Journal Entry: June 12, 2008

Yesterday after work I headed south. I had plans in place to meet Toby for an evening of programming. We've pursued projects together -- primarily video games, and particularly a single one, an MMO called Remnant -- ever since he taught me to program.

Most recently, we'd started talking about building a Python client for a tabletop game, when we started looking over our old documentation and decided we'd really rather work on Remnant again. My oldest notes for that project date to 1999. So, yeah, we're not making great progress.

Still, it's an interesting pursuit, and Toby has a 3d game engine working (built primarily in C++, but callable from Python scripts), and it's really not too great a leap to get started.

Anyway, since I work so far south of our house, I went straight there from work, and Gwyn was kind enough to make me dinner. She made some fantastic chicken and rice, and the kids were fun company at dinner.

Afterward, Toby and I went immediately back to the office to work. He showed me what he had working (a flat plain of a world, with a tree in the center, and an avatar that could be made to run around, using standard RPG controls. While I was there, we added an enemy creature, and implemented a very basic form of combat. That was pretty cool.

Game development will be pretty evenly divided into the C++ stuff and the Python stuff, Toby building up the game engine, and me building up the game environment, writing in character interactions and story events, stuff like that.

We wrapped things up around 7:30 and I headed home. I spent the whole drive thinking about the things I would need to do to get the game part up and running, and they were all things I'd done recently for that cheesy single player game I was working on. And, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the majority of that code can be copied and pasted right into the new project. I have yet to try it out, but I should be able to dramatically improve the game's functionality with a tiny bit of work. I'm anxious to get started.

Still, when I got in I decided to play some AoC instead. I wasn't sure how long I would have, and I hate having to stop a programming project in the middle of a change, so AoC seemed safer. I got several levels and finished off the starter area, which was my goal.

T-- got home late from church, last night being the final night of VBS, and then she and I watched a couple episodes of Lost, so it was pretty late by the time I got to bed. I had some fascinating dreams, too, but I didn't write them down, so they're lost to me now. I remember it was in England, and there was something about a bomb, and it would be a perfect movie for the guy from Napoleon Dynamite. I can't even imagine how those pieces fit together....

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.