It’s been a while again, but I only have time for a quick update since it’s getting late. I’ve been working on a little render engine off and on in my spare time for a while. It doesn’t do much yet. You can’t even move the camera around, but I wanted to throw it up so I don’t lose it if my hard drive were to die like one of the ones in my desktop did recently. The only noteworthy thing it does do is load and display Collada models. So if anybody needs a reference for how to do that with FCollada and actually manages to find my blog, kudos to you and good luck, fine sir or madam. You may find it on the projects page.
So, the news is out and I can at least mention it now. We got bought by THQ. Kind of cool for the company since it gives them access to a lot more resources and kind of makes the whole developer/publisher relationship a lot simpler. It becomes more in THQ’s interest to spend money on us for different stuff because it becomes an investment in their studio rather than an expense paid for someone else’s studio. They also don’t seem to have a whole lot of interest in changing things in terms of company culture, either, so that’s pretty cool.
But it also has good and bad consequences for me, individually. I had hoped it might make it easier to move from an hourly employee to a full-time position, but if they have more money to throw around, it could also mean they don’t really want the comparably cheap labor I would be providing. I’ve only got a few months left until my contract is up and I don’t know if there’s going to be a position available for me when the time comes, which kind of sucks. It would be kind of interesting trying to apply for a job someplace else when I can’t really say anything about large portions of what I’ve been working on. I’m not exactly sure how that would be handled. Hopefully things will turn out alright and I’ll land steady employment somewhere that I enjoy working. Of course, this could also be the motivation to try to hack it on my own, who knows. Time shall tell.
When you are really really busy. A couple months and a couple milestones have passed. The game at work is looking pretty awesome, but I still can’t say anything specific about it yet. Sadness. I’ve also started becoming one of those people, who codes at work and then goes home and codes some more for fun. Never thought that would happen. So I’ve been working on the rendering engine I started before I got a real job and it has changed quite a bit, mostly in small ways and how things are structured due to the influence of seeing How It’s Done™ in the real world. A lot of it is stupid stuff that should be obvious, like passing around pointers to everything is a lot more dangerous than passing around indices to stuff in managers. Anyways, the main stopping block I ran into when I set it aside was that I was trying to get it set up to load Collada files, which are apparently the future, but I couldn’t get their damn API hooked up and compiling. It turned out that their project settings were a little off, so the dll it was making was fubared, but at least now sort of works. I think I have it loading in verts, normals and texcoords correctly, although it’s hard to tell when I can’t be sure any of these models I’m testing on are exported correctly. One of them has a mesh with only two verts in it. How the heck is that supposed to work? But I’m making progress again, and that’s the most important part. I’ll be starting my own company and getting filthy stinking rich in no time, now.
Oh, and I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned that I picked up three kittens, gave one away and now have two cats. They’re funny and they keep my legs warm when they aren’t falling through the space between my legs when they’re propped up on a table or getting stuck under the refrigerator. Silly buggers. And they don’t like catnip! What’s up with that? The world must be coming to an end when cats no longer have a craving for catnip.
Apparently I should quit this whole “game developer” nonsense and follow my true calling as a profession poker player. I just got home from winning 90 something bucks from some people at work. I feel a little bad about it because it seemed like I was sucking up all the luck from the guy next to me. I never lost a big pot and only occasionally lost a pot that I seriously bet on. If this goes anything like my Mario Kart streaks, I’ll go back the next time intending to lose a little so I’m not so far ahead and still win somehow. At least until my luck runs out for a week straight and I lose everything I’ve won so far. Oh well, too tired to worry about it right now and I still have to get up and go to work tomorrow.
(12:37:49) Me: had more adventure last night than I planned for :P
(12:37:59) Friend: yeah? the birthday party?
(12:38:04) Me: yeah
(12:38:16) Me: it got to be around 12ish and I figured it would be a good time to head home
(12:38:29) Friend: and then you took two of the strippers home
(12:38:30) Friend: …
(12:38:35) Me: so I wish the birthday guy happy birthday and walk back to the light rail station
(12:38:43) Me: lol
(12:39:13) Me: wait for the train and get screwed out of a couple bucks because the damn machine doesn’t want to give me change for a $20 (only thing I’ve got)
(12:39:24) Friend: nice
(12:39:30) Me: get on the train when it shows up and figure I’m home free
(12:39:34) Me: but no
(12:39:38) Friend: lol
(12:40:03) Me: the train goes a few stops and then the operator says “this stop is blahblahblah, also this train is going out of service at this stop, so everyone needs to get off”
(12:40:11) Me: commence cursing
(12:40:19) Friend: ha
(12:40:37) Me: so I get off and think “well, whatever, maybe I can just walk the rest of the way”
(12:41:15) Me: take a look at the map, it looks like it’s about 6 miles from my destination so while it won’t be fun, it probably won’t take all night and I can just show up late to work
(12:41:43) Friend: ha, yeah
(12:42:01) Friend: that’s when the stipper-mobile gave you a “ride” home?
(12:42:09) Me: walk for a little ways and discover there is no way to continue following the train tracks unless I want to climb a barbed wire fence or walk on the tracks themselves, neither of which sounds like a good idea
(12:42:18) Me: :P
(12:42:28) Friend: yeah
(12:42:43) Me: so I take a little detour, start walking along a street that goes parallel to a highway that I know will take me where I want to go
(12:42:57) Me: hit another spot where there’s no way to continue
(12:43:33) Friend: ha
(12:43:49) Me: start to detour around it again, but by this point I’m figuring that the entire trek back will be like this and will actually take like 12 hours instead of the planned 2-2 and a half
(12:44:07) Me: so I walk alllllll the way back
(12:44:29) Me: follow the train tracks back to the stop near the bar, with a few more minor detours
(12:44:48) Me: wander up to the bar hoping some people are still there
(12:45:23) Me: and fortunately I made it there 15 minutes or so before the bar closed at 2am and a few remaining people are getting kicked out
(12:45:59) Me: bummed a ride in a cab with some of them back to the office where my car is, drive home and finally go to sleep around 3ish
(12:46:12) Friend: lol
(12:46:23) Friend: where the stippers were waiting
(12:47:06) Me: of course, as soon as I get home, I realize I have a postmortem meeting with the CTO at 10am the next morning so I can’t really show up that late
(12:47:12) Me: and cry myself to sleep :(
(12:47:19) Me: for like 3 hours
(12:47:23) Me: weeee
(12:47:35) Friend: well that sucks
(12:47:46) Me: I’m in surprisingly good shape considering the circumstances, though
(12:48:03) Friend: yeah
(12:48:13) Me: and I didn’t get shot wandering around downtown Baltimore at 2 in the morning by myself either
(12:48:17) Me: so things turned out ok
(12:48:20) Friend: that’s good
(12:48:38) Friend: no strippers are pregnant with little philipes
(12:48:41) Friend: also good
(12:49:06) Me: heh
(12:49:34) Me: yeah, clearly not a singles bar :P
(12:50:13) Me: but whatever, it was mostly fun and I got a decent story of me being stupid out of it
(12:50:38) Me: the weirdest thing, I think, was the wandering around on my own part
(12:51:02) Me: occasionally I would walk past somebody and I think basically everyone said some sort of greeting
(12:51:13) Me: which was pretty surreal for it being 2 in the morning
(12:51:33) Friend: ha, yeah
(12:51:34) Me: it felt kind of like Fable when you walk around town and everybody is like “Hey, it’s Chicken Chaser!” or whatever
(12:51:46) Friend: ha
(12:51:48) Me: except they didn’t call me chicken chaser, but you get the idea
(12:52:50) Friend: it’d be funny if they did
(12:52:54) Me: haha yeah
