Student Feature: 'Day in the Life: Tony Basch, Programming Student, SMU Guildhall'

Today's Gamasutra student feature, as part of the site's expanding Education section, is another Day in the Life, this time told by Tony Basch, a programming student at the Guildhall at SMU. Basch describes a day full of heady assignments, teamwork, tight deadlines, and more importantly, a passion for making video games, and in the following excerpt, he describes one of his assignments: "This is one of those times where you don't consciously decide to skip a meal but are just so engrossed in your work that it almost happens. Or maybe its crunch time. Actually, it's not crunch time because I'm not working on any huge game, just a Minesweeper clone. After the lecture on double-buffering in Win32, the professor in our Software Development for Games class had charged us with the task of writing a Minesweeper clone in a week and a half. Not just a clone, but a pixel-perfect replica of the standard Windows version. It's such a small game that you would think there is not much to it, but I can tell you, if you look, there are some nuances. A few of them involve ALT + TAB'ing, none of them involved behavior I was willing to replicate. The professor wasn't worried about it either. Because of the list of goofy things my fellow programmers managed to find, I am certain that at least one of them used to be a surgeon. Regardless, it's due the next day, which also happens to be our first exam and of course I haven't had time to study for it yet. At any rate, I decide that maybe I should go eat something, so it's off to the apartment." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including tragic news of Basch being hurried out of the building by the security guard. (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).