Vacations Ending...

...and I still don't know if I'm accepted into my university!
My classes start 14 of September, and I don't even know WHEN I will know if I will be granted a condo by university.
In the best case in a few days I'll discover that I've been given an aparetement and that I'll have another schoolyear without much worries apart from the classes I failed last year (which can cost me going to uni this year).
Apart from that I'm making another small engine. After working with openGL and SDL, and making a 21.000 lines of code long engine doing this one is actually pretty easy, especially since I'm not making it for various games, but only the basis for some prototypes.
My current prototype is a simple 2D animation system, bundled with an IK system and ability to draw textured mesh on it. It's practically finished apart from few bugs and certain incoherence between parts which makes me correct the code I've written before, but apart from that it all worked. Now I want to make a very simple Animation editor that features: keyframe operations like moving, creating, deleting, and reasigning to another bone (yes, the keyframes are bone independent, they only store the angle of a bone, and the ease). IK based animation building. saving and loading the animation into and from a file. Undo-redo operations.
For now that's it. It's already difficult to make this program since I have little previous experience, and I'll have to make a small GUI (oh, this reminds me, I have to download and instal the openGL font creator and the png import library).
I think it's all for now. I don't have that much time here in poland to be on pc, so the work is going by little bits, and I generally can't be on the pc for more than 4 hours a day, including programming.
Maybe I'll come up with a cool and simple game Idea I'll want to make more than this (quite useless, apart from the experience) animation system.
I'm also interested in the GDC presentations lately, I've seen all of Chris Hecker's presentations and I have to say I must thank him a lot. I learned a ton of things, and he gave me the inspiration to start programming again with his and Chaim Gingold's Advanced Prototypig talk at GDC, which I can certainly reccommend if you have difficulty starting programming again.
That's it for now.
Cya later!
Spliter

Du di dam dam

Vomits, Spewing, Dripping, Splashing, Paint, Water and anything else I can think of, was the only thing I could think of for the last few days, in my free time from rummaging through cupboards, tables, and under the beds in search of documents I was supposed to deliver LAST MONTH!
Ah well...
I'm seriously thinking of implementing some cool looking spewing in my game, but It's really hard to find any kind of graphical and especially video resources for something like that (especially if you don't want to get grossed out, and looked funny at). I could do something like that at home if I had a few buckets of paint, or tinted water, a camera, and a place to do the footage, but although 1 and 2 are available, nr 3 is in short supply.
Apart of that things aren't getting much better. My brother's return to Poland is almost certain since I can't find a job. I'm going to stay here in Portugal, living in a University condo, but I still don't know what about my sister, She could stay here if she wants it, she's the only one of us three that has any working experience, and on top of that she's a girl, which means that getting any job for her isn't as much of a problem as for me and my brother (who is still too young to have a job).
But for now let's live bad things behind. Lately I wrote a bit of a story for my game called Alternate Gravity. I already wrote 4 chapters of a book when I was younger, and a ton of unfinished comic books I gave up on, so at least when writing for this game I have some previous experience. It's shaping up pretty well so far, and I've managed to fill in some of the holes I had from when I organized everything in my mind. Now I see why design docs are so important.
normally when I create a game, I write down all the technical stuff, and create a small technical design doc, thanks to which I can easily make all of that, unfortunately I never actually created any game design doc, so even though I had the technology, and the abilities I never quite knew how to put it together. The worst mistake I do when making a game is that I don't have a final product in my mind. I can see myself playing bits of it, but I never quite know how the entire game will be, and how do I sew those separate levels into one solid gameplay.
So far I can reveal some info about Alternate Gravity (I would hope this blog end up as a gossip source for my game in the future :) ).
1-You start in a lab complex called Newton doing beta tests for an exo-suit.
2-Newton is located at an unnamed part of the world that it NOT America.
3-The gameplay will revolve much around the gravity. The entire environment inside the Newton labs will have it's gravity twisted in various ways.

I'm still working on some of the bosses for the game, and on how will the player look, but I'll probably use an older design I did for a small experimental game with similar concept.
Here's Alternate Gravity in it's experimental form:
http://files.filefront.com/Alternate+Gravityzip/;13745447;/fileinfo.html
(filefront will be used only until I can find a safer location to upload in which I have more control over the content)

Okay! It's time to finish this post and get back to work finding that stupid document I need for my father to let me off the hook (for now).
See you later!
Spliter

Little update.

Hi!
Long time no see huh?
Well... since this blog is almost as dead as my hopes I decided to update it a little with how things are going.
First, I wanted to apologize for my continuous negligence of TTL2. I do some work every now and then but lately I have difficulties on concentrating. Even my Team Fortress 2 enthusiasm is starting to wilt. I think the obvious reason for that is my slight depression and tiredness. And me still not having a job isn't helping.
Luckily there's still one thing that keeps me sane: Alternate Gravity. So far my biggest programming project. It's a game that I plan on releasing commercially, and if it's not good enough at least I hope it'll give me a kick in the right direction. I have planned much, and much of that is being done. Right now I'm working on perfecting the lighting system, so far it works by brightening everything places that aren't in shadow, but I need something better, so I decided to try another method which consists of rendering the lights BEFORE the screen is drawn, then copy the final product to an offscreen texture, and then render that texture on top of everything simply darkening the places that are in shadow.
Apart from that I'm also working on the editor. I finally got the UNDO and REDO thing to work. but since I want the game do be easily modable I want the editor to parse the config from a file, so I can use the same editor for different projects (as far as those projects are 2D as well).

Every single time I post something on this blog I realize more and more how inappropriate and ironic the name is. Initially it was supposed to be a blog where I could upload doodles and drawings I do from time to time, but for the few past months I haven't done almost anything when it comes to art (Apart from the scarce TTL2 updates). So I was thinking of either changing the name, or go along with it and say that art is a expression of one's feelings, needs and hopes, and so even programming itself can be art!
...I'll most probably go with the second one since changing the name would be too much work :D

I also was thinking of starting a journal on gamedev.net where I could update my progress on alternate gravity and other programming projects and maybe even get some feedback (as opposed to this blog which no one reads ...).
Well... I have test today in about five hours and I've barely studied...
So i'll be going now and maybe soon I'll update this blog with how TTL2 is going and also I was thinking of starting a review column for both movies and games.
See you later!
Spliter

TTL2 update

Yes! finally after 5 weeks of no news I am happy to announce that I become sufficiently bored with games, and programming to get into the artistic phase. So, what does that mean? Well, it means I'll be making more TTL2 updates now as I have been working on it! So far I'm halfway through "We don't go to ravenholm" which, thank god, is one of the easier to do episodes and so it's less work for me :) .
Since Raiki allowed me not to do any static models (wardrobes, cars, airboat etc) My work progression will be much faster from now on, cine I'll only be focusing on the essential models like Aantlions, gunships and other that aren't too complex yet are fun to make, and their animations!

This update models are:
The omnipresent Fast Headcrab:
Quite simple, so far there are only two versions I've done of him. This is the second.

The annoying eye blinding Scanner:
Simple to animate, but it's one of my most complex models I've done so far.

And finally the glorious Strider:

He's quite difficult to animate, but the result is always worth it.


So here you have it. The strider on the right and the scanner were both done several years ago, when I and Raiki decided to work in a team on TTL2 for the first time.

I should have the Ravenholm chapter finished by today night, and tomorrow I start working on the highway 17 when I get back from uni. I can finally feel the inspiration flowing through my veins, And as a plus, I'll be able to show this movie in my portfolio.

Oh yeah, a little life update.
I'm currently searching for a job, so far I've sent my CV and an motivation letter to two companies, one of them is Dephos, a 3D imagery company (they do maps, gps's etc) they're looking for a student with experience in C++ and 3D graphics, so I guess I fit, and the other is a Portuguese store line where my uncle works. I'll also send my CV to another graphic company, and I hope I can put TTL2 as one of my works in my portfolio.

Well... I'll see you in a week with more TTL2 updates!
Spliter

ps: I finally managed to get more writing space in blogger, it's quite usefull.

Projects

I decided I want to do something other than just games, but also something will help me achieve my goals.
So, in beforehand here's the list of things I want to achieve in my life:
-work at valve
-work at/for Pixar
-get a first job
-get married and have at least one son and one daughter
-Make the greatest game ever (or at least a game that will win the Game of the Year award)
...and finally after I've had my fun being awesome:
-Become a teacher at a good university, and pass on my knowledge to other people, helping them to get even better than I was.
-Die for someone I love (the last one preferably at the end >. < )

7 things to do before I die, not a big list but not easy as well. If there's ever an advice I can give to someone it is this: Create goals for your life. Even if you don't accomplish them you'll go farther than if you had none.

So in the meantime I plan on creating few things on my own that will help me in the future.
It's not a secret so I'll share it with you:
Let's start with something small
that's not so bad! And yet it will help me learning Quaternions which I'll need later!

Ok, now something more ambitious!
Now that's more like it! I'll still have to create a program to create the models, which although not listed, is still part of this project.

Ok, this one's a real leap forwards
It's starting to get interesting! especially 8 and 10, which are also a part of the next project:


Now THAT's advanced. It will be the first time I'll attempt making something this complex. By the time I'll start that project I'm hoping to have a model editor ready, and a working basic animation editor. it's gonna be quite difficult to create those 4, but it'll be worth it, because if I do them, that'll mean I'm prepared for the future, and have done a good share of work to prove it, and to show my potential employers.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I'll be posting updates on this blog as I work through these projects.
Seeya!