Nov. 28, 2006 @ 06:23

I have the final meeting today between all parties concerned prior to my return to full-time employment. After 2½ years of sickness and one false start at re-joining my job it looks like I finally get to start doing things for real.

I’ll be glad to be working again, earning a wage and having a routine but I’m still a little nervous as to what exactly my new role at the company will be and if I’ll be able to do it. My biggest fear is that circumstances won’t be ideal which will result in me getting sick again although the plan is to start back part time and steadily increase my hours and responsibilities over the coming year.

I just hope I end up doing something I like. Shame we’re not a game company. 🙁

(Image courtesy of Trois Tetes)

Nov. 11, 2006 @ 20:34

I was recently tipped off that another mod was using my Waco glider model and had posted pictures of it in a media update. Hilarity ensued.

Don’t steal my stuff. I’ll find out and name and shame you. Oh, and also be sure it’s not a model thats been done for a large software producer. They have much larger legal departments…

Nem has been busy updating GCFScape and HLLib and has included much better defragging of GCF files than Valve’s own. To quote from Nem’s post:

“The results of HLLib’s defragmenter were better than I had expected with an average speedup on HLLib tests of 2.62 and an average speedup on Steam tests of 2.32 (for a total average speedup of 2.47). The baseline tests were all conducted on Day of Defeat: Source GCF files that had been run through Steam’s defragmenter (which claimed 0% fragmentation even though I calculated an average of 8.38%).”

Interesting to note that Valve’s own defragmenter claimed 0% fragmentation when Nem calculated almost 10% in some case. Nem continues:

“Of particular interest is the 3.35 speedup for DOD: Source validation through Steam. This is because validation is more IO bound than CPU bound meaning the speedup is indicative of Steam’s raw file IO speedup. The result of this IO speedup can be seen in the dod_anzio test where I was able to load dod_anzio 26 seconds faster than before defragmentation. Even the casual gamer should appreciate that.”

I know myself that some of the slow load times with Steam have frustrated me so if in some cases you could be gaining 20 seconds or more it’s certainly worth a look!

You can read the rest of Nem’s post and more details of his tests and results here and download the latest GCFScape and try it for yourself.

I wonder what Valve will make of it…

Nov. 5, 2006 @ 20:46

There has been quite a lot of coverage and discussion in the press of late about “serious games” – using computer game technology for serious purposes such as situation training and education. It’s really encouraging as it’s something I’ve been interested for a long time and started to get into a while back.

I picked up on this article in particular as it mentions a couple of projects I’m familar with.

First of all it mentions Tim Holt’s GNNViz project which I’ve been lucky enough to follow the development of. Tim has done some amazing work getting real world terrain and forestry data into existing game engines – no mean feat. Tim’s had to write a number of custom tools to transform the data types and custom shaders to give a realistic appearence to all those thousands of square kilometers of terrain.

Secondly, the article touches on the on-going development of “PULSE!!” which I mentioned in a previous post here. I hadn’t heard much of if after the initial demonstration so it’s nice to see it’s continuing to be developed.

With a lot of negativity towards games (e.g. “Bully”) and their social impact in the press it’s encouraging to see more articles like this one promoting the positive uses for the technology. That said, from my “insider” info the number of serious games in development or discussion is growing so maybe 2007 will be a boom year.

Start buying stock in Transmodrify now! ;o)