Author Topic: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work  (Read 21257 times)

Offline Ktoff

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #30 on: August 28, 2010, 10:21:48 am »
Hmm, what do folks think of these two?  That's a good suggestion; I'm on the fence about how they look at the really small sizes, though.  But could be good for an in-game font replacement. :)

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/cheapprofonts/geometry-soft-pro/bold-a/

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/cheapprofonts/geometry-soft-pro/regular-a/



These fonts look quite nice and futuristic, but i find them mcuh harder to read than the current in-game font. In particular the rounded edges of most of the letters cause them to almost flow into one another. This is probably intended by the designers bot does not help readability.

Glad to see the work progressing. I cannot help wondering, how your crazy dedication to your work will fare once your child is born (I need my weekly upgrades). With my vast experience of 13 days of fatherhood i can tell you, that you can expect a surprising shift of perspective.

But maybe than we will be able to actually finish a game before the next three versions are published (or maybe i'm just slow :-) )

Cheers

Offline x4000

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #31 on: August 28, 2010, 10:44:33 am »
These fonts look quite nice and futuristic, but i find them mcuh harder to read than the current in-game font. In particular the rounded edges of most of the letters cause them to almost flow into one another. This is probably intended by the designers bot does not help readability.

Yeah, that's the worry.  The question is whether they will be nicely readable at the size we intend to use them or not. I'm still undecided.

I cannot help wondering, how your crazy dedication to your work will fare once your child is born (I need my weekly upgrades).

I'll be all but gone for three weeks, just an hour or two of work per day on average at best, and sometimes less.  Then I'll be back, but instead of 60-80 hour weeks it will be more like 40-50 hour weeks... pretty much from then on out.  I've intentionally been working extra long hours for the last year or so in order to get as much done as possible for when my son arrives, but that's always been with the intent of freeing up time so that I can have lots of family time.

That said, I have it easier since I work from home, so I don't have 1-2 hours burned on just commuting.  That makes it easier to have a bit longer work day without actually having less time away from family.  And it's a situation where I can work late at night when kids are sleeping, anyway, when he is older -- that way I can see him during the day or in the early evenings, without actually impacting work by taking off during the day.

It helps that my hobby is also my job, so it's easier to sacrifice "hobby time" for just working for Arcen -- it's what I did for years, anyway, long before I made any money at it.

On the other hand, the thing for most people to remember is that I'm not the only one at Arcen now, right?  I've been massively unreliable work-wise this week, and probably only got 25ish hours of work done, but you wouldn't know -- thanks to Keith.  My son has already been exerting quite an influence on my life, I'll just say.  Nothing bad, but he seems to have a sense of humor already. ;)

With my vast experience of 13 days of fatherhood i can tell you, that you can expect a surprising shift of perspective.

Congrats to you!  ;D  Hope all is going well, I'll be joining you in the thick of it soon. ;)

But maybe than we will be able to actually finish a game before the next three versions are published (or maybe i'm just slow :-) )

Probably will help, at least!
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Offline Ktoff

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #32 on: August 28, 2010, 11:26:14 am »
I'll be all but gone for three weeks, just an hour or two of work per day on average at best, and sometimes less.  Then I'll be back, but instead of 60-80 hour weeks it will be more like 40-50 hour weeks... pretty much from then on out.  I've intentionally been working extra long hours for the last year or so in order to get as much done as possible for when my son arrives, but that's always been with the intent of freeing up time so that I can have lots of family time.

Superdaddy approves of this :) I hope you'll enjoy this time.

also: we definitely need a baby sub-forum now  ;D 'have i told you about the color of my baby's poo today'?

Offline Spikey00

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #33 on: August 28, 2010, 12:38:30 pm »
Prolong save load times aren't too much of a worry for me, though a full minute is somewhat worrisome if that's a empty test save, instead of a full mid-late game.  I was already pleased enough with the loading times before that optimization a long time ago.

I shall have my fingers crossed for those impatient individuals!
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Offline RCIX

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #34 on: August 28, 2010, 07:02:00 pm »
*does a little dance*
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #35 on: August 28, 2010, 09:05:10 pm »
Well, different phases of childrearing have different demands time-wise, but I'm managing the "wife, two children, and two (professional) jobs" thing while still getting quite a few hours for Arcen work (one of those jobs) without any of the others feeling neglected, so I think that when things calm down a bit after those first few months you'll find the schedule possibilities pleasant.  Working from home is a huge part of that, energy and time wise.  Also, in my case my wife can focus her time on the children and the house (though I make the dinners generally), and that's a really huge factor.

But I honestly don't get to actually play games any more (not a biggie, making them is more fun), or anything else significant hobby-wise, but that's mostly because of the two-job thing.  Anyway, it's all a balance :)
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Offline x4000

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #36 on: August 29, 2010, 09:22:57 am »
Indeed! And, hopefully the two-job thing won't be too long for you. But, that's all good points. My wife will be at home, too, so that's also helpful -- she helps out with arcen on various things as people might know. She and I wrote the story for tidalis, and she coded all the cutscenes. she did the trailer for zenith remnant. She did about 30 levels out of the 80 in the original Alden ridge. And various other things. Oh, the adjustments to the Pfenning font to make it legible for AI War, and fixes to the little font used in Tidalis, too.
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Offline Spikey00

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #37 on: August 29, 2010, 12:10:16 pm »
You lot sure have wonderful wives; I'm surprised they haven't introduced themselves here on the forums!
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Offline CogDissident

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #38 on: August 31, 2010, 12:49:38 pm »
Mark up my vote for regular-A of those font choices.

Offline drum

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #39 on: August 31, 2010, 02:02:36 pm »
'Geometry Soft Pro Regular A' looks good white on black but unless you're using 12pt or higher i dont think it'll be as instantly readable as it needs to be.

Offline Ktoff

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #40 on: August 31, 2010, 08:14:20 pm »
Well, different phases of childrearing have different demands time-wise, but I'm managing the "wife, two children, and two (professional) jobs" thing while still getting quite a few hours for Arcen work (one of those jobs) without any of the others feeling neglected, so I think that when things calm down a bit after those first few months you'll find the schedule possibilities pleasant.  Working from home is a huge part of that, energy and time wise.  Also, in my case my wife can focus her time on the children and the house (though I make the dinners generally), and that's a really huge factor.

But I honestly don't get to actually play games any more (not a biggie, making them is more fun), or anything else significant hobby-wise, but that's mostly because of the two-job thing.  Anyway, it's all a balance :)

This sounds impressive! I sure wonder if having children helps qualifying for managing positions :) Especially in cases where both partners are working (and probably not from home) the degree of coordination neccessary is sometimes mind-boggling.

Hopefully i'll manage to organize my time as well as you apparently do once we have a bit of a Routine.

Offline EagleMountain

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #41 on: September 08, 2010, 07:46:10 am »
This sure looks like the right way, but as other here, I'm a little worried about the font choice. I hope it will be easier to read in the new version. I have a hard time in the current version as it is now.

Keep up the good work  ;)
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Offline x4000

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #42 on: September 10, 2010, 01:56:57 pm »
One way or another we'll get the font stuff figured out -- don't worry about that.  I'm sure it will be an iterative process, as always, heh.

In the meantime, here's the latest screenshot.  Of course, that doesn't do justice to all the non-visual functionality that has been added in the meantime, such as input handling, and so on and so forth.

Also, don't fret about the menu backgrounds there -- that's still just stuff from Tidalis, and the fonts aren't sized right, and and and... ;)

Plenty of polish still needed all over the place, of course, but it's going well.  Also don't fret about the low framerate shown there (10fps, about half the AI War default of 20fps) -- that's with thousands of ships drawn on the screen at once, and a bunch of UI elements, without some key behind-the-scenes texture combinations that will cut that draw count by around half.  I'm actually really jazzed at this stage that it's performing so well without a lot of the optimizations that just haven't been ported yet.

« Last Edit: September 10, 2010, 01:59:16 pm by x4000 »
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #43 on: September 10, 2010, 02:09:39 pm »
seems like apparently dont have knowledge   ;)

Looks great so far though  :D
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Offline Spikey00

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Re: Frankenstein (sort of) lives: AI War Unity porting work
« Reply #44 on: September 10, 2010, 02:46:52 pm »
I'm impressed--all the progress done so far by your team!  It's going to be like a rebirth of AI War!
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