Don't Worry, I'm Still Here

Sorry about missing last week.
I'm busy as hell working at the final (though it will probably change still at this stage) game startup sequence. I've got things working nicely now and will have a more detailed update soon. The load sequence is somewhat interesting and I think worthy of a couple paragraphs on this humble blog... later.

I'm also busy with revamping, and hopefully near-finalizing, the network protocol for the game. I'm giving particular attention to the sequence of events and data transfers that occurs when a player first joins the game.

If you remember in a previous entry I mentioned how this was the most time-consuming part of an earlier sprint. Given some further (and much briefer thought) I've created a much improved process and am throwing away pretty much all of my old network code in favour of a new solution which should support all of the events that may occur in the final game. All of this I'll write about, in more detail, tomorrow.

Off topic for a second...
I was visiting my parents earlier today for some delicious chicken and potatoes. I also got to see a bit of my brother's new score in gaming. He's picked up a copy of X3: Terran Conflict. This was a game that I've been moderately interested in acquiring myself. Unfortunately I only got to see a bit of a tutorial mission which was mildly, but irritatingly, broken. My brother was piloting an unarmed freight ship but the instructor, inexplicably, was telling him to blow up debris containers despite being unarmed. Needless to say he had to abort the tutorial at this point... going without any remaining information that could have been provided.

I hung around for a few more minutes. What I saw implied a large, freeform game universe. I'm strongly reminded of EVE Online, Freelancer and/or (what I've heard of) Privateer. Sadly, I didn't get to see much more since my brother seemed more interested in reading about bread factories than exploring the world.

However, based on what I've seen I'll definately look to pick up a copy for myself some time. The best part is I don't have to worry about Starforce, SecurROM (sp?) or any other bullshit DRM. I can either get it through Steam or pick up a DRM-free box somewhere. Even if the game turns out to be less cool than I'm thinking it will I'll still be more than happy to support a developer who's willing to not include pseudo-malware in their products.