| It's Been A While... | May 5, 2013, 8:39 am |
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2013 has been an odd year for me. I've barely touched Doom at all (2012 wasn't dissimilar on that front, to be honest), but far more importantly I've been made redundant and found a new job. I've not had an official contract saying a definite start date just yet, but it's looking to be Monday 13th. I'll be working for Yodel up in Liverpool doing loads of stuff with OBIEE and their legacy systems. It's about 5 grand more than the previous job earned me and, thanks to how my redundancy pay worked out, I've basically earned an extra month's salary this year overall, with an extra 1.5 months of holiday too. Not a bad deal, all told :P As for the stuff you are presumably more interested in... I don't think I have the drive for Doom mapping any more. I've got loads of WIP maps in various states of completion, for ZDoom and limit-removing projets (mostly my own, but a few community efforts too) with a lot of cancellations over the last year or two, but essentially no enthusiasm for any of them. Just now I opened a map to do a proof-of-concept for my MAYhem 2013 idea and almost instantly realised that I knew it would work and can't be bothered to see it through. The idea was that, now my life is seeing some stability and certainty once more I'd be able to pick up some hobbies again. You know, play games more (which I've certainly been doing), read some books, keep up with some of my favourite shows, get back to the gym (I'll want to move to Liverpool first for this one) and find a creative outlet. It appears Doom is unlikely to be that creative outlet. I think I need a new challenge. Turns out that, after 80 maps or so over 10 years, it just doesn't seem to be as exciting as it was, even with all of the stuff ZDoom has to offer or the limitations to push in Boom, limit-removing or vanilla projects. Maybe I've got some more maps in me, maybe not. I'm just really not feeling it and figured you guys might be the ones to discuss with. |
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| The Positive Spin on This is That it's a Motivational Kick... | January 9, 2013, 5:58 pm |
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... to go and get a more interesting job (and indeed, life) than my current (rather boring, although comfortable) one. The more negative is that I'll be made redundant in the near future (I'm one of the 67 in Cambridge). We were told to keep this quiet, but as it's on the news (I've had people outside the company telling me they know why I'm suddenly job hunting) I figured I might as well mention it here too. You may find I get a bit intermittent over the next couple of months, as I'll be dedicating a lot of my free time to making sure I have somewhere to go when free time would otherwise not be an issue :P The good news is that I'm already getting leads and seem to know a lot of people who know people/companies/places that I could/should go, so optimism is my current note. tl;dr: Dat economy... |
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| As we're all at it... | November 11, 2012, 3:53 am |
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I'm going to be 23 on the 15th! So young, but it feels so old... Figured I'd get it up a few days early as I had a birthday meal with some family members yesterday evening and it gives people more time if they feel I deserve a birthday map this year ;) |
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| Well, that's me unhappy... | September 20, 2011, 11:08 am |
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I'm not sure how well known this is, but 4 months ago my girlfriend (of 7 months) left the country to go back home to the United Arab Emirates. As she was just here for one year to do a third year of her degree, that makes perfect sense. Now, because we'd gone and gotten really attached we didn't break it off. We were both upset enough at the airport as it was afterall. We'd worked out a few plans to go and see eachother. Her plan of coming back to do a Master's after earning money for a year has fallen through as she's now serving as her parents' retirement fund along with her sister (apparantly that's how things are done in Indian families). My main hope was to get a Scholarship to the University of Bolton's Ras-Al Khaimah Campus, where I'd spend a year within 80 miles of where she lives in Sharjah. Just found out today, after what amounts to around 3 whole months of waiting, that I came a close second. I don't think I can accurately decribe how this has made me feel at the moment. All that time spent staying in touch, all the hard work I've put in and now I've been told I'm just not quite good enough to get a second year with her. Yeah there's a load of other shit to do with the actual scholarship, but the thing is I was almost the ideal candidate for that. Al-fucking-most. Guess I'll save up for a holiday and get a last week or two with her so we can give up on good terms. |
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| One of my First Major Steps into Video Game Production - Update! | April 25, 2011, 1:49 am |
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I'm in my final year of a course entitled "Computer Games Software Development" at the University of Bolton. I've got about 4 weeks left to get a game in, and naturally, I've been making a simple FPS. It's got to be in full 3D, got to use a shader and some middleware other than the rendering one. There's obviously a few other points on the project specification, and I'm working to fulfill most of them. My portfolio has a selection of my best work from prior years, and I'm hoping to emulate the relative success I had with Assignment 2: The Game, and then go way above and beyond. The linked video shows where I am so far. Information on what is going on and what I'm still planning to do are in the description for the video. [yt]EvvAd_9vNX0[/yt] Whilst this is still very in-development, and quite primitive too, it's a healthy dose of progress for me, so I thought I'd show it off. Models and materials are all stock OGRE stuff ATM. I canned the use of PhysX a month or two ago as it was causing a lot of headaches. The game uses a combination of new code and rewritten code from A2:TG. Once I've got a GUI in, I'll only need to make a couple of more complex levels to already have a better game (from a technical stand-point) than A2:TG, which is all quite exciting for me! Anyway, enjoy :) |
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