Last day?

So today was the last day of GPA. We tried to hit the ground running after PoC, and we got the documentation knocked out like nothing. We did, however, run into an issue in our pipeline between the artists and the programmers.

Since Maya has things set up in a right handed environment like OpenGL, and DirectX is a left handed environment, obviously one end of the pipe was going to have to do something to compensate for this. Unfortunately, BOTH sides did the fix they needed to do in the even that the other side did not. So we ended up reversing things back and everything was rendering backwards because of this.

After a night of being super worried (Andy was, anyway), and thinking that either we'd have a horrendous looking rendering manager or the artists would have to repeat a week's worth of work, Andy sat down with some other programmers, as well as a couple of our artists and got things figured out. Our artists were able to recreate the animations the proper way without spending nearly as much time as we had anticipated and I think we managed to dodge this bullet with only a slight graze.

Some frustration has been going on between some team members about how much our IPs want us to work. I don't really mind trying to do 12 hour days from the get go (aside from today) so that we are sure to get our stuff done and save the leisurely time for once we have met our goals and start polishing things. It was pretty hilarious seeing Dave working on the Gantt chart for Beta while a couple of us are discussing this and he bursts out: "I don't FUCKING CARE if you want to go buy groceries! This is your number one priority right now!" This was referring to a comment made by a team member earlier that day.

But I guess that's all I've got for this.

kthxbai

And Another Blog

I'm sure this blog is going be much less intensive of a blog than many other people's. Mainly because I spent the last 4 days back up in Iowa getting my leg checked over and my wisdom teeth pulled out.

To start out with the leg, found out that my bone is still in two pieces, but they're still slowly growing back together. To help speed this up, I got put on calcium supplements, and they're mailing me a machine called a 'bone stimulator' that apparently vibrates through my leg to activate bone growth. That should be interesting.

My wisdom teeth came out pretty easily. The dentist was surprised with low massive they were, and I had the whole crew standing around watching as they got pulled out. One of them even had 5 roots on it! It was a very entertaining extraction extravaganza.

Only got called a couple times while I was away, the second time I was asked to fix the aiming code for the AI. Someone was editing it and completely messed it up. So I got to redo the the turning code, the pitching code, and the way that it fired. Overall I felt kinda bad that I wasn't there to help the team, but I feel that the end product for PoC was awesome. Good job team.

orly?

Hmmm I don't really have much to say this time around. Got some work done over the weekend. Andy came over both days and we got a few things done. Right now I'm kinda on the back burner waiting for Andy to finish rendering so we can all test our own code.

I spent some time looking back over my code and adding in more code for my tasks, that will be implemented once we can test it. Also wrote a few more functions for the matrix4 library for Justin.

Got our first episode up for the vlog this morning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA6eDrrCNhw

Other than that, no big news. Guess I'll go to sleep!

Dun Dun Dunnn

For anyone that read the last blog I wrote, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think I'll be doing another marathon tonight. Unless I get off on a topic again. We'll see.

So what happened today... Well, I forgot to set my alarm (for like, the 5th day in a row >_<) and I somehow keep managing to wake up at like, 7:45 so I've got plenty of time to get ready. So that's all dandy.

Ummm, in the group, I guess I'm becoming somewhat of a secretary for Andy Lee. Everyone is always needing to talk to him and asking him questions, distracting him from his work so he can't get anything done. I'm going to kind of filter the questions directed towards him and allow him to work more steadily. We'll see how that goes.

Got nominated to go to the Tech Doc review with our Jake and Dave. It went pretty well, imo. There were a lot of things that we needed to change, but it was nothing too major. It shouldn't take too much of our time to make the fixes that Carlos wanted us to. Also, note to self, I need to email everyone the list of things I wrote down during the meeting.

Other than that, group stuff has been going well. Had some integration issues last night, but we got that all sorted. It is now bidness.

Last night Andy and I recorded some footage for our vlog. We got a little more serious than our first video, actually talking about the game and a little bit about group dynamics. We DID throw in our fair share of humor though, for like, 60% of it maybe. haha I guess we didn't really have that much to talk about for the game itself besides boring tech talk. The first actual episode will be up either later tonight or sometime this weekend. I'll post a link to our channel at the end of this blog. (I've been spamming it on facebook looking for view and subscribers.)

Right now I'm sitting here at Meridian Hookah Lounge watching my friend Malissa blow smoke bubbles. One of em popped right in front of my screen and got bubble juice all over it. haha

Lets see, this weekend, I guess we're going to divvy the changes in the Tech Doc. Either that or I'll just be in charge of most of it again, since my tasks for PoC are waiting on rendering to be able to see them and for ground clamping. We'll see.

This weekend will be somewhat of a nice rest. This week has been crazy. Long days almost every day. And hanging out with Malissa. She's visiting my roommate and I from back home in Iowa for the week.

Yep

Ok

Guess thats it.

kthxbai

I just realized there's a title box.

So today was REALLY stressful. We started out thinking we were prepared with our tasks that we needed to do for PoC, and then everything got completely revamped and some things got taken out while a lot more got added.

For example, the wind mechanic got taken out of the PoC. I was slightly frustrated at this, because for an hour and a half or so before we found out, I had completely written all of the wind code that we needed to make it work properly, and right after I finished it I was told that it got cut from the PoC. I mean, it's still there so we can put it in whenever we need it, but I felt like that time was wasted doing something that wasn't needed for the current next milestone.

Also, our lunch break got cut short by about 35 minutes because we needed to rehash our milestone acceptance form and we had to have it done by the time we got back from lunch even though we were only told to redo it at 11:30. We all had to rush for our lunch and one of our IP's Dave didn't get to eat at all because he stayed back to make sure everything was formatted and took care of sending everything to where it needed to go.

I guess the point I'm stressing over is that we thought we had an agreement with the EP and IP for what was going to go into the PoC, and we scheduled what we were doing based off that, and without warning, the next morning we were told that it was all wrong, even though it was exactly what we agreed on only two days before.

I dunno, I probably seem pretty angry, but I guess we just have to deal with it. We're gonna do our best to get everything done the best we can.

Another thing, when we were splitting up the tasks for what to do before PoC for the second time (because we had to rewrite it all), a certain member was upset that we weren't putting in a finalized AI. We were told to keep basically what we had with our demo, but with a couple modifications, but he couldn't accept the fact that a fleshed out AI was not wanted for PoC. He kept arguing even though he couldn't say that he would be able to implement it for the PoC. It was so pointless. We argued about it for several minutes, trying to accommodate his needs while still maintaining what was supposed to go into the PoC, until he finally got angry at all of us for no reason and told us to stop arguing about it. I hope this doesn't keep happening.

On a side note, after a long day of working on the Tech Doc yesterday, which was super stressful as well, I grabbed some BK on my way home and watched the most recent episode of house, which was amazing. Today the new episode of Bleach came out, they finished with the filler last week and this was the first episode back on the main storyline. So good.

Something funny, Andy and I have a running joke where I'm a crippled guy that's always being offended by everything he does. (I really broke my leg in two places over xmas break, and I've got a metal rod inside my leg. The screws going through my bone that stick out a little bit mess with my muscles and I walk with a slight limp) At the same time, when I 'freak out' he takes on the role of an offended Asian guy. When I was writing up the integration plan in the Tech doc, instead of putting his name as the integration lead, I put "Some oppressed Asian guy" as a joke. And it accidentally got left in for the first turn in for the tech doc. >.<

HOWEVER... I only claim 30% of the responsibility for this, because it just goes to show that after I typed it up, nobody bothered to read over it to make sure it was something everyone could agree on. I guess I could take that as a compliment as it could be a representation of their confidence in my writing abilities.

Bah, anyhow, I guess I worked off my steam typing all that up. Right now Andy is bothering me about where to eat for supper. Heck if I know.

KK guess that's all for today, hope you had fun reading it, or not.

First blog again since break finished. Over break I wrote most of the math library, only having a couple matrix functions left, and did some work on the tech doc.

Tomorrow I'll be putting everyone's modules together in a single doc, and when that's done, I'll be hashing out the rest of the matrix functions.

Also to note, Andy Lee and I are going to be starting a video log about what it's like working in final project. Our channel is PainfullyAwful on youtube, feel free to subscribe and stay tuned for our videos! We'll probably have a new video up every few days with some talk about how its going. This is mainly for Andy, but he wanted someone to do it with him, so I guess that was me. =D

Today I finished the documentation for the Math module.

My next task is to finish the Physics module.

After I finish that, I plan on beginning to write the code for our math system.