chalicier

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:23:33 GMT

Ubuntu update:

My first attempts at installing VirtualBox went awry and I had to reinstall Ubuntu entirely, but I managed to rescue most things along the way. Next install, was a bit more careful and it worked fine, installed XP, got C# and XNA working perfectly. Now all we need to do is shift the SVN server to the dedicated machine and stick it on one of our static IPs and I'll be good to go.

Otherwise, it's all been very interesting. Mail was the usual piece o' piss to sort out. Firefox is a bit weird, for some reason the default font size is tiny on most pages - anyone know how to fix that? I've gotten UFO: Aftershock to run under Wine with little trouble, and it runs nice and fast too. DF also works with no issues whatsoever. All told, I is happy,

I've restarted work on an Exalted-based roguelike, this time in C# using libtcod-net. It's going well so far - I've gotten an @ moving about and some data structures for Exalted stats, plus some design work on how I'm going to manage powers etc (basically by using a modified version of the 2nd ed combat tick rules). I'll stick a download link on here once I have something worth looking at.

Actual work has been mostly on hold this week due to both Cerys and Bethan being ill. We've moved a bit further forward thanks to Ian, but the multiplayer still isn't working. It doesn't help that XNA won't let you run two networked sessions on the same machine, so I have to keep interrupting Ian to get him to run it. It also has horrible, horrible problems with system firewalls.

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:35:10 GMT

Reasons Why Exalted Is More Awesome Than Any Other RPG:

1) High tech? Check: First Age gear. Steampunk? Check: Autocthonians. Pirates? Check: Lintha, the entire West. Swashbuckling? Check: The South, complete with flintlocks and cannon. Politics? Check: The Realm.
2) Ray! If someone asks you if you're a God, you say, "Don't insult me!"
3) During the short campaign I ran at WARPSOC, one of my PCs actually ran upside down along the underside of a series of tree branches, hitting zombies with his absurdly big sword as he went.
4) There's an entire class of Exalted specifically built for being angsty twats. And the default setting has you kicking them in the tits as a standard motivation.
5) Want drugs? That's fine, there's a kind of dinosaur that pisses heroin. No, fucking REALLY. If that's not enough for you, fine, I'll go get some Cocaine from fucking HEAVEN. That makes you IMMORTAL.
6) Your standard response to something pissing you off is to PUNCH IT IN THE FACE. Even if it doesn't have a face. Even if it's a metaphysical concept. Even if it made the universe. PUNCH IT IN THE FACE.
7) Also, Martial Artists can PUNCH YOUR SOUL OFF.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:55:57 GMT

My first LJ post from my new Ubuntu install. After XP murdered 2 hard drives, to add to 6 cases of OS suicide in the past 4 years, I've decided it can sod off for my day to day usage.

So far it's been fun. The latest version seems to fail at finding unRAIDed SATA drives, I spent ages trying to circumvent that last night and finally managed it this morning. Everything else has Just Worked so far, including my printer, which Windows always choked on. Definitely much better than any Linux distro I've tried before.

The only downside to this is I can't run XNA on this 'un - Mono's fine and all, but we still can't run the xna assemblies on it. So I might end up dual booting anyway for work purposes, grumble mumble.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:09:44 GMT

I would post a review of the player event I was just at, but all I can seem to remember is this line from Friday night:

"I find you FASCINATING."

... and the unrelenting urge to slip it into IC conversation all through Saturday.

Oh, and Chiara cooks damn fine cakes. And the stew the crew made was awesome. And I love Andy to bits.

Ta oxfordgirl , you continue to win at Maelstrom.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:56:39 GMT

We're incorporated, finally. Everybody say hello to Mutant Caterpillar Games Ltd!

We've moved into an office on the Science Park (notably smaller than the last one but still way too big for 3 people) and now we're getting on with prototyping while we wait for the bank to get around to giving us an account so we can transfer money in and get broadband set up.

The "we" in question consists of me, Cerys and Ian Gledhill (a former colleague of mine from Broadsword). We have a good strong concept for an XBLA game, which is something of a synergy of our 3 approaches (retro game mechanics from Ian, conceptual storyline from me, visual aesthetic from Cerys).

The plan is to try to find enough startup grant money to get this game developed without needing money from publishers. We'll still need a publisher - you can't get on XBLA without it - but they'll purely be acting as publishers, not as funding partners. That way we get a much bigger cut, and XBLA being what it is, it's a cut that will keep paying out for a long long while.

In related news - XNA is a piece of complete piss to work with.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:07:19 GMT

We have a name, we have a plan, we have some starting capital (and access to a buttload of starting grants etc), and we have a game design. This thing is actually happening.

Cerys has finally realised what this is going to mean for our finances for the next few months and has shat a brick or two. I shat my bricks at the same time as I signed up to this idea, so I suspect I'm seeming a little overly calm to her...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:06:37 GMT

Right. I have news, and I've decided this is how I'm going to distribute it, since I know a goodly number of my friends still read this (even given how rarely I update). But before that, I'm going to explain what's happened since Broadsword folded. Given that it's probably going to get a bit lengthy, I'm going to put it behind a series of cuts.

Well, after Broadsword folded I went to Strom, had a fairly shitty time due to a fucking awful head cold, didn't get nearly as drunk as I'd have liked to, and came home in an even shittier mood than when I left. Shortly after that we were told to come into the office and clean out our shit. It was all very funereal.

Then Harry dragged us all into the pub one evening and explained what was supposedly going on. The liquidator, hungry for any cash that could be dredged out of Broadsword's corpse, had decided to push *PUBLISHER* to carry on with the contract and *PUBLISHER*, rather than face a termination lawsuit due to having delivered the contract for the game TWO DAYS before Broadsword went into liquidation, seemed amenable to the idea.
This was the plan: We were to be paid on a weekly basis that would amount to the equivalent of double our former salaries from the remaining pot of cash allocated to the game. We'd get anything that was left at the end, and Julie would take a big fat cut along the way. We'd work up to Christmas at the latest, get the bugs worked out and the game ready for release, and then go our separate ways - except for yours truly, who'd be hanging about until after Christmas in case we didn't make submission.

Obviously, we all thought this was an awesome idea so we got our combined asses into the office for two weeks and worked at getting a prerelease demo done for an important showing-the-game-off opportunity. It didn't quite work due to a mistake in the build sequence, but we didn't find out about that until after Julie had sent us all home, having been told by *PUBLISHER* that the deal wasn't as on as we'd been led to believe.

At this point we should have realised something was up, especially when John mentioned that *PUBLISHER*''s boss had sent him an email asking who were the two most indispensible members of the team. He replied that it was me and Ben, given that Harry (who had been lead until this point) had decided the stress was just too bloody much and he didn't want to carry on. See, I was the graphics programmer/Wii expert, and Ben had written all the gamecode.

So, after weeks of four-way negotiations (between me, *PUBLISHER*, the liquidator, and John, who was handling the handheld version of the game) we finally managed to get sufficient agreement for me to call everyone in. We moved into the old Broadsword offices, years after leaving for the Shiny New Building, and set to work. Then our new producer arrived, along with an experienced, old hand coder they brought in "to cover for anyone who gets another job". All pretty rosy, right? Our producer was a young guy with ambitions, who seemed really driven to turn this thing around - after all, a successful rescue job is a ticket up the food chain in any company, right?

We went through a week of incredible work. Seriously, even considering we lost days to moving furniture and getting servers set up and a whole morning to rows on the phone between me and *PUBLISHER* over whether those two weeks I mentioned earlier were going to be paid for (something I'd explained was a requirement for us to come back into the office at all), we got huge amounts done, massive quantum leaps forwards. The second week, sans producer, was a little slower as we started to dig deep into the bigger problems plagueing the codebase, but bit by bit things moved forwards; the movie system finally reached stability, I found some memory holes in the particle system, the preloader became much more reliable, and so on. So far, so good. That takes us up to last week.

Then, on Wednesday, I got an email. "Will, we'd like you and Ben to come down to Oxfordshire to (the coder)'s company to talk to him about how the whole thing works." Hmm. By this point we were already very suspicious; *PUBLISHER* had essentially failed to give the liquidator a contract she was willing to sign and this just seemed like a bad news meeting. I put two and two together and figured out that *PUBLISHER* had decided to offload the project on to (the coder)'s company and drop us; further I worked out that they were asking for me and Ben cos they were going to ask us to backstab our friends and go and work with the new team. My suspicions were confirmed when Ben explained that he couldn't go immediately but needed more notice, and they insisted that it had to be both of us, so we resolved to arrange things for Monday (just past).
So when we travelled to Oxfordshire on Monday, it was with expectations as to what was going to happen, and said expectations turned out to be entirely correct. They were indeed trying to poach us to work with (the coder)'s company and the contract was indeed being taken away from us. Ben and I were offered a very sizeable sum of money to work there for about 6 months, with accomodation paid for by *PUBLISHER*. Ben agreed - after all, he has little to lose - and I told them I'd think it over.
Then when we got back we discovered that *PUBLISHER* were attempting to wriggle out of paying for last week's work, insisting that I itemise every single task done every day by every member of staff. Making comments about artists not producing enough discrete pieces of artwork and about coders "hiding behind the code".
At that point I decided that I couldn't in all seriousness work for this kind of people; not only had they strung us along for more than a month while they waited for their replacement company to get into a position to take it over, they then attempt to dodge payment and insult us into the bargain? No way would I move 5 hours travel away for 6 months for that. Hell no.

So I turned them down, and agreed to spend the end of the week documenting the code for them. Ben's going ahead with it, and good luck to him. The rest of the team have gone home, and my short first stint at being a lead coder is over.

So what's next? Well, having spoken to Ian Gledhill, a friend and former colleague of mine, then gone away and thought about it long and hard, I've put the wheels in motion to begin a new venture. I'm going to form my own development company, along with Ian and Cerys, and we're going to put together an XBox Live Arcade game.
I've had it with working for managers, and I've had it with trying to negotiate through the contracting minefield. No, we're going to find funding, hire an office, put a prototype together, get a publisher on board to push it through Microsoft, and get this thing out there. After that? Well, let's see what happens.
It's all very scary, and I'm not at all sure this was the best course of action. But if I don't do it now, I'm going to hate myself for it. If it fails... at least I tried. And if it works?

Wow. Now there's a thought.

A funny thing happened on the way to the...

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:35:38 GMT

I was heading in to work this morning (we got paid this afternoon, yippee!) and was just heading up the little path that leads from the University Campus to the Science Park. Behind me a bunch of primary school kids - about 50, the kind of group that sometimes heads into the Sports Cage for an activity morning or something - was turning a corner very slowly. It was a bright but a bit chilly day, and as usual I was wearing my boots and full-length black leather coat.

I emerged from under the trees into the sunlight, at which point a wasp decided to try to fly into my ear. I can only assume it thought it could stay there for the winter. Anyway, I responded like everyone else - ducked down, flailed my head and arms around and yelled at the top of my voice.

At which point one of the passing kids yelled "It's a vampire!"

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:42:01 GMT

Well, looks like I've salvaged something. I have an agreement in principle on the money for the 2 weeks work, and the money for this week has been delivered to the nigh-uncontactable harpy that's supposed to send it on to us.

From the mouths of babes, etc

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:42:43 GMT

Apparently I'm a bit poorly in the face.

Attack of the 50 Foot Drama Llama

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:27:46 GMT

FUCKING HELL. I just posted a huge long thing about Broadsword folding and then LJ's stupid fucking Rich Text thing killed it.

Short version - Broadsword has gone into liquidation, everyone's been made redundant, got about 3 weeks contract work for the liquidators and statutory redundancy pay to apply for, after that I've no idea what I'm going to do. Leaving Aber seems a horrible fate, but as a very wise man told me on MSN this afternoon, I'm talented, experienced, and 30 - I'm never going to be this employable again.

Ian - you need to contact the liquidators. Will get you the email tomorrow.

Short term plan is to go to Strom this weekend as planned and get very, very, very drunk.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:35:06 GMT

OK. I've had enough.

I've spent the last couple of days responding to previously sane person after previously sane person repeat the same infuriating mantra: "It's just flu, it's nothing to worry about."

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS JUST FLU.

As a population we're for the most part resistant to most of the seasonal flu strains that run through the elderly every winter, culling out a few thousand here or there. And most of the time when people say they've had "the flu", they've not actually had influenza; just a nasty cold with a bit of a fever attached. Certainly the "24 hour bug" is not flu at all most of the time, it's just a respiratory infection of the kind that people get constantly. After all, our respiratory systems are giant, warm, wet breeding grounds for anything.

So why is swine flu at all worrying? Because it is [b]JULY[/b]. You know that term, "seasonal flu"? That's so called because it's at its most virulent during the winter, but also because it spreads much faster when everyone's cooped up inside sharing germs. This one? It's spreading like wildfire in the middle of flu's least favourite time of year. It's a different strain, one most of us aren't going to respond to with a bit of a sniffle; it's going to be about a week of feeling like death. Remember getting the flu as a kid? That's what it's going to be like.

The current wave is apparently abating. Now, it's arguable that the wave has been exaggerated by idiots thinking they have swine flu after getting a cold from the cold snap we just had. But quite likely it is receding. Is that the end?
No. That's not what flu epidemics do. They fade, then they come back. And then again. And then again. And each time they catch a different chunk of the population.

I swear if I see one more bloody stupid thing like the Eye this month: "Total deaths from Swine Flu:300 Annual deaths from normal flu: 2000" I'm going to scream. It's July. People don't die from the flu in July. For fuck's sake, what about this isn't obvious?

Of course, I know the answer. Skepticism is now fashionable. After all, it feels good saying They have got it wrong and your Common Sense knows better, right? No. Bullshit. This isn't bird flu (which was never actually proven to transmit between humans - swine flu jumped species in 3 days apparently), this isn't ebola (which was geographically contained due to its short incubation period).
YOU DO NOT KNOW BETTER THAN EPIDEMIOLOGISTS. YOUR "COMMON SENSE" DOES NOT TRUMP REALITY.
All that people are being asked to do is keep an eye on themselves and their families for signs of the disease, and to take some basic precautions to reduce exposure (use hankies to sneeze, wash your hands, don't share drinking vessels). What the fuck is wrong with that exactly? What?

I stand by what Ben Goldacre said. If next year rolls around and nothing much has happened - if swine flu goes damp squib - then I won't be "proven wrong", I'll be OVER THE BLOODY MOON, and I'll be lucky. Just like everyone else. Diseases aren't something to make comparative statements about. Diseases kill people. Your mother, your kids, your friends. They KILL PEOPLE. Stop being fucking smarmy twats and recognise that fact already.

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:06:07 GMT

So, I finally went to the dentist, who proceeded to torture me as only dentists know how.
Turns out that I have really bad gingivitis ("the worst I've seen in a long time") so even the scale and polish was an agonising, bloody affair. The anaethetic for my filling then failed to work, so I had it done without anaesthetic. It wasn't so bad compared to having my gums torn apart...

So now I have this thermonuclear mouthwash called Corsodyl which makes me want to puke, and Cerys says my mouth odour is better. Would have been nice if she'd mentioned the odour sooner...

What's Time but a thing to kill or keep or buy or lose or live in?

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:36:31 GMT

I'm 30 this year.

Holy shit, I'm 30 this year.
30.

Amusing Child Stories #2635264

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:32:54 GMT

Last night we had huge trouble getting Bethan to go to sleep, so at my wits end 2 hours after bedtime I settled her in with Cerys' suggestion that I explain the Large Hadron Collider to her. Talking about the giant loop of particle death led on to the subject of the Big Bang and the beginning of the universe, and she drifted off to sleep with me explaining the origins of carbon and the beginnings of life. Bethan made my eyes bulge at one point, when I asked her "before there was anything, before anything existed yet, what was there?" and she thought about it and replied "Nothing."

So, fast forward to today, and I asked her "When we were talking last night, do you remember what started the universe?" and she responded by tapping her beaker against the side of the big bowl of popcorn she was eating. Thinking it an accident, I repeated the question... and she tapped her beaker against the bowl again, making a loud, resonant "DING!" I responded with "Does this mean you understand string theory?" and she grinned and looked away.

Next time someone tells you everyone is a believer until they get old, or everyone has a little magic until they get old, just remember this: Everyone intuitively understands complex concepts from the world of physics until they get too old and stupid to keep up. Probably around about the age of 5.

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:18:54 GMT

Having talked to Cerys about it, I now definitely can't make it to Strom. Spending even the train fare would be inadvisable, assuming work don't get their act together next week, which is a risk I can't afford to take.

I apologise to everyone I'm letting down with this.

On the plus side - 5 day weekend with Bethan!

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:17:51 GMT

1 day before the event, and I have £100 left of my overdraft, and no money about to come in.

My isn't this fun.

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:35:47 GMT

Wow. Remember the saying "No-one sues in LRP"?

Well, clearly someone does.

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:13:15 GMT

In the tabletop game Exalted, which I know a few readers are familiar with, there is a supernaturally addictive pastime called the Games Of Divinity, to which the entire higher pantheon of Creation is hopelessly addicted. I have come to the conclusion that said game consists simply of a series of laptops and a server running a forum.

Jupiter: lol pwned
Invictus, Bitches: I pwns all of you cos I'm in charge
Moon-ho: Hey let's talk about animals
Saturn: FUCK YOU CRAZY BITCH what is it that time of the month again?
Invictus: You all suck so hard

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:52:35 GMT

Here's how I feel about politics right now:

victory
instinct over intellect
victory
it erupts from deep inside
history
history is laughing at us
plotting its discovery
victory, victory
blame it on the victory

(Bad Religion, as usual)

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:51:27 GMT

I'm currently listening to the "Penny Arcade vs PvP" D&D podcasts (the old ones, not the new ones with Wil Wheaton) and it's actually making me want to play 4th Ed. Quite an achievement, no? I suspect 4th Ed is going to be a sort of "Constantine" thing for me - it's not actually D&D, but if I ignore the fact that it's called D&D and just enjoy it for what it is, it might be kinda good in its own way. Same as Constantine is an OK-ish supernatural thriller type film, and is quite enjoyable if you just pretend it has nothing to do with Hellblazer.

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:20:41 GMT

Guess what - I got my WoW account suspended!

Yeah, y'know, my account on a game I don't play any more, suspended for goldfarming or trading or something (it's a very broad accusation - "trading activities"). I've sent a snotty email back demanding to be told what the hell I'm supposed to have done. Not cos I want to play WoW again, just cos I'm not that fond of being accused of doing the thing that actually made me quit WoW in the first place.

It's kind of ironic, I got sent the Lich King trial email just the other day and was actually giving it some thought. Heh.

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:30:32 GMT

Yet more Aphelion braincheese.

One of the problems with the old system which I've been looking at is that in terms of mechanic, there's little difference between Augmentation and Skills (to use the old terminology). You can feasibly have a piece of cyberware or a genemod that allows you to not get knocked down by guns, and also a skill that does the same thing. The differences are secondary; PULSE vulnerability and side-effects in the latter cases.
Another problem is the issue of skillsofts - chip-mounted software that a character can plug into themselves that gives them a skill instantly. How is it possible to balance temporary, transient skill capability like that with a character's permanent skills?

To get around this, my current model abstracts all of these capabilities as Abilities. Whereas previously we havd a single list of Skills, a single list of Cyberware and so on, now I give every Sector a different selection of available options, all of which translate to a list of standard Abilities. In the printed rulebook a "see <X> Ability" reference would do the job, while on the Website, we can use mandatory hovertext over the Ability name to show what it actually means.

A couple of examples:

The Ability to not fall over when shot with a gun is called "Firearm Strikedown Immunity".
The Training lists available to Street characters include a Skill called "Hardcore", which states that it grants the F.S.I. Ability. Mil characters also have access to a Genemod called "Reflexive Stability" that grants F.S.I., and the Mil "Shock Trooper" Lifepath includes F.S.I. as part of its setup.
Finally, there is a skillchip available to most characters called the "Combat Suite MkIII" which includes Firearm Strikedown Immunity along with a few other Abilities such as Combatant (the ability to use weapons correctly) and Rapid Reload (removes the artificial 5-second pause when reloading). However, the character requires several other pieces of Cyberware to be able to use said chip.

The Ability to withstand extra damage is a particularly common one. It's simply called "Extra Body Hit" and is available as a Skill to pretty much every Sector, is part of numerous Lifepaths, and is also available through Genemods. The major benefit of all of these available sources is that while each source has a maximum number of additional hits available (1 per skill, 1 or 2 as part of a Lifepath, and up to four from Genemods), characters that have access to all of them can thus gain more than other characters.

The issue of side-effects is dealt with blanket-fashion. So, any Cyberware marked with an asterisk in the list makes you vulnerable to PULSE, each Genemod increases the amount you need to eat, every piece of Bioware makes you more sucsceptible to disease, and so on.

I've got a whole SHEDLOAD of Abilities lined up, but I need to work on keeping them down; Wouldn't do to make things too complicated...

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:01:11 GMT

The starlings are back early this year. It's always a beautiful sight, even more so because they fly level with the studio windows. The sheer numbers are just mind-boggling.

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:17:50 GMT

S'funny. I was just watching the Four Horsemen videos and although I get a little annoyed at how Christopher Hitchens insistently hogs the speaking role, I keep getting all fanboyish over him.

I mean, I shouldn't squee over Christopher Hitchens. That's just wrong.