Interning at GG

Hey everyone, this is my first blog. I was accosted by some employees here at Garage Games with pitchforks (and a few crudely sharpened chopsticks) and told to post a blog and introduce myself, so here I am.

A little about me:
I'm interning here over my Summer break. I go to UCF in Orlando, FL where I'm working on my bachelor's in Digital Media. I'm originally from Miami, FL, where I spent most of my free time going to local shows and drinking in parking lots with my buddies. Orlando is boring, 'nuff said. I'm normally regarded as 'weird' on a regular basis by both strangers and friends alike. I love to travel when I can and I love, love, love music.

I have about six or seven years (I have no real concept of time) of programming/scripting experience with various languages/environments including C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, UnrealScript, and now TorqueScript. I also have [very] moderate modelling and rigging experience with Maya and Max. Plus I can make clouds with Photoshop (Clouds Filter, ACTIVATE)! I enjoy learning new things and working on any kind of multimedia projects and I generally strive for quality in whatever projects I work on. I've worked on several game projects, including one which actually shipped: Devastation by Digitalo Studios. Most recently I've been getting in way over my head doing large-scale PHP work for practically nothing to try and build some kind of portfolio, but you know how that goes... [Checkers' commercial] "You gotta eat!"

My first impressions:
Eugene is AWESOME! The weather here rocks and the hippies are more or less docile - I haven't been attacked yet. It's clean and laid back and I actually saw a sorority girl talk to a homeless dude (unheard of where I come from, but great nonetheless). There are some decent local bars and plenty of riff-raff to mingle with. The local music scene here is kinda bland from what I've seen so far, but I've only been here for two weeks and they've kept me pretty busy, what with the TGB release and all, so I'll have to investigate further.

As for GG, I love it. One of my major hesitations in coming out for this internship was the idea of being a number in a box, but it's really not like that here. Everyone is awesome and they made me feel at home within the first week. Aside from being a little intimidated by the sheer intelligence of most of the staff, I have been really confortable here - heck, they had a keg in the office on friday.

What I've been doing so far:
I have been working on TGB stuff: some scripting stuff, and some doc stuff that had to get done before the release. By the way guys, TGB is so freaking easy to use. Within 24 hours of being introduced to it (with no prior TorqueScript experience) I was able to make a little car control prototype from scratch - and I'm including the ten minutes I spent on art ;P. I also just finished working on a simple physics demo that will be up on TDN soon (I think...). Other than TGB stuff, I also got to go to the TGE/TSE boot camp for free, which was great (thanks, Steve!) - lots of info. Hmm, what else? Oh yea, I also went paintballing with some guys from the office the other day and I'm.. still... sore.... ugh. These past two weeks have been great, and I've got lots more time here to enjoy it. To sum it up: Life is good.

-Thomas