A Writer's journey into game development

It is here. After a long wait (for some), we have a brief vision of what Star Wars VII is going to be. Perhaps because my expectation is not the same as years ago, I didnt noticed the time. One day we had the announce, one day I find the trailer is a few days ahead, and probably I will forget about it until next trailer (which we surely will have next year, or even two), and then until release. The trailer has everything that defines the original Star Wars: X-wings, Millenium Falcon and Tie fighters.Which means, in my opinion, that it will more closely connected to it than the New Trilogy, a weird story, totally inconsistent with previous lore. I hope Kasdan and Abrams have done a better work than Lucas did. Check this article in The Verge if you want to see the cast and a short bio.

A few days ago I got my Ello invitation. This new social network is still in beta stage and I thought I would never get it, anyway I was curious about it and the words minimalistic design attracted me. My connection is not so fast, or better to say that it is quite slow, so any web site that doesnt require to download megabytes of Js code and AJAX stuff is a relief. And yes, Ello is minimalistic. So much, that takes some time and tries to figure out how to comment or publish. There is no quick way to express your approval for a post (thanks Facebook, for making us addicts to Like ), except for commenting something stupid like Amazing! or Wow! The interface is clean, light, I would say empty. Havent found anything interesting in Ello yet. Not only the interface is empty, the lack of users can be perceived. All your friends (or your enemies) are in Facebook. In G+, all your Gmail contacts were there, and there was interesting info since the first day. So, as I feel so lonely, I wan...

I always had an issue with Windows as development platform. I have found all kind of weird problems when compiling my projects with Visual C++, weird crashes, and of course, the redist hell. After a very productive weekend, VS 2012 totally fucked my night yesterday. The project compiles and runs under Linux, but Visual C++ yields lots of syntax errors. Can you believe that? Syntax errors! Produced by an Urho3D class, whose header file is already included, a few lines above the offending line. Thats why I have a rule (which I forgot this time): never write more than 20 lines of code without testing in both platforms. But thats not all. Seems that neither Urho3D editor can load the scenes I worked this weekend, there is some textures it cant load. I have only a solution for this: move the development to Windows and migrate much more code than I expected to AngelScript, implementing in C++ a minimal launcher. So, I have to go back to study sessions.

Today I got my first glimpse to my book's cover. A very brief one. Even when the contract states that the author should approve the cover, the book went directly to printing without me even seeing, not the cover, but the whole edition. So, I dont know how it looks or whats inside. As usual, a contract in my country is just a paper required to justify Company A's payment to Subject X in case of audit. The actual content should not be taken seriously. Which means that I dont know how many printed copies there will be (surely no more than 3000), how much I will be paid (not too much, anyway), or when.

Yesterday I spent the night looking at Urho3D scripting system (finishing Wasteland 2 has been like raising a heavy stone that was compressing my free time). During weekend I found a weird build problem that ignores some options, preventing  Lua scripting and samples from being built, so, to avoid potential problems to future users, I will stick to AngelScript, which is a sort of default language for this engine. Seems that I will have to keep the C++ code minimal, and write everything in AngelScript. I had the wrong idea that LuaJIT was faster, but somebody kindly mentioned in the forums that, as LuaJIT is not using FFI, AngelScript is faster. At least, fast enough for my needs. What do I dislike in Urho3D? Well, obviously the lack of editor integration. And the use of OpenGL 2 instead of 3. Yes, it does supports a broad range of devices, which I appreciate, but OpenGL 3 does too, and it is much more advanced. And I think I still have a lot to learn about it, and it has a lot...

Master (or Maestro, in spanish) comes from latin Magister , which means chief,  director or teacher. Magister comes from Magis : more or great. So, magister can be defined as somebody above the rest in knowledge or skills. For example, Magister equitum , cavalry chief in Ancient Rome or Magister militum , military chief. The word minister derives from minister , which means attendant, servant; and this one from minus : less. The minister was the lesser skilled assistant. So, latin explains why any asshole can no be a master, but perhaps can become a minister!

I had this engine in the pending tasks list since a couple of months (couple>4, really), but at some point I was motivated by a project I saw in FreeGamedev forums . Urho3d is a young project, and the first time I took time to look at it, I wasnt too kind with it. The editor was ugly and non intuitive, from my point of view, I didnt spent time looking at the samples, and also experienced troubles when trying to compile it. Cant say that all the problems are gone, but in the last weeks I have learned to appreciate Urho3D, despite the lack of certain features, like terrain edition tools. Or (I really miss this) having the editor integrated into the engine itself, like Unity3D and most ocmmercial engines. Being able to run the game, see how it looks, and go back to edit the scene is something really useful. But something in Urho3D got my attention: it is really easy to learn. Even when I still far from mastering all the engine, I have achieved in a week much more than I had with ...

Some months ago I was contacted by the publisher office to sign my contract. I have been waiting for two long years until at last I got a confirmation that my first novel (actually, my first novel that is worth reading) was on its way to the bookstore shelves. And some months later, I got a mail from the editor in charge of reviewing the book. Indeed,a  long process for a novel not so long. My story as writer goes back to 2001, when I got a new job and decided to start writing in my free time. The first novel started as a Sci-Fi story of a boy that must become a bounty hunter, inspired by Boba Fett. Later it changed to a fantasy novel, and the boy became a monster hunter. I released it on Internet a year or two later, but only got a hundredth downloads, maybe. I abandoned the second part, almost finished, and forgot about writing for while. After such dissapointment, perhaps the wise choice would have been not to write anymore, but I decided to write a short novel as backgroun...