Plan for Ted Southard
by Ted Southard · 12/11/2004 (6:44 pm) · 3 comments
Seems like everything this week has a good and bad side to it, with most things showing the bad side first...
Firstly- Not that I thought it would be easy, but I never did like the business side of games, and the financial-talk part of it is rough. Of course, the good side of it is that there's more talks next week, and an announcement coming very soon...
Second- Got a gander of the trueSpace 7 beta last night at the trueTown celebration in NYC, as well as getting the chance to meet Roman of Caligari and a few others face to face. Great people, wish the software gave me the same feeling(WTF do you mean that you won't have bones revamped in v7, but you took the time and money to throw at "collaborative realtime modelling" over the net?? Do people use that more than bones? Was that the feature that people were asking for and even leaving for other applications for over the last 3 years? And no sdk for 7?? No wonder noone develops plugins for trueSpace anymore... ). Sorry, but no upgrade here until they actually live up to all the hype they push out. I actually wrote a long .plan ranting about it today, but I scrapped it because I thought it sounded too harsh (not that it wasn't deserved, they heard it from me for 11 hours yesterday, so they know what I think). The good news? Well, since I don't think it's worth the upgrade price for anyone looking to work on games, I save the money I'd have used on it. ;)
Third- My brand spaggin' new motherboard crapped out on me today! Oh well... I can blame it on ordering it off the web, but this also happened with a store bought one the last time I built a PC, so it's probably just Murphy's Law popping out from under the bed to remind me that he still has the last say in most matters. Makes me wonder if there's a patron saint of Potential Mistakes Coming About or something like that. The upside is that I'm returning it for a new one, so in a week and a half things will be back to normal...
Fourth- I'm still tired from yesterday, like they gave me mono or something... I think I need to start working out again, I'm starting to get all sluggish. :/
Well, that's the less development-specific .plan for this week. Probably tomorrow or the next day I'll have the announcement and will go in-depth into it with another .plan... Maybe I'll rant about Caligari some more, haha... Probably not, I got better things to do.
Firstly- Not that I thought it would be easy, but I never did like the business side of games, and the financial-talk part of it is rough. Of course, the good side of it is that there's more talks next week, and an announcement coming very soon...
Second- Got a gander of the trueSpace 7 beta last night at the trueTown celebration in NYC, as well as getting the chance to meet Roman of Caligari and a few others face to face. Great people, wish the software gave me the same feeling(WTF do you mean that you won't have bones revamped in v7, but you took the time and money to throw at "collaborative realtime modelling" over the net?? Do people use that more than bones? Was that the feature that people were asking for and even leaving for other applications for over the last 3 years? And no sdk for 7?? No wonder noone develops plugins for trueSpace anymore... ). Sorry, but no upgrade here until they actually live up to all the hype they push out. I actually wrote a long .plan ranting about it today, but I scrapped it because I thought it sounded too harsh (not that it wasn't deserved, they heard it from me for 11 hours yesterday, so they know what I think). The good news? Well, since I don't think it's worth the upgrade price for anyone looking to work on games, I save the money I'd have used on it. ;)
Third- My brand spaggin' new motherboard crapped out on me today! Oh well... I can blame it on ordering it off the web, but this also happened with a store bought one the last time I built a PC, so it's probably just Murphy's Law popping out from under the bed to remind me that he still has the last say in most matters. Makes me wonder if there's a patron saint of Potential Mistakes Coming About or something like that. The upside is that I'm returning it for a new one, so in a week and a half things will be back to normal...
Fourth- I'm still tired from yesterday, like they gave me mono or something... I think I need to start working out again, I'm starting to get all sluggish. :/
Well, that's the less development-specific .plan for this week. Probably tomorrow or the next day I'll have the announcement and will go in-depth into it with another .plan... Maybe I'll rant about Caligari some more, haha... Probably not, I got better things to do.
About the author
Started with indie games over a decade ago, and now creates tools and tech for games. Currently working as a contractor for startups and game studios.
#2
What I understand is that they're opening everything up to scripting, which is great on one hand because you can script in C++, VB, Lua, Java, etc... But on the other, that stuff doesn't get compiled, so if I make a plugin using scripting, then I'm out of luck to someone copying and pasting to make a free script. With Caligari looking like they won't have an sdk, scripting would be the only way to do things, effectively shutting out 3rd party devs, unless they get on the ball and change that(and I really hope they do, because I'd like to finish a few of my products that are laying around).
As of last night, they only had a hazy idea of "encapsulating" the scripts so they can be protected and sold, but it wasn't in the demo, and from the vagueness of it, it sounded like that feature was being added on the spot. But they were very reluctant to talk about an sdk, and even being able to make plugins as opposed to scripts, and the answers to those questions left me and a few others wondering.
That's the same with the architecture. It's still tS6.6, with the inability to do an edgeExtrude, because the new architecture will only apply to the new features for now, until they get around to porting the "legacy tools" to it. And with "400" legacy tools, who knows when they'll all be done. And that doesn't even cover bones, which it appears wasn't being worked on til the begining of the year, and they couldn't fix it in the 6.6 architecture-making me wonder how Primitive Itch got such a kick-a$$ animation package done by himself with 6.6.
All in all, for the still renders that tS is good for, it's a hell of a lot better, and I'd upgrade. But being someone who needs to animate, I wound up telling them at the end that they lost me. They alternated between saying that bones would be in the release of 7, and then released as like 7.1 or 7.5 or "later on", but that sounds too much like what they've been saying about it since version 5. In all honesty, I don't believe that their architecture had anything to do with it, as much as their drive to get flashier features into the app to be "revolutionary"...
So yeah, XSI, or Maya, it looks like... ;)
12/11/2004 (9:11 pm)
Matt, there's no 3rd party dev's left... Except for those working on the gameSpace side of the house, and that's mostly exporters. I was the only plugin guy there, except for a niche-market guy from the Czech Rep. and from all accounts, everyone has deserted them.What I understand is that they're opening everything up to scripting, which is great on one hand because you can script in C++, VB, Lua, Java, etc... But on the other, that stuff doesn't get compiled, so if I make a plugin using scripting, then I'm out of luck to someone copying and pasting to make a free script. With Caligari looking like they won't have an sdk, scripting would be the only way to do things, effectively shutting out 3rd party devs, unless they get on the ball and change that(and I really hope they do, because I'd like to finish a few of my products that are laying around).
As of last night, they only had a hazy idea of "encapsulating" the scripts so they can be protected and sold, but it wasn't in the demo, and from the vagueness of it, it sounded like that feature was being added on the spot. But they were very reluctant to talk about an sdk, and even being able to make plugins as opposed to scripts, and the answers to those questions left me and a few others wondering.
That's the same with the architecture. It's still tS6.6, with the inability to do an edgeExtrude, because the new architecture will only apply to the new features for now, until they get around to porting the "legacy tools" to it. And with "400" legacy tools, who knows when they'll all be done. And that doesn't even cover bones, which it appears wasn't being worked on til the begining of the year, and they couldn't fix it in the 6.6 architecture-making me wonder how Primitive Itch got such a kick-a$$ animation package done by himself with 6.6.
All in all, for the still renders that tS is good for, it's a hell of a lot better, and I'd upgrade. But being someone who needs to animate, I wound up telling them at the end that they lost me. They alternated between saying that bones would be in the release of 7, and then released as like 7.1 or 7.5 or "later on", but that sounds too much like what they've been saying about it since version 5. In all honesty, I don't believe that their architecture had anything to do with it, as much as their drive to get flashier features into the app to be "revolutionary"...
So yeah, XSI, or Maya, it looks like... ;)
#3
12/12/2004 (11:18 am)
Well spoken, Ted. I don't consider that harsh at all; some seem to confuse 'harshness' with the simple way it is. And well; reality, is pretty harsh sometimes... To me, it's a matter of perspective and priorities, which, imho seem to be misplaced. I have struggled with the bones system in gS, and thanks for a heads up on a timeline for any real improvement. I think I got it tamed somewhat, with Matt's exporter/help...knocks on head[a simulated wood-like product].;) 
Associate Matt Summers
Dark Industries