Plan for John Quigley

Long time, no Plan. I guess I'll start with what I've been up to recently...

First, I worked on the Linux port of Marble Blast, which is available for purchase now from this site. I don't know how it is selling now, although on the opening weekend the sales were "better then expected". Of course, everyone's expectations (including mine) are pretty low :)

Currently I am working on Linux Orbz. It has actually been functional since the end of last year, but for a variety of reasons it won't be released until Orbz 1.2. That should happen in a few weeks. Soon I will begin working on Linux Think Tanks. I already have it up and running, but I haven't done my typical ritual of merging in linux head code, making a build system, making an installer, and hunting for linux specific bugs.

The porting experience has given me some insights into porting torque games, both from a technical and planning standpoint. But I'll save those for another plan update :)

Ok, enough Linux already!! What else is going on? I built a small prototype for a hover-vehicle based racing game. However I've pretty much back-burnered that project because it will require substantial modifications to the terrain engine. But, I learned a lot about the data representation of the terrain, rendering custom objects, and also hooking up the convex-feature based collision detection for said custom rendered objects (a real brain bleeder).

I'm also learning blender. My hope is that I can use it to make "programmer art" for future games. Yes, it has an odd user interface, but beneath that, I think it is a very powerful tool. I am already getting accustomed to and even liking the interface. Fascination for the abomination maybe.

Finally, I decided that I wanted more time to work on games. Thus I reduced my employment status at my day job to "majority time" (30 hours). I'm fortunate to work for a company where there is not a lot of stress in my job, and they are also open-minded about unconventional employment status. Still, this is a risky move, especially in this economy. Its not going to get less risky as I get older, though. So, I decided to do it now.

Thats it for this plan update.