A Writer's journey into game development

Forgot to mention that my book is already available in the stores, but only in Havana. According to Yoss, some members of the literary workshop already bought it and the opinions are good, which I consider an achievement because they are a very demanding public, used to read good fantasy and sci-fi. Also is worth mentioning that they are published and awarded writers and they are not shy if the text deserves critics. I hope to talk more with them in the book fair, next month, and perhaps discuss with the publishers my next novel. And the payment, which seems to be delayed because the publisher has no money.  In the meantime, Im enjoying my new condition of published author.

Some months ago I created a video using OpenShot and it was easy. Well, the task wasnt too complex: just cut and assemble pieces of a few captures. Im now working on the game trailer and seems that OpenShot is not well suited for the job. First I found that the titles were quite limited: I could not place the text in arbitrary screen positions, only at some predefined locations. There is not much I can do with title format, unless I use Inkscape. Cant create 3d titles unless I use Blender. Well, I dont need too fancy titles, I just wish I could have them. Not essential. Then I started to test timing with the soundtrack and found that at some point the video is getting garbled, removed the part, and the new first seconds became garbled again. At some point, OpenShot no longer plays the video preview, just the audio, I have to close and open again. Also the program freezes. Doesnt seems to be lack of memory, I have 4Gb and conky reports that only 1.3Gb are being used. Im thinking...

Thanks to a friend, seems that I will be in Havana Book Fair, next february. Actually, Im going to be in the capital for more time than I expected  (and wanted), I hope I can productively use that time to meet some people with similar interests. Specifically, game developers.

Been quite busy lately... thinking and waiting. Project was halted, pending the solution of a weird behaviour in AngelScript inheritance: the ancestor methods were being called instead of derived class ones. My mistake, of course, I had to declare the ancestor as interface , not class . The derived classes must implement the methods declared in the interface class, like classes derived from abstract classes in C++. So, game state system is almost there. I already managed to go back from game play to main menu.

Seems thatI forgot to post screenshots of latest progress. Currently Im stucked with a few issues, like the game states and attached script instances, that halted development.

Im quite pleased to tell myself that my third novel probably is going to be finished this year. To my surprise, I managed to write a 90% of the core events. And, Im glad to say that I achieved this without stealing too much time from the game project, which also requires writing. What is left is filling the blanks and polishing the plot, then leave the book rest for a month or two and then go back to polishing and adding details, and then another rest period followed by more details. The goal is to have at least 2 more novels; in case the second is accepted, I can have others in the queue to ensure publishing one per year, or two, if the publishers let me. Im also planning to find some foreign agent, but Im not sure what novel is the best for this, the first or the second. The first is already printed, and the overall opinion is that it is a good book, although a bit simple and even short for the standard (3-5 tomes of 400-500 pages). The second is much better (not much longer tha...

I have been checking Torque3D site often, waiting for an update. Well, not so often. But first it was daily. then, every 2-3 days. Then weekly. Lately, I look it sometimes. No news. Not even regular irrelevant news, but quite irrelevant news posted every 2 months or so. Havent looked at the forums. Probably nothing interesting there neither. When I left, there were a few interesting projects, like refactoring the renderer to use proper deferred rendering (not deferred lighting) and add DirectX 11. I isouns good, but the core problem of the engine (hard to underestand, lack of proper documentation), wasnt being addressed. Torque3D has a nice community of people that managed to underestand the engine and it suits their needs. For the rest, the clash with a new complex tool is not so good and many abandon, like I did, when after a month of work you still think that you dont know nothing about the engine. In retrospective, I did well not spending more time with Torque3D. Yes, I spen...