Finally at uni!

So here I am, studying Games Development at the University of Hull. I really like the classes because it's finally (after all this waiting) something that is really interesting to me. Unfortunatelly this one year I've been away from programming (while at the navy), I kind of forgot everything. In some cases, things that were like my everyday breath-in, breath-out process when I used to program, now appear in front of me like monsters.
Here is an example: during the first week of advanced programming we were taught in the lecture about building an efficient shorting algorithm just to demonstrate the differences between C# and C++. I've been writing collision detection algorithms, complex physics and pathfinding routines. Then just a year away from programming, I can't even remember how we loop in C? I mean.... commooooon!! Of course everything is gradually coming back to my mind and I feel my brain is still in the "loading data..." process.
Now, there is also something good coming out of this! This whole "loading" process gives me the change not only to catch up but also to fill-in any gaps. My first native C++ program was a DirectX9 3D Game - yes, seriously that was my first and I didn't know how to cout/cin yet -. That's not so good for learning C, is it? So this time I'm going all the way up from low-level. Therefore I got quite a few used books on C and Assembly.
So, I'll keep "loading" for a while and I will come back when the level is ready for some action.

A fresh start!! or just resuming...?

My military service at the Hellenic navy is finally over. Don't ask me if I learned something new during these 9 months or if it was any worth it. New experiences are always welcome as long as they don't interfare with my plans but in this case this whole navy thing did. In any case it's over already and there are so much to catch up. First things first though.

When I start up Visual Studio after all this time of inactivity, it feels like an ex-girlfriend I haven't seen for a while. You see I have spent so much time on that very screen, that feels nostalgic. I don't know how to act, everything looks strange but with a little of time I'm sure the good old times will come back!

XNA Studio grew up terribly and I have so much to learn. I left it on version 1.0 and now version 3.0 is coming out soon! In addition I have never programmed in DirectX 10 since I never had that kind of hardware. That will be fixed soon since I'm getting a new PC this fall.

The big news though is that from this September I'm going to the University of Hull to study Computer Games Develepoment. Starting as a 2nd year student cause of my previous degree, my feeling is to go there and this time get the job done properly. So no stupid excuses for me this time. I don't care if the course is good, I just feel like studying. I carry this feeling for the past two years and it's completely unaltered from the time I started to look for a games job, writing tons of code and spend my day reading developement related books.

So while I'm spending the rest of the summer in Greece, I'll reorganize a few things in my mind to go there prepared. Till then see you at some beach~