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So, I was lucky and the lottery gave us a day off for Christmas at the last minute. Which means I have tomorrow off. They told us this today. Which is to be expected. Of course this means however that I had to plan my Christmas a head of time as if I was going to work, and now I won't get to see my son until after 3:30pm. Then Friday, back to work and we'll see if I end up having to work New Years day, which is a strong possibility. Groan, groan, whine, ect.. To be honest I'm just glad I have a job right now. So the little annoyances aren't really that bad.
I do however need to start concentrating on some sort of transitional period over the next year. I plan to continue my current job, but would like to be ready to go into a software development position of some sort by the first part of next year. At which time I'm also hoping to have the engine ready and being used for exclusive production of Phyersoft games for the length of the current agreed upon contract, after which the engine will be released to the public.
At that time, I'm hoping that over a few years of further development, support, and building a community around the engine, I'll be able to transition into having it as the base ip for my own business. Then, after getting some infrastructure setup to continue development and support, I can really begin concentrating on making games. Of course as soon as the engine is in a production quality state, I'm going to begin on a project of my own as well. I have three that have been partially designed that I'd really like to finish and build, but I'll have to cross that bridge when the time comes.
In the meantime, the challenge of staying focused and motivated is in the forefront. I may have to limit myself to being more selective in my future involvements in future projects that stretch outside of the realm of my main goals, after current projects are made good upon and completed. At least until I have more time. If I continue to be so fragmented in my undertakings, and going off on tangent projects, the next four years will go by like this past one. Time having passed with good intentions, some work, a lot of planning, and little to show for it. This of course would not be a good thing.
For anyone interested, I'm now on Twitter. Something that I put off for a while because I thought it was kinda weird, but after getting into it the last couple of weeks, you can get a peek inside the lives of people all over the world every day, which is an awesome concept, even if it is instantly brief and and enormous time killer. A cool thing I've done, just randomly select followers from one person to the next and see who you end up on after a random number of clicks.
Merry Christmas everyone, may your stockings be coal free, unless they're stuffed with clean coal, then market that shiznit and make some clean energy for the masses.
Made some progress today on the new data management classes for the engine. I'm working to get linked list implemented in such a way that objects and scenes will be able to be as dynamic as possible. And as per usual, I'm rolling my own, which is always fun, educational, and tedious.
I have to go Christmas shopping for the family sometime this weekend, which will be a nightmare I'm sure !!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't meet my goal 15 minute segments of internet use today, but I did cut back, which helped me be more productive.
Blurry blurry vision, it's not as cool as it sounds believe it or not. Sure you see a big purple spot every where, but it makes it hard to read and to tell the difference between certain colors. Not really handy when your trying to put some new ends on a cat 5 cable. So, I experienced this last Monday and Tuesday. I finally decided to go to the doctor for the first time in six years after it didn't go away. The doctor sent me to a specialist, and after some test, they discovered that I have a condition called Central Serous Chorioretinopathy. It's an eye decease that effects mostly white males ages 25 to 45 and it causes retinal fluid to leak into the front part of the eye and causes warping of the pigmentation. This can lead to fun things like retinal detachment, or permanent visual defects. It's apparently caused by a reaction in the small single cell layer that separates the fluid and solid parts of the retina, brought on by a reaction to too much epinephrine( adrenaline for we simple folk), and is somewhat of a medical mystery.
The good news is that I should get most of my vision back and with some precautions, a the chance of a recurring episode can be greatly reduced. The bad news is that if it does happen again, the likely hood of permanent damage greatly increases. I go back to the doctor next Tuesday for a follow up to make sure the liquid has recessed and that everything is healing.
More troubles, except this time, in the server front. I have to assume that the server was some how cracked, because before this Monday, there was no trace of a problem, and I hadn't downloaded anything in months to the server. On Monday of this week however, I discovered that when trying to access the forums at decipherone.com, the forum software was generating an error message saying it was unable to connect to the database. I finally had some time to look into the problem after getting home from work late last night. Tenga.A virus anyone? If you want some I can send you any one of the exes on the server because they are all infected. Which after doing some research seems odd, because apparently there are patches for it in XP from service pack 2 up, and I have service pack 3 installed. I didn't get it, but now I get to spend this weekend reformatting the server and loading all the software back on it and setting up some new security precautions.
Well troubles are said to come in threes I heard one time, and I know of another problem that I won't discuss for reasons I leave a mystery, but the good news is life moves on. I really wish my work on the engine would though, but life keeps seeming to throw me some distractions that have to be taken care of first.
There has been quite a bit going on since my last post. I moved last week, downtown, into a new apartment, which is quite nicer then the last place I was staying. The building is older, but it's kind of interesting to be in one of the first buildings built in the state. I haven't had any ghosts visit me, but that's all good and well I suppose as I don't think I really know how to entertain ghosts. I'm also finally not in a basement apartment, which I had been the last two before this one. Instead, I'm on the top floor and there's an awesome view of some trees and downtown streets from my many windows. Which is all well and good, it did suck having to move all my shit up four flights of stairs though. Many thinks to Dan and Sam for helping me move my stuff.
As I get settled I'm hoping to really get focused back on getting the engine to the 1.0 bench mark for beta by the end of the year. As I've been writing about for a while now, I haven't really been as focused as I should be. The good news however is that I really feel at home in the new place and feel a lot of focus starting to come my way.
I'm also really wanting to finish the Barricade Proto-type to showcase the engine and want to start working on my personal game project. With things being so close to completion I've found it really hard to stay the course, but after coming this far, it wouldn't make any sense to give up.
Work on the website needs to continue as well, although I'm thinking that it will take a back seat the engine now, which wasn't the approach I was taking the last few months. There's still a lot of work to do there, but things will be completed with time.
Not really much more to write as of now.
I am spending way too much time reading and posting on forums these days. It's good to see all the great projects going on over at tigsoucre, but there is just so much information there that I've missed out on that I'm trying to catch up with that I'm easily spending two hours a day reading the forum posts. Plus working on my website and having various other things going on, I really need to refocus.
The server for the website will be down for a short amount of time as I'm going to move it on Thursday to a temporary place. Not that anyone goes to my site anyways, because there's not a lot to see there yet, but just in case someones wondering.
Well, I modified the blog layout to resemble the theme on the Main website so now things look somewhat uniform.
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
It's been a little while since I last wrote anything in here. What have I been up too, work mostly at the day job, but aside from that, I've been working on getting the website going. Really that's about all I've had time for, creating content, and I'm finally starting to deal with databases again for the first time in about six years, and starting to dabble with some php. It seems like I've been writing a lot also, but about what I'm not sure as it doesn't seem like I've actually produced a whole lot.
I'm also getting ready to move again, this time into a house finally. So things might be slow for a while a yet, but things are always moving in the background. I have forums up and running http://www.decipherone.com/community but odds are if you're reading this blog, you may already know that.
More as news develops at 10.
The month of June 2008 has come and gone already. Half of one orbital rotation has been completed and we are our on our way into the second half. As this begins, I think that it's important for me to reflect for a minute on things that have transpired this year. To see where it is that I am heading and to take note on where things need to change in order for more positive outcomes to be realized.
I was blessed enough to receive a job this year that has allowed me to hold true to completing obligations as well as fund my hobbies and personal business endeavors. It can be easy to forget where one comes from and to take for granted what one has when it becomes a part of ever day life and begins to seem less then extraordinary. The perception of course is wrong. It's something that I have to keep in mind as flight through the cosmos continues this year, and something that I think I should remind myself of, each and every day.
Family is also something that can start to be taken for granted. It's important to have family because they are the ones that help to keep us honest, that we share our triumphs and falls with. They are the ones that let us know when we are acting like a fool, even if we can't see it, and that help pick us up after we have had a bit of misfortune. When things start getting comfortable, it can be easy to forget just how important family is. They are the magnetic poles that guide our moral compasses.
Health is an area where I have been lacking in this year. I was doing well with taking care of myself for the first quarter, but once things starting getting a little unorganized, I allowed myself to fall into a pattern of little to no physical activity. This is bad for me as exercise has always been a huge way for me to relieve stress. This could potentially lead to other problem areas, which in turn could effect the other areas of my life that I've already reflected on. This is something that I've been making a note to change in my mind, but haven't really put forth an effort to remedy. If I don't get serious in this area, I fear it could have some adverse consequences.
I have not accomplished as much as I should have at this point with the game engine this year. At first my time was eaten into by other areas of my life such as work. But for the last three months or more, it's been mostly due to laziness and failure to structure my time to be productive. Granted, I have made some headway, but it hasn't been enough. I have failed to set consistent goals and know that I should have been doing more. Dedication in this area is a must if things are to be ready by the end of this year to move forward into what will be the second phase of my business endeavors. (which I will write more in about in the coming months)
I've been thinking a lot about my goals, community, and my future lately. Essentially, I've given myself five years to make it on my own from nothing to indie game development company. At the end of the five year period I plan on not giving up, but instead taking a more traditional method of academia, because at that point I'll have proven that I can't do it on my own. If things don't change, I'll be sitting here five years from now in too much of a similar position. Except I'll be having to take out loans to take a bunch of classes. I don't like being in debt for any reason, especially to learn(something that should be available to everyone if they want it, at an inexpensive cost, if not free)
Over the next few weeks, I'll be working to get back into a productive schedule that includes exercise and a minimum amount of time to work on things. I'm also working to develop a full fledged website and community to surround the game engine also, so time structuring will become more and more important as we come closer to the engine reaching it's first release phase, and the website officially going live.
It's flooding all over the state of Iowa right now, including here in Des Moines. I happen to be in an area with higher elevation, so I pretty much have lucked out so far and haven't felt the wrath of nature directly. I have however been witness to the many people who have not been as fortunate and who are losing their homes, access to their work, and even some people being separated from their families. If anyone reads this blog, and you happen to be the praying type, I'd ask that you do so now for those people who are having their worlds shaken up. At the same time I realize it's not like similar things aren't going on in the rest of the world, it just makes you take notice even more when it happens to hit close to home.
Speaking of weather, I've been kind of under it the last few days. I've had something of a fever and upper respiratory infection, so I've been kind of unmotivated to get things done. Not that I haven't felt that I wanted be motivated, in-fact, yesterday I attend the local Game Developer Forum Meeting, and today I completed assembling the server, and even now I'm taking the time to write in this here blog, but I've just felt un-motivated. I just hope to get back to feeling normal soon, but I suppose, just like the rain, all I can do is wait it out.
A few days ago, I did manage to complete the side by side XInput and DirectInput implementations for the engine. I also started working on a new test app, or rather a more polished demo showing recognized presses and the like for both generic and 360 controllers. I still need to finish that however. I am then going to tackle finishing up the GUI classes for the engine, which will probably end up taking me a little bit longer then I like, but it'll be a good experience.
I also decided to install Ubuntu as the os for the server. This will be good as I'll finally have a dedicated installation of Linux that I can start to code for, and work out serialization and windowing issues in regards to cross platforming for the engine. Although at this point it's not really a concern, but it's something to look forward to.
At any rate, I'll be spending time building up some resources for the server over the next few months. I'm not going to rush it, as I'm hoping to do some more professional things with the inter-web, and I also have a lot to learn in the way of the operating system, databases, server sided scripts, and server administration in general. I think I'm going to turn in early to try and get to feeling better, and to get an early start on things.
My son is sick again today with a high grade fever and some other symptoms, but apparently the doctors couldn't pin point what it was. I plan on doing some reading and code analysis before bed, but I'm dealing with my son being sick for the time being.
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