Journals

I usually make a summary of my year and advancements around my birthday. Here it comes!

Moving to university (college for American lads), was a big step - just as it always is. At first I was doubtful about my choice, but when the second semester came I came to conclusion that I actually like philology and language studies in general. I made a lot of progress in my education, and that's only the first year!

When it comes to my personal issues and social life - I've got through with most of the problems, but there are still things that I want to improve, especially in terms of communication. I need to get rid of shyness in certain situations (I become shy around people that I study with but we've never spoken, and when women hit on me, but I'm quite confident when making small talk or helping people - and I do the latter always when I have a chance). I also have problem with going out and doing something alone. I can spend time in my dorm completely alone without any problems, but when it comes to going out alone, I'm all hesitating and lazy. To fix this, I started going out for a walk at least two times in a week. I've met a lot of interesting people and have a pack of psychos that I enjoy spending time with. I still keep in touch with some people from before university, but everyone's busy with their lives now and spend more time with new people.

I traveled a lot this year. I moved across the whole Poland five times: my sister's wedding, becoming a godfather, holy communion of my godchild, becoming a godfather once again, and a Guns 'n Roses concert. I also moved in my local area and between home and dorms. I can't imagine my life without traveling!

Finally coming to title relevant information! I filled in a form, printed several papers and got accepted to study at a second faculty! I received 188 points and had a first rank in the recruitment system! Now I will study both English and Russian philology! In a week, I'm going to Switzerland to visit my siblings and go sightseeing in the mountains, then I'll head to Germany to work abroad.

It feels good to have everything sorted out!

To live is to die.

I had a dream, it was both crazy and beautiful. I had launched Terragen Classic and saw an advanced yet clean and well arranged interface. In addition to the usual editors (which got a massive overhaul), there were also editors like character editor, model editor and game logic scripter. I spent a lot of time in this dream fiddling with material and atmosphere editors. The former had full PBR and procedural creation matched with Terragen's usual material properties. There was a nifty window with an example scene - selecting faces on it adjusted the material to slope of the face and its other properties. The atmosphere editor had a real time preview window, enormous amount of sliders and even more preset examples that were great on their own. I had tears in my eyes when working with that suite.

A man can dream, but a question is: What if Planetside made game dev tools?

I will become a godfather tomorrow!

Shameless advertisement time!

BlackRite Interactive

I had set up a development and publishing studio about two weeks ago. Only four people account for it so far, but there's time for recruitation.

If anyone wants to join us or ask for our help, feel free to message me on ModDB.

My grandma had died last Saturday night, the funeral was yesterday. Being a hard case of stoicism, I'd mostly emotionally coped with the loss, even though just yestrday I was about to break down and cry. Yet still, memories and thoughts remain and seemingly start to haunt me.

Three weeks ago when she was taken to hospital, I had decided to stop working on anything related with writing or development for some time, to let the steam off. But the more I tried to suppress creative processes ongoing in my mind, the more painful thoughts I received. In effect, I started writing a book, greatly changed and improved lore and setting of my game project and thought over concept arts and OST for it, and came up with numerous ideas for my Darkmod fan mission.

I've never been so moved, brooding and nostalgic, yet so motivated and ready to act in my entire life. As if creativity was the best way for me to cope with anything bad coming my way.

The beginning of next semester is getting closer, my break ends at upcoming Monday. I need to vent...

I've been working my ass off as usually when getting back home. I always helped my parents and family overall as much as I could. I'm one of the rare cases of college students that instead of taking money, bring it back home to help out family. It's been tough after my father's surgical operation, but I'm used to much more work, I'm only a bit tired.

However, my gradnma had an effusion today, several hours ago, and it was a really heavy blow. Thank God I'm still on break and was there to help before an ambulance arrived. It was only a weak effusion, but it really scared the shit out of us, especially that my grandma is 86 years old. She's much better now, most of examination turned out great results for her age (which is not weird, she was always active, never needed any medicine and never even stayed in hospital!), but it's not certain whether she'll be alright.

Overtly worrying is really bad for my health (especially stomach), but sometimes it feels like the whole house would fall apart without me...

Typical rant journal entry.

I'm getting through another productivity crysis, mainly because I'm working mostly alone, and I've got some university related motivation issues...

First, boring life-related stuff:

Maybe it's because the speciality I've chosen - English Philology, aiming for master title and title of certified translator for the court (former is the requirement). I'm probably the only person that is not there because that language is my passion, and not because I failed to qualify for other unis like about 25% percent of people here as well (I actually had about 350 recruitment points for another uni, where I could study forestry, only 115 were required, they sent a few letters after me two weeks ago...), but rather because of a specific set of plans I have.

I feel that this choice was a step backwards, taking into consideration that I graduated a technical school (getting highest score on finals there and most likely scoring very high in comparison with other schools in this region), always preferred practical and technical classes, and sciences, especially biology. Whereas here I have to learn all those boring little details, like several ways to pronounce one vowel, historical detail and such (and while I was learning those fast and forgetting them even faster, I never really enjoyed them).

Another thing that's gnawing one me - do I need college when I graduated the school with technician title and with several qualification courses done - all of those in fields that have (always had, and most likely will have for a long time) a demand for workforce, pay nicely and are in fact enjoyable? I find a prospect of specialistic flights for let's say, a power plant, to monitor state of wind turbines or high voltage lines, or seeking out people with thermovision cameras for emergency services, or commercial flights for TV stations and private endeavours (I can do both types of flights right off the bat) much more interesting than teaching or sitting for hours by a desk to translate a few pages of text, and that's just about only one of possibilities. I know that finding a job is not an easy task nowadays, but I'm one of those fuckers that have the balls to freelance, run their own business and take up a few odd jobs in between.

For short, I have a lot of different plans, career prospects and even more doubts, to the point that what I'm doing right now feels not pointless, but maybe unnecessary and a bit painful.

Now to the point:

I highly prefer to work alone on any projects I have, but it just doesn't work. Not because of troubles with creating assets, maps, code or script (I'm a jack of all trades...), but because no one is going to kick me in balls when I'm procrastinating for too long...

Some time ago, I had a short collaboration with Windawz, who was meant to take a role of lead level designer for my current project. And while it ended without anything actually done on the level side - I created base assets and scripted gameplay framework (that is now available as SE2DevBase) in a very short time. All I needed to do it was simply a mention that a few assets were needed in a message from him.

Teamwork seems to be a huge motivating factor for me when working on larger scale projects, so I decided that I'll form a team of modders willing to contribute to the project, in a forum thread that I'll post soon.

Anyone that read that wall of text, have a cookie:

Uploaded a Storm Engine 2 dev base on GitHub!

It contains minimum base assets coming with the engine, as well as game logic (entities), placeholder DEV textures, simple skybox, test fire particle and a test level created by me.

https://github.com/Snehk/SE2DevBase

I decided to halt my current project for a while. It was moving on mostly on design part, rather than on actual development anyways. I realised that I still lack some more skills to get something as big and ambitious as Revenant: Darkborn was meant to be. It's not that I couldn't do it in the long run, but rather it won't fit my vision. Currently I'll have to strip it off of some of ideas and planned features which are crucial for development (especially level design and world building). And that's not something I'm going to do.

So instead of completely dumbing it down, I decided to focus on smaller projects for the time being until I gather enough experience to run that huge project again.

I already came up with a fresh idea. Something close, in similar convention, but much different, much more linear and with simpler gameplay. It'd be something that'd put me better on tracks towards something larger. I'll work on some concept arts and first few levels/entities before I'll make a proper site for it.

Darkriders

Semi-linear thirdperson slasher.

They were mighty warriors, truly a knightly elite. Brave, honourable and loyal, Knights of the Height Keep always aided those in need and allowed entry to anyone approaching their gates in search of shelter. But everything changed once they embarked on a journey to retrieve a holy relic - Heart of Archangel Cilber, ripped out of his chest by demons of Daemei in the ages past. While fighting with darkness and paving their way to afterlife, a horrible curse was placed upon those knights. And while they succeeded in retrieving the relic, none of them returned to their keep. Consumed by taint, they fell for the dark and became Darkriders. Ruling great storms of Underworld, they ride dark lightnings across the Abyss in eternal struggle to find peace. Shortly after their demise, Height Keep was corrupted by taint as well and became home of many dreadful monstrosities, long dead warmonger that was Duke of these lands raising from death among them, to rule once again. It is said that with all the taint gathered upon this place, one can open gates of the Underworld for a short time and that great reward can be received after retrieving the Heart of Archangel. Whether it's immense power, great treasure, a warm place in afterlife or transcending beyond confines of human existence remains unclear.

Visit accursed ruins of the Height Keep and face wrath of Undead Duke. Open the gates of Underworld and travel through barren lands and ghost towns swarmed by undead and dark spirits. Explore perilous Daemei ruins and witness demonic warfare. Face worst nightmares imaginable and corrupting taint of Abyss, to battle with fearsome Darkriders, retrieve Heart of Archangel Cilber and take your reward.

Ideas dump. You may or may not get sued if you steal one of those...

Organ Memory

Genre: Survival horror/Puzzle solving
First person perspective

Based on the pseudosceintific theory that memories can be stored not only in brain, but also in all individual cells of one's body.

The story is simple - someone dies and several people receive organ transplants from that person's body. You are one of them. A long while after you're out of hospital, your health gets much worse. Further examination reveals that state of all your organs gets worse - except for the transplanted one, which grows stronger. In some time you receive visions from organ donor's life, and strange paranormal occurences happen all around you. You find out that other patients after transplantations are in the same situation. You must find a way to get out of this shit, and (not necessarily) help others.

TLDR: Organ donor is a douche and returns as a ghost to kill you and get it's organs back!

Necromaster

Genre: Strategy
Isometric

Evil vs Evil scenario. Deep in enormous caverns under some accursed desert lie ruins of a great ancient civilisation. After ages of lying dormant you awaken - one of the Death Lords that brought aforementioned civ to it's ruins. Your goal - breach to the surface. But to do this, you'll have to get an undead army, and you're in a wonderful place to get it, as that place is an enormous, ancient graveyard! But alongside you, other death lords awaken and each and every one of them wants to rule both undeground and topside world. War of the undead starts!

Player would have unlimited power, but would be limited by resources - bones needed to animate undead. Excavating them from ruind and graves would be necessary. There'll be several starting units which would split into varieties based on one stat, like mobility, offense, defense. There'll be also neutral or outright enemy units - like ghouls that'd attack both you and your enemies.

Undead Hunt

Genre: Strategy/Survival/Hack and slash
Isometric

Humanity turned away from gods after plague outbreaks and great war - gods turn away from humanity and open gates of Underworld, letting countless undead and other monstrosities like demons or dark spirits into the world.

In singleplayer campaign, player would control a group of undead hunters that have to clear off some area, survive, find out what caused the cataclysm and stop it.

In multiplayer, player would control only one character in given scenario and would have to cooperate with others to complete objectives or survive.

Edit: Forgot to mention this one

Nocturne: Black Heart of Jeramesh

Genre: Survival horror/puzzle solving
Third Person Perspective Shooter

Remember the old game Nocturne made by Terminal Reality, where you played as an agent of secret government organisation fighting monsters and paranormal? It ended with a horrible case of a cliffhanger... But this idea is not to continue story after that point. It's rather like one of chapter's of the game - seemingly unconnected story, just another case. This time, Stranger would be sent to investigate mysterious abductions and paranormal phenomena in the city of Jeramesh.

I'm writing too much of these journals lately, but screw it. I need another advice, but this time it's development related. It comes to the engine specifically.

I'm considering changing the engine my project is running on. The choice is as follows:

id Tech engines (tech 3 or 4 specifically) - I'm a big sucker for id Tech and really love their engines, each of them is great and has it's advantages and disadvantages, but they are pretty outdated by now and not that flexible. I'm moderately experienced with working for Tech 3, 4th iteration being a bit too obscure though.

Source - I'm not too much experienced with Source, but having a good familiarity with GoldSource might help me with that.

Unreal Engine 4 - the big hitter lately, it has everything a modern engine should have, but I don't have any experience with it at all.

CryEngine - like UE 4, no experience with it.

Berserk option - develop a Half-Life mod, then go standalone with Xash/Solokiller's engine once it's done.

Since what I want to achieve is passable/decent graphics with great gameplay, keeping up a good and relatively efficient development and speed, and cross-compatibility, which engine should I choose?

Coded a forestry specific programme, mainly because back in September I specified that I'll make something like this in my scholarship application. It works well for my crude coding, but still looks and does shit. At least it does just what it was supposed to do...

Here's a link for anyone willing to try it (warning: it's a win32 console application in polish language): ForestR

And here's the clean, readable and simple, yet crude code:

#include <cstdio>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{

int MCh = 0;
int MsCh = 0;
float Pow = 0;
string Krain;
string RDLP;
string TSL;
string GTD;
string Rb;
ofstream out("Projekt.txt");
do
{
	cout << "ForestR - Program do projektowania sztucznego odnowienia lasu." << endl;
	cout << "[1] Rozpocznij projekt" << endl;
	cout << "[2] Wyjscie" << endl;
	cin >> MCh;

	switch (MCh)
	{
	case 1:
		cout << "Podaj kraine przyrodniczo-lesna" << endl;
		cin >> Krain;
		cout << "Podaj RDLP:" << endl;
		cin >> RDLP;
		cout << "Podaj TSL:" << endl;
		cin >> TSL;
		cout << "Podaj GTD:" << endl;
		cin >> GTD;
		cout << "Podaj powierzchnie:" << endl;
		cin >> Pow;
		cout << "Podaj rebnie:" << endl;
		cin >> Rb;

		cout << "Kraina przyrodniczo lesna:" << Krain << endl;
		cout << "RDLP:" << RDLP << endl;
		cout << "TSL:" << TSL << endl;
		cout << "GTD:" << GTD << endl;
		cout << "Powierzchnia dzialki:" << Pow << endl;
		cout << "Rebnia:" << Rb << endl;
		cout << "Zapisywanie..." << endl;
		break;
	default:
		break;
	}

} while (MCh != 2);

out << Krain;
out << RDLP;
out << TSL;
out << GTD;
out << Pow;
out << Rb;
out.close();

return 0;

}

That cstdio is most probably useless here, but I don't care.

I need some advice on studying abroad.

I have a TOEFL Junior certificate with rank Superior (my score was 850/900) and now I'm considering taking a TOEFL iBT test that might well increase my chance of moving out of Poland and study abroad. I'm considering countries of western europe, since I rather won't afford flying to other continents. Currently I'm waiting for my Matura exam results, but might take the test in the meanwhile.

Can anyone give me some advice on studying abroad? What are good universities out there, how expensive it is, any job perspectives?

So I end technical tomorrow. Not a big deal, but looking back, a lot has changed over the course of last four years... for both good and bad. What next? College I guess, if I'll pass matura exam (many people fail on maths, it's quite difficult exam). If not, then I already have a technician title, as well as several courses I took in the school for free - timber quality and dimensions sorting, forklift operator, tractor drivers license (yet to take exam); now I'm doing a drone pilot and farming chemistry is about to come. I can always work abroad, like 3 of my 5 siblings...