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TGEA Batching Doc + randomness

Name:	Brian Richardson
Date Posted:	Aug 18, 2007
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Blog post

So, a whole lot has changed for me in the past two years or so. I've moved to Portland, OR and bought a house. I've gotten engaged to my girlfriend of over 8 years. I've shipped a few pieces of software. The latest change is that I've joined the engine team here at GarageGames! It's definitely been a childhood dream of mine to work on games and game technology for a living. I'm getting chills when old songs (mostly old Front 242) are playing and I'm hacking on our next engine release. Reminds me of staying up too late as a kid trying to make .s3m music players in protected mode assembly. Also, reading Gamasutra and GG is work, not something I have to hide when I'm at work! ;) Everyone at GG has been really cool and it's a great place to be.

I've written a small article on TDN about the batching system used in TGEA. If you want to add a new object to TGEA, or add custom shaders you must know how this works and I think the article is a good overview to get you started.

Also, if you are doing any graphics programming with DirectX and are not using PIX you are going into a knife fight with a pointy stick. PIX has been a great tool for debugging silly graphic artifacts. It's told me twice that some textures were not getting set. It's also really good at showing you how your scene is being drawn. It's so good in fact, that for my required screenshot in a .plan, I'm going to post of screenshot of a scene in PIX!

As I keep on learning and creating new things, I'll try to write more articles explaining pieces of the engine and other fun stuff one can do.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	02/06/08 - A PIX debugging session 08/18/07 - TGEA Batching Doc + randomness 01/13/06 - Torque is a good playground! 10/26/05 - Plan for Brian Richardson (bzztbomb) 09/24/05 - Plan for Brian Richardson (bzztbomb) 07/18/05 - Plan for Brian Richardson (bzztbomb) 03/02/05 - Plan for Brian Richardson (bzztbomb) 12/14/04 - Plan for Brian Richardson (bzztbomb)

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Christian S (Aug 19, 2007 at 00:06 GMT)

"I've joined the engine team here at GarageGames!"

Gratz man!
Nice to hear that part of GG is further manned. Good luck with the dream, and keep 'em posts coming

Brian Ramage (Aug 19, 2007 at 01:13 GMT)

Front 242 kicks ass. Saw them live once, great show.

asmaloney (Andy) (Aug 19, 2007 at 01:37 GMT)

Brian Richardson kicks ass. Saw him live at the office a couple of times, great guy.

Tom Spilman (Aug 19, 2007 at 02:27 GMT)

Pix rules... i can't work without it anymore.

Great to finally see something documented on the RenderInstance system too. ;)

Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (Aug 19, 2007 at 02:42 GMT)

Congrats on the job!

Ray Noolness Gebhardt (Aug 19, 2007 at 03:53 GMT)

I want to go into a gun fight with a knife, like the Punisher did in his movie.

Ray Noolness Gebhardt (Aug 19, 2007 at 04:02 GMT)

And great news on the job with GG. I assume you are working with TGEA which is awesome. As you know its an awesome engine, but it needs a bit of loving. While you are in there can you make sure that the multi-pass custom shaders work 100%? I know there was some weird issue with the shaders messing up after 2 or so passes (I found the issue while porting a hair shader to TGEA).

Well anyways that's really kick ass. I always get excited when I hear about someone working on stuff that involves TGEA. I am sort of a shader nut to say the least. At the moment I am saving up for a new notebook so I can play around with DirectX 10. That is one hot API, and I know I will sound like a fan boy right now, but if TGEA supported DirectX 10 it would drop some jaws.

Timothy Aste (Aug 19, 2007 at 05:05 GMT)

Awesome to have you aboard Brian, been a huge help! And Front 242 does in fact kick ass.

Alienforce (Aug 19, 2007 at 08:50 GMT)

Front 242 is one of the best choices for background music when developing.
and congrats to the job!

Vashner (Aug 20, 2007 at 13:46 GMT)

Congrats and thanks.

Mark Dynna (Aug 20, 2007 at 15:00 GMT)

Congrats on the job Brian, here's hoping you continue to post more informative TDN articles. I'm also glad to here that TGEA is getting more help.

Brian Ramage (Aug 21, 2007 at 00:41 GMT)

Brian Richardson kicks ass like Front 242 on TGEA!

I've told you in person a couple times already Brian, but congrats on the new job, I hope you enjoy working at GG as much as I have.

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