Still extremely busy, but hopefully that will start to fade. It's nearing the end of the semester and there's a lot of stuff for me to do next week - another milestone of my game course's game is due on Monday and other work keeps popping up in the periphery. Hopefully I'll get some time to work on Afterglow - I want to implement a few different enemy types and prototype having an AI that isn't robotically accurate and unrelenting.
Web Ranting
My webhost has decided to fold at the end of April, so I bought a Dreamhost account (apparently without really doing a lot of research on them -- although they seem to be fine so far) and I'll be trying to move my website over there. I hate web development, but more than that, I hate the bulk and massive incestuous vertical integration of most pre-built CMS applications.
This means I'll end up hacking some more on my website script; it looks like MySQL database transition is actually a lot easier than I thought it was, though, so I'm hopeful that all I'll be doing is just cleaning up rough edges.
I also got a free domain out of signing up for Dreamhost, so I'll have to think about what I want to do it. Tentatively, I'd love to start a car blog and document my misadventures with used cars and inappropriate-unrealistic affection for the Honda S2000.
This is going to be a small entry since I got a lump of assignments recently, but I think you should be able to find enough to make you happy.
Afterglow
I added functionality for weapons to have multiple types of shell casings, and some weapons don't have them at all! I also fixed a long-running bug in my shared vector class and cleaned up a bit of code here and there. Motivation is pretty low since I'm fairly burnt out from schoolwork.
I also closed a ton of old tickets open for the game; overall, my bug reporter says I've closed 498 bugs since I started keeping track. 88 bugs remain open, but a lot of them (47) are feature requests to update my shared libraries.
Auto Show
This weekend, beside seeing Watchmen, I went to the local auto show and saw stuff like this:
Aside from the Subaru booth, it's hard to decide my favorite between the Hyundai Genesis Coupe (cheapo RWD turbo) and the Ford Transit (super-reliable small-displacement diesel work van with a 5-speed).
Dodge didn't have anything that was any good (even the six-speed Dodge Challenger SRT8 felt flimsy and incoherent), and all of GM's cars and work/street trucks felt super cheap and plasticky, worse than even the budget Hyundais. A big surprise was finally getting to sit in a Honda S2000 (they're $53K here - so no one has one) and finding out that it perfectly fits me. I kind of want one now.
If people are interested, I can post a more in-depth report of which cars I saw and what I think. I'm still sorting out the list of what were big surprises and which were big disappointments. I have a ton more photos.
I implemented a particle system behind the scenes several days ago, and now I've gotten around to making use of it with spent shell casings.
Currently, they don't come out of the right part of the gun, their velocity can be wonky as hell and they depth sort over the player characters. Once I work these annoying little glitches out, it should look a lot better.
I also want to use this particle system for gibs, but we'll see how that goes. Another priority is setting up the game so I can actually die and respawn (it kind of serves as a reminder that every time I start the game for debugging, I have to tiptoe around the superaccurate AI enemy I've created so he doesn't kill me and trigger an exception).
I guess I'd better get started on game content, too; I'd love to get entity and enemy placement in the editor, but first I should build a level that's actually worthy of the honour.
Posted - 3/26/2009 11:32:26 PM
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