dinsdag 9 september 2014

On the Absence of Tuna

In case you hadn't noticed, which is most likely the case, I've been away for a while. Away from the game development scene. Not because of some holiday or a depression or anything like that. Let's call it a software revelation.

During the judging period of the last Ludum Dare I just thought to myself: "Is this really what I want to do with software? Aren't there better things to make?" The questions were answered very swiftly with a "no" and a "yes" respectively.

Back when I started programming I had another hobby as well: Game Maker. Using the drag-and-drop software to make some silly, little games. Once I had learned C#, I got into XNA and thought: "Why not combine the two? Why not program games?", and what started off as some kind of trial quickly got me sucked into the community, and all of the sudden I was known as, and identified as a "game programmer".

It was really an experiment that in the end just didn't work for me. While I was supposed to be playing Ludum Dare games so people would rate mine, I just thought "screw it". I didn't play any LD games, and didn't even look at the rating my own game got.

So I've been out of the game development scene for about six months now and I can't say I've regretted my decision. I've also taken kind of a general break from software development, but have worked on several things along the way, including some C compilers ('cause why the hell not, right?).


I take interest in low-level programming, real programming. It's the reason I got into programming in the first place, I wanted to know how to make one of those cool .EXE files, I just wanted to figure out stuff, the deeper levels of the computer. Games simply don't do it for me.

I've also transferred maintainership of Pencil.Gaming over to the person I deemed most appropriate and trustworthy, one of the people who contributed to it, and has, through other projects, shown adequacy in maintaining this kind of thing. While OpenTK is under active development again, Pencil.Gaming is now maintained by Andy Korth at https://github.com/andykorth/Pencil.Gaming.


So for those that were interested in me because of game development or Pencil.Gaming, I fear this is where it ends. I will from now on be active mostly in low-level software.


Antonie

maandag 6 januari 2014

2013 in Review

If you despise blog posts listing off all the good stuff that happened in a specific year as much as I do, you'll be happy to know that I now think less of myself as a person. But hey, there has to be some positivity right?
Although I have recently claimed that nothing really positive of importance happened in 2013, I was mainly talking about how 2013 changed the world as a whole (funny how 2013 is the subject there, I call metonymia). I still maintain that that's the case, but on a more personal level, a hell of a lot of stuff has happened, a lot of which positive as well.
Because of that I thought I'd list off all positive things that happened to me personally in 2013 (most of which software-related, weird huh?), and won't bother about the negative ones. So here we are.

  • I participated in 2 ludum dares and the 7DFPS challenge (keep in mind that my first LD was LD25)
  • I made two really good internet friends (Gallefray and metaldemon, they're on #ludumdare quite a lot)
  • I first did some team work in a ludum dare
  • I first met up with someone I met through the internet (that'd be metaldemon)
  • I first did some serious assembly programming
  • I wrote my own gaming library, which was actually somewhat succesful
  • I wrote three/four compilers for my own programming language, the last of which worked out fairly well
  • I first did open-source software
  • I gained a following on twitch
  • I got myself a twitter account
  • I launched my own webiste
  • I first started fumbling about with git, which I know use extensively for all my open-source projects
  • I first started using linux seriously (might have been late 2012 as well, not sure), which I now mainly use
  • I started despising Windows 8
  • I started supporting the Piratenpartij
  • I found out who Linus Torvalds was
  • I managed to write down some of my opinions in a simple markdown file
  • I fell in love with GCC
  • I found out mono wasn't just a crappy .NET port
  • I first did DOS and mode 13h programming
  • I became more libertarian in politics
  • I got my CAE grade A
  • I started loving/learning Swedish
  • I found out about ÆØÅ
  • I started using the command line (but hey, you have to when using linux :P)
  • I found out what GNU was and started disagreeing with it
  • I went to Rome
And that's about it. Not a lot if you look at it like this, but quite a lot of firsts and noteworthy entries in there I'd argue, so it hasn't been all bad :)
Let's see what happens in 2014, I doubt more noteworthy stuff will happen than this.