I'm considering adding a new section to my website, which actually has been just this blog for sometime now. It has just been a blog for so long, since I think just the blog is kind of insufficient. I have been experimenting with several content management systems for what must be several months now. Considering my interest is in video games, I think what I'll do is add a games site that's to my taste. I still honestly haven't found a CMS that'll work towards my needs, so I believe I'll very likely be hacking what's already available to suit my needs. I suppose you can expect it to come up by June this year. (I'm working on another unrelated project, so I'm being a little more liberal with my estimation. Chances are a skeleton will be up before the end of this month, but I don't think it'll come close to my actual idea until June 2008 or later.)
Talking about Direction
Reading this post and the question posed by Chewxy was rather intriguing to me then, and still intriguing to me now. A few months ago, I posed my friends this simple yet profound question - where do you see all of us 5 years from now and 10 years from now. When I was 15, I joined and qualified for the finals of a national youth programming competition, the DGX DCC 2001. It's no longer being held now, sadly. I obviously didn't win, but it was somewhat interesting what most people who were 1 year or 2 years older than us had for ideas to submit for their finals. I'd argue what I submitted was particularly childish now and probably the most incomplete, but I think it's more than likely all of us thought similarly.
Now, six years later, I'm doing actuarial science - something I didn't even remotely know about then. I'm still no closer to completing Sword Fantasy than I was five years ago. I'm not using anything I learned in school in daily classes besides my mathematics and even whatever use of that is reduced to what I would consider a negligible amount.
My programming never really took off until two years ago. In the span of two years, I've learned more than six programming and scripting languages (C, C++, Java, R, MATLAB and Lua - I don't consider Warcraft 3's JASS to count, neither do I count PHP or C#), gotten familiar with all 3 major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), finished more games than I have in the two years before that, and made a Warcraft 3 custom map (which I chose not to release because of a similar item already out). And I'm not in any computer programming class, software engineering class. The one class I did attend was for fun and for a free high distinction - as well as reassurance that I would probably be bored if I tried to go the programming way for a degree.
My brain is still trying to recover from the two years of stagnation at HELP. I have still been unable to access it completely - I'm hoping the course will get harder and switch my brain back on. My memorization functions are still greatly limited (as evidenced by my poor performance in Corporate Finance). I certainly hope that it will recover by next year. It feels funny knowing that you are capable of more, but your brain refuses to go that extra mile.
The Coming Year of 2008
First, let's look at what happened last year. I took a trip to Cairns with a few friends - two old ones and a new one. I was supposed to start on Sword Fantasy's basic game framework, but ended up coming short. Despite this, I've gotten a lot further with learning the programming required, although my game research has slowed down - owing to books being so costly in Australia. I did somewhat rewrite the first chapter of the story into a more cohesive more readable form. What do I plan to do this year then?
1. Finish a game engine. - Yep, the most ambitious goal yet. Complete a game engine. How ambitious is this project? I intend to build an engine, complete with graphics and sound - with fully scriptable maps. (I intend to implement fully scriptable AI at some point, but we'll see - highly dependent on how far my virtual machine coding has come.) Broken down, this makes it into several tasks: Get a virtual machine running (the most daunting, in my opinion). Get graphics running and reading data from scripts. Get sounds running and reading data from scripts. Learn how to execute scripts the multithreaded way.
2. Get a job. - Yes, I know goals 1 and 2 conflict. I'm not sure if my goal is to get a job for next year, or a part-time job, or just setting up myself a job. What I mean is actually getting into a tighter routine. I think getting into a routine where time is slightly tighter than it is now will make me more hardworking.
3. Cook more. - Time to save myself some money and learn a few more culinary skills. In addition, cooking actually gives me more time for programming. So go figure.
4. Program something for PSP. - Yep, thought I should give it a try. Chances are it'll be a Luaplayer program since I don't want to spend too much time working on the PSP when I should be working on getting stuff working in Windows. It might not even do anything.
This year, I think I won't expand the story any further, owing to spending more time on everything else. I think to me, the most important thing to do this year is expand my software portfolio while studying. I believe that it's time I go back to fullforce computer programming instead of lazing around researching games and RPG systems. It's time to finally build the engine the game is going to run on for real.
A Few Mishaps
There was a mishap while I was updating the site to Wordpress 2.3.2. I accidentally corrupted my database, and guess what - my last usable backup was from 1st of December. As of such, I've lost all posts made this month. I don't even recall what I wrote in whatever few posts I did make, but I know that I did have a photo to show off, and here it is:
As for everything else I think it's not important enough to test. And oh yeah, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is actually playable to me. Considering the fact that I considered the past 3 numbered games unplayable - that's some huge improvement.
Departing Back for Malaysia and Following Hiatus
I'm departing back for Malaysia on Tuesday (27th November). After which, I'll be pretty busy and will be unable to blog for the better part of December (probably the whole month, in fact). In fact, depending on how things go, I could easily be busy for the next few months too. The blog will most certainly continue - but it's possible that you might not be looking at an update until February or March - due to overall unavailability, as opposed to the usual writer's block.