Captain's Log Supplemental

One of the things that has been resting on my mind, is working on my game projects and raven shield admin system. I do believe, that I’ve figured out a way that I can augment my engines capabilities without breaking down portability to much, and still retaining the “C” language factor ;). I’ve also decided that my RvS admin tool, will likely benefit if I complete my games net code, and integrate it in place of the existing networking code it uses.

I’ve three game projects, generic titles being StarFighterGame, TacFPSGame, and MechCombatGame; each chosen for their obvious descriptiveness in place of an iron clad title. StarFighterGame, has been awarded the title of “Stargellas Revenge ©”, and the others are still to be decided. Story wise, Stargellas Revenge is green light, it just needs the game code and assets to catch up with it. I have the general overview for TacFPSGames story and enough design details set, but still can’t figure out a proper title. The ‘mech game, I’m thinking of splitting into two different games: one aimed at a combat simulation, and the other as a Real Time Strategy game, charting the “Bigger picture”.Story wise, things need to develop further, as well as growing a title. On the one side, I’m thinking some what along the lines of an epic war meets small scale tactical warfare, and some hordes of enemies to mow down for the action cravers, hehe.

The code backing my game projects, is engineered to be highly portable, and suitable for producing most any kind of game. My primary focuses, more or less follow the styles of arcade and simulation games, but alas, I prefer flexibility over rewriting crap later on, hehe. I could do so much more if I had more to work with :'(.

I haven’t been getting much rest lately, although a fair bit of sleep. My dreams have been weird, ranging from caring for the best friend I’ve ever had, to struggling with more difficult adversaries. It’s kind of strange, because I generally don’t dream about the dead :-/. The only good thing I can say, is despite a few disturbing things, going to bed ’round 0200 local sure beats 0700, lol.

My minds focused on getting stuff done, and trying to rack up some R&R. Which leads to my new official Quake motto is “Fuck’em all, and let John sort’em out”. With the wifi being a bit more upity lately, I’ve mostly been hanging around Raven Shield the past couple weeks; unlike SWAT 4, in RvS if you lag out in the middle of a gun battle, it tends to increase your survival rate, rather then negate it.

Yet I still have a tendency to lag up and fall off into deep space when playing Quake :-(. Although I must admit, even with my wireless freeze frames every two minutes or so, I’m actually getting quite good at handling them, but there’s only so much you can do when it’s in mid air lol. Last night I got plugged off an arena platform, and died with rocket launcher in hand, because I lagged up and missed the chance to rocket myself onto a nearby jump pad for a last minute save.

Well, I finally reached the point where I couldn’t focus on the code any longer, and just went to sleep hours early lol. Ironically by the time I would’ve likely gone to bed, there was such a huge freaking storm blowing, that I woke up o/. It was so ferocious sounding, that it took me a while to be sure whether or not I was dreaming or waking up, but it woke me up lol. The thunder was so earth shattering loud, I think to get any louder, it would take flying in it.

The downside of going to bed early, is missing a few hours coding, and that I’m awake already :'(

Between projects, duties, and my own odds and ends, I’ve basically have used five or six programming languages this week in order to get stuff done, and have probably read code in a dozen more languages. Sometimes I really wish sticking towards one or two languages across every task would be more practical, but I’m unlikely to see that happen in my life time. I just use whatever gets the job done best.

Ya know, if I could speak human languages as well as I know computer languages, I could order dinner in any civilised country in the world.

Today’s main goals, are to work on finishing my ‘new’ client side admin for Raven Shield, hash out Stargellas networking sub system, and find some time to play a couple rounds. Although of course, if I actually had a worth while choice in the matter, I wouldn’t be spending my day camped in front of a computer, but knowing my family well, it’s unlikely to day is to stick to last weeks schedule. *sigh* at this rate I’m never getting out of this place without a sledge hammer.

I’ve just finished a portion of a open source project, that’s worth about $1,000-$1,500 in monkey labour, even at going wages for nublet programmers in these parts. But it’s not a project I’m involved with for profit, so much as an opportunity to leave things better then I found it. It is cool however to know what ones time is worth o/. On the upside, since the code I’ve written falls under a very permissive license, I can always put it to good work else wheres, hehe. The code should reach the git repo this evening.

Recently heard that my brother was involved in a car accident, sounded like it was on par with a “Jaws of life” or glorified can opener kind of situation. Either way, for the second time in 12 years, his cars totaled. Apparently, he is also pissed off that the guy who hit him, did it by serving to miss a dog, instead of running the poor animal over. I glad both my brother, the dog, and the other driver are all in one respective piece, even if it means a destroyed car. You’ve just got to love my family, don’t you? It made me think a bit about how my father exited truck driving, by hanging the rig off a bridge, but sed -e s/missing a dog/missing a woman with kids in the car/g. Maybe it’s just my brothers nack for driving like a Gran Turismo race track, but he seems to be good at totaling cars when he actually /does/ get into an accident.

As for me, I’ve been largely glued to a computer, working on various projects. Luckly, there has been one decent thing going for me, I don’t have to get up before ‘lunch time’ on days off work :! Which kind of makes it easier to be up all day and all night working on crap, until of course, you’ve got to go back out to work >_>. I am that freako kind of person, when the project interests me (or I need to), you’ll find me eating, sleeping, and breathing it. Until either it gets done, or I need to take a break before I have a stroke lol.

While I was being dragged across the super market the other day, I was contemplating very seriously, dropping support for FreeBSD from one of my upcoming personal projects. The time savings alone from doing that, would allow getting it done perhaps a year or two ahead of schedule. Delays involved from supporting FreeBSD are not a fault of the OS, so much as many third party assholes that make it more troublesome to support FreeBSD, but could like wise make life easier if the right software was available. Then I got to thinking, well if I could just purchase certain tools in the first place, the time savings in production would just be worth it (I’m only likely to be using the program under Windows NT anyway), and those tools would *ease* that platform support issue at the same time. A bit, at the cost that those tools would also mean closing the code base :(. Shortly after wards, it occurred to me: the possibility of forming a small company with some friends (or hiring them on as helpers). Having the extra dedicated assistance of a small team instead of going virtual army of one, would help speed up getting it done, keeping it professional, and between the lot of us, we could cook up some interesting projects to stay in business with. In due time, we could also upgrade to bigger and better tools for a more rapid turn around then a near non existent starting budget allows. The problem however, is even if we found a publisher for our products, our stuff kicked everyone’s ass, and the publisher wouldn’t simultaneously screw us out every orifice in the dealing, I doubt if we would reap enough profits in order to make it worth my friends efforts :-/. For me, any profit is still, well more then I had before, but if I’m going to get others involved, I would want them to get a fair share. I don’t get involved with stuff in order to make a buck off it, I do it because I want to, but I can’t expect the same of the rest of the world.

In all probability, that project in question will be produced virtual army of one, along with the help of a few people who’ve volunteered or given their services for a few parts. And the code base would stay open, and FreeBSD will likely be supported. Whenever possible, I do prefer writing code that supports Linux, BSD, general Unix, Mac, and Windows; but of course, since I don’t have a Mac, I don’t support OS X officially lol. I just don’t burn the bridge of supporting a given OS, unless it’s necessary.

When it comes to the questions of closed / open source, I’m a realist. I very strongly prefer open source, and under a *real* opens source license: not the GPL. (Zealots stop reading now and go fsck yourselves.) I will use closed source software when it is the superior or more suitable application. However, being able to read(!), and even hack at the source is a massive plus for me. When it comes to stuff I write, I prefer to keep it open source also, for just the same reasons I prefer to have access to the source code of programs I use.

In the end though, I expect a good quality program that is well executed, be it open source, closed source, free, shareware, or just costs more then a shiny new Lamborghini.

It seems that I’ve finally succumbed to joining those around me, Monday and Tuesday being especially crappy days. At least today, I can smell again… lol; so I assume things are moving back towards normal again. Compared to most people that I know, I’ve always had a bit of a weak sense of smell, but more fine grained sense of hearing, so it’s not a major loss. I’m just not used to being sick. Woke up with a sour throat, and went on to spend a day being wet, cold, and on the run, with just a gram cracker to show for nourishment.

Sometimes I wonder, if getting sick is GODs way of saying, TAKE A FUCKING BREAK! Either way, that’s about as often as I get sick, irregardless of how many people manage to cough all over me 8=). On the upside, I’ve found more time for coding, if not gaming :-(. I spent about two days of having my mic muted whenever I joined TS3, because of my throat, .but I’ve been more active on the night cycle anyway of late, so it’s not like I can speak much anyway lol. Code wise I’ve been working on my games I/O subsystem and experimenting with Qts WebKit module, and continuously failing to find the time to “Practice” my knowledge of WxWidgets, in favour of using Qt more often :-D.

Aching throats, nose constantly running, nasal passages stuffed tighter then a thanksgiving turkey, chilly as windy night, and so on… doesn’t really bother me much, until I run out of paper towels to use as a Kleenex! At least this time, I haven’t been killed by excessive PND and flem, like a few years back. The main things that piss me off is if I’m fussed over, luckely ma has been sicker then I have, so she’s been to preoccupied with bitching about her own problems xD.