My involvment in the development of Ars Moriendi came to an end for the most part this past Tuesday. I was assigned some work to make up 10% of hours missed in APD, and they did not feel that the work that i completed (40pg networking tutorial w/source code)was sufficient enough to make up for the time missed. I was assigned to write about TGE networking and how to implement our object heiarchy. Both were to be in tutorial form. I didnt have time to complete a obj heiarchy tutorial that i felt would have been beneficial to my team, and i figured the exhaustive networking tutorial more than made up for my time lost. This didnt turn out to be the case. They would have rather had me write a few pages for each tutorial instead of only completing one quality tutorial.

This is all fine - ive spent almost 3 months developing this game with my team. This includes game design and tech. Ive taken my team very far, and they have a definate edge because of the work that i have done. Our build on the first day of GP was better than what many groups have turned in for Alpha, and was as good as/if not better than some final projects. This was told to my group by several GP lab instructors. Im going to miss all the guys on my team, and they have all been really great throughout this whole ugly process. Theyve fought just as hard as i have to try and keep me in the group, and that really means alot. You guys fucking rock :)

So, moving on and picking up the pieces...

I am meeting with a friends group on sunday to discuss my joining up with them. My good friend Fabio has a team with no real tech guy yet, so i think ill fit in well ;) If i join up with them, i will be restarting APD with them in january. Im already exited about working on a new project!

Currently Im looking into the Nebula2 engine. It looks damn sweet, and from what ive seen so far has a really nice dx9 shader framework. Nebula2 isnt a game engine by any means, which is cool cause ill be able to learn more about rendering, faster. If we end up using this id like to write an opengl render path with a glsl framework. Ive got another two months before development starts, so i should be able to do some cool stuff. The main goal is to have tech mostly completed by the first day of GP so that we can start on gameplay. But here i am getting ahead of myself already... This week is all about research, hopefully by sunday i can nail they tech well be using. I thought about writing my own engine, but the risk is too high with my current expectations. I know i can write a renderer at this point, im just not sure it will look as good as i expect our final project too.