Plan for Luc Jordan
by Luc Jordan · 01/11/2004 (1:17 pm) · 2 comments
Work has been crazy. At least, crazy for me; I'm 20 years old and averaging [edit: more than fulltime; forgot someone from work might read this hehehe... exact numbers are indelicate]hrs in a 4-day work week . . . then another part-time job of sorts, and language classes . . . heh, doesn't leave a ton of time for playing games, let alone 'making' them.
I've been fortunate the last few weeks -- was able to spend time with some serious coding research/education, since myself and another programmer at my job get to build a frighteningly complex client-server application, from the ground up, that will be managing easily tens of millions of dollars worth of assets, doing standards-compliant accounting etc . . . eek!!! And since neither of us is godlike (I have theory, other guy has 10+ years experience programming, 15+ years graphics/print, we both have drive) we have been doing a LOT of studying. I was able to learn a LOT in a short amount of time, and just because Torque is such a good model to look at for clean, powerful, efficient code (compared to, say, your average VB app :P) I was using it as an analogy for pretty much everything.
But now I am understanding a LOT more of the code. In the last 9 months I've gone from zero SQL knowledge to being RIGHT in the cusp of true SQL-guru-ness. I've gone from being confused by simple recursive functions to implementing my own carefully tuned depth and breadth-first graph traversal (directed/cyclic), and then the next step to actually implementing it all in SQL and server app code (asp or php as the need arises). Stack-based programming, stored procedures, all kinds of funky XML, learning .NET, my own hacked version of the open-source pdftohtml utility and then the search engine to search it faster than fulltext indexing in sql . . . this is in MONTHS, just months. Before that, I was horribly smug when I compiled Torque for the first time, and was insufferable when I managed to get php/mysql running and a simple "SELECT * " query working.
So, now . . . I'm coming back to Torque . . . and wow. Just wow. What I can understand now is orders of magnitude more; I just sat down and read the code straight, for hours, over the last couple of days (coffee-based insomnia as the root cause), and it's beautiful! I am so excited. I may not be able to do anything, but I'm SEEING it, and I'm amazed.
Are other engines as incredibly ideal as Torque??? I know that Torque's graphics are, to some, outdated. But the more I look into the engine, the more flabbergasted I become. It is truly beautiful.
I remember, when I was 14-16 (and when this place was a rumbling in the clouds surrounding the development of Tribes 2), going on long walks and talking to myself about designing games -- very realistic, depressingly detailed make-believe discussions about the kinds of gameplay sacrifices we would have to make, as well as the usual boundless optimism born of ignorance.
I am looking forward to continuing to learn about Torque. I am really looking forward to the release of Melv May's fxShapeBlitter (or whatever the exact name is), because I really want to work on integrating at least elements of board game/RTS into the ordinary first-person game world, and it sounds like that will help a lot with any rendering bottlenecks (and also scene graph traversal).
Mostly, though, I just want to continue to screw around with this great technology. Not to mention reaping the fruitage of it -- Marble Blast and Orbz have been excellent. Keep up the good work!
This isn't a proper .plan, since I'm not working on any projects. I just figured I'd share my boundless enthusiasm with the world.
Game on.
I've been fortunate the last few weeks -- was able to spend time with some serious coding research/education, since myself and another programmer at my job get to build a frighteningly complex client-server application, from the ground up, that will be managing easily tens of millions of dollars worth of assets, doing standards-compliant accounting etc . . . eek!!! And since neither of us is godlike (I have theory, other guy has 10+ years experience programming, 15+ years graphics/print, we both have drive) we have been doing a LOT of studying. I was able to learn a LOT in a short amount of time, and just because Torque is such a good model to look at for clean, powerful, efficient code (compared to, say, your average VB app :P) I was using it as an analogy for pretty much everything.
But now I am understanding a LOT more of the code. In the last 9 months I've gone from zero SQL knowledge to being RIGHT in the cusp of true SQL-guru-ness. I've gone from being confused by simple recursive functions to implementing my own carefully tuned depth and breadth-first graph traversal (directed/cyclic), and then the next step to actually implementing it all in SQL and server app code (asp or php as the need arises). Stack-based programming, stored procedures, all kinds of funky XML, learning .NET, my own hacked version of the open-source pdftohtml utility and then the search engine to search it faster than fulltext indexing in sql . . . this is in MONTHS, just months. Before that, I was horribly smug when I compiled Torque for the first time, and was insufferable when I managed to get php/mysql running and a simple "SELECT * " query working.
So, now . . . I'm coming back to Torque . . . and wow. Just wow. What I can understand now is orders of magnitude more; I just sat down and read the code straight, for hours, over the last couple of days (coffee-based insomnia as the root cause), and it's beautiful! I am so excited. I may not be able to do anything, but I'm SEEING it, and I'm amazed.
Are other engines as incredibly ideal as Torque??? I know that Torque's graphics are, to some, outdated. But the more I look into the engine, the more flabbergasted I become. It is truly beautiful.
I remember, when I was 14-16 (and when this place was a rumbling in the clouds surrounding the development of Tribes 2), going on long walks and talking to myself about designing games -- very realistic, depressingly detailed make-believe discussions about the kinds of gameplay sacrifices we would have to make, as well as the usual boundless optimism born of ignorance.
I am looking forward to continuing to learn about Torque. I am really looking forward to the release of Melv May's fxShapeBlitter (or whatever the exact name is), because I really want to work on integrating at least elements of board game/RTS into the ordinary first-person game world, and it sounds like that will help a lot with any rendering bottlenecks (and also scene graph traversal).
Mostly, though, I just want to continue to screw around with this great technology. Not to mention reaping the fruitage of it -- Marble Blast and Orbz have been excellent. Keep up the good work!
This isn't a proper .plan, since I'm not working on any projects. I just figured I'd share my boundless enthusiasm with the world.
Game on.
About the author
Kenneth Mair