Arcen Games
General Category => The Last Federation => Topic started by: x4000 on May 16, 2014, 05:28:30 pm
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So, here we go again with a few workdays of break in releases, go figure. ;)
Keith has been working on a variety of time-consuming behind-the-scenes things (relating mostly to bubbling up some of the underlying sim numbers for your viewing pleasure), and I've been on a myriad of things. Today and yesterday morning I spent a lot of time experimenting with some various things I'm not ready to talk about just yet (heh), and in general working on some bigger-picture design work rather than just coding furiously on the smaller things like we have been. This afternoon I mostly worked on some performance improvemetns for the solar map when fast-forwarding, and then a huge bunch of stuff with pirate bases.
As noted last Friday, though, I'm going to try to get away from doing anything beyond emergency patches on Fridays, because then I'm not looking over my shoulder all weekend worrying that I need to do an emergency patch and not being able to ever take any proper time off.
Yesterday afternoon I also kind of hit a wall and just slept the whole time after lunch. Just kind of mentally and emotionally and physically I hit this kind of low point, which is my version of burnout. The thing that was bothering me emotionally has nothing to do with anything, really, except that my wife and I have been watching the DVDs of Burn Notice and were down to only two episodes left. I hate it when a great series ends (I felt the same after the Harry Potter books ended, or the LOTR trilogy of movies, etc), but I was really overreacting here. Just a symtom of being tired. After four or five hours of sleep, I was groggy but feeling emotionally stable again, heh. ;)
Today I started off a bit sluggish, honestly, so it was a good time to work on other stuff relating to the game but not in the mode I've been in for a while. As the day has gone on, I've been feeling more and more energized, and now I'm pretty well back to normal. That sort of "crash" is how I tend to burn out. Whereas others go into a slump for months, I tend to hit a wall and then just collapse for a day, and then when I see that the world didn't explode without my constant attention, I calm down and recover. Anyway, I knew that was building, but it's really kind of a minor speedbump that happens at least once a year for me. Now I've got a much better work-life balance (in the last month) anyway, so things are certainly improving on that front.
You definitely don't need to worry about me getting burned out or tired of this game, though. I am absolutely still thrilled to be working on it. At the end of the Valley 1 project I was feeling pretty worn out by just the rollercoaster of that whole thing. And after thousands of hours into AI War, I was feeling kind of worn out there and ready to focus on other things while Keith took the reigns there. But with TLF I still feel like I did back in the summer of 2009 for AI War: like this is only the start of something much, much bigger and cooler. Just to put anyone's mind at ease who reads this.
I figure that some insight into the psyche of someone like myself would be interesting. I fully intend to be doing this 30 years from now, so no worries. ;)
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I hate it when a great series ends (I felt the same after the Harry Potter books ended, or the LOTR trilogy of movies, etc), but I was really overreacting here.
Perfectly normal to feel almost a sense of bereavement when a good story ends.
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I hate it when a great series ends (I felt the same after the Harry Potter books ended, or the LOTR trilogy of movies, etc), but I was really overreacting here.
Perfectly normal to feel almost a sense of bereavement when a good story ends.
Oh yeah, for sure -- I often do. But having it just take over your day is a bit extreme.
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I was almost sure x4000 means machine.. with Chris Park Software.
Reprogram, do not humanize.
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As noted last Friday, though, I'm going to try to get away from doing anything beyond emergency patches on Fridays, because then I'm not looking over my shoulder all weekend worrying that I need to do an emergency patch and not being able to ever take any proper time off.
Yesterday afternoon I also kind of hit a wall and just slept the whole time after lunch. Just kind of mentally and emotionally and physically I hit this kind of low point, which is my version of burnout.
Today I started off a bit sluggish, honestly, so it was a good time to work on other stuff relating to the game but not in the mode I've been in for a while.
I figure that some insight into the psyche of someone like myself would be interesting. I fully intend to be doing this 30 years from now, so no worries. ;)
Heh, I don't know how old you are, but even a 55 year old programmer seems kindof a weird thing to see nowdays, but most likely will be extremely normal in 30 years.
Also, it was a friday, so I kinda think the whole world was feeling like that, I slept for 12 hours!
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How do you feel about holding off the 1.020 until the 20th?
Because it is funnier.
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I was almost sure x4000 means machine.. with Chris Park Software.
Reprogram, do not humanize.
Originally the name x4000 was the name of the villain in a novel I was writing as a teenager. He was indeed a robot. I'm not sure why I chose the name as my forum handle in the late 90s, I guess it just sounded cool.
Heh, I don't know how old you are, but even a 55 year old programmer seems kindof a weird thing to see nowdays, but most likely will be extremely normal in 30 years.
31, so I'll be 61 in 30 years. I actually know a number of guys that age who are excellent programmers. My father in law is right about that age and is a really awesome programmer at Cisco. He's gotten to work on some very cool projects.
How do you feel about holding off the 1.020 until the 20th?
Because it is funnier.
Haha, I think I'd rather come out a bit sooner than that. ;)
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Take it easy, good to know you're feeling reinvigorated! I'm really happy that TLF seems to be such a big success for Arcen that will hopefully lead on to bigger and greater things!
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I figure that some insight into the psyche of someone like myself would be interesting. I fully intend to be doing this 30 years from now, so no worries. ;)
AI War 2 confirmed.
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I figure that some insight into the psyche of someone like myself would be interesting. I fully intend to be doing this 30 years from now, so no worries. ;)
AI War 2 confirmed.
If I keep at this as long as I hope to, that is likely an inevitability. Ten years ago, AI War would not have been possible due to hardware limitations in terms of graphical stuff as well as CPU stuff. Once hardware is way better once again... who knows, maybe we'll switch to full 3D or something, 10 years from now. I really don't know what the future holds!
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You could just about do a 3d version now if you were tight about your coding. Thousands of animated 3d ships on screen is quite doable today, and tens of thousands are likely by the time DX12 is shipping.
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You could just about do a 3d version now if you were tight about your coding. Thousands of animated 3d ships on screen is quite doable today, and tens of thousands are likely by the time DX12 is shipping.
Not really, though:
1. We don't have experienced 3D modelers. I've been doing it since 1998 or so, but very very much at a hobbyist level.
2. The number of types of ships is pretty prohibitively high in general, and to do the sort of dynamic batching that would be required for the way that we draw ships (as opposed to doing true culling) would either be a big rewrite or else some very fancy code that would take a long time to figure out.
3. The unity engine RAM limits would start being hit pretty hard here, probably making it impossible for now.
4. Using anything higher than DX9 really isn't acceptable to me at this point, because we'd be excluding a huge portion of our userbase. In 10 years that won't be the case, since people who are using 10+ year old PCs aren't exactly our target demographic. But anyone using something from within the last 5ish years ought to be able to run our games.
5. Oh, and the workflow tools for setting up 3D stuff in the way that we want really is not great. It could be made to work, but it would be a huge hassle. A lot of that sort of thing is likely to be solved in the next decade or so.
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So, you won't mind if I preemptively steal the massive scope 3d space strategy genre away from you then, since none of those points apply to me :)
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Ha. There's a reason that I don't try to corner any one market and just stay there. Aside from that being personally boring to me, it also makes us at risk of someone doing that sort of thing.
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I'm glad you don't. You have some of the most creative designs out there.
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I really appreciate it -- it means a lot to me when people say that. I have a document with literally dozens of ideas in all sorts of genres just sitting around, so I usually have the luxury of choosing from something that I think is both commercially viable as well as interesting at the time and as good as possible, rather than having only one idea. Anyhow.