September 9, 2006 - Saturday |
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 | The Team Tournament Blog I'm working LLLLAAAATTTTTTTEEEEEEE. We are sending a HUGE milestone build of the game tomorrow, and it's going to kill me. My plan is to work until I have enough light to drive by, and then head home for a day off, sleep, take my wife out to a movie, and then sleep again, and come back to work Monday morning.
The more bugs I fix, the more that pile up on my list. Luckily, about half of the bugs aren't something I need to worry about right now. But, the other half, I do need to get to, YESTERDAY.
So, why am I wasting time blogging, you ask? Well, its simple, the process I'm running takes about 8 minutes of waiting per iteration.
So, I may have mentioned this before, but I've switched to diet pop. I've lost about 8 pounds with that being my only lifestyle change. But, I had a regular Mt Dew today. Lordy, it's just TOO sweet. I dont' know how I did it for so long. I mean it, it's terrible. It used to be I could eat straight sugar, and now, I can't even drink a regular pop. What a change. I still have no problem with chocolate.
Oh, and you should so find a south park character creater. I made 2 avatars. They are pretty sweet. I'll see what I can do about posting them.
SHIT, I have completely forgotten about Jordan's response! I need to get on that!
Ok, I'll post the pics, then I'll send Jordan's response.
~OUT~
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| September 7, 2006 - Thursday | Long time no blog.... Ok, so I have team tourney's working in one game, and now I'm helping a guy get tourneys working in another game so they can be compatable, which should be cool.
The bad part is that I broke another piece of the game, which isn't very fun at all. Well, it's not that I broke it, it's still broke after I thought I fixed it, so I guess I'm not as good as I thought I was, oh well. I spent a good portion of last night 9:30-11:00pm working on finding one problem with my boss. It's a good thing he was there to help, I didn't know how to even begin looking for this type of bug.
So, now that part works, but the rest of it is broked. And you can quote me on that.
So, I've been asked some things about the gaming industry, and I figured since I spent quite a bit of time writing it up today, I'm going to post it on my blog.
The guy who asked me is trying to start a gaming company (I've got them on my friend's list) Embryo Showcase. I know one of the guys, and I know I've met another one of the guys, so I don't mind helping out.
I'm not a total authority on the gaming industry, but here's what I see from my code monkey position:
Jordan,
I've rearranged this into a quasi-interview format.
Jordan:
I was curious about what types of games you are working on (genres, platforms, etc).
Jeff:
The company that I work for is a subcontractor for a company called Zipper Interactive, which is now a division of Sony. Zipper Interactive makes games for Sony consoles. Right now, we are working on some PS2, PSP and PS3 games. You can look us up at http://www.zipperint.com, but you won't find much about making games there. We have one game franchise that we work on currently, SOCOM: US NAVY SEALS. In the series is SOCOM: US NAVY SEALS, SOCOM2, SOCOM3, SOCOM Fire Team Bravo, upcoming we have SOCOM: Combined Assualt (basically an expansion of SOCOM3) and SOCOM: Fire Team Bravo 2. We also have a couple other projects that aren't announced yet.
Jordan:
It would also be interesting to know what some of the tools of the trade are
Jeff:
This is a HUGE topic. In order to answer it I'll need to get a bit into design of games. Bear with me....
When most (99%) of games are created, there are 2 main pieces. There is the game engine and the data. They work together to create a game. However, these 2 pieces are held together by a scripting component. We use a in-house created scripting language, but there are quite a few to choose from. The relationship and uses are as follows:
Code: Use this for anything with complicated logic, AI, stuff like that
Scripts: this is the glue that holds your data to your code. Scripting controls the flow of the game, it defines objectives and missions, stuff like that
.. Images, movies, sounds. This is stuff that you see in the game.
Ok, now the easy way to make a game is to use the Torque engine, or something similar. This is a game engine that you can work with. It has it's own scripting language, and already has all the physics and weapons and items stuff in it. That way you can focus on the game instead of the engine, it lets you skip a HUGE step. There is a book that you can get with some good information about game creation, and it comes with a CD with the torque engine on it, and some modelling software, and lots of shareware versions of industry tools. "3d Game Programming All In One" ISBN: 1-59200-136-X It's by: Kenneth C. Finney. You can't use it as a bible to create games with, but it will help with a lot of stuff. It has an overview of EVERYTHING you could need to know, but for in depth stuff, you'll need more books/google searches.
We are using a scripting language called Lua for one of our upcoming projects. This is a freely available toolset for development, but you may have to pay for it if you want to sell your games (not sure).
For our engine, and most game engines use the same thing, we use C++. Almost every game that you'll see around is written in C++, and probably will be for years to come.
For images, anything will work. For sounds, I have no idea. For movies, again, don't know, I think we use MPGs. For levels/worlds, you'll need to figure something out. If you get the torque book, it has something, we use Maya, but my guess is that you don't have the money for that....
Jordan:
and how the company is organized (who does what when, and what is done internally vs. externally).
Jeff:
The first thing that happens is the designers come up with an idea. Story boards and such for a game. Once the game has been decided on, the designers get really specific about how the game should look, act, and feel. The best way to do this (as with any software project) is to create a document that specifies (this should be HUGE). Then you'll need people to create the game. There should be graphics artists and coders. You'll need to create models for your characters, levels, items, and anything else you want to see in your game. Then you'll need an engine to make these all work together. After this, you'll need to start turning models in a world into a functioning game. There is a lot of coding involved here, game engines are not easy to create. we have over a billion lines of code in ours, and then we also have lots of supporting software. This software shares a good chunk of the code that the game uses, but there is more code there too.
Jordan:
Is there a website
or anything that I can look around at?
Jeff:
EVERYWHERE. Google knows all. I'm not trying to be funny or cryptic, but just search for google on whatever specific topic you need help with, it should help.
If you have questions, or if I said something confusing, let me know.
Jeff
What I have posted is NOT a manual to get you started making games. You need to have a basic understanding of code and design. You also need to have an understanding of how to google your way out of ALL situations or have people who know EVERYTHING around you.
Umm....I'll probably revise that before I send it to Jordan, but I'll post the revised version (if I remember).
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| September 1, 2006 - Friday | Grouse 2 of them. This morning I shot them. This afternoon I ate them.
Work, work, work, all day long.
Tomorrow I'm making a state machine to handle team tournaments.
Taht's my life in a nutshell.
Oh, my parents are coming up Monday. WHOO HOO.
tired...wife just went to bed....I'm going too....
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| August 27, 2006 - Sunday | Talledega nights Yeah, go see it.
Oh, and my back hurts.
And I can't wait for Thursday. That's the first day of hunting season for grouse. WHOO HOO!
That's pretty much it for now.
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| August 26, 2006 - Saturday | Ok....I haven't been blogging as much recently.... Mostly because I've been working and sleeping. That's been my life for the past few days. However, today it was different. I had the first day off I've had in a couple weeks, so I spent the day in Spokane with my wife, shopping for new clothes.
Work has been long, but interesting. I've been assigned some big pieces of the game (nothing compared to what some others are doing, but it's still pretty big). They are going pretty well, except for the fact that it's slow, and there are some major pieces that have to fall together in order to get the whole thing working.
Hunting season is coming up, and I don't know when I'll be able to hunt. I've basically been told I need to work all the time until we start the Gold cycle, so maybe I'll do some morning hunts, leaving home early to walk through some woods before work. I don't know. Once the Gold cycle starts, I should have more time to be myself, but that won't be for a while.
My wife started school last Monday. It is interesting because, it's the first fall that I'm not in school EVER. It's also interesting because she's taking all these classes, and she's a student again. Ok, here's the thing, she went to CSI and ISU, and between them, ended up with an AA and BA in Psychology. Now, a couple years later, she's going back to school for Elementary Education. Her mom told her that's what she should have done a long time ago, and I agree, but Jessica wanted her psych degree, so she got it. Well, she's back in school now.
My parents are getting closer to finishing their remodel. They had a yard sale to get rid of their old furniture and stuff today, and are using the proceeds to buy a new microwave. The last time they bought a microwave was when my brother was born...he's 21 now. My dad is laying formica tomorrow for the counter tops, and they are getting pretty close to having a useable house again, which is pretty exciting. It's going to look great. My mom said it looks like a magazine in their living room right now, and trust me, she's probably right when she says that.
My parents are coming up next weekend, Sunday night through Tuesday morning because I invited my dad up for some fishing earlier this summer, and now I don't know where to take him. He wants to catch trout. I know where some are, but I dont' know where exactly to go catch them, I also don't know if they'll be biting. I'm pretty sure I could get us into catfish or bass any day of the week, but trout, this late in the summer, I don't know. The water will be pretty warm, I guess we'll see. I also don't know what my wife and mom are going to do that day, but I guess that is up to them to figure out.
I'm almost up to 2500 miles on my motorcycle, and I know I've put a few miles on my truck. I know it's about time to change the oil in my truck, and something tells me my bike should be soon too (no oil filter, too small). But the problem is that I don't know how to change the bike's oil. I'll have to make sure to ask my dad that when he's up here. He rode bikes for years. I also have to oil my chain so that it won't die on me, which would be bad.
I stopped by and saw Cameron yesterday. He was hanging out on his porch, drinking beer with Jake and Rachael. It was nice to sit, relax, and BS with old friends. I really wish I had more friends around town, and more time to hang out with them. It's not that I'm lonely, I just crave some variety in my life.
I've started on a tic tac toe game, writing one. It's an interesting experiment. The game itself isn't that complicated, but it's the process of developing and testing, checking win conditions, stuff like that. It makes for an interesting process. The real experiment will be that I hope to implement some sort of learning AI. Something where it recognizes patterns, and learns strageties around them. It's more for research than anything else. AI is totally cool to me, and I am wondering what I can do to explore different strageties of AI. It won't be ground breaking technology, or anything, but it will be kinda cool, as a project to myself.
That's pretty much my life in a nutshell.
Ok, carry on.
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| August 23, 2006 - Wednesday | Multi-Thread So, have you ever been typing www.myspace.com and typed www.myspa.cecom? It's not because you can't type. Rather, it's because your brain is multi-threaded, and it's doing too many things at once. So, it gets slightly out of synch, and it creates a race condition in which the "." gets output too early. That's all. 8:34 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove | |
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| August 21, 2006 - Monday | I'M SICK OF THESE MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLANE So, I was just hanging out getting ready for work on Friday. I was half dressed and bugging my wife, you know, the usual. Anyway, I hear on the radio, "Caller number 3, right now, we'll give you 2 tickets to go see SNAKES ON A PLANE!" What the hell. I picked up my phone, and a few tries later and I was caller 3. HELL YEAH. So, in order to get my tickets, I had to say Samuel Jackson's line from the movie. I didn't know it, but he told me, so I gave it my best Samuel L mixed with Dave Chappell's impersonation of him, and I let it RIIPP. Now, I couldn't say the F-bomb on the radio, so instead I had to say "father," but they ended up playing it like 5 more times (that I heard), and they talked about it this morning. So, I'm practically famous now. I'm thinking I need to start calling in more often. Anyway.
So, I'm just sitting here waiting for autobuilder to run...kinda...see, I checked in 254 files a little bit ago, and while most of that was a libary, it still was huge. Anyway, I have to baby sit it for a while, and since it was so huge, I have to make doubly damn sure I didn't break anything. Well, I did....I checked in a file wrong, and it takes about 20 minutes to fix it. So, I've got it checked in and fixed, but that doesn't mean I can leave, I still haven't tested optimus. I'm building Optimus whilst blogging about some MOTHER FUCKING SNAKES ON A MOTHER FUCKING PLANE.
So, anyway, mad props to my new morning show, sorry Lex and Terry, the Z-Fun Rude Awakening is sending me to a MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE ABOUT SNAKES ON A MOTHER FUCKING PLANE. Now, it's time to go find their myspace page and comment them up.
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| August 15, 2006 - Tuesday | OPTIMUS....COMPILE FASTER Ok, I'm back. Lovely night, and I'm just hanging, listening to some tunes while I wait for something to compile. I've finally got everything integrated and it's ready to go.
Those damn bastards didn't fix my car today, which means that my wife has my truck again tomorrow....NO FUN. But, I should be riding my bike anyway. The gas money difference makes it totally worth it.
You know what I hate worse than cooties? Long arm hairs. Do you get these? FREAKING EH!!! Like, the normal ones are like 3/8-1/2 inch, but there is that one that sticks straight out, and is like 2 inches long. EWWW. I just pulled one out.
My boss's dog still hates me when I show up on my motorcycle...today she let me pet her, but she ended up growling and snapping at me....I guess I'll have to start bringing treats on my bike too. She's cool with me once I get my gear off, but she can't make the jump from scary motorcycle guy to nice Jeff. You can see it in her eyes when I put my stuff on in front of her, she gets more and more nervous as I suit up. Maybe it's the smell, maybe it's the look, I don't know. But she was scared to death of me when I started, I started bringing treats for a while, and then I stopped, and she left me alone, now she likes me, but only when I drive my pickup.
Oh, about my wife's car, it has sprung an oil leak, and rather than look up under there myself, I have a 90 day warranty from the dealership and a 12 month warranty from subaru, so FUCK THAT, I get dirty enough. Now, I guess we'll see how worthless that warranty is......
Turkey season....Sept 15-Oct 9 (I think those are the dates). So, it starts in a month, and lasts until deer season. Which means it's time to pull out the guns again and put them up in the rack (that's why I got the damn thing). Then, my ammo box full of hunting stuff goes into the back of my cab, with a jacket, my vest, and my camo stuff, and I'm ready to hunt at any time. I've got to get my deer tag here pretty quick too. I may try to see if there are any spare deer tags for this unit left from the controlled hunt draws....maybe I'll get 2 deer!!! But, probably not, I don't need the 2nd tag, but I do need some ammo for my 8mm, deer ammo, not mil-surp. Deer ammo and a tag is all I need for hunting this year. I've got everything else I need. If I hadn't bought my bike and my wife's car, I'd get a new rifle, but, again, you win some, you lose some.
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| Turkey season starts soon again..... Yeah, my wife wasn't too pleased when she heard that...mostly because it means I'll try to hunt instead of hanging out with her. So, I said "well, you can go with me". She didn't like that idea either. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
Oh, and I won a fight the other day....we were fighting, and I won. It was pretty exciting, but, I had to win by going to get icecream and such. So........well.....
Anyway, the work update is that I'm bringing months of code from SOCOM3 into SOCOM: CA today....months of work, all merged in during one afternoon. I have spent all day integrating changelists and resolving files. BIG FUN. But, the nice thing is that there are lots of bugs being fixed/prevented because of it.
So, my head hurts, I just thought you'd like to know that, and I'm going back to work....Peace
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| August 11, 2006 - Friday | autobuilder So, 12 hours yesterday of work, I spent the last 3ish hours yesterday fighting with this bug, I could get the thing to work once, but not after that. So, today, I changed a little bit about how it works, and FINALLY progress. So, I got it fixed, but then realized that my testing wasn't as valid as it should be because I was using an old version of the UI. So, I tried to sync to the newest, and KABOOM. Anyway, now I'm able to sync and build, so autobuilder.
My wife has left on a trip to McCall...well...she will in a few hours. She's gone until Sunday night. Which is good for me because that means I can work without her trying to get me to come home. Good for work, maybe not good for my health. I'm looking at a lot of work this weekend as we get set to release our Beta.
However, she's taking all my fishing stuff, so even if I had a few minutes to spare, I couldn't stop and fish for a few minutes. Which is probably good, I should be sleeping instead of fishing during my time off. But, oh well.
Work has consumed my life for the past little while. I've been eating here, excercising here, and just generally living here except the sleep. It's not bad, except that I miss time to myself, and time with my wife. But it's the nature of the business I guess.
So, I'm pretty sure I've lost one of my most faithful readers (long story, and it starts about 6 years ago), who else is reading my blog? Anyone? I know someone is, because I'm not generating that many views.....come on......don't keep yourself hidden...I know you are out there.
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| August 8, 2006 - Tuesday | quick update: It's almost 8 o'clock here in Deary. I'm waiting for Autobuilder (once again), so I figured I'd blog a bit.
Not much is really going on except work and living.
HOWEVER, my motorcycle and I celebrated 2000 miles together yesterday, it was a beautiful thing. Just to give you an idea of the total cost of the motorcycle so far:
What, like 3 months payment so far, plus sales tax, helmet, gloves and chaps
so, 80x3, 150, 75, 10, 50......lets just call it around $500
ok....so, 2000 miles on the bike:
60mpg, so, 33.3 gallons, at 3$/gallon, $100
ok, in my pickup
20mpg, 100 gallons, 300$
so, I've saved $200 in gas by spending $500, for a total cost of $300....not too bad I say.......now, you might be saying, you lost $300 on the deal...well...not really....I was going to buy a bike anyway.....so, at least I'm using it!
build done....goodnight
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| August 7, 2006 - Monday | My weekend Yeah I was told that there would be TONS of people working LONG hours over the WHOLE weekend. Turns out that people work like 4-8 hours on Saturday, and well, Sunday not many people worked, and the ones who did didn't really work that much. So, what that means is that I worked like noon to 6 on Saturday and then like 11:45-2 on Sunday.
I got stuck on every bug I had, so there was nothing to do but waste time until people came into the office (on Monday), so I left to spend some time with my wife.
Anyway, I've got to get some breakfast and lunch together so I can get off to work.
To all my homies, peace, love, and happiness, I miss you guys.
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| August 4, 2006 - Friday | Autobuild lets me blog.... Ok, FINALLY I got an offer for nekked pictures!
Just one, and it's only an offer because she offered to text them to my phone, not knowing my phone sucks major donkey balls con queso.
So, I'd been going for like 7 hours straight at work and then I just started getting silly, like annoyingly silly, so much that I was annoying myself, so I went for a walk to burn off some energy and focus my mind a little bit. Well, just as system maintainance, I started an auto build, I came back knowing I was too early for autobuild to be done, and it was done anyway, OPTIMUS DIED. Yeah, so, I decided to pretend it wasn't a problem, but apparently it is. Now the game is crashing on me, so, I'm building the world again.
AND, it gives me time to write a little.
So, here's my interesting perspective on my blog, well, interesting to me.
I started posting stuff on my blog to collect my thoughts, chronical my job hunt, and my new life as someone with a degree in Computer Science. I blogged about lots of stuff in the 55 posts that I've posted (according to the counter that was right <------ THERE when I was writing this. Some stuff I wrote for myself, some I wrote for others. Mostly, I just wrote to have a creative outlet and to collect myself at the end of a day. But, what happened is that people are actually reading this. I know a few people that read it because they have left me comments (12 of them), but with 566 blog views, that leaves 554 (I think my math is right) instances of people lurking on my blog. I know some of them are me, but there is no way it's ALL me. Someone suprised me the other day by mentioning my (possible) pending road trip to Nampa. I didn't realize he read my blog. Compared to my less than 250 profile views (which I KNOW is boring--ON PURPOSE) this blows my mind that people are that interested in what I have to say. So, here's some interesting stuff. My job is putting a strain on my wife. Mostly because this is the first week I've had to work long hours. She doesn't like it much at all. She wants me home. I want to be home, but this is the industry that I chose when I wanted to be a software developer. It didn't matter what job I had, there was going to be times like this. I can see why so many people in my industry are single or attatched to people who are also doing similar work. I'm sure that if she was busier, she wouldn't mind so much (school is starting soon). But for now, it SUCKS, and they are going to suck until the game ships, which means stress on myself and my marriage until we sign off on the game......AHHHHHHH. Oh, and for those keeping score, Optimus just crashed! WHOO HOO! The guy who sits next to me is leaving, which means it's probably time to throw a hambuger on the grill, but I'm not THAT hungry yet, and I think I'll be here a while longer (it's 7pm right now). OPTIMUS JUST CRASHED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll give it one more try before I kick someone in the teeth! Anyway, I really want to go do some fishing, maybe I'll stop by Spring Valley on my way out here tomorrow, I guess we'll have to see how tomorrow goes. 6:50 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove | |
