I was asked recently to do a relatively simple task: read a TGA file, reduce the size and write it back out. I felt that was too simple so I decided to go a little overboard and also to release my code to the world. A nice bonus is that I have the start of a new tool.
The task was set to only take a few hours. It ended up taking 24 hours and I decided to keep track of the process and document it.
Well it's been a busy year for me. Shipping Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, briefly working on an unannounced 3DS title, and finally working on Michael Jackson: The Experience for Kinect. More information on MJ later; the bottom line, it was (is) a super fun project to work on. I'm hoping no one noticed but I've upgraded to the latest version of Joomla. I've been working on some websites lately which has been surprisingly fun. It's been a while since my last update so I have a stack of articles I'm planning on writing soon:
Update regarding Compile Time Hashing - I want to respond to some comments and make sure that I'm linking the latest and greatest version.
Information on the websites I've been working on - I have a newfound respect for Javascript programmers.
Information on this website - Complications that arose my upgrade and some improvements I've made to some Open Source stuff.
Michael Jackson! - Great project, tons of praise for Kinect.
Programming Test - I've been asked to do one and thought it would be fun to document the process and results.
I worked on the 2010 Pop for most of its development. I really got into working with Ubisoft's primary Engine and made a lot of improvements and fixes. Overall I was really happy with the game. If nothing else it had very solid gameplay. It didn't fare so well on Game Rankings (76) but most of the complaints seemed to be about the story and setting.
Not much to say really. I'm finally getting around to updating my work history. I'm still with Ubisoft and unfortunately the last couple years I'm having such a good time working I haven't had to energy to do much on the side. So haven't really updated the games I've worked on lately, since coming to Ubisoft I've had the pleasure to work on Lost: Via Domus, Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip(Wii), Prince of Persia, and I'm now currently working on Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands. The great thing is that I've had the chance to work on all current gen platforms.
I managed to sneak on the reboot of PoP right at the end of development. I mainly spent a couple months helping to debug the PC version for release. Not a huge lot of impressive work to do but it did help me secure a position on the PoP: Forgotten Sands team. Metacritic: 85.
Lost is the first game that I worked on at Ubisoft. It was a really fun project, the game was very well done and quite true to the Lost Canon. I was interesting working on an older engine but we were still able to produce a high quality product. While it didn't get a huge Metacritic score (54) I'm happy that users enjoyed it and rated it well (80).
So I was playing Yahtzee with some people while vacationing in Europe (WHAAAAAT, Yahtzee is a fun game!), and I started thinking what it would take to make a video game of it. I wasn't thinking about making a full release with all the bells and whistles, but just the guts.
Ok they don't suck, but I have managed to make some improvements on them. I'm currently in the process of rebuilding my personal base library. I'm trying to do it 'right' this time by adding unit tests and making everything simple and readable above all else. I've gotten to the point where I'm writing a String class. In the past I used the C++ style '<<' operators but I find them cumbersome for generating proper formatting. There is a lot of flexibility in the good old printf function (i.e. %10.10s). In this article I aim to show the (minor) deficiencies of the current Printf functions and describe better methods.
But not free beer. Well not for you. I've finally decided on a licence to use for any source code I release. I present: Beerware. This is an absolutely free license, you can do whatever you want with what I give you. If you like it and we meet then feel free to buy me a beer.
