Posts Tagged → development
Rebirth, to Death, to Rebirth
For the next few days, I’d like to spend a moment each day rehashing a post from one of my original blogs before they all evolved into my shiny Multiblog. Today’s is from almost two years ago, back when I was still completing my graduate studies at NYU. I had started “Interaction Faction” as a means for venting my game development and design snafus, which were daily at the time. I was also angrier/more emotional about programming back then, probably because my thesis was my first serious coding project.
From May 8th, 2008, on “Interaction Faction”:
Taking a moment from my critique of game design, in an hour of desperation I offer to you my ray of hope through this epic retelling of adversity.
Death. All I could think about was how to throw my shiny UT3 collector’s box around my apartment, as the editor, just days before a presentation of a project, would not allow me to look at the properties of my builder brushes. Oh, the window would show, but you know those delicious dark gray sub-boxes? They remained unopenable, shut like a nun’s panties. Crawling around the UT3 forums proved futile until one post, one booming voice echoing:
“When judgment is at hand, delete the UTEditor.ini in the UTGAME\Config files in your Documents folder, for the righteous shall be saved.”
Well, I wasn’t saved yet – it didn’t work. HOWEVER, deleting UTEditor.ini along with its cohorts UTEditorUserSettings.ini and UTEditorKeyBindings.ini was successful. The editor was restored to harmony and joyous modding.
I hope this solution also helps those with unreasonably skewed brushes and other varieties of bizarre parameters that the editor saves for the following session… for your convenience!
Revisiting/Learning
I suppose there comes a time when every Master’s degree-wielding warrior wants to take their thesis and burn it to a crisp. I think I may be beyond that point, though, so a revisit may be in order.
My thesis was an audio engine that used Flash, Javascript, and Java all at once… on one page! Essentially, there was a very smart Java library that I wanted to use, but I wasn’t savvy enough to port it into Flash. On the one side, it was better for Flash – no slow-downs due to processing my crazy sound layering/grouping/composition demands, but on the other… well, let’s say that testing wasn’t pleasant. It eventually worked, but it’s not ideal to have multiple conduits between your game and the sound that sound be occurring at about the same time.
In other words, I felt like my thesis was scrappable not long after I completed it. In the future, I don’t know if I want to gear an audio engine like the one I am envisioning towards Flash or, well… Unity.
Yes, Unity. I’m trying to pick that language up in my “spare” time. There’s a possibility that a certain artist I know will create gorgeous 3D objects if I make a game that is ready to receive it. I know this is possible in Flash, but I’m already seeing full-screen 3D browser games in Unity that have me floored. Gorgeous rendering… in a browser. I almost can’t handle it.
In a totally different area of my brain, I also completed an undergraduate thesis in Greek music theory a few years ago. I think it’s worth looking over that for some usefulness, too.
