| Tuesday, September 23, 2008 |
  Urgency | 
Posted - 9/23/2008 11:56:48 PM | I sat down this evening to try and get some coding in, this would have been the first time that I've really sat down and worked on the engine this month. Side tracked again. Granted I did look at the code and decided what I needed to do next, but then I started organizing a contest that we'll be running for the local game dev group here for our one year anniversary. Then I got side tracked looking at all the abandoned game projects that are posted in the TIGSource Forums and ended up loosing a good portion of my night.
I'm hoping that once I move next week I'll really be able to get focused again. For one thing the apartment has large ceilings and lots of windows and large rooms so I'll hopefully be more content with staying in and working on things as well. But that won't help me if I can't stay focused.
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| Monday, September 22, 2008 |
| Changes | 
Posted - 9/22/2008 10:13:47 PM |
I've been doing way too much messing around the internet as of late and not enough coding on the engine. I'm also going to be moving again next week, so things are a little hectic right now.
I'll be moving into the heart of downtown Des Moines for the 3 time in four years. I finally got a decent apartment down there though, so I plan on staying there a few years. Which will be an awesome change because, well, I tend to move a lot.
So I'm supposed to be finishing up game state management, python interfaces, and working on the next version of Scribe. Those three things will put me to what I'll be considering a 1.0 version of the engine. It'll be the bare nuts and bolts, and will allow me to make games.
I'm then going to be working on a side scroller and completing the Barricade Proto-type, which has stood still since April.
Then there's the networking layer and the effects layer to take care of, which I'm considering extra at this point, but really is a necessary part of any modern game engine.(Hell even 10 years ago.)
I'm really aiming to have all of those tasks completed six months from now. Those things will be doable, but are going to require extreme focus on my part. Especially as I'm trying to do the gathering of gamers thing and develop my site community. I'm also going to be having to have some beta testers come on board and help test things.
If anyone is interested in beta testing email: support at decipherone.com
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| Friday, September 19, 2008 |
| It's kinda pathetic but... | |
Posted - 9/19/2008 12:20:20 AM | I just spent the last hour or so reading all the entries I've ever entered into this dev journal. It's pretty interesting to see a progression of ones efforts and personality through the years. It's kind of narcissistic to read all my posts, but really it was more so for reflection.
Really, I just want to thank everyone here that has contributed to the developer journals, have posted comments in my journal(especially during some trying times, it helped a lot), and that continue to make gamedev.net such a great community. It's personally given me an outlet and an audience that is of like minded individuals that can share in a great passion and way of life. </CHEESE ALERT>
On that note: It also made me realize how long I've been working with the same designs for Troglodyte, and how damned long it's taken me to get my python interfaces for the engine done. Which they still aren't. Well, at least I've been consistently inconsistent :P
Beta by January, it'll bring me up to a point of two solid years of work and about half a years worth of work from the other 2 combined, (as some of the initial graphics frame work, although very little, is still in the engine).
There is a lot to do by that time, a lot of it though is just bringing all the systems that are currently in place together in a grand unified organism.(Images of Kurzweils singularity theory poring into my head).
At any rate Gamedev.net, it's been a great five years, here's to five more!
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| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 |
| Source Control | |
Posted - 9/17/2008 10:10:35 PM | Source control is something that I neglected for quite sometime due to some issues that I had a few years ago with using Microsoft Source Safe. I'd asked some fellas over at gamedev.org a little while ago about what they were using as I have plans to get some additional help with projects in the near future and was wanting to look into again.
After looking at some of their suggestions I decided on Subversion , and I finally downloaded it to the server and started working with it today. At first it was kind of a struggle because even though the documentation is pretty thorough, it leaves out some important details. It seemed no matter what phrases I was typing into google, I couldn't find any other documentation.
It wasn't until I entered the phrase subversion walkthrough that I actually found some sites that help me get it up and working. Mainly Video How To: Getting Started with Subversion and Source Control was what I looked towards for some straight forward answers. It's a really well made tutorial for anyone looking to start using subversion on windows and it also introduced me to the GUI command tool Tortoise which is way better then simply using the command line interfaces.
I'm pretty happy with the experience so far, and am glad that I can now have access to things remotely as well. Now to actually get some coding done.
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| Tuesday, September 16, 2008 |
| Errmmmm... | |
Posted - 9/16/2008 10:01:41 PM | I had planned to actually get some work done today on the engine as I'm aiming to get things into beta by the beginning of the year. Unfortunately I just got home after a fourteen hour work day. I spent most of the day driving from one end of the state to the other and then back. I covered roughly 900 miles. It makes me wish that KITT was my work vehicle. At least he could tell me some interesting stories or show me some cool stuff on an lcd. I'm sure the day will come when digital personalities for vehicles will be common place. Hopefully some actual project updates tomorrow. For now bed!
Oh and if anyone ends up signing up at the Gathering of Gamers it'd be cool if you could drop me a note. Someone could start a Gamedev.net clan or something similar. Tomorrow night is GoG game night. I've been trying to stir up interest in doing PC games in parallel with the 360 games that the members do now, but it seems like there has been very little response to that effort. If you game on the 360 and want some peeps to play with, or some competition, check it out. It starts at 7 I believe, you can find the details on the front page of the site.
Night.
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| Autumn and the Gathering of Gamers! | |
Posted - 9/16/2008 12:12:50 AM | September is here already and although I've done better this year then any other at blogging I still haven't met a lot of my goals in that area, but things happen, people get busy, and time goes by, just like every other year and every other life.
At any rate, as per usual, I've been pretty busy. As previously mentioned, I'm still working on building the site over at www.decipherone.com , but it's been kind of slow going, along with production on the game engine. I haven't really been spreading myself too thin, more so I've been getting side tracked a lot with spending time with friends and also getting some other projects going.
One such project is getting involved with the guys over at www.gatheringofgamers.com . This is a great social networking site that is geared specifically towards gaming. With the exception of the great games experiment, I haven't been one for social sites, but this is one that I've actually been somewhat active in this year. I met the president Ben at our first game developer group meeting last year, and managed to meet up with him again and the site intern Zach (aka RyuBlitz on the site) a few weeks ago where we played some disc-golf, some 360 and had a few drinks. We had a great time.
At any rate, I'm very impressed with the site as it's grown to near 2,000 members as of this writing in a little over a year(just over as of August 28), and people keep getting more and more involved. There are plans for me to help out with some contract work as well as help promote the site and attempt to get some networking opportunities set up. It is dedicated to helping gamers network. You set up a profile and have friends, classic social site style.
Last week there was also the addition of a clan system that is used to help those involved in gaming ladders keep track of their members. The site has recently seen an onslaught of KSI members join since the system first went live and we expect to see numbers continue to grow.
Ben recently got back from New York last week where he went to meet up with the Microsoft based company Massive which specializes in game advertisement. The plan is that the GoG is going to be in charge of a gaming event in New York in November.
Other interesting opportunities have happened for this small upstart, like attending E3 and plans to attend the Major League Gaming Play Offs in Dallas Texas in October.
If you are a gamer and you're looking for a place to hook up with other gamers, then the GoG is the place for you. Stop on by and check out some profiles, find other peoples gaming tags and meet up with them on line. Come be a part of a growing community that has of yet seen it's peak time. With many more plans for the future, get into the Gathering while the getting's good.
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