Let everyone know what you're doing.
This could go on people's home pages, and details probably should, but a brief mention here gives us a single place to look for an overview.
- Hacking away at a version of Elite to experiment with automation/AI. See autoElite - Hmmm... This entry is over a year old! But I'm not giving up on it yet - I tracked down and fired up my code the other day it's still something that might be worth pursuing
- SDx Linux server up and running: see jdh-sdx
- Home interior project badly stalled at the moment, living in hellhole. Could pick up again at any time. In the meantime, I'm poking around at SDx stuff again.
- Investigating the possibility of using Lisp for development. Yes, for SDx. Yup, you heard right. Lisp.
- Translating the physics simulator to Lisp to see how it performs.
- Building up the rudimentary physics simulator. Haven't yet gotten to the stage where I get to worry about all the sophisticated stuff we've talked about on the wiki. :-)
- Hoping to integrate physics simulator with Frank's first steps at rendering soon.
- Going through "Beginning Direct 3D Programming." Learning the basics.
- Fiddling with Milkshape 3D for models. (I ftpd an unfinished image for a ship made with 3DS Max using the developer account. You can view it here [developer account]. I also made one in Milkshape; I should post that somewhere...)
- Investigate getting a Viewpoint broadcast license for Sdx. The intent would be to publish models in an easy-to-view format in a single location. Now that we have an ftp site (yay John!) we have a place to put the current version of files, but without a public viewing mechanism that still requires people to download and have locally installed renderers. For the time being, the renderer is Milkshape, but that's $20 that people don't need to spend just to view models.
There's an example of what it would look like on /ViewpointExample, except that there would not be a "watermark". The broadcast license removes the watermarks free, presuming Viewpoint agrees that their technology is not being used to sell products or as a functional component of the web site. Note: This requires installing Viewpoint, which is a 3D model viewer. I think you'll be prompted to install it when you go to the web site. If not, try going to the [Poly Gods home page] and see if there's some link. If that doesn't work, contact me and we'll figure something out.
- Working full-time at NetDevil. I'm still planning to pop in here to discuss game design in a general sense. And NetDevil will almost certainly never produce anything like we were discussing (even if I were to try to influence them to do so): their thought process and approach are totally different, and I doubt they'd ever make a game that realistic or sophisticated....
- (4/30/03) Um.. haven't visited for a while. Episode 2 of Jumpgate released on 3/18, if anyone here still cares. if your accounts aren't all dead, well, there's more stuff in the game now. Some of it is even good. I feel like I'm fiddling while Rome burns, except I'm the only one really working as if Jumpgate could last out the year. Still, I'm learning a good bit and messing about in the code a lot more. I actually feel like programming is my main responsibility... and, well... it is.
DWM I still have my account, against my better financial judgement. I was loathe to give up my beta tester's medal. :-) I do hope to play again sometime. How are the subscription numbers doing? Istvan On the US server, low. Very low. EU is healthier, but still not great.
- (1/28/03) Popped in to say I think of you guys daily, if not hourly. I'm spending a great deal of time staring at ugly non-OO legacy code, with frightening duplications that may or may not be unused if anyone has time to trace the spaghetti to find out. Also seeing why Jumpgate's design seemed incoherent - it's all been sort of "wow, this'd be cool" feature based, not an iota of consistency or planning in sight. A small design team with a coherent plan can make something that will knock the socks off Jumpgate. I'm going to do what I can to push Jumpgate back toward its real potential, but wow, what inertia.
- In other news - a close friend of mine let me know a week or two ago that a mutual friend of ours from college is sitting on a design document for a software project. This design document is for, I believe, a fairly straightforward turn-based strategy game. It is interesting, however, because this game is for an existing market - AEG's Legend of the Five Rings fantasy oriental world (home of very popular collectible trading card and RPG games). The owner of this document has been told in writing by AEG, "We are interested. However, we are not in the computer game business. We will gladly sell you license to make this game and provide you with our art resources should you find yourself in possession of a development group who can implement this." This could be an interesting game project for a team to cut its teeth on, before actually tackling an MMORPG. Mail me if you guys think you might want to pursue this at all, and I'll gather the necessary contact information so you can discuss it directly with the principal. The guy who wrote the design document is also a programmer, but this project is to big for him to try alone.
- The game programming book that I once was studying includes a simple sample space sim game (Yes, I like alliteration). I think about all you can do is fly around. Anyway, I'll try to get that going so that we have something to play with. Well, I've made a little bit of progress. I'm going to document my results on the Sdx Primero Intento page.