This is an interesting comic... I guess as the gamer population ages this is going to be alot more common place. Maybe gamers will have to start stories with "When I was your age..." hahaha....

Portal as a business model...

Kotaku has a very interesting article... With the success of Portal being analyzed what does this say in to our industry? Should this model be the litmus test for all innovated products deemed too risky by, to use a Half Life convention, our benefactors?

Its an interesting thought... I don't obviously don't have any answers so I will merely pose more questions. Is it a way to test the reduce the risk game production? Or is it simply that game publishing executives don't have the stomach for this business anymore? I'm guessing the game executives of today don't have an the experience of beating OR are unwilling to "bet the farm" on some crazy kids game design project? Which is understandable... but this business was built on the "crazy kids game design project" and moving away from that ultimately lead to gamers who remember the good ol' days to blow the dust off their old gaming machines... the whole retro gaming industry I believe it a spin off of the lack of innovation and unwillingness to take risks in the gaming industry.

Wow... that was long winded... if your still reading Thanks for endulging me. See the orginal Kotaku link below.

http://kotaku.com/336504/gearbox-want-to-copy-portal

Another classic from Penny Arcade

Pictures from my work Christmas Party.

Mr. Plow...

During our 1 day of snow fall I managed to snap a picture of a snow plow. Don't ask why I felt compled to post this picture. Maybe I just needed something to do... or maybe I need to justify going out and walking in the bitter cold for nothing but a stupid picture... ah well another question that life will not answer.

Whistler Day Trip

If you take the time to adventure up to Whistler for the day during the summer this is your reward. Sometimes I forget we have all this in our backyard.

Nothing like a Whistler sunset. :)

So it ends...

Well its finally done. I've moved into my new place... and I'm done with all this mess.

I'll post pictures as soon as I get my computer up to normal running condition.

Stay tuned... :D

The magical day came...

Well, after another 'error' Aragon has moved the inspection date from Feb 16th, to Feb 21st. Well that day has come... but we called the city of burnaby and they have no record of any applications for inspections from Aragon. So, there is a error on some end ... I will call aragon again tomorrow to see what is going on... they had better no be lieing yet again to me.

To clarify, I called there offices this morning and asked if the inspection was going ahead and their people said "YES". So the saga continues... and continues...

I'm really getting sick of all this crap.

Never purchase anything from these "people."

Finally... some progress

We decided to drive past our townhouse / construction site after today. Wouldn't you know it... they actually appear to be 98% complete. The construction 'blue fence' was taken down, my front yard had a nice picket fence around the perimeter. It actually looks like a ready to be moved in home. It looks like the construction people finally got the lead out and did their jobs!

So hopefully the inspections will go fine, and I can then move in. At least a little progress has put me in a very good mood today... :D

Waiting & WoW...

As I'm still waiting on my house to be completed. I've been playing alot of WoW recently. As of tonights quests on the foggy area known as the 'Wetlands' my paladin is now level 20. And yes, I'm quite proud of myself. Hopefully, I can power level my way to level 40 so I can finally, finally, FINALLY get a create mount so I don't have to walk/run everywhere.

Level 60-70, can't remember which, is when you get fly mounts. Yes, that will be very sweet.

Oh well,...

10 second house update:
Aragon sucks, I'm waiting for my house to be completed. They still no idea when it will be ready. Fantasic company eh? Yes, I thought so too.

Tank Wars

I've decided to being development of a very VERY simple game just get some momentum on my home projects. So, my selected project is a tank game. Its not really a game, its more of an AI testbed. Tanks are going to have a set of behaviours that will be switched on during runtime.

Ultimately, these tanks will just sit within the small world and try to destroy each other. I've got one behaviour about 50% completed. The 'hostile' behaviour does the following:
- scans for tanks in the surrounding area
- attempts to move closer to it (if out of range)
- attempts to shot the closest tank (if within range)

There are other behaviours that I'm thinking of implementing that are taken directly from the 'steering behaviours' model such as "evade", "arrive", "queue", etc.

I hope to have something that can be fun, and maybe user customizable through some very simple scripting language or possibly xml. But that is a consideration for later on...

I'll post some source code, and or some screenshots (when I start the rendering modules of the code) when I've gotten them a happy place.

Stay tuned...

[townhouse] we have a date... welll not really...

I decided to call Aragon again on Thursday. They made sure to tell me that they still did not have a firm date for completion on our townhouse. However, they were planning for Feb 15th to either have or apply for the occupancy permit.

I'm not holding my breathe as we went down this road two months, and then they noticed that it wasn't my townhouse getting the permit. I'm hoping anyways that this will be the final push, and they will final do the job I paid them to do about 2 years ago.

Stay tuned... but for now, courage.

Open Source

There is alot of fear around open source. I personally don't see what the paranoia is caused from. I'm personally more fearful of programs where I can't see the source code. Open source programs you can see exactly what they are doing.

Are you really sure that $800 word processor you purchased at Futureshop isn't scanning your harddrive attempting to credit card numbers. Likely, its a long shot, but after being in the software business a couple of years one thing is for certain... weird stuff makes it into the final builds of products that alot of people 'thought was removed' or 'should have never been there in the first place.' Famous last words eh?

There is a small sense of satisfaction with open source that other people have gone over the code with a fine tooth comb even if you don't have the skill to do so yourself. Generally, the people who do spend there time 'auditing' free software will scream very loud if they see something 'fishy' in there.

That being said, give some open source software a chance. The following website lists alot of applications that I currently use or have used in the past. Give one a shot, and you will be surprised. You might even ask the question, "hey, why is this one free and the commerical one $500?"

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

Can you tell I'm bored...

I didn't check the posting logs... but I'm sure that I haven't posted this frequently in well... ever. Can you tell I'm bored out of my skull?

I just finished leveling my WoW character to level 11 Paladin. The game is excellent... the most striking aspect of the game so far is the graphics. Its an odd line that Blizzard walks with its games. You can see the game graphics engine is nothing to write home about... but yet its beautiful in its simplicity. The game is obviously NOT in the same arena as 'Gears of War' graphically, but the art is done in such a way that it works. You never question that this pile of pixels isn't a living, breathing world. Thats enough stroking of Blizzard Entertainment... the last thing they need is another fanboy.

10 second townhouse update...
Aragon sucks. Thats the last time I buy a home from a fiction character from the 'Lords of the Rings.' (I should have walked away when I saw the name... no good has come from the LoTr)

Thats my stamina for this post... check back next time for more ... what this was... is... meh.

L8r

Happy 2007 everyone! Hope this new year is better then the last one!