Scrubs and TV

I've been sitting watching scrubs again, and I just keep cracking up at it. Since Stargate's now been cancelled, its good theres still something on thats still worth watching!

I had to stay late at work tonight which wasn't bad.... I think thats the first time in the 2 1/2 years since I started! Russell and I are determined that we won't work the insane overtime that usually goes with being in the industry. I think once you have a family, it all changes, and you just don't care what the hell they'll say..... As long as the work quota is reasonable, and you make it - you shouldn't have to do overtime.... This doesn't seem to be the way the rest of the office is working..... They're gonna lose people over that.

I've been working with C# at home in preperation of Microsoft releasing the XNA stuff, so I've been building a games framework - and my understanding of what you can do! Its quite nice, very Java but without the pish java has to deal with. About the only issue was getting a timer to automatically update the window every 50th of a second. Its never gonna do Unreal3 on windows.... but it might on the 360!

The EIEF

So I did my bit at the EIEF (http://www.eief.co.uk/) and it seemed to go okay. I can never tell what Im actually like, I always think I sound like a total pratt. Still, this year, I'll be able to tell coz Channel 4 recorded it!! (audio only - thank you god!). You're only supposed to have 5 min to talk (which isn't a lot really), but I've no idea how long I went on for.

I met I knew someone from CodeOp's who was doing a talk on freelancing, and she was terrified! And you know, for a male dominated industry, I was the only guy on the panel. I suspect its male dominated in the ranks.... but its the women pulling the strings - as we all know they like to.....

Good fun though - I do enjoy public speaking, even if I do tend to waffle on a bit, and I can't wait to hear what I was actually like!

DMA Design....

I've spent the week updating my DMA Design site. It takes ages to get some of the material together for it, but I wanted to finish off the rewrite of the Lemmings page's. I also decided to put up a couple of pages from the next chapter (1991) since they were sitting around doing nothing as well.

I really need to start writting 1992 as well - before I forget it all! Once I hit 93-94, there should be a lot more people that can give some input and keep things fresh.... so far its just me. Anyway it's worth a read, even if it is to see just how badly I spell.

DMA Design Web Page

I'm in Edinburgh on Tuesday talking at one of the Edinburgh International Games Festival (EIGF) things. Its being held at the Odeon on Lothian Road at 11:15, so if your bored - come along....I suspect it's going to be a lot emptier this year. Last year, abo8ut 1/2 were kids with paretns - but schools are now back so....

C# and .Net

So.... I'm doing a tool to build textures. Last time I did this I did it in C++ as usual but since I need to update it a bit, I thought I'd have a go doing it in C#. Now C# is pretty good in some cases, really easy to do GUI stuff - just like visual basic is, but still has some problems when dealing with memory. I had a bug that showed this up - I thought I had to make millions of textures, but it turns out that was wrong - obviously. But it did show up that C# was allocating twice the ammount of ram to do the job. Now, for 16 byte allocations, that wasn't bad, but if I was doing this in c++ I'd allocate a huge chunk of memory, and then just point to it. But in C#, you can't do that. "fixed" arrays actually have to be constant, which I don't want, which means you're buggered. This is pretty bad really for a "new" laungage.

Still, after I fixed the bug memory wasn't an issue so I was able to proceed as normal, and it's pretty good - in general. The other reason for trying this is that with Microsoft doing an open devkit for the PC and 360 in C#, these are the kinds of problems I might hit.

I'm really looking forward to using this new SDK (Software Development Kit) and being able to do little games on a 360 - perhaps even sell them....I just need to think of one - preferably one that won't take a year of my spare time to do! I've been doing several projects at home. One is a retro Commodore Plus/4 shoot-em-up (www.xeo3.org) and then theres my DMA History site (www.dmadesign.org), and then I have a few other smaller personal projects. Between all these - and family - I have almost no time to do "small games"....but I live in hope!

Long time no typing......again.

Been a while... whats new. I was in Boston for a week while attending a large graphics confrence (SigGraph) which was great fun. Boston's really nice, lots of green things, and very walkable - unlike most other US cities.

Sitting in a dark room for a week is a bit much, but at least we were able to get out and about in the evening.

Joe started school yesterday as well, and he was looking very grown up in his new school uniform - I'm feeling old now.... :(

Football fever!

Been doing almost nothing except watching the world cup really. Some fairly good matches and some fairly dull ones but its great fun. I love watching good teams play, but it does bug me when commentators say this game or that game will be a walk over; all the teams had to fight to get to the world cup in the first place, so they're all pretty good. Ghana proved that yesterday by beating the Czech's, it was a game that everyone assumed would be a dull walkover by the Czech's.

I also discovered my projector takes in a HiDef signal! And although its sampled down, still means I can a truly outstanding picture! The projector does 960x540, so the 1920x1080 progressive image is sampled down, but boy its cool. So I've stolen the Cable TV box from the Living room and put it beside the projector and been living in HiDef Heaven!! I wonder what a proper 1920x1080 image looks like once its been projected onto an 8foot screen...

First communion...

Its my daughters first holy communion on Sunday, and she'd been doing lots of classes and leassons in preperation for it. My mum had been so looking forward to this last year just before she passed away, so it'll be an odd happy and sad day for us all. We still haven't gotten my mums estate sorted out, but I have no idea how long these things take really. I promised my Gran that mum will pay for the dress Rebecca will be wearing since it meant a lot to mum to be the one to buy it. Frances got a chain from my mums collection for becca to wear on Sunday, so thats nice.

Its funny how we keep trying to include the ones we've lost in our lives, I'm not sure if its out of loss or knowing that she's up there watching and allowing her to take part in some small way. I suspect the latter. It's one of the reasons I don't feel the need to go to the grave very much, I feel like she'd not there, but is watching from somewhere else. When Nicholas was Christened, out of chance we ended up using a white scarf of my mums as well... I know lots of people would say thats just chance, but I don't think any of us see that.

Back to normal.....almost.

I've just about recovered now, so I've been back at work adding to the latest Demo for Dave. Russell's been having a ball adding really sad effects, but it's all adding up to something that looks fairly neat. I'd love to see this for the first time again because I don't really see anything special most of the time. M ost folk seem to think it looks amazing, but I have to admit, I just don't see it. It looks cool, but not quite as amazing as everyone makes out... I can't tell if they really do think that, or are just being nice.

I did buy the large climbing frame thing for the kids, and I've spent most of the week building the damn thing. I'm almost done, I've just got the swings to add. Although, that looks like a job in itself. Still, Joseph was out playing on it tonight and had great fun, so I hope this will keep them out and help keep them active. When I was their age, I was never in the house, I was always out playing...I don't want them to become too lazy this early on - I've no idea what that'll do to them later in life when they have no choice in the matter....

Blah....

I've been feeling really crap past few days, full of the cold or flu - who knows. So after being off wortk for a couple of days then back in today, I've decided to take a long weekend to relax and try and recover a bit more, today was hard going and I didn't really get very far.

Russell seems to be having fun doing some visual effects for our app, and while not vital, they will show how dynamic it is and the advantages it holds. Theres still a long way to go, but with any luck the visual quality should double which would probably make it more attractive to the people Dave's after. Im still finishing off my GUI system, but its almost done. I took a small timeout to help Russell with my 3D engine, and correct and improve some of it. It appears to be using lots of VRam, but Im not really sure why - something I'll have to investigate.

I've not done anything with my BASIC really, been too knackered. I hope to pick it up again soon, although I intend to buy the kids climbing frame this weekend so thats probably a wait and see. Still, these things usually take time to deliver so...

Google me this....

I've been playing with Google earth and Sketchup, and boy does it have issues. I mean, its nice being able to build your house and put it in google earth and all, but theres so many limitations to the editor that you just dont get with a normal 3D package. Initially, you think its much easier than a real 3D package, but as you get into an edit, you start to realise all the tools that have been removed, are actually ones you need. Its also dog slow, and I'm not really sure why. Being a games coder, Im used to throwing around 100,000's of polys, yet google earth stutters as it draws a few hundred. No idea why, particually since they do draw lots when you switch on buildings in New York. The comunity's seems a bit too wide spread as well, although they do have a good age spread. My father-in-law loves it for example, but I know that no one aisde from an artist could actually use sketchup. Oh well, I guess it might get better in time but there are still problems that the concept of using sketchup gives. But when you have almost infinite money, I guess those can be fixed too.