Plan for James Lupiani

Getting back in the swing of things.

In the nine months since my last entry, I've:

Received my bachelor's degree in MIS from USF (Dec 2004)
Whew. The end came into sight and sped by like a bullet from a gun. Before I knew it I was up and out. I continued dropping by to do the radio show with my friends for the spring semester, and then...

Got a job as a Software Developer at a local company
Most of the software I've written and worked with these past few months has been in Python, which was what originally attracted me to the position. Because Python is turning up all over the game industry, I figured I could get some more experience with it and save up some money at the same time. My little foray into the large corporate environment will come to an end in October, just in time for me to head out to Eugene for IGC 2005! Finally this year I can afford (time & money) to fly out and meet everyone. I've got to get to planning the specifics soon...

Purchased TSE
I must have decided I actually liked constantly merging in changes, and as a consequence of above income, I decided to get the TSE-EA license and play around with that. I've since updated my game's code base to use it, and I'm looking forward to exploring some of the eye candy features!

Along the way, I'm tying up some loose ends I'd never got around to. For instance, I've ported over my popular Star Rendering class to TSE, but I'm doing it right this time. I've separated it out into a Sky-derived class that you can drop into a mission instead of the regular Sky. I also wrote a new conversion utility in Python that draws from a different star catalog, with which I can apply colorization to stars based on their spectral class. I haven't decided if I'm going to post it all as-is, or start working on additional features I'd planned, like making the stars twinkle.

I'm also submitting some minor Torque/TSE patches along the way. Getting everyone to update zlib has been on my list forever. I could've sworn I sent in a patch before, but I guess I hadn't--I did today.

Ordered a new laptop
Also as a consequence of the above. My good ol' laptop is exhibiting its severe overheating problems again. I expect its power chip to fail soon, if not the remaining RAM slot. Rather than spend another hundred hours repairing it, I shrugged and ordered a Toshiba Tecra M4. I was looking for something a little more portable than my current (Sony VAIO PCG-GRZ630), with better battery life and a real video card so I can still do some 3D development on the go. The zing factor is it's a tablet PC, so now I'll be doodling on my screen like it's an infinitely large whiteboard.

Ah well, that's all for now. I'll try to post some fancy screenshots or something soon.