| A Farewell... for now. |
[03 Feb 2006|03:10pm] |
I know it's been a while since I've posted... between the work, holidays, (more work) and family, life has been rather hellish. So, it's with some good news that I have bad news -- my wife and I had recently found out that we'll be expecting this coming late July! We'll be finding out the gender this time around, but in order to put everything in order in terms of financial planning for my family, I need to leave Hero's Journey.
Ahhh, the trappings of having kids -- in addition to my 8-5 job as an application developer, I also teach three evening classes here at the college where I work (killing our GM Meeting Evening) and, Wednesday nights, I usually play traditional Irish music at the local pub to unwind; the rest of the time is spent with my wife and little girl.
So, I bloody-well will be keeping an eye on HJ... :) I've pretty much an open invitation back, and I can't wait for that day! Best of luck to Team Simutronics and I truely do look forward to the day when I can continue posting (usefull) information in this journal.
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| Christmas List |
[05 Oct 2005|02:56pm] |
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Bless my family's heart, we're all gaming geeks; my mother and step-dad have multiple L60 characters on both EQ, EQ2, and have played about every single MMORPG that's ever been -- AND they run a guild that's been around for almost a decade now. My family reads this journal and has starting harrassing me with the questions of 'What do I want for Christmas', so I've decided to unretire my old blog website to place the things that could never be found on Amazon -- some of my tastes and interests are definitely outside of the scope of commercialism and thus, quite expensive. It's amazing how much I've begun to think out different saving methods for my hobbies and for my little girls' college and marriage fund.
Oy, I'm not going to be able to retire anytime soon.
My Christmas Wish List
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| Faster Than The Speed of Technology |
[13 Sep 2005|08:16am] |
*sigh* Well, all that money I dropped on the new machine has come back to bite me in the ass -- I've been out of commission for a while now because, unbeknownst to me, HeroBlade hadn't been tested with dual core CPU's and there's an issue that's restricting me to about 4fps because of it -- that's not including the long pauses ever two seconds or so.
I used to be able to connect from my 'real job'; however, major changes in how we control authentication and a sudden need for a full sweet of web and database appliactions to support those changes have had me doing 9 hour-a-day coding with no time. Hopefully they'll be able to get a test platform and work this issue out; I've got stuff to do!
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| New Development Machine |
[01 Sep 2005|02:36pm] |
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About a month ago, I came to the sad realization that my 1 1/2 year old Celeron PC wasn't making the grade anymore in terms of gaming and development. So, I took a couple of weeks and did a lot of research on some of the latest hardware so I could make an informed decision on what parts to purchase and finally build myself a new PC.
Here's what I wound up going with...
- AMD 64-bit X2 3800+ (Dual Core)
- MSI Neo2 nForce4 SLI Motherboard (w/24-bit SB Live!)
- 2GB OCZ PC3200 Memory
- BFG GeForce 7800GT OC 256MB Video Card
- Aspire 520-watt Switching Power Supply
- 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA Hard Drive
- Memorex 16x Dual Layer DVD+R
- Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition
- Aerocool Mid-Tower Case
Here's a few pictures:
  
  
So, I picked up a pretty pimped out case -- plexiglass side panel with a built-in blue LCD fan, the front of the case has a massive turbine-style fan that's lit blue as well. I picked up a blue LED case fan for the back and got round, blue IDE cables for the non-SATA drives. The PSU also had UV-sensitive sheathing around the power connectors as well for a nifty visual experience.
After a few days of playing, I must say the machine is pretty much da bomb -- it's smoking fast, I'm getting 64fps in WoW and the HJ Development Client is fast as hell. Pulling up the Task Manager, I see two CPU's monitors (from the dual core) and multitasking between intensive apps and apps that utilize multiple threads is insanely quick; I'm even convinced that the 64-bit compiled version of IE renders and grabs information much quicker.
It's all enhanced using dual monitors and, one day, I'll pick up another GeForce 7800GT and run SLI with four monitors.
*drool*
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| Nostalgia |
[04 Aug 2005|11:28am] |
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So, I was browsing around the web this morning looking at some puzzles and games -- just trying to help come up with some interesting ideas for HJ when I started becoming *really* nostalgic. I remembered about one of the most famous computer puzzle games that ever was: The 7th Guest. I had bought it... heh, I can't remember when, but I remember running it on my Tandy Sensation 486/25SX (Brand-spankin' new at the time) and it was positively immersive.
After reading about the life and history of Trilobyte (the company who made Guest), I started thinking back to my younger gaming days -- The Shadow of Yserbius on the ImagiNation Network -- probably one of the first graphical MUDs of it's time, I remember being 15 or 16 at the time I was playing this game. I was a QuestMaster named Locke in the "Kingdom of Yserbuis" guild... basically the person in the guild (for that 'server' -- they had several), who kep the secrets of each and every quest in the game. Granted, I had gone through the game fully at least twice, but my mother made friends with a chap named Frank who had worked at Sierra who was nice enough to send me the detailed quest solutions for reference).
I still get some warm fuzzies thinking about that game -- believe it or not I still occasionally speak with people that I met on TSoY. I kept up with a fellow who called himself "RobinHood" who actually introduced me into MUDs. When the advent of the World Wide Web opened up, he was at the forefront doing things that were innovative for the time. His website is still up at benturner.com. I was also a massive Red Baron fan on INN as SmoothieFT (A member of the Flying Tigers squadron) and still email several of my old FT pals every now and then.
Kinda gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling.
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| Completely Off Topic |
[02 Aug 2005|06:42pm] |
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So, I take the wife and kid to Wendy's for a bit of dinner after a rough day at work. We get there and, even though I'm the third person in line, it's not until 10 minutes later that my order is taken. Here's what I ordered:
- Junior Bacon Cheese Burger
- Junior Bacon Cheese Burger only pickles and ketchup
- 2 medium cokes
- 1 small frosty
- 1 cheeseburger kids meal with a milk
Well, I get the food out to the table (after another 10 minutes of waiting for the food AFTER the order was placed) and I start checking out the food for accuracy, now that I had an idea of the level of stellar service they were providing. While the kids meal was OK, my kids milk was opened and half gone... Maybe they ran out of creamer?
Also, instead of the two bacon cheeseburgers, I now had a hamburger with pickles and ketchup and a cheeseburger with onions.
...
......
*sigh*
Suffice it to say I won't be hitting back there any time soon -- so far, the best place I've had in terms of order accuracy has been Taco Bell. Practically error free for as long as I can remember. McDonalds was close up there as well, but they've been slacking lately. Ah well, I could probably stand to eat a bit better anyhow.
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In any case, everything else goes well -- doing a lot of Active Directory WSH/VBScript programming at work. Made my first ActiveX DLL in Visual Basic 6 because WSH/VBScript doesn't support a byte array needed to duplicate/create a GUID. Working on it today, I must commend Microsoft as it's one of the most intuitive things I've done -- if I need to access an item within active directory, I can pull it by GUID, an LDAP path, or a couple of other methods. That type of multi-access is great, especially with what we're trying to do.
Ah well, off to check my mail on WoW then on to HJ to get some work done. ;)
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| Cooperation and Coolness |
[01 Aug 2005|03:15pm] |
Ask any programmer... It's just so fricken cool when you write code and it just works -- now, while a lot of that is talent in programming, it also relates to the intuitiveness of a programming language. Since I'm still technically new to HSL (relatively technically, kinda sorta), I'm pleased as punch with myself. :)
So, I had mentioned that we were put on a quest building schedule to allow us to time how long it takes to do one type of quest as opposed to another. Well, though our quest team is flying through building the world and NPC's and dressing, our other technology that's going to interface things code and mechanics-wise (handling encounters, etc) is going through this great collaberative process to get this hammered out. In any case, I've started code on three different quests, just about finished off one completely whilst I'm getting into the core code and details of the second quest.
Though we're progressing from easy to relatively hard missions (in terms of making things dynamic and full of story and content), it's still a neat thing to sit back and appreciate the things that are turned out after folks who are geographically thousands of miles away cooperate to produce something this cool.
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| The Nitty Gritty |
[21 Jul 2005|09:47am] |
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So, we've been put on a tight schedule with rapid fire quest development -- mostly to see how long different aspects of the development process takes. Everything from a single goal quest to the kind with multiple victory conditions... With that we'll be able to accurately gauge the time it takes for each type of quest, giving us good estimates for future development and building.
I'll be starting to work with generating creatures as part of these events and quests; it may sound really rudimentary (working in an online game, monsters should be an everyday thing, right?), well, being assigned to different areas of the games' development -- quest team, systems development, world building, etc -- it can sometimes limit your exposure to different aspects. It's still one *hell* of an experience
Speaking of GM's, Hero's Journey is looking for more. :) This is a great opportunity to get on the ground floor of the game development industry... If you've always thought about it but want to know a bit more about what's involved and what the position entails, check out http://www.play.net/hj/info/gamemaster/home.asp -- a link to the application is contained within the explanation. In a nutshell, if you've had any experience at all with level building or object orientation programming, consider submitting an application.
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| More Quest Stuff |
[18 Jul 2005|12:53pm] |
We're starting to get into the swing of things with quest design and implementation -- but NOW I know why I code... some of these folks are creative as hell and can blast out these intricately detailed areas with a great story line to boot.
I played a bit more with the character generation... my GM character currently is currently a human with two peg legs, two gear arms, elvish ears, and cornrows with a face colored to resemble a clown. It's absolutely hilarious the freedom that we have in modifying shadings of specific areas of the face, though I think we'll have to limit those options a bit -- my 'example of what a character shouldn't look like' is testament to that. :)
Back to coding!
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| A Quick Update |
[05 Jul 2005|05:50pm] |
Been a while since I've updated...
Between work, teaching three courses at the college, chiropractors, band rehearsal and Hero's Journey -- *so* much has been slipping. In any case, I've switched to the Dark Side(tm)... that is, I've gone from systems development to quest development; kinda as one of the coders for the quest team so for the different puzzles and actions that require sophisticated scripting, they have someone on hand to take care of that without having to submit requests for coders outside of their department.
So far, so good... been playing with some new concepts, messing around with GUI programming -- doing much better than I had though, but man, it still is all time consuming!
So, off to class for the next 4 hours. Bleh!
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| Okie, It's Not THAT Bad... |
[10 Jun 2005|11:15am] |
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So, I realized the err of my ways in how I was building my area -- I applied a few techniques (along with some common sense) and voila! I had a perfectly assembled skeleton area in a few short hours; Ah, if it was only something other than a 'test' area, I would've made it a lot bigger, but I think, since I'm still figuring a few things out, it's still for the best. I have found that thinking of a backstory for your area, as well as sub-stories for each of your rooms, does wonders for adding in the little nuances that give it character.
I'm pleased with the progress I've made -- especially in comparison to the disaster that was my first attempt... I can only go up from here. ;)
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| Writing Code... |
[07 Jun 2005|12:39pm] |
I've realized that creating an area is increadibly time consuming -- especially for someone as 3D impaired as I. ;) Naaw, I've done my fair share of 3D Max editing in the past, but imagine playing legos with peices that didn't snap together... in zero gravity. Then, once you have all of the pieces together, you needed to add little extras to made it look pretty. I think I just gave myself a headache thinking about it; in any case, I decided to shelve the area for a day or so and start playing around with what I do best: code.
I still find it increadibly amazing that someone, whether it be a person, a consortium or company can sit down and write its own programming language that's interpreted, compiled and assimilated into an environment. I am, therefore, standing slackjawed at what this language is capable of -- I can see the similarities from the languages used to power their current games, but the addition of the OOP concepts and newer technologies really do make it an insanely useful tool.
In any case, I created a few test scripts and got them to affect in-game objects and, as a whole, I have a decent 'base' understanding of the underlying theory behind how things are affected, but I'm still scratching the surface of its capabilities. I'm hoping to get into a lot of the base-level programs and systems, but I can't very well do that if I'm here blogging -- back to work!
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| SimuCon Soon... |
[04 Jun 2005|10:23pm] |
It took me *5* bloody hours to get from Washington D.C. to Delaware yesterday -- about 110 miles. FIVE HOURS -- and not in my nice, broken-in Grand Am... no, I had this crappy state car I signed out, a Plymouth Breeze. It felt like I was ducking down the whole time to get a proper view out of the windshield. Bah, I'm still bitter, but the Oracle training went well -- I've learned more about SQL queries (Oracle-specific) than I think I ever want to know. I'm still pondering whether I should take two more Oracle related classes to get the DBA certfication or if I should take something fun like Perl and MySQL.
In any case, SimuCon is coming up in less than two weeks; GAH. I'm traveling WAY too much this year, but at least this trip will be more pleasure than business. I shot an email off and arranged to get an HJ nametag in addition to my DR player nametag, so if you see me, be sure to say hello.
I've almost finished my first 'big' test area -- I have to clean up a few connections, but I've already got some of the foliage in place and I'll be starting on things like trees and other props shortly thereafter. All in all it's a great process and, though I doubt it would get used, it is definitely giving me a perspective on how the objects are handled so I might be able to better apply code to them.
It's late, so I'm off!
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| HJ E3 Movie Link |
[01 Jun 2005|09:00pm] |
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I've found that movie link -- check it out HERE and dig on the tactics and mission completion alternatives.
Oh, and before anyone asks or gets into a bad habit, Chade is pronounced Shade.
Thnk u, drv thru pls.
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| Amazing Video |
[31 May 2005|07:47am] |
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There's a link somewhere on the HJ Forums that leads to a hand-held video made of HJ's E3 demo -- it's a german website, but the video is narrated by HJ's Producer, Melissa Meyer and it is insane. Having been working on the game and using its tools for the past week, I'm still amazing at what's been accomplished so far (mind you, I mainly stay in the realm of building and development right now, so it's easy to loose the big picture of things and not see a lot of what else is going on).
If you haven't seen the demo, find that bloody link and go watch it -- they're adding elements of tactics involving utilizing your party members in order to attack your opponent, alternate methods to complete your missions and the sweet graphics. I'm still blown away by the envionment control and the trees/grass swaying in the breeze.
Ah well, these week I'm off in DC for Oracle training (damned day job), and I know when I check in to my hotel, the connection is going to be firewalled as hell so I probably won't be able to get any *real* work done ;p, so I'll press on until Friday!
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| The Start of My Journey... |
[24 May 2005|02:16pm] |
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It's nice when you get a birthday gift a little bit early...
So, I'm sitting at home playing World of Warcraft with a friend when I see an IM pop up on my other monitor -- even though we're in the middle of fighting some odd looking centaur-like creatures, I ask him if we could relax for a few minutes. So, I alt+tab out and it was Melissa Meyer giving me a heads up that they were sending out my GM package for Hero's Journey; well, to say the least, I was pretty elated! So I get into work this morning and fax back the information to the Simutronics office -- now, it's all a matter of time. :)
I've always been so-so with my blogging, but I figure it'll be a nice little diary to keep for my 'coming out of retirement' segment of life. No, no I'm not some old fella like ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) drbubba , but I did work for Simutronics before -- if you've played Modus Operandi in the middle-late 90's, you might remember MO-Chade; that's right, it's the man who was responsible for creating 'The Cricket'. "A masterful and brilliant work of code?" you might ask, to which I reply, "Nope, just an inanimate object that folks like to hang around for some reason."
In any case, as far as my duties go, it looks like I'll mostly be relegated to in-game development... coding and scripting and the like; I may also be dipping into documentation and training, along with a little bit of world building if it suits me well enough. So, check back often and feel free to drop me any comments as I'll try to update when something pops up.
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