This is finally starting to look like October
Ramblings of General Geekery
Yesterday I busted out the old Canon DSLR and all the muscle memory came back in a few minutes… so fun! And an example of physical buttons and knobs being so much better than touch screens in many cases
Anti-union corporations going “nah you can’t agree on stuff before talking to management” has the same energy as casinos going “nah you can’t use basic math when playing card games”.
Good morning!
This month’s chocolate box has some spice in it! The Mayan one has gone straight to the top of my kid’s best chocolate bars ever! (I’m “meh” on it myself though)
Innerspace is still holding up! The kids were super into it, judging from the screams and laughs and falling off the couch.
By the way, kids, this is how you do proper game dev: an expensive Topre mechanical keyboard, and Vim (yes, that’s me here) That’s how you get featured in videos! I don’t make the rules.
Project Hot Tub: Remembering Some Cool Cancelled EA Game I Worked On
IGN has a very nice article and video about Project Hot Tub, which I worked on a bit as a Frostbite engine developer. I was part of the Frostbite cinematics team but at the time I was mostly working on the camera system (which got used on a couple projects like Anthem and one of the later Plants vs Zombie: Garden Warfare sequels… can’t remember which).
Hot Tub was gearing up to be a really fun game to work on. The kind of AAA-level game with a kid-friendly tone that you typically only find on Nintendo consoles. Remember when the most famous games were supposed to be fun, and not some gritty hyper realistic violence fest? Anyway, I was pretty sad when it got cancelled, especially given the circumstances outlined by IGN. This is the kind of stuff that happens in big corporations. Cheers to old friends who will probably get a bit nostalgic from seeing the game again.
By the way, you can see me and many other engine devs in the many shots IGN took from this Frostbite hiring/marketing video! Good times. I’m famous.
Current writing progress:
“Intramuros” (Delta Green) 6k words
“Tales of the Lizard Wheel” (RuneQuest) 50k words
“The Bloody Banquet” (RuneQuest) 4k words
“Survey on Mount Seton” (Call of Cthulhu) 4k words
People: “Open-space offices are so noisy, it’s so hard to focus and get anything done”
My house: kids running and screaming, dog barking, someone vacuuming the dog’s hair, neighbours mowing the lawn, 3rd eBay TTRPG delivery of the day at the door. “Yeah this is so much better”