Journals

I'm getting really frustrated in my uni program. We've got teams of 5-6 people, and we have to make a game prototype in a semester then finish the game in the next. We have to do this from scratch. On top of a standard university course load.
As happened last year, I'm getting shafted by our limited scope. I'm expected to do my job as a level designer with, not only no neat toys, but no gameplay tools whatsoever. I have a school-provided copy of Maya (Which I am not fond of, though god help me I'm starting to be able to manage with it) and notepad with which to organize the map props and the gameplay entities. Nobody else is writing tools to use with the engine, because we have no time to do so with and it's not a priority for anybody else. I'm not writing a toolset because I'm not an engineer and I don't have the skill or knowledge needed to even get started with it. Also we don't have any finalized formats so I can't even write a parser to read or write map files. I have to hardcode everything character by character, and I don't even have a full format.

If you want a level designer to do neat things, you need to give them toys to work with. Spending all my time buried in a text editor with barebones gameplay code will not lead to a stellar product by any standards.

So you know what? I am going to, right now, with all my authority of a nobody, declare Laurie Cheers the programming patron saint of level designers. Because he took a look at us, and he said "You know what? These guys could use some new features to play with." AND THEN HE MADE IT HAPPEN. Spirit of Half-Life is still used by nearly every Half-Life mod in development now, because it was that damn good, and it gave us that much flexibility and ease with which to do our jobs.

Would that we had more people like him. My headache would disappear.
Bless you, Mr. Cheers. You knew what we needed, and you provided.

B!

Bought Doom I and II from the Doom Complete pack from steam.
Which I am now proceeding to not play through steam, as the built-in DosBox emulation has really bad video colour and lag issues. (I'm running the WADs through the gzdoom interpreter instead)

Sometimes you just want a nice corridor-erm...maze shooter.

I decided to give learning Source Filmmaker another shot.

I uh, I made a thing.

Quick question: What microphones do you guys use for voice and/or general recording? What would you recommend that I can probably get relatively cheap (Under $250) and at retail?

Heh. Heheheh.
Not sure if this was intentional or not.EDIT:
Heh. Heheheh.

10011

EDIT 06/11/2013
I like how this has exactly 19 comments.

Quick vote; Who thinks I should change my username? I've got one in mind, but I'm unsure if I want to go ahead and do it.
JeffMOD is what I'm known as far and wide across the Valve/Modding community, but, as I'm sure you've noticed, it's always been kinda...lame.
Since I'm about to start a new chapter in my life, so to speak, I'm wondering if it's time for a change.

Watched all 13 episodes of Elfen Lied today. I have to say, despite what Soup Miner thought of it back in '09, I thought it was a pretty good series. Very, very graphic at times, and a lot of characters were, well, complete and total scumbags, but I very much enjoyed the issues of morality and humanity/"what is a person". (Which I always do)

Also, Soup, I know this is 5 years late, but a couple things;
"Also "they are born to kill humans" is a fucking lame explanation for superhumans that go on insane killing sprees."
IMO, that's simply an excuse used by the scientists to justify what they're doing. [Ironic, considering what's happening at the top.] Personally, I think the truth is simply what you suggested would be a better explanation; Psychological issues. If you're mistreated for your entire life for being a bit different, you gonna snap and kill someone. Everyone.
"Dead should mean dead"
Keep in mind you never actually see the outcome of that fight, though. She appears to gets the crap beaten shot out of her, but it's possible she won out or escaped in the end.

Anyway, pretty good anime, if one that had to be cut down a lot from the manga (so I've heard) to fit into the series. If you like anime or philosophical discussions, (or both) I'd recommend it, assuming you're 18 or older; There is quite a lot of nudity, graphic violence, language, and mature subject matter.

Went to the movies last night with a couple of friends who went off to uni this year. We saw Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby.

Iron Man 3 was great
Gatsby was decent, much better than the '60s version we had to watch in class.

But the reason I'm writing this journal, is because during the trailers for Gatsby, one for World War Z came on.

You know where I'm going with this.

I saw 3.5 seconds of Archie and it was awesome.

We trudge through our lives, day by day, step by step. We eat, we breathe, we sleep, we survive.
In short, we exist. But it's not enough to merely exist. Exisitence for existence's sake is failure. To truly be sucessful, we have to live.
And to live, we have to think, feel, fall in love, and create.
It's not always easy to live. We have our share of bumps and bruises along the way. We'll think things that just aren't true, feel emotions that we'd rather not. Perhaps we develop feelings for the wrong person, or find that something we've created has a fatal flaw. Maybe we simply fall flat on our faces and break something. Human bodies are fragile like that.
But we can't let those brusies stop us. If we become bitter over them, then we'll have lost sight of what truly matters. In order to keep living, we have to keep striving for our goals. Because it's our goals that make us human.
So don't despair. It's too early to give up. Pick yourself up off the floor, dust yourself off, and get back on your road. Because there's still much to learn. There are a million things left to feel. You will find your true love. And before you close your eyes one last time, you'll make something wonderful.

Because even though you died, you lived first.

Happy April Fools!
Here's the official thingy/

Original Post:
Exciting news on the Hazard Course development front! We are pleased to announce Hazard Course: Infinity, and the position of writer being finally filled!

Sadly, there is also some...less good news, but on the bright side, I may be actually getting a payday from this.

So today I made my first major performance in front of a large group of people.

As a final summative project in Drama, we had to create and perform a one-act play clocking in at around 50 minutes. So we got the entire class on board for one massive production. Today we performed it in front of a large portion of the school as part of the arts festival. We got good laughs, (it was a dark comedy) and surprisingly, I got good laughs. People were coming up to me for the rest of the day and telling me I had a good performance, that I was great, that I was the best person up there (that last one, IMO, is BS, but I appreciate the gesture)

So yeah. Timid old me was up on stage playing an old retired mob boss and talking about how to get laid. One of my friends described me as being the most confident she's ever seen me, and I just got this message from our director:
"Jeff, I cannot express how impressed I am by your performance today. To be honest, I was a little nervous about how you would do. Nothing personal, but you've never performed something of this magnitude before, but I'm glad to say that I was proven wrong. I'm so proud of how you made Old Man Jannety into your own character. You were truly a highlight of the play, and I'm proud to call you a colleague and a friend. 10/10 would perform again."

You could say I feel proud of myself right about now.

'Twas the night before Christmas
at least over here
So happy holidays
I wish you good cheer.

Today I saw an interesting movie trailer at the movies today. Now, I can't remember what the movie was called, but the premise was that humanity fought giant extra-dimensional aliens from a portal on the ocean floor using giant mech-suits. These suits had an onboard computer; GLaDOS.
By which I mean it was obviously voiced by Ellen McLain. Using the same tone. And the same post-process effects. I was watching it with friends, and I turned to the one out of the group assembled today who had played Portal. Her reaction?
"Is that GLaDOS?"

Oh, also The Hobbit pt 1 was entertaining and the people freaking out about it running at 45FPS are full of it.