I got back from my trip three days ago. It was fun, but I'm feeling kind of depressed now. I really don't know why, though.

I got first place in the DigiPen workshop for my level; you can download the final game <a href="http://upload.thetyphooncorp.com/sidescroller.zip">here</a>. It was a fun class, and now I halfway understand things in C++ I never understood before like pointers, objects, and whatnot. I have some photos of me presenting my project that I'll upload later.

On the weekend between the two weeks at DigiPen, my uncles and I went camping. Little did my mom (sister of said uncles) know, they brought along a friend of theirs from high school, and they spent literally the whole time drinking beer. They went through 120+ cans by the time we finally returned to my uncle's house (the one I had been staying in). Sure, we had some fun fishing (I caught all the fish) and tubing (I stayed in the longest), but it really wasn't that fun because I had nothing to do but watch them get drunk. Eventually I faked heartburn and went to my tent to listen to music and go to bed. So all-in-all, not the most fun weekend ever.

Back at DigiPen, I got to go to the Nintendo company store on the second-to-last day. I bought:<ul><li>Animal Crossing: Wild World</li><li>Advance Wars: Dual Strike</li><li>Metroid Prime: Hunters</li><li>Another copy of AC:WW for my cousin</li><li>Another copy of AW:DS for my cousin</li><li>A "Nintendo of America" hoodie for my cousin (his mom had cancer recently so my mom gave me $50 to spend on him)</li></ul>I also went to the Microsoft Company Store with my uncle. The prices on stuff were OMFG awesome. Like:<ul><li>$20 Windows XP Pro (mine old one was invalid)</li><li>$30 Age of Empires III</li><li>$20 Windows Live OneCare</li><li>$10 Windows Vista t-shirt</li><li>$10 Chemical equation for caffeine t-shirt</li></ul>When my mom came to visit for the last two days (to see her brothers and to fly home with me), we went to the Microsoft Company Picnic. That place was amazing. There were wagons about forty feet long and four feet deep filled with soda pop positioned regularly around the place, and the food was amazing. It was a little too hot to fully enjoy, though, so we left. But not before buying a t-shirt of the event as well as a Microsoft 30th Anniversary hat.

So yeah, we pretty much loaded up on crap this trip. Good times, though, except for that one weekend.

You're all thinking to yourselves "Oh, takua108's back! That means we'll get more long, regular, and slightly pointless blogposts to read and rarely comment on!" Well I have bad news: I'm leaving again tomorrow. We're driving to Denver, Colorado (from Rapid City, South Dakota, it's not <i>that</i> far) to see a baseball game and to get my two sisters checked on at the doctor's office there. They both have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and South Dakota is too redneck to have any decent facilities to check on that sort of thing.

But this is the last trip of the summer! Not that that means much, because when I get back I'll try and get a job, and if I can't get a job my mom will make me do community service (for my college record). So…yeah.

Oh, and on the game I made:<ul><li>It was written entirely in C++ using this thing called the FunEditor, which basically is a C++ compiler that takes care of all of the difficult DirectX stuff for you by making functions, member variables…kind of like Game Maker, but a.) less professional interface (it was made by DigiPen college students), b.) not using it's own language, and c.) more difficult (and not just from a GM user's perspective; "Sprites" (aka Objects in GM) belong to a "Level" (Room)…just think about how hard that makes life for you)</li><li>All code, graphics, and sound was done by me</li><li>The controls are just arrow keys or WASD to move, and spacebar or right CTRL to fire</li><li>Like I said, I got first place out of my class by a <i>longshot</i></li><li>If you die, restart the game; I accidentally left a critical error where after clicking "new game" your health, lives, score, and other global variables don't reset themselves, so the result…well, you can see for yourself. It's rather funny, actually</li></ul>Also, I forgot to mention two weeks ago that while we were staying with our grandparents, we vistited the local Borders out of bordom. I got Ajax for Dummies, and it's extremely helpful.

In TOPDOWN news, I've made the ammunition system work, including reloading. The weapon reloading animations look sweet; if they didn't take multiple sprites to draw, I'd upload them as GIFs.

So yeah. I'm done.