Journals

Best moments I've recorded in my school:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0_kjaDK5fs

The first 30 seconds or so are simply silent because I planned to add some music there, but meh. xd
This is one of the bigger reasons why I love school. I tried to listen and put subtitles and translate this stuff, but sometimes, it was so muffled and non-comprehensive that I couldn't understand what we were saying.

In the video, you can see characters like Roki (yeah, that guy who will be in Quest For Burek; the guy who got trapped under the chairs and played the guitar) and Enis (the "Bosnian gopnik").

I'm very curious about what you have to say about this little compilation by me.
(I had also planned to include the part where one classmate punches the Qur'an a couple of times and kicks it, sheesh, but that wouldn't be received well xD)

Edit #1: 24 June 2017; Reason: Changed the first sentence, hoping the journal would get some attention.

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and really love their engines, each of them is great and has it's advantages and disadvantages, but they are pretty outdated by now and not that flexible.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?

Opened my 3rd year exam results; turns out I haven't achieved enough to continue on with my course. I can still get an ordinary degree by passing the resits in august.

Only hope now is that I can partially transfer to informatics (comp sci) and attempt to get a honours degree with them given half of my computational physics course so far has been... comp sci.

Not great news to hear. Family is supportive though.

I was very curious about this, so I decided to dig into my old pictures.
It's a part of my personal history. I've talked about it a lot of times. But I wasn't really sure if that's how it really happened.

Let's see what happened to my old PC (R.I.P., my old friend), and how on Earth did my brother "steal" the laptop from me?22nd of July, 2014.
A few days after my old PC's death.

A month before that, my parents bought me a laptop. I wanted to build a "gaming rig" (hehehehe, there was an AMD Radeon HD 6450 on that part list, once), but they bought me a laptop instead. It's actually a good decision, considering what I'll probably get this summer.

And as you can see, that PC in the picture is the dead corpse of my old PC.
It had 2GB of DDR2 RAM, an Ati Radeon HD 4650 (which served me well, by the way), and a dual-core Pentium processor @ 2.4GHz.

It also had a Hitachi 300GB HDD:For some reason, there's duct tape lying on the Ati graphics card:Weird.

Its life came to an end during the time I was staying at my other grandparents'. Basically, I brought my recently-bought laptop and my brother used the PC I left him at home.
It was inevitable. He was playing Roblox one night and there was a thunderstorm outside. That's at least my assumption. He then continued playing and then there was a strike, and the components got fried.

Sad, isn't it?
When I returned, I was shocked and angry at my brother.

We took the computer to a local PC fixer in Stolac (my nearby town), and we traded. He got whatever was left of the PC (actually, only the graphics card got fried), and we got this 2007 Fujitsu Computers Siemens Lifebook S Series S7120. Fujitsu S7120 for short. That's the one I use now.

So, my brother used that one, probably as a punishment for not taking any care about my PC, and I still used the newer laptop.(taken in 2015)
Oh, what a cutie. He played DooM when he was 5. :]

This is us playing Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas in my room:21st of September, 2014.
Oh, the good, old days when he listened to me and wasn't so stubborn. :]
Now I realised that he was so young back then...

But in those pictures, he's using the older laptop! How come he's now using the newer one!?

Well... it all came down to this:9th of July 2015.

As you can see, I'm in a different house in that picture. Precisely, at my grandparents (and that monitor in the background belongs to a PC which has an AMD Athlon processor, and a low-end, integrated GPU).

What does that mean, then? You can clearly see that I had the older laptop. My brother was using the newer laptop. During that time, he must've gotten attached to its performance, so he noticed the difference between the 2 laptops.

What a bad move, seriously. I don't know why it happened. I really don't know. Maybe my parents told me to leave the laptop to my brother, who knows. xd

And if you're wondering, no, this one happened after my PC had died. My PC died in 2014, while this one happened in 2015. Take a look at those dates I wrote up there...

There. That's why I'm now forced to use this trashy laptop:But I'll build a new PC this summer! HA-HA! But if I do the same mistakes as I had done them in 2015, then I'm screwed.

Also, R.I.P. my previous journal. It had reached a staggering amount of 181 comments and it shall be memorised as one of those journals which deserve to rest eternally, in the TWHL hall of fame. Rest in pepperoni.

Shameless plug time!

Hi folks. I used to do stuff on this site. Now I don't!

Just a quick one: if you're at all interested in tabletop gaming, please take a look at my mate's Kickstarter campaign for EPiCS - a laser-cut, interlocking city system. I've been assisting with the campaign for a while now (I produced the video) and can certainly vouch for the quality of these things: they're utterly amazing to see in person.

Hi,
The moment is came again where I need to play with the Hammer.
I downloaded all the assessment and set Valve Hammer Options as usual with right pathes to the building tools, textures and game exec (Half Life/hl.exe)I run one of the tutorials about doors type (doors) but once in the game nothing happen.
The console says map change failed: 'doors' not found on server.
I checked the valve/maps folder but there's only doors.map and no .bsp.
Do you know a way to solve this issue?
I use Steam HalfLife, Hammer is under Windows 10
Help me !

I think I've been hearing a click of death from my laptop's drive ._.

If I buy a new drive, how difficult is it to duplicate this one's exact contents into the new one? It would be bad for my schedule to have to reserve a whole weekend installing Windows and getting everything back to where it was.

What might make a solid, durable choice for a new drive?

Could someone provide any advice?

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?

Life update.

May 5th 2017: I quit my job at a chemical plant because I was not happy. I decide to move to Florida because: 1) I don't like cold weather, 2) why not.

May 12th 2017: I fly to Florida to an interview with a company my friend works for. Not exactly a position I really wanted but it was a job and I was unemployed.

May 13th 2017: Friend gives me a business card for a tech recruiter down in Florida.

May 14th 2017: I email recruiter and get a phone call back for an impromptu phone interview.

May 17th 2017: Fly back to boring rainy Connecticut.

May 24th 2017: Skype interview with recruiter. Goes well. Presents opportunity for neat job, thinks it'll be a good fit.

May 25th 2017: Recruiter has lunch with managers from job opportunity. They seem excited. He's excited, I'm excited.

May 30th 2017: Phone interview with new company. Went well. I laughed, they laughed, we talked about TWHL and my misc game development and programming experience. (neat)

June 4rd 2017: Begin move from CT to FL

June 5th 2017: Complete (mostly) move from CT to FL

June 7th 2017: Face to face interview with same company I had phone. It went well. I laughed, they laughed, we went more into my VG experience for some reason. 5 hours later they offer me the job, I accept. I have a job.

So I was unhappy. Made a handful of significant changes and I'm on my way to being happy.

The job: Designing and programming amusement park rides.

Real. Life. Videogames.

Oh my God

I'm sure it's of niche interest, but I'mma take a moment or two to reflect upon something that has troubled me lately.

As I've mentioned in the past, I am transgender. Though I have been sure of this for some time now, for a variety of reasons, I have yet to make any moves towards making any physical or social changes. Regardless, there is a dichotomy between how I see myself and how others perceive me.

I am, at present, largely unable to affect those perceptions. In real life, it's much more convenient to simply suppress my discomfort and present myself as male, saving myself from any potential uncomfortable questions, harassment or abuse (I'm sure in this town, I would have no trouble finding it). Those closest to me know my feelings and respect them, despite the fact that there has been negligible difference from their perspective (which can be a different kind of difficult, in a way).

As far as TWHL goes, I'm perfectly comfortable presenting the way I feel, because y'all are (generally) great people, and I know that the people I care about here are the kind of folk who won't hold it against me. This place, to me, is not just a place where awesome people hang out and do awesome things, but is also a sanctuary where I can be myself; where I don't have to question myself. That's a very powerful feeling at this stage in my life, and I couldn't be more grateful to have it.

The crux of this journal is where dichotomy creeps back into it. Being the internet, my persona here is simply a distillation of my personality. Plain text conveying my thoughts, carrying no perceptions of who I am physically. So it can be very, very hard to introduce any of the rest of me. There's a reason why I'm not in the Teamspeak of these videos, as much as I very much wanted to be. To present my voice is to challenge who I am here (and, indeed, who I feel I am). As a result, I am cripplingly self-conscious about my voice, even more than I am about... well, the rest of me.

The past handful of days, I've been challenging myself by joining the SnC fellows for videogames. Part and parcel of that is joining the Teamspeak. As much as I love joining in with them, it takes some significant psychological effort every time I have to hit that push-to-talk button. I guess I just want to shout out Archie and Urby in particular, for being just so damn accepting and welcoming. Being able to join you guys means more to me than you might think.

I'm about to start working on a new map.
I was wondering: do you follow a particular methodology when creating the map? Like: layout first, then texture, then lighting, or a bit of everything with iterative improvements?
I personally used to go with the room-by-room approach (completely finishing a room, then going to the next), which I now think is a terrible idea.

I suspect my computer is starting to show its age, but I don't know exactly which part(s) is lagging behind. Anyone with experience in this sort of thing able to guide me towards what I should be looking to replace/improve next? (I'll give what information I have, may not be complete.)

ASUS P8Z68-M PRO (~5 years old)
Intel QuadCore (?) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz (~5 years old)
8 GB RAM (DDR3?) (~5 years old)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (<1 year old)
2TB HDD (<1 year old)
Windows 10 (<1 year old)

An explanation to the recent misunderstandings of my sentence(s):

For Bosnians (and maybe Serbs, Croats etc.), Germany is a sort of a 'promised land' and everyone wants to work there.
That includes me. I'd love to live and work in Germany someday.

We have these stereotypes in my country which say that the most-paid job in BiH is (in pay-checks) equal to a very low-paid job in Germany.

Though, there are reasons for me to avoid going there:And now:I think I also read somewhere that they uncensored Quake, which is nice, ahahaha. Less reasons for me to not go to Germany!

I am the excited owner of a Mazda 3 hatchback, 2006 model.
No seriously, my mouth is stuck in smiling mode.