 Welp, yet again I'll update with a not to techfile. Ive got a good excuse this time, Ive been working hard at work (Team17 for now) on my project (still NDA). Just wanted to kind of comment on the whole garagegames.com thing and the V12 engine. I know loads of people who use and abuse flipcode are 3D junkies, hell, even I, a humble game programmer, dabble in the black science sometimes :)), but the opportunity to cut some code and just plop it into V12 is pretty exciting to me. All those stupid idea's I knocked on the head because I knew I didnt have time to make em work in even the simplest form all spring back into life. I know commercially it just wont make sense for most people, but Ive never been one to be bothered by money, I do games because I genuinely like it, games appeal to my creative side, ok, I am a programmer, but I am not some automaton who dreams of shaving cycles off every simple routine (been there, not my bag baby), I'm not even one of those guys who LOVES to preach about some language feature like your a complete caveman if youre not using all the bells and whistles of whatever the latest compiler are. I just want to make games. I am interested in writing GAME. It seems simple really, but its surprising how few programmers generally think about this stuff. They think about this algorithm, or that algorithm, without thinking "does this feature work?, does it feel like its supposed to?, is it clear that if I give it a certain input, its going to produce a meaningful output? I guess the whole thing stems from things like the unreal 2 tech demo mentality. I'm not trying to knock it, I like to see nice eye candy as much as the next man. But what in the hell does that have to do with games being fun? I'd be far more impressed with these things if they even had some semblance of originality or thought. If you look at V12, the best thing its going to do is introduce some new people into the games industry. If I were running a game company, I'd be watching what people produce with it, and even might contact one or two of the people who produce anything good. Ok, the industry itself is going through a very mixed up time, but talent is talent no matter the time. Any development company would be stupid to pass up the chance to evaluate people by actually seeing what they could do with a commercial grade engine. Just think about it, if you can find a guy or set of guys who can produce a great game with an almost free engine, what would stop them from doing that for you? Dont get me wrong, this isnt saying that every wannabee who gets hold of it will make it into game development mainstream, what I'm saying is that if you ever wanted a chance, had some knowledge but not enough to tackle creating the engine and game all by yourself, and were prepared to put the effort in to complete something game-like. Well, here is the best chance your gonna get. Anyway, enough ranting. Next time, I promise I'll be good and write something semi-useful. I've been thinking about doing a peice for Kurt on game architecture (or one or two version of), not RENDERING, not anything specific, just GAME. :)) Until next time. Phil. 
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