I'll go and make a better Alpha Engine clone and CS 230 course content myself just to prove how little DigiPen cares about what should be an incredibly important class for game programmers. CS 230 / GAM 150 should be as good of a class as CS 120. It's important building blocks that sets up the rest of your understanding of game engines and programming for games; why the fuck were we doing matrix math by hand in CS 230 instead?

I think upperclassmen forget how fucking shitty the non-Mead early programming classes are when they defend DigiPen against detractors. Like, yeah, sure, NOW you're a good programmer, but that's only because you suffered through GAM 150 and CS 230, attended every GAM 150 Club meeting and took notes, and worked your ass off programming over the break between every semester. DigiPen sure as hell did not prepare you for any of that. DigiPen courses are nowhere near all bad, but if I were to make a list of courses I want my money back for, CS 230 is definitely up there.

>>3086

OP, did you take down the paste or did DigiPen? o_O

>>3103

this. Does anybody in this thread have another copy?

>>3094

I'm a student, just one that has responsibilities regarding this sort of thing. I can tell you that the improvement we're seeing is in both CS120 and MAT140, and as far as I know neither were changed dramatically to be easier.

As for the CS 230/GAM150 thing, we're aware it's terrible, but I haven't had the time to take it up with the parties involved. Trust that we know it's a huge problem, and agree completely that the classes need to be fixed.

As for the comment that we should go back to Alpha and that any student or R&D member could redo it, you're completely right, it has been redone before by both students and faculty. The changes never got put into place for various reasons, and so we've just got to keep pushing for that change. Hopefully one year students will actually have help working on GAM150 and it will appropriately prepare them for GAM200.

Right now GAM150 is trying to bring as many discipline together as possible, which is admirable, but it's coming at the cost of not preparing programmers. And in many ways not preparing the other disciplines from using the genuinely bad (though understandable) tools they'll often face in the coming year.

>>3107

So are you just going to let most people now taking gam200 fail or just fix it for this year's cohort.

>>3105

I took it down. I have pastebin pro. That's right don't fuck with me. You can say I'm trolling all you want, just lol when you're just a beta compared to me.

>>3108

They probably aren't going to change GAM 200 (much), just allow a bit more leniency if anything (though we'll see about that too). >>3107 pretty much laid out what I think has been going on (i.e. GAM 150/CS 230 being the main problem points and not so much the "core" classes).

As far as I'm aware, GAM 100 was supposed to teach you the disciplines of the game team, and GAM 150 was supposed to prepare you (more) for the actual work involved, while CS 230 was supposed to teach programmers how to make game engines. When my class took those, CS 230 was the broken cog in the machine, and we raised a lot of ruckus about it (even bringing some teachers on board) but it turns out that the school didn't understand after all and thought that leaving CS 230 alone and making the other classes that depend on it easier (so mostly GAM 150 and its tie-ins) was better. Maybe they decided that most of us passing CS 230 was good enough, without realizing why that was (we had to learn the material in advance for GAM, so of course we knew what to do by the time CS 230 covered it).

Perhaps we need to organize and bring this up again, before the current freshmen take those courses. I know last year my class voiced concerns when we realized what they'd done to those classes, but it was too little too late by then. We'd probably need something more to make things clear.

>>3108

GAM classes are, as I said, pretty out of our hands. We have effectively relationship with the GAM department.

I help the people taking GAM 200 whenever I can.

>>3116

They won't change anything about GAM, ever, because DigiPen likes GAM the way it is. It lets people who want to be super tryhard be super tryhard, and DigiPen loves to prop these kinds of people up as the gold standard of how teams should operate. DigiPen loves to put the games that these kinds of teams make up on the monitors and show them at PAX and stuff, because they're so flashy and cool-looking. If DigiPen wanted to improve itself at all, it would stop focusing on games like that, and work to improve things for everyone. Yes, you're always going to have incredibly smart people, people with prior programming skills, and so forth… so no matter how bad things are for everyone else, people are always gonna tryhard. But the tryhards shouldn't be the standard! Yet, at DigiPen, they are.

Again, even though I personally think the old Alpha Engine GAM 150 was better than the current version, it was obviously broken in several key ways (again, #ifdefs for Android support in the headers, despite everything else being broken). Yet, DigiPen has no incentive to improve Alpha Engine or the curriculum, because at the end of the day, no matter how poorly you teach something, some team is always going to have a super cool (compared to everyone else) game at the end. Ellinger and the other professors have no idea what it's actually like to go from learning C one semester to figuring out how to make a game engine, in your spare time, with nearly zero support from CS 230, the next semester.

The justifiably-cynical part of me says that they changed GAM 150 to use Zero only to improve the quality of GAM 150 games. People are dropping out sophomore year, Sem 3 and 4 (not counting summers)? No problem, let's just make it so the games that come out of Sem 2 are better, because after teams have already shipped their GAM 100 game, making another for GAM 150 should be relatively easy compared to writing an engine nearly from scratch in C. Sure, it'll make the jump from GAM 150 to GAM 200 harder, but anyone who struggles there was probably going to drop out anyways, right? :P

DigiPen should spend a lot of money (which, I know, they won't) on hiring a professional educator, someone who has experience in laying out curriculum, to help sort out these issues. Or something. It's clear that they have no fucking clue what they're doing, but they like to pretend that they do.

Someone should make an infographic showing how much the curriculum changes year-to-year at DigiPen, compared to other degree programs at other schools. I think it would show just how little they know what they're doing.

Like, GD students should be told before they enroll:

>Only Ellinger actually cares about your degree program

>He thinks he's super smart and doesn't actually know what he's doing as he adjusts your curriculum from semester to semester

>Once you enroll, it'll become incredibly apparent that the rest of the school only cares about the CS programs

>They've added, what, two or more new CS degrees, and they still haven't figured out how to teach the GD programs

>If you're BSCSGD, literally nobody cares about your degree program, not even Ellinger

>>3135

>Someone should make an infographic showing how much the curriculum changes year-to-year at DigiPen, compared to other degree programs at other schools. I think it would show just how little they know what they're doing.

Let's do it.

I'm a freshman though, sorry.

>>3150

Better yet, a changelog for each course.

>>3092

I've chatted with him a few times at parties. He acts pretty much the way he presents himself in this piece. If you're less experienced, he'll seem like an awesome guy teaching you all the secret stuff people like you haven't figured out yet. If you have enough experience though, you'll realize he's the dangerous sort of "teacher" that doesn't always know what he's talking about, but will gladly shit out opinions with such certainty that the less informed will mistake his conceit for wisdom.