I'm at GDC this week. The conference is pretty weak so far, but it's been great to see so many of my friends and colleagues.

I used to help teach the Advanced Direct3D Tutorial day with Richard Huddy and others, and Richard and my buddy Cem are keeping it going. Strangely, there was no OpenGL Tutorial this year - not sure what's up with that... Conspiracy theorists, start your typing...

During one of the lectures I attended, a speaker said 'This is really just common sense, but...'. Not a good sign. I want the insights and gotchas, please, not the obvious. ;)

Been doing a bit more game work in the mornings, adding a spear trap to the first level, which I'm not happy with, but I'll leave it as is for now. Also some level editor fixes with the dragging interacting with the snap-to-grid.

The trigger system is fairly powerful now. A trigger can be set off when entered, or on a timer, or by another trigger command. Also game entities now have an on_activate facet that can execute a command as well. I added compound commands a while back, which is key for things like the spear trap.

I have a spear hidden in the wall with gravity turned off, and a trigger on the floor near the spear. That trigger's on_enter sets the spear in motion, plays a sound, and starts a dust particle effect. Another trigger waits for the spear to enter it, and then plays a banging sound and lets off its own dust cloud, and stops the spear.

Here is an older shot of one of the mayan-type levels.