First day at Criterion

So today was my first day at Criterion!

All I can say is that the company is wicked! I am really proud to had the oppertunity to join them and I will be giving my best.

Well I know you are all dying to hear everything about the company and the game I will be working on, but unfortunetly as you guys know the Games Industry is very secretive and you have to sign almost a dozen NDAs etc. Hell the games industry is almost like the CIA or MI5! So your luck is out. All I can say is that Criterion know what they are doing.

PS. I was quite impressed when I heard that my lead used to be a programmer at Bullfrog and he has worked on some of my most favourable games, like Hi-Octane, Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, Theme Park. He said I made his day since he met some one that actually loved playing Hi-Octane.

OpenGL

Aaaah I have forgotten what a joy it can be to use OpenGL as a rendering API.

Yes, the people that know me, you read that correctly. When I was getting into 3D I was using OpenGL, then I moved over to Direct3D and have only been using that since. However there where always certain points in time when I got a craving to just do something again in OpenGL. Alas that day never came until recently.

I must admit the main reason I switched over to Direct3D was that back in "those" days, Direct3D was supperior to OpenGL. It had a very nice helper library (D3DX), in general Direct3D at that time was just more up to speed with the latest technology. For the last couple of years however OpenGL is just as good as Direct3D, and in the end both of them are just an API to access what the GPU can offer (well you know what I mean).

About 3 weeks ago I got a real craving for doing a personal project or two. Since it has been about 2 years (the 2 years I have been in the games industy thus far) since I last did any personal 3D programming (engine, game, etc). I mainly got the craving for learning shaders again, since it has been "years" since I last touched them and what the heck I had the free time on my hands since I was waiting to get my leave to remain in England before I can start at Criterion.

My only real problem was to decide on which API to use this time, Direct3D or OpenGL. In the end I decided to not use Direct3D until version 10 comes out with Vista and I decide to switch over to Vista. So because I don't want to play around again with D3D 9 and since MS have changed quite a bit of the stuff, I decided to go with an old time favourite...OpenGL. Well ok that is not just the only reason, the other reason aswell is that since I will be doing Maya tools at Criterion and Maya uses OpenGL, I figured I can't go wrong.

So I changed my libraries (well just me graphics library) a bit and decided to not write an engine this time (well just another one that gets made half way and then get paused and eventually canned). Instead this time I made my goals for myself very clear. No engine, no game just a couple of demos for learning purposes. For example, I have never implemented parallax mapping, so viola one of my demos or samples would be to implement parallax mapping. I am currently just writing a small framework that I will be using to write my demos or samples. At this stage my framework uses my code base (a couple of general libraries that can be used for any general 3d programming). When my framework and code base is at a decent stage then I will release the source code for anyone to use as they please.

EA here we come!

Yipee for Skippy! I finally got my limited leave to remain granted by Home Office and my visa is now valid until 2011!

I will be starting to work at Criterion on Monday, can't wait!!!

Gothic 3

Yeeha! Gothic 3 was released today and I made sure I buy myself a copy.

Gothic is one of those briliant games that didn't have excellent advertisement, well maybe only in SA. I never even knew the game existed until I once saw Gothic 2 at a friend's house. Without even knowing that it was an RPG a borrowed it from him. Instantly after installing I was hooked to the game. In my own words it is one of the best RPG's I have played.

So based on that experience I was thrilled to see that Gothic 3 was going to be released today and vowed to buy it as soon as it hits the stores.

The only anoyance so far is that I have installed it and it already requires you to download a 60MB patch, that even before I could get a glimpse of the game. Well I guess it has to be down to the fact that the gold master was scraped and that the game wouldn't have even seen release today. But I guess they decided to ship the scraped version and just require you to download the patch. Luckilly I am now in the UK and actually have a thing called broadband internet, so it isn't as bad as the time I had to update and register Half Life 2 over a 56k modem back in SA...it took me 3 hours before I could play the game after installation.

Anyhows I am off to go and play it now ...

Might start next week

Things seem to be progressing with my application for Leave to Remain. Finally after about 8 weeks of waiting they finally have my details on their system (Home Office) and my case worker phoned today asking some information.

Not only that but my Work Permit with EA has been granted !

So hopefully I will be able to start working at Criterion within the next week.

Scotland!

Me and Gerry went up north to her home land Scotland for the weekend!

The main reasons for our visit was that it was her dad's birthday and that she had to see a dentist (in this case her Sister). We stayed with her sister in Glasgow.

On Saturday her father treated the whole family for lunch at a lodge in Loch Lomond. Now for those who don't know, the scotish calls lakes lochs and there is probably a thousand or more of them all over Scotland.

Scotland is very beautifull! The landscape is very green (due to rain) and there are hills and mountains everywhere.

Saturday was also a very big football match for Scotland and they were playing against France which came 2nd in the World Cup 2006. Their was guys wearing Kilts all over the place.

I must admit I like Scotland a lot and wouldn't mind retiring one day next to a loch.