Windows Server 2003 I started a new fast track class at Palomar today for Windows Server 2003 which looks like it'll be a really interesting class. I also get a demo copy of Windows Server 2003 with the book so I'll be installing that on one of my spare hardrives in my computer soon. I just installed Fedora Linux on Sunday but since I'm not real experienced with using it, I wasn't too impressed once I started actually using it. I think if I was hosting some things off of the OS it might be better but it just didn't live up to what I thought it would be capable of.

The Server 2003 class should be very educational and at the end I can take the MCSE test for certification for the Windows Server 2003 platform which would be nice to have even though I plan on going for the programming route. What will be nice is being able to setup a web server here in my house that can support .Net 2.0 development and databases so that I can really start working with ASP.Net 2.0 applications. The ones I've been building lately have had to be databaseless or else I'd have to start finding someone to host the databases separately.  ¶ 5:11 PM 0 Comments

  Quote "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." -- T.E. Lawrence

"That is the characteristic of great scientists: They have great courage." --R. Hamming

"Science progress advances in units of courage, not intelligence." -- P.A.M Dirac  ¶ 12:04 AM 0 Comments

  My new venture So lately I've been looking at a lot of different blog sites and what other bloggers do and what I generally see is that the blog sites mainly just offer the same things. I guess blogging is really about writing a lot of stuff for a very few people to view and its always text. How often to do you see a really good picture blog? How often do you see a podcast in a blog? Podcasts are actually quite interesting if done well. But what about even video? Then I started thinking about what kind of video experience would people enjoy and how could I use the new iPod video which I think is going to really take off during this next year. And then I realized that games are interesting to watch. So I've started a new blog/game review site at Game-Overdrive.com where I review recent games that have been released.

We're also looking at different ways that we can distribute this blog. We have made it now into a podcast so that you can go into iTunes and subscribe to the podcast, we have an RSS 2.0 feed that you can subscribe to on the page as well as an atom.xml feed. I'm also working on getting a couple other guys to help submit new reviews and content to the site that are video related. My next thought is to start making the content for the page compatible with the PSP but I dont know if thats even worth it since I think the PSP isn't going very far. Anyways, let me know what you think of the new reviews. We have them in Quicktime 7 format and Windows media player format.

  ¶ 12:02 AM 0 Comments

  Okay, here are a few pictures. This first one is the underground part in my escape level. I hope you all were able to view the video that I posted in my last blog.

In case you didn't know, I got a goat today. We named it Trixie and its really nice. Goats are like dogs except they're useful for something. This goat eats constantly. Eats weeds, weeds, dry brush.. everything. Hopefully this means that there wont be very many weeds in the back yard soon which would be nice.

We also moved the ducks to the backyard now. Thats Jeremy in the background. He lives in the studio appartment below us.



Goats love climbing on things.
  ¶ 10:38 PM 2 Comments

  Gameplay video blog + Podcast Here is a new video of the gameplay of the two levels I'm showing here. Still messing with textures. It seems like it's a never ending process. Some day I'll get some good looking textures completed but for now, I hope you enjoy these gameplay videos. Also, I'm hosting this as a video podcast for all of you who have iTunes and want to subscribe or are thinking of getting an iPod with video. I'll try and get a link up here soon that goes directly into iTunes so that you can subscribe.



  ¶ 10:04 AM 0 Comments

 
So Apple has released their new Apple iPod Video and this is actually something I'm pretty excited about. I generally don't care about their iPod line of products that much since it really is just an over-glorified MP3 player. I have never found the need to be able to store my whole hard drive on a device in my pocket and I'd never be able to fill it with that many songs. I barely have 2 gigs of songs on my PC as it is now. Actually, what I do have a lot of on my PC is video. I have a massive amount of video on my PC and if I could take all the video with me, I think that would be very cool.

So, Apple has come out with the iPod with video but they currently offer two shows on iTunes at the moment which is Lost and Desperate Housewives. My mom loves Desperate Housewives and I really like Lost but I dont know that I would spend $2 on an episode unless I missed that weeks show since the story line has so much depth to it each week.

For now I'm not going to get one. I might still buy TV episodes periodically just for viewing on my computer such as Lost or maybe even Smallville if they offer that at some point but for now, I'm still going to be iPod-less.  ¶ 7:30 PM 0 Comments

  So I've been working on one of my maps. I took some more recent screenshots of my progress. This first picture is actually a background I implemented into the HL2 engine for a mod.

This picture is just after one of the combine police officers in my level kicks open the door when suddenly he is shot in the back by one of your friends in the level. This is at the very start of the level.

Then you look out the window and into a city street where there are combine soldiers and gun vehicles driving up to the building. I'm trying to go for a sense of despiration in the scene.

Another shot looking out the window.



The friendly at the door. I use a lot of AI scripting in the level. My textures need a lot of work. I haven't really been focusing so much on textures yet though.

You can see the dev texture on the left. This is a hallway at the bottom of the stairs. The combines are coming in now.

This I wanted to see what my level looked like unoptimized since I'm just doing all of my builds without VIS enabled. Normally it wouldn't render all the other BSP buildings that are out of my current view but it is since the VIS didn't render. I'll try that later.



I kinda think this is interesting how it draws all of the textures when you shoot at someone in the game. You can do this by going into the console and typing in "Mat_wireframe 1" and set it as 0 to turn it off.

The explosion of the vehicles outside. Well, thats all for these pictures. I'll be posting more at a later time. Let me know what you all think.
  ¶ 12:40 AM 0 Comments

  Here are some screenshots of different maps that I've been working on during the last year or so with the HL2 SDK. One of the maps was for a MOD that never made it to completion but I think that the map I made for it which is the outdoors map was still fairly good looking. I was fairly fresh with the HL2 SDK at that point.

This picture is of a map that is currently still in progress. A lot of this is really learning how to do all the scripting for the AI. I've become fairly skilled with the AI scripting now so that I've been able to make a fairly interesting battle occur.





This is when I was testing using AI and the limits of what my computer could handle. I think the only limitation was my GPU actually drawing the 50+ characters I had on screen at once.

This was the loading screen for the mod Psycho Hill that I was working on. I created the background map for the project and loaded it into HL2 as a background map. Later I was going to change the Half-life 2 graphic to Phsyco Hill.

This was for the Psycho Hill mod team.

Another shot. The truck is an ingame asset of HL2.



A dirt road along a lake.

This is of a small pond with some HL2 game assets.
  ¶ 10:51 PM 0 Comments

  My Goals for this blog Welcome everyone! I just started this blog and I hope you return to view my future update. I started this new blog as an outlet for my art and programming projects. I plan to post updates on the differnt projects I am currently developing along with any questions I may have along the way.

My art takes the form of designing levels for computer games which I enjoy immensely. I currently have a couple of levels that I am working on with one intended for completion for a contest which is a multiplayer HL2 map. I wont be posting any screenshots of this map but another map which is a single player HL2 map I will be posting some screenshots of as I develop it.

My programming projects are currently all in .NET using C#. As I create little applications I'll post them up here for your input.  ¶ 10:05 PM 1 Comments