Monday Merges

Adjusting The Heavens

A strange sort of day, in perhaps two parts. A speedy first half where I added the ability to adjust bloom and light ray intensity settings via hot-keys and a rather slow second half where I battled with a dreaded 'corrupt heap' issue for countless hours. 

I then had a third part in my increasingly inaccurately termed 'day' when I introduced real-time shadows and shaders to the editor itself, not just the in-game part.  The result was pretty cool, as the shadow allowed a real sense of placement when planting entities down.

Entities do not self shadow at the moment, but that's just a case of adding some lines of code into the entity pixel shader. My fear is performance, but I managed to do a decent 'generalized shadow' for the grass and if the shader begins to slow, I can always revert to that technique.  As we now run the engine on 16 texture stages, slot availability is not the problem but I should be vigilant about asking TOO much of all my shaders.  I am pretty sure though that everyone reading this will insist entities self-shadow, and that the performance concerns get resolved forthwith and without delay ;)

Also the scene is sorted by texture, not by depth, so there is perhaps a huge performance gain to exploit when I switch scene rendering to the new sort mode. Apparently 'overdraw' is still the enemy of a fast graphics engine, and rendering a huge brick wall in front of the camera first is always recommended when you have intense pixel shaders in 'da house.

As you can see from the above snap, more content is pouring in (and more to follow) which should give us more scope for new screenshots and presenting in-game suggested situations.

Next Step

Now that the entity shaders and shadows are working on both sides of the divide (editor and game), my main task for Tuesday is to get saving and loading to work properly to finally be able to store terrain edits. Right now it only stores entity placements.  Rick is also pushing for a 'random tree and bush plotter' in the editor to allow rapid generation of small groves of trees, which is not a bad idea. The palm tree shot you saw before was the result of a similar random algorithm which varied position, rotation, scale and even incline.  I am sure I can rustle up some spray gun which can fire of entities at the terrain without bunching them up and allowing for this natural scatter effect. You may not believe it, but in the palm tree shot from a few days ago, all the trees where identical, and only differed by position, rotation and scale. This opens the door to instance objects which will give the engine a superb advantage in terms of memory consumption and rendering speed.

Signing Off

If there is more time Tuesday, and I think there will be, I will probably add the guns back in to the engine and see if I can get the flak coded up. It's a tall order, but one needs goals!  I also need to load the latest version only my fastest Ultrabook so I can demo the version at a meeting on Wednesday, so that will be a test for it's Windows 8 compatibility AND it's ability to run well on a mobile GPU. No pressure ;)

Champagne Time!

Well You Gone And Did It!

Another little milestone on our rocky road to rapture. The daily views on my blog just topped 1000, the highest ever since I started at the beginning of 2013 and a worthy of a celebration drink.  I had planned to visit Wigan Friday afternoon and watch a good old game of rugby, but a huge email inbox, a pending blog and plenty of work ahead forced poor Lee back into his seat.

The project is starting to glow with the promise of what can be achieved, and it's an exciting time for me at the moment. I just can't put it down!!

Progress News

I was all set to continue my experiments into large scale dust bowls and sand storms, complete with sounds and subtle transitioning effects when Rick took one look at the early prototype from last night and suggested no further work be done on it. I personally saw great potential in the idea, but Rick wants his finished product a.s.a.p, so we move on.

I thus moved onto integrating the latest in-game engine stuff back into the main IDE editor, effectively allowing levels to be edited and then instantly previewed as though it was the final game.  To this end, I created a new and final prototype to hold the engine in-game pipeline to replace the current weapon prototype which was assuming this role, and also started the actual final map editor module which would replace the grid edit proto which I use to quickly compile and test editor features. These two steps easily consumed six hours of work, but the code is well ordered, neat and ready for expansion.

A Hiccup

Although I can now paint the terrain, jump into a gloriously shaded world and run around it, I cannot leave and come back to the same view. Returning to the editor from the game just shows a black screen and has something to do with my post process reversal code not working. Nor are the weapons added to this new system yet. It all works nice if I switch off post processing in test game, but this is just a stop gap.  The solution for a new day is to step through the rendering behavior when back in the editor mode and find out specifically which part of the post process system is irrecoverable. Once that is done, I can quickly add weapons and be back to where we should be.

Beyond that, finishing off terrain saving, allowing levels to be created and stored with everything we have so far, should be a good result for Sunday. With that, we can start making screen shots and videos as the new terrain content comes in.

Signing Off

It's been a series of very long days, and I am hopeful to get a few more hours in the garden to take a break from this monitor this weekend. I have a meeting on Wednesday to show the current visual progress of the product, and despite my prediction that the main game engine and IDE would not be integrated by then, it looks like it just might be.

A Note From My Ego

Here is a photo of me presenting a 7 minute ramble to the highly select fellows of the Intel Black Belt dinner in San Francisco, representing Wales by entirely failing to affect a Welsh accent.  Can you tell how many glasses of beer I drank in the 24 hours preceding this shot?

Thursday Triumphs

Good Coders Are Bouncy Coders

That's right, you can't keep us down for long!  Given the overwhelming support for increasing the texture stage count to 16, even from my good friend at a certain graphics card company, I solved the issue of terrain shadows and normals in a stroke.

Monster Shader

In fact, when I had completed the leviathan shader, it turned out that it's performance was very reasonable for the amazing number of things it was doing. Turns out the performance hog happened a little later when I switched EVERYTHING ELSE on and ran it as one combined program.

Performance Tuning A Must

I had hoped to get away with avoiding performance tuning until later in the project, ideally after the beta, but it seems I will need to face this one earlier than planned. To that end I have ordered a mid-range GTX 650 Ti graphics card to compliment the NVIDIA NSIGHT tool, which will give me unparalleled access into the innards of what my graphics engine is doing. Turns out my chunky old AMD card can't run the tool :)  That said, I am still running 45fps with everything switched on and unoptimised, which means it is certainly fast enough to continue developing, testing, adding different content and generally allowing a few screenshots and videos to be had.

Your New Shadows and Normals

As you have pushed for them, I though it thoughtful to give you a screenshot showing the new features. Here is the new ground shadow system which provides real time dynamic shadows for the terrain and the grass coverage:

And here is a blatant normal map poking through the muddy terrain by the waters edge. I have also toned down the water reflectivity, adjusted the fresnel term and muddied the water tint some more:

As you can see, I re-used the palm tree leaf normal map while I await final artwork from Mark who is currently busy producing lots of lovely terrain art!

Some Scouting

I also checked out some of the 'competition' by viewing all the best of the best E3 game releases for 2013, and tried to mine more ideas for shaders I could throw into this engine. Alas most of what I saw was either scripted sequences or mountains of content, nothing technical I could pull out quickly and convert into an new engine feature that could improve the shots and vids. If you find inspirational material that contradicts my findings, please do post a comment so I can check it out. I am not in the least bit phased by the lofty heights established by 20 million dollar projects, and I don't mind having a go :)

Weapon Work

What you are not seeing here is the work progressing on the weapons side of things. We now have complete animations for all weapons, sounds are coming along nicely, lots of subtle touches in there over and above the airmod tricks such as a separate running animation for weapons, weapon wobble based on parent camera wobble and some new weapon lag code to create a natural effect when you swing around quickly.  Running along now feels more realistic and I am looking forward to completing the rest of the weapon systems once visuals have been cracked.

Signing Off

As customary, it's getting pretty late (or early) and my list still has a few items un-ticked which will be pushed to the next days. I had hoped to play around with dust particle effects and sugar steelers, and might plop another hour into it before noddy time.  Hopefully I will get some terrain content on Friday and have a fun filled weekend populating my little world.  I am pretty sure the only thing I need now to get some nice screenshots is enough content scattered about the empty fields to make it look like something ;)

Wednesday Woes

It's Not All Cherries and Cream

A pretty 'orrid day really. Started good with some clean-up of the shadows and optimizations  and then came the re-integration of the color maps. This was when the dreaded performance monster caught up with me. I have escaped the beast for many a moon, but today it found me.

Turns out rendering the whole terrain in full polygon glory twice is a little too much for my graphics card and my FPS dropped to 43 fps. Completely unacceptable considering other parts of the engine where not engaged. Not sure the cause, but my first guess is that rendering that many polygons twice was too much, and that subtle use of a pixel shader is the solution out of this.  It could also be something silly, and not the first time, but for tonight and my frazzled brain, I do not know which.

Solutions Pending

I have a few ideas how to get around this one, but really the main idea was to double up on my texture slots and get the job done. Turns out I cannot do that without a 'significant' performance thump. One idea is to use more than eight texture slots, limiting the cards Reloaded could run on. Another is to create texture plates with four texture patterns and normals on them, therefore staying within the eight texture slots limit, but requiring some fiendish texture wrapping math in the pixel shader. A third option is to drop normal maps and shadows altogether and move on. A forth is to somehow have a 'shadow shader' which can overlay the established terrain surface. In fact there are as many solution as I could dream up, but I need one that I can code within the day, will perform at top speed and fit nicely with that I have already coded.  The life of a coder is never dull!

Pre-beta 'don't look if your name is Rick' Screenshot

So you don't feel too dejected, and not wishing to share my pain, here is a nice screenshot from my horrid proto with the color stripped out. As you can see, nice shadows and normals under the colored vegetation, and the vegetation being shadowed too which was no small feat! Also shadows spanning off into the distance, you can't see this, also no small feat!

I had hoped to show you a full color screenshot or even video of the shadows in all their glory, but not at 43 fps!!  No Sir!

Signing Off

I either need to find the route cause of this performance hog when rendering the full screen terrain twice, or find a new way to have colored textures, normals, veg map and cascade shadow maps all in the same shader pass.  No one will thank me for pretty visuals and horrid performance, so this needs solving right now or we have to back track on our visual ambitions!  Fear not, it's me we're worrying over, and I usually find a solution, eventually ;)

Igniting a new network: Meet our Tech Hub partners

Over the past few years, tech hubs have sprung up in cities across the globe, making it possible to start a high-growth company from almost anywhere, not just London or Silicon Valley. Tech hubs help make that happen—providing desks for entrepreneurs who are chasing their dreams, mentorship and educational opportunities for talented developers, and a vibrant community for innovative startups.

We started Google for Entrepreneurs to help foster entrepreneurship in communities around the world. Through our work in more than 100 countries, we’ve been incredibly impressed with the catalyzing impact that tech hubs have had: helping startups grow, and creating jobs in local communities in the process. So today we’re announcing a Tech Hub Network with seven partners, initially located in North America. 1871 (Chicago), American Underground (Durham), Coco (Minneapolis), Communitech (Waterloo), Galvanize (Denver), Grand Circus (Detroit) and Nashville Entrepreneur Center (Nashville) are all top notch spaces fueling entrepreneurship. We believe these hubs have pioneered a new approach to launching a business, and it’s our mission to help support them.

We’re partnering to create a strong network, providing each hub with financial support alongside access to Google technology, platforms and mentors, and ensuring that entrepreneurs at these hubs have access to an even larger network of startups. We’re excited to exchange ideas and connect hubs with each other and with Google to have an even bigger economic impact on local communities.

Posted by John Lyman, Head of Partnerships, Google for Entrepreneurs

Tuesday Was Shady

Message Received And Understood

All my plans, I placed in a bag and tossed out the window for Tuesday. The feedback both internal and external was clear, which was to get those pesky shadows back in!

A sage thought, and the right one. I have plenty plans for more eye candy in our terrain but shadows are super critical to make the scene 'pop'. To that end, apart from dealing with delegation via emails, my focus today was all things shadowy.

More Than Normal

As you may know I have already maxed out my texture stage usage on the terrain shader, and I ain't using more than eight slots in this engine to ensure some level of backward compatibility with last years graphics cards.  Mark, and now Rick are both insisting on normal maps for the terrain floor, and as they are technically shadow casters I decided to add them in. I achieve this by making the terrain a two pass process, or rather, a two render process. I can hear the intake of breath there, but there simply is no way to squeeze a veg map, five color textures, four cascade shadow map textures, multiple normal maps, one per texture style and who knows what else.  The good news is that in theory the shader work simply gets split between the two passes, with only the geometry getting processed twice. This is where deferred steps in to improve performance, and this can still be an optimization for us, but I need to get it written first before I can start performance tests.

I used some placeholder normal maps, and the terrain has had it's nice textures and subtle colors replaced by a basic lighting system (used by Valve) which employs said normal maps.  Once this was done, time for...

Shadow Games

I must have visited this shadow stuff about three times now, each time getting better and improving it. My finished shadow shader is now the best, with the ability to stretch all the way to the end of the terrain map and generate a convincing directional light.

The current prototype as I write this is in debug mode with each cascade tinted a specific color so I can see the quality step line and iron out any last minute artifacts like shadow edge bleeding and peter-panning.  All looks good to be which means time to add it to the new terrain shader.

It's 2:40AM now so I could slink off to bed and restore a more normal working day for the remainder of the week, but who would integrate the shadows into the new terrain shader :)

Signing Off

I am going to fix myself a small J.D & Coke as a little reward for getting the super sized shadow issue sorted (finally), and then put another 25 minutes into the shadow integration, then see if I can rotate myself back onto the day shift. It's hard to say whether day or night shift produces more, and I've experienced plenty of both. I dare say it's 50/50 and entirely dependent on the devilishness of the code on that day.

And the winner of the 2013 Google Science Fair is...

Do you have an idea to change the world? That’s what we asked the 2013 Google Science Fair participants back in January, and students ages 13-18 from around the world met our challenge. Today, the finalists—representing eight different countries—gathered at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. and presented their projects to a panel of esteemed judges. Attendees of the Fair and judges alike were wowed by the finalists’ passion for science and their drive to change the world.

The top 15 projects were selected from thousands of entries submitted by talented young scientists from more than 120 countries around the world. These projects were impressive and represented a vast range of scientific ingenuity—from a multi-step system created for early diagnosis of melanoma cancers to the invention of a metallic exoskeleton glove that assists, supports and enhances the movement of the human palm to help people who suffer from upper hand disabilities.

It was a tough decision, but we’re proud to name the three winners of this year’s Google Science Fair:

• 13-14 age category: Viney Kumar (Australia) — The PART (Police and Ambulances Regulating Traffic) Program. Viney’s project looked for new ways to to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching, so they can can take evasive action to get out of the emergency vehicle’s way.
• 15-16 age category: Ann Makosinski (Canada) — The Hollow Flashlight. Using Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, Ann designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts.
• 17-18 age category AND Grand Prize Winner: Eric Chen (USA) — Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic. Combining computer modeling and biological studies, Eric’s project looks at influenza endonuclease inhibitors as leads for a new type of anti-flu medicine, effective against all influenza viruses including pandemic strains.

Viney, Ann, Elif and Eric

Each of the winners will receive prizes from Google and our Science Fair partners: CERN, LEGO, National Geographic and “Scientific American.” This evening, we also recognized Elif Bilgin, from Istanbul, Turkey, the winner of the “Scientific American” Science in Action Award and the winner of the Voter’s Choice award with her project creating plastic from banana peel.

Thanks to all our 2013 finalists for their amazing projects and love for science. For updates on next year’s competition, see the Google Science Fair website.

Science and technology are crucial to solving many of the world’s greatest challenges. We started the Google Science Fair to support and foster the next generation of scientists and engineers. We look forward to seeing you change the world!

Posted by Clare Conway, Google Science Fair team

Monday Visualised

It's All Eye Candy Baby

As you may know this week has been geared up to dedicate solely to visuals. I have postponed the necessary final integration as it was decided that we needed some gorgeous screenshots about the place, and in the grand scheme of things it all needs doing.  I had planned to add the layers of polish once all the main functionality was in place, but I am sure you will not be objecting to seeing more of the final art take it's rightful place.

As it is definitely blog-worthy, I have produced a very small sneak video from the end of this days work so you can see where I am:

This one shows you bloom, using the multiplication inverse technique, a much deeper water effect so you cannot see the bottom of deep areas and my favorite  the light ray effect which will cast light volumes from the sun through any canopy or other above surface obstructions to create a sense of light volume in the scene.

What Is Next

Having ticked off the three shaders I wanted to do, the next two big visual tasks (apart from adding more content) is to work on flak/explosions and shadows.  I have a neat idea for producing some fast shadows using the cascade technique but it's experimental and might swallow some precious time. To avoid this possibility, I have decided my next task will be flak, explosions and particles.

This should add lots of opportunities for more cool visuals as the flak will leave a trail when you fire the rocket launcher, the explosion will have plenty overlay effects which I am looking forward to tweaking and of course the scene can benefit from particle effects which comprises everything from the dust that slowly settles after an explosion through to gusts of wind, distant fogging using particles and sugar stealers.  Not sure how much of all that I can get done in one day as the Flak is coming directly from the classic engine and it will take some time to re-factor the code so it slots nicely into the new systems.

Signing Off

I stole two hours today to get some gardening done (the weekend was pretty cloudy and cold) and highlighted to me how out of shape I have become in the last six months. Spending every waking hour at the keyboard has it's downsides, with general fitness being the first to suffer.  Hopefully Tuesday will be cloudy so I can rest my bones, but if the sun appears again I have a small path to finish digging and the manual toil does not seem to make a dent in the subsequent coding I can get done.  If you add up all the hours I've been awake, deduct three hours when I was outside and one hour when I ate some food, today racked up a good 10 hours and I'm happy with the result :)

Explore the world’s constitutions with a new online tool

Constitutions are as unique as the people they govern, and have been around in one form or another for millennia. But did you know that every year approximately five new constitutions are written, and 20-30 are amended or revised? Or that Africa has the youngest set of constitutions, with 19 out of the 39 constitutions written globally since 2000 from the region?

The process of redesigning and drafting a new constitution can play a critical role in uniting a country, especially following periods of conflict and instability. In the past, it’s been difficult to access and compare existing constitutional documents and language—which is critical to drafters—because the texts are locked up in libraries or on the hard drives of constitutional experts. Although the process of drafting constitutions has evolved from chisels and stone tablets to pens and modern computers, there has been little innovation in how their content is sourced and referenced.

With this in mind, Google Ideas supported the Comparative Constitutions Project to build Constitute, a new site that digitizes and makes searchable the world’s constitutions. Constitute enables people to browse and search constitutions via curated and tagged topics, as well as by country and year. The Comparative Constitutions Project cataloged and tagged nearly 350 themes, so people can easily find and compare specific constitutional material. This ranges from the fairly general, such as “Citizenship” and “Foreign Policy,” to the very specific, such as “Suffrage and turnouts” and “Judicial Autonomy and Power.”

Our aim is to arm drafters with a better tool for constitution design and writing. We also hope citizens will use Constitute to learn more about their own constitutions, and those of countries around the world.



Posted by Sara “Scout” Sinclair Brody, Google Ideas Product Manager

Friday Fully Loaded

A Day In The Armory

A great day if you like playing with big guns!  In my efforts to ensure backwards compatibility with all legacy weapons and AIRMOD enhanced guns I brought in a few favorites from Errant AI's collection and made sure that full functionality was restored to them.

In the process I learned quite a lot about the new features I did not even realize existed in the engine such as ammunition pools so you can have a single type of ammo for multiple types of weapon.  Special animation reserves for zooming, empty weapon state, alternative weapon animations so on.  I even found early work on melee and dual wielding, though I am going to be careful about these to make sure we get the best result down the road.  
Simply duplicating the weapon and placing them to the left and right looks odd when you reload (as you see four hands).  I am thinking more in the style of sword and shield, or carrot and stick style systems which will be more controlled by the artist than the fine tricks of coders.

All Guns Present

I know have the Sniper, RPG, Shotgun, Uzi, Pistol and Magnum present and correct, working in the new weapons prototype and ready for Mark and Johann to do there thing and finish off the content.  It is staged in such a way that I don't have to get much involved now so can focus elsewhere.  Hopefully within a week, the weapons will have extra features such as animations for walking, running and pressing against walls, accurate fire spot and smoke emissions, and the very latest sound effects to lift the version up another notch in quality and game immersion.

Else Where?

My next task, should I chose to accept it, is to re-implement FLAK and EXPLOSIONS to the prototype. I was going to jump to shaders and shadows, but when I fire the RPG and get no trailing rocket and huge bang, it leaves one wanting. It also means that once coded, it's done and I don't have to back track too much.  The explosions will come from our new explosions code and art, and should make an impact in the new terrain scene.  My mind started thinking about underwater explosions and rockets skimming along the surface of the water but i stopped myself. These crazy notions are for the realm of future adaptions.

Signing Off

This weekend will be a gardening weekend if the weather holds.  In playing catch-up after my IDF trip, I seem to have burned my candle a little, and a small recharge is in order. I have some potatoes I am curious to unearth, and a small path to cut.  Hopefully this will give me the thrust on Sunday to add a little bang to the prototype. The classic FPSC rockets did not have a trail behind them, and flew is a perfect straight line. I am tinkering with the idea of a rocket that keeps it's heading, but slightly weaves it's way there and leaves a thick plume of smoke in it's wake.

It will also give me the chance to tie in the explosion code, which has remained an isolated module up to now, and start adding the good stuff like physics particles, knock-on effects and maybe a few brush fires :)

Thursday Peeky

Blur Works

Seems my blurry screen shot attracted a huge number of visitors yesterday and today :)  That said, I won't be making that level of tease again as I think I went a little too far. As I explained earlier today, I kept adding one more level of blur until the lack of shadows was hidden, but but then it was pretty much a wasted out shot. Sorry about that!

Good and Bad

The bad news is that won't be able to inflict any more shots on you for the next few days given the lack of public worthy visuals, but the good news is that I have switched tracks to work on shaders and shadows (and guns). I've made the decision that Windows 8 and integration can hold off for two weeks while I bring the visuals up to the level where screenshots are not embarrassing. I means delaying the beta slightly, but I think the eye candy treats will be worth it.

I was also sent this worthy article on SSAO which is a nice way to get top visuals through GPU power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion

I also plan to visit the world of bloom, light rays, tone mapping, shadow blending and dynamic lighting on my way to better visuals as well, so hopefully screenshots in a few weeks time will not only be permitted but desirable.

Weapon Work

Today has been mostly about guns, and it's been a real haul this one. I had to strip out the gun code from FPSC Classic including all the AIRMOD and other modifications and integrate it into a new weapons prototype.  The idea is that rather that write the gun system from scratch, I would incorporate all of AIRMOD into the new engine and then augment it with some ideas for improved motion ans visuals around the weapon HUD object itself.

The first stage of this plan worked very nicely and now I have the classic FPSC guns in my prototype running around, reloading and firing through my gun selector.  All very good.

The next step is to add the new Reloaded weapons and configure the gunspec on each one to perform all the functionality you might expect of them.  The downside is that some animations are missing, some gunspec files don't seem to want to cooperate and the animation.txt file I need is missing on come. Completely expected as this is the first time I have ventured into the weapons area of the file structure we have here. The good part about this is that I can explore the new AIRMOD settings and create a neat and tidy template for the new weapons gunspec file, and get to grips with exactly what is missing. I can then produce a snag list for Mark for his return next week.

Signing Off

It's been great running around with more than the Rifle for company, and using the old weapons got me thinking that bringing in ALL the old weapons might be a real boon for Reloaded. Applying new shaders to the old weapon media might produce a lot of choice right out of the box, not to mention any old entity assets that still look pretty good. For now I am holding off on making too many legacy promises, but by re-using ALL the FPSC Classic gun code, I have paved the way for 100% backwards compatibility with legacy weapon models, including the much sought after ErrantAI collection!  My prediction is that by close of business Friday I will have the new weapons tamed and working as far as they can, then I can double back and re-activate related systems like flak, decals, full scale explosions and the myriad of hooks the weapon system taps into.  Exciting times!

Wednesday's Ground

One Step Back, Two Forward

A strange sort of day, with some progress being made, only to be countered by breaking enough stuff to spend the second part of the day repairing it. That is not to say a wasted day as we now have good terrain loading and saving, all terrain, physics and combat prototypes load and run with the same media set and my personal favorite, our resident TGC Store administrator took charge of the entity library for Reloaded and created placeholders for them all. That meant I could drop the whole library into the main IDE and start browsing.

And That's Not All

After seeing all my new lovely entities, I could not resist continuing the integration work (despite some distractions I shall not mention here) to get entity ground detection and stacking. Now when you select and place an entity, it follows the terrain perfectly as you move it around and places it on the floor as you might expect. Also it has the smarts that when you get for example a crate, and press RETURN to find the new height at that point, the second crate stacks perfectly on the first.

I really don't want to show you the raw screenshot yet, not without shadows, some bloom and a few other nice touches, but the above is a sneak peek and totally blurred up view of my prototype as it is today. As you can see I have been adding pallets, barrels and even palm trees to my terrain scene, and you cannot see it now but I am using a night sky effect.  You might also make out the dumpster from the old Alley Level content which will probably make it's way to the final Reloaded asset collection!

Decisions

I have a decision now whether to work on Windows 8 compatibility for the IDE and prototype executable partly as we need this anyway for release, but mainly because it allows team members running Win8 to be able to see what is going on. The other direction is to complete the weapon and combat prototypes to include all the weapons we have so far, which will allow us to refine them and ensure all animations are in place and to get the sounds tailor made for each weapon.  Both are critical, though I have yet to decide which path to take for Thursday.

Signing Off

I must say, once I added terrain ground detection to the entity placer, it became a real pleasure carving out terrain shapes and adding things like trees in clumps.  Not a clue what the long term performance hit might be for such a proliferation of per-entity vegetation, but it really opened the floodgates for a more diverse level design from what we used to have with FPSC Classic.

Still, plenty progress being made as we march closer to October, and both the IDE and the slow unification of all the prototype modules are getting stronger every day.  It's also great to know the pledger community (and our beloved investor), and the team in general, are happy for us to continue aiming high, sacrificing a few arbitrary deadlines for a top quality result. I don't want to tease you needlessly, but I should be able to put something playable in the hands of all pledgers within the next 4 weeks if all goes smoothly.  You have shown extraordinary patience, and a sign you really understand the development process by allowing me the time to get it 'just so'.

Now I'm bouncing in and out of the IDE, it's starting to feel like one piece of software rather than 15 separate prototypes.  More to come!

Tuesday In The Library

Integration Goes Well

I have started getting my prototypes to behave again after the massive step to integrate the terrain editing into the main IDE. All playing happily together again. This means I have separate AI, Terrain Edit, Physics and Combat prototypes to use for work on those specific areas, but all key work instantly feeds through the main engine automatically via the module files shared amongst them.  The bottom line is that it means my compile times are vastly smaller, and I can run the prototype much more quickly than launching the entire editor each time. No sense loading in all the characters and AI stuff if I am working on the terrain editor or the main map editor core.

Sounding Out

As part of the physics prototype, I have added the material sound system and are now able to work with this as the main testing platform with our sound guy. It's working very well and a great way to instantly test new sounds as they come in, and more importantly, for the sound guy to test his own work before announcing it to the rest of the team.

Right now we are working on weapon sounds, footfalls and experimenting with some barrel rolling sound effects though not sure if this last one will make it in as a main feature yet.

Backing Up The Lot

Since getting back I have been aware that backing up should be stepped up at this level of the project where every file counts.  To that end I have spent some time cleaning up older archives and ensuring only new files for the Reloaded project are kept at the front.  It's vital that should a PC decide to go on an extended holiday, I can get back up and running on a second machine. Always good advice, but especially now!

The Reloaded Library Forms

In my absence, a whole pile of lovely art was waiting for me, so I decided today was a good day to start organizing the new asset library for the Reloaded project.  Here is a rather nice render to keep your visual eye candy streaming in.

If you ever wandered why enemies in games sometimes have masks, scarfs and other facial obstruction's it's that if you removed it all the faces would be exactly the same. The problem with creating a game engine is that unique faces are a drain or artist time and GPU rendering. By hiding the face, you can confidently send hundreds of them into the battle without the player knowing any better.

Fortunately we DO have more characters with different faces, but we also want you to be able to drop in a handful of soldiers without changing your entity brush each time.  Maybe in the future we can add a system to randomly change the face on characters automatically so you don't have to worry about this particular scenario.

The library is small at the moment, but that is good for me as it allows everything to be tightly tested with physics, visual shader rendering, performance, back-end attribute data and how they work as a part of the whole game engine.  Still, six categories and growing so we're well on our way there.

A Call TO Action

I am in need of some parallel help if anyone from the Dark Basic Pro community is reading today's blog. Take a look at the shot below:

As you can see, a typical snipe position and a few victims in the distance, but the thing I want to point out are the green boxes placed around the base of the protruding hills in the terrain. This is my very quick hack to define obstacles that the enemy characters have to navigate around to chase the player.

I am looking for someone with some experience of DarkAI to write a new very small prototype which will take 1024x1024 height data and create a series of DarkAI polygon obstacles that contour around the raised parts of the terrain. y current technique is to detect a height difference of 50 units, and if detected, slap a box there.  Crude, and is a performance hog.  I need a system that can do this in real-time (as the terrain height data is being modified). Does not have to be 60 fps, just something that can be fired off and the DarkAI obstacle map adjusted in less than a second, ready for real-time game play.

It's something I am getting around to, but it's a B priority while I cobble everything else together so having someone produce the goods in parallel to what I am doing would be very helpful.  Just email at lee@thegamecreators.com or comment here for more information!

Signing Off

Well this is the end of another long day. Just going to let my PC finish off the backups, drop box and SVN uploads, then call it a day.  Rick kindly ran my new IDE on Windows 8 and totally broke it, so I am also getting a Windows 8 test machine set-up to start the compatibility work sooner rather than later.  I am sure it's just a few file permission related pebbles, but it's enough to prevent Windows 8 users having a good time!

Wednesday will see more Asset Library work, and a start on the entity mode in the IDE, to ensure selections are placed smartly on the new terrain instead of 'through' the terrain as the current version likes to do.  I also want to clean up the IDE a little more so what little there is in there feels more polished and less half-baked.  Coming together though, and with some new icons and art, will look as good as it's coded ;)

Another windy day in Texas: a new power purchase agreement

As part of our quest to power our operations with 100% renewable energy, we’ve agreed to purchase the entire output of the 240 MW Happy Hereford wind farm outside of Amarillo, Texas. This agreement represents our fifth long-term agreement and our largest commitment yet; we’ve now contracted for more than 570 MW of wind energy, which is enough energy to power approximately 170,000 U.S. households.

The Happy Hereford wind farm, which is expected to start producing energy in late 2014, is being developed by Chermac Energy, a small, Native American-owned company based in Oklahoma. The wind farm will provide energy to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the regional grid that serves our Mayes County, Okla. data center.

Some (happy) cows on the future site of the wind farm. 

 The cows will still have plenty of room to graze between the turbines.

The structure of this agreement is similar to our earlier commitments in Iowa and Oklahoma. Due to the current structure of the market, we can’t consume the renewable energy produced by the wind farm directly, but the impact on our overall carbon footprint and the amount of renewable energy on the grid is the same as if we could consume it. After purchasing the renewable energy, we’ll retire the renewable energy credits (RECs) and sell the energy itself to the wholesale market. We’ll apply any additional RECs produced under this agreement to reduce our carbon footprint elsewhere.

This type of power purchase agreement represents one of several ways we’re working to make additional renewable energy available for both our data centers and the communities in which we operate. In Scandinavia, due to the region’s unified power market and grid system, we’re able to purchase wind energy in Sweden and directly consume it at our Hamina, Finland data center. We’re also working with our local utility partners to develop new options. In 2012, we signed an agreement with GRDA, our utility partner in Oklahoma, to green the energy supply to our Oklahoma data center with 48 MW of wind energy from the Canadian Hills Wind Project. Earlier this year, we began working with Duke Energy to develop a new renewable energy tariff (PDF) in North Carolina.

We take a comprehensive approach to acquiring renewable energy for our operations. We’ll continue working directly with utility providers, collaborating with industry regulators and pursuing creative agreements (PDF) like the Happy Hereford PPA.

Posted by Matt Pfile, Senior Manager, Data Center Energy and Location Strategy

Monday And Back From IDF13

What A Blast

As this is a Reloaded blog, I won't be writing a huge report on IDF 2013 except to say that it was a huge blast and I really enjoyed my time there. It's always the people you meet that make the event worthwhile, and a finer bunch of dudes they are too!

Some highlights are the introduction of a new super small chip called Quark which will usher in the era of wearable computers (something I predicted many moons ago).  Perceptual Computing continues it's relentless pace into a paradigm shifting future and it will be great to see what comes out of the imminent PerC competition. For the first time ever, IDF held a huge party for all developers and featured circus food and plenty drinks!  I tried to tweet some pictures but 3G costs a fortune for 'Brits in the States' and I used over £60 in less than three minutes when I accidently tethered to my Ultrabook.

Today's Progress

Aside from catching up on emails, paperwork and clearing some desk space, the main thrust for today was to implement the material sound system to suit the new modules. This allowed me to add footfalls, and a prototype splash sound effect around the water line.  The proto can also be used by our sound guy to fine tune the footfall sound effects that will be recreated for Reloaded.

My inbox still has some other items that need my attention, but alas my Internet connection is down (again), and in fact I am writing this in the browser cache in the hope the Internet magically comes back to life.

Signing Off

Of course, the internet would come back as soon as I wrote the above :) I am posting this now before it goes again!  Will be working on overall IDE integration this week so hopefully a screen shot or two to come in the next few days.  Alas I cannot take a screen shot of the new sounds ;)

The HALO Trust: Helping communities reclaim the land with Google Maps for Business

From time to time we invite guests to post about subjects of interest and today we’re pleased to share a post from Guy Willoughby, Executive Director of the HALO Trust, a U.K.-based nonprofit dedicated to landmine clearance in post-conflict areas. Hear how HALO is using Google Maps for Business to fight the war against mines, clearing more than 1.4 million landmines worldwide. -Ed.

When conflicts end, making communities safe and livable often means removing dangerous remnants of war. “Getting mines out of the ground, for good,” as we say at the HALO Trust, has been our mission over the last 25 years. We work in more than a dozen countries and regions across the globe, clearing landmines and other explosives, many of which have been buried underground. While we’ve been in operation for almost three decades, there is still more to be done.

In Kosovo, where people are reclaiming their homeland after the conflict in 1999, we’re working in close cooperation with the government and local population to collect and share information about where mines are located. It’s a true community effort—farmers tell us where they’ve seen signs of mines and where accidents have occurred. It’s our job at the HALO Trust to take this data and make it usable, accessible, and visually compelling, so clearance becomes more efficient and happens faster.

One of our biggest challenges is keeping our field teams safe. We need easy-to-use tools that can help us find, map and clear hazardous areas without putting our operations at risk. Over the years, we’ve continuously improved our mine clearance techniques, including the deployment of Google Earth Pro.


Google Earth Pro makes it easier for the HALO team to do the dangerous and detailed work of finding and mapping at-risk areas. Because it’s based on the same technology as Google Maps and Earth, it’s easy for our teams to use and create maps without IT or GIS expertise. It’s a tool that is familiar to our employees and something they use in their daily lives, so we can start mapping right away.

The information we gather, including GPS references to landmines in the field, is imported into Earth Pro so that we can plot mine locations. We also use the incredibly detailed satellite imagery in Google Earth to identify and map hazardous areas. These high-resolution maps serve many people: from families who live near mines, to crews who clear them, and donors and other organizations that support us. When donors view the vivid interactive maps of our project areas—with mines so close to schools, farms and houses—they understand why the HALO Trust’s work is so critical.

Accurate maps from Google Earth Pro mean safer working conditions for our local teams, and faster progress toward our goals. In Kosovo alone, we’ve removed thousands of landmines, cluster munitions and other explosives. And with the help of Google’s mapping tools and our donors, we’ll be able to declare the country mine-free.

Posted by Guy Willoughby, Executive Director, the HALO Trust

Explore the Galapagos’ biodiversity with Street View

This week marks the 178th anniversary of Darwin’s first exploration of the Galapagos Islands. This volcanic archipelago is one of the most biodiverse and unique places on the planet, with species that have remarkably adapted to their environment. Through observing the animals, Darwin made key insights that informed his theory of evolution. Here’s a short documentary that captures the 10-day expedition:

Today, in partnership with the Directorate of the Galapagos National Park and Charles Darwin Foundation, we’re launching the 360-degree images from the Galapagos Islands that we collected in May with the Street View Trekker. Now, you can visit the islands from anywhere you may be, and see many of the animals that Darwin experienced on his historic and groundbreaking journey in 1835.

Darwin may have first sighted San Cristobal Island from the water, perhaps near where we sailed with the Trekker strapped to a boat in order to observe the craggy shoreline and the Magnificent Frigatebirds that the rocky landscape shelters. After landing on San Cristobal, we made our way to Galapaguera Cerro Colorado, a breeding center that helps to restore the population of the island tortoises, seriously threatened by invasive species. Wearing the Trekker, we walked by giant tortoises munching on leafy stalks and recently hatched baby tortoises.

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The Galapaguera plays a critical role in conservation of the giant tortoises

Darwin visited Floreana Island, but he didn’t have the scuba gear needed to properly explore the marine life just off the island’s coast. Thanks to our partner, Catlin Seaview Survey and their SVII underwater camera, we were able to collect underwater imagery of some especially energetic and inquisitive sea lions that came out to see whether the divers wanted to play!

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The playful Galapagos Sea Lion is one of the endemic species of the islands

On our hike through the wetlands of Isabela Island, we spotted some marine iguanas, including this one sunning itself after a morning swim. On North Seymour Island, we got up close and personal to blue-footed boobies performing their mating dance and the Magnificent Frigatebirds with their red throat sacs.

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The blue-footed boobies on North Seymour island

The extensive Street View imagery of the Galapagos Islands won’t just enable armchair travelers to experience the islands from anywhere in the world—it will also play an instrumental role in the ongoing research of the environment, conservation, animal migration patterns and the impact of tourism on the islands. See our Lat Long blog post for an example of how the imagery will be used for scientific research.

Visit our behind-the-scenes experience and tune in to an exclusive Google+ Hangout with the Google Maps team and our partners at 9:00 a.m. PT today to learn more about this special collection of imagery.

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Project Lead, Google Earth Outreach

Get that world to listen: Celebrating the Clash, an iconic band

It was clear from the first chords of their 1977 debut album that the Clash were more than just a punk band. Their politically charged lyrics combined with their hunger for new rhythms gave them an unparalleled ability to create music that made you think as well as dance. They embraced all genres while still sounding like themselves and redefined what a rock group could accomplish musically, politically and culturally.

From the reggae-inspired social commentary of tracks like “White Man in Hammersmith Palais,” to hip-hop infused cuts like “Magnificent Seven” and even Top 40 hits such as “Rock the Casbah,” their songs gave a generation a lifelong connection not just to the Clash, but to music in general.

From time to time, Google Play teams up with iconic rockers to help tell their stories. When we heard that the Clash were planning to re-release some of their greatest music, we wanted to celebrate their legacy and create something cool for their fans around the world. They handed over hours of unseen footage of the late Joe Strummer discussing the arc of the band’s career. And the Google Play team interviewed the rest of the members to get their perspective on what they accomplished and how they did it. The result is “Audio Ammunition,” a free, five-part documentary about the Clash that walks through the writing, recording and reception of each of their classic studio albums.

Watch part one of the documentary on Google Play, and you can check out the other four parts on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/googleplay. You can also buy all five of their newly released, digitally remastered albums on Google Play. And because the Clash’s legacy continues to inspire musicians today, we’ve produced some exclusive cover versions by contemporary artists we admire. These four tracks are available as free downloads for a limited time on Google Play.

The Clash explored a world of ever-expanding rhythms and possibilities and the urgency and power of their music still resonates today. As bassist Paul Simonon says. “We weren’t concerned with playing just on our doorstep. It was to play on any doorstep, throughout the world.”


Posted by Tim Quirk, head of content programming for Google Play

Just a Reflektor: a virtual projection with Arcade Fire

Since Chrome launched in 2008, we’ve been experimenting with new ways to tell stories on the web using 3D graphics, immersive sound effects and more. In the last few years, the mobile web has also exploded, so we wanted to explore what kind of new interactions were possible using the latest technologies available on Chrome for Mobile.

“Just A Reflektor” is an interactive film directed by Vincent Morisset and featuring a new song from Arcade Fire. The film lets you cast a virtual projection on your computer screen by holding up your mobile device in front of your computer’s webcam. That way, you control all of the visual effects in the experience—not by moving a mouse on a screen, but by moving your phone or tablet through the physical space around you.

The film’s heroine, Axelle, is revealed through a spotlight that moves in time with your mobile device.

In a later scene, a liquid effect is combined with a time delay, creating a video collage.

About four minutes into the film, the “reflektor” is turned toward Axelle herself.

To explore the effects used in the film, see the technology page, where you can adjust a number of visual settings and create your own effects using a robust editor. You can also watch a behind-the-scenes video to learn about how the film was made. The code for the film and tech page is open source, so creative coders can download it and try it for themselves.

The technology page lets you create, edit and share your own visual effects using footage from the film.

We hope this project inspires more filmmakers and visual artists to experiment with the latest features in Chrome. And for everyone else, we hope “Just A Reflektor” offers a new, exciting way to interact with the web.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

(Cross-posted from the Chrome Blog)

What is the State of the European Union? #askbarroso

Is Europe really emerging from the financial crisis? What’s going to happen to Europe’s 5 million unemployed young people? Does the rise of euro-sceptic politics spell the end of the EU as we know it? Will Europe act on Syria?

Now’s your chance to put these questions and others to the man in charge of the European Commission, President José Manuel Barroso, in a special, live State of the European Union Hangout interview, hosted by the euronews Global Conversation team, but driven by you.

The Hangout on Air takes place on Thursday, September 12 at 20:50 CET / 11:50 PDT, one day after President Barroso’s 2013 State of the European Union address.



euronews is soliciting questions, comments and ideas for the interview until 12:00 CET / 03:00 PDT on Wednesday, September 11. No topic is too big or too small—all you need to do is submit your question (text or video) on Google+, Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag #askbarroso. The authors of the best questions—as chosen by euronews editors—will be invited to interview the President in person, live, in the Google+ Hangout.

To tune in, visit the European Commission’s Google+ page Thursday, September 12 at 20:50 CET / 11:50 PDT. And of course, you can keep commenting up to and after the interview using the hashtags #askbarroso and #SOTEU.

Posted by Al Verney, Communications Manager, Google Brussels

Don’t get locked out: set up recovery options for your Google Account

This summer we’re posting regularly with privacy and security tips. Knowing how to stay safe and secure online is important, which is why we created our Good to Know site with advice and tips for safe and savvy Internet use. -Ed.

Strong passwords help protect your accounts and information on the web. But forgetting your password is like losing your keys—you can end up locked out of your own home. It gets worse if your password gets compromised or stolen. Sometimes the thief will change your password so you can't get back into your own account—kind of like someone stealing your keys and then changing the lock.

If you've lost your Google password, you need a way to get back into your Google Account—and back to all of your stuff in Gmail, Maps, Google+ and YouTube. To help you, Google needs to be able to tell that you’re the rightful account owner even if you don't have the right password. There are a few easy steps you can take right now to make it easy for you—and no one else—to get into your Google Account if you forget or don’t know the password.

1. Add a recovery email address. By registering an alternate email address with your Google Account settings, you’re giving Google another way to reach you. If you forget your password, Google can send a link to that recovery email address so you can reset your password. Google can also use that email address to let you know if we detect something suspicious happening with your account.

Setting up your recovery options can help you get back in

if you get locked out of your Google Account

2. Add a phone number to your Google Account. Your mobile phone is the best way to regain access to your account if you forget your password. It's like the "fast lane" for account recovery: we text a code to the phone number you've registered with us, and you're back in business in no time. Your phone is more secure and reliable than other means of recovering your account. Methods like “secret” questions (asking your mother’s maiden name or city where you were born) may have answers that are easy to remember, but they are also possible for bad guys to uncover. And we’ve consistently seen that people who register a recovery phone are faster and more successful at getting their accounts back than those recovering their accounts via email.

You can also get a text message if Google detects that something suspicious is going on with your account. Giving a recovery phone number to Google won’t result in you being signed up for marketing lists or getting more calls from telemarketers.

3. Keep your recovery options up to date. It’s a good idea to check your recovery options every so often. For example, if you change your phone number after setting up your recovery options, take just a minute to update your recovery settings to match. We'll remind you of your current settings every so often to make it easier for you to keep them up to date.

That’s it! You can either update your recovery options next time you’re prompted, or you can take two minutes to do it right now on our Account recovery options page. For more advice on how to protect yourself and your family online, visit our Good to Know site, or check out some of the other posts in our series on staying safe and secure.

Posted by Diana Smetters, Software Engineer

A petition for greater transparency

Today we filed an amended petition (PDF) in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This petition mirrors the requests made to Congress and the President by our industry and civil liberties groups in a letter (PDF) earlier this year. Namely, that Google be allowed to publish detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests we receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including Section 702. Given the important public policy issues at stake, we have also asked the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. It’s time for more transparency.

In addition, along with a number of other companies and trade associations, we are meeting the President’s Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies today. We’ll reiterate the same message there: that the levels of secrecy that have built up around national security requests undermine the basic freedoms that are at the heart of a democratic society.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Director, Law Enforcement & Information Security and Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy and Government Affairs

(Cross-posted on the Public Policy Blog)

Friday Heights

'Highest' 'Users' 'Ever'

That's right, my blog received the highest readership ever yesterday at 950 sets of eyeballs :)  Quite pleased about that for some reason.  Anyhoo, the news of the day is that I managed to integrate the terrain editor into the IDE today and thanks to my painstaking diligence of preparing the modules ahead of time for seamless integration, it dropped in smooth as silk. Naturally I had to connect up a few power cables, but apart from that, it did the job.

Due to our new policy of not showing anything crude and unusual, there will be no shot of the combined IDE and terrain editor as the toolbar icons are a compete mess thanks to my tinkering and the rest of the IDE is in limbo.  I can report that I have tied the menu items and toolbar buttons to the shortcut keys and now a new terrain mode can be controlled like any other IDE feature. Saving and loading is not in, and that will be my task on my return.

Return From Where

Did I not mention?  I am flying out to San Francisco for the Intel Developer Forum conference on Sunday and not returning for a whole week. This is my last recharge before I dash to the finish line for the October release, and beyond that the Christmas version.

I will be attending a few lectures, meeting some friends and spending the best part of four days talking shop with fellow developers.  If any of you are also going to IDF, you are welcome to join me for a beer or two, and I will be tweeting on and off throughout the event. My tweet address is @leebambertgc

Signing Off

It's been a long week, largely thanks to the early morning starts and long un-interrupted days, and now I am at close of business on Friday my eyeballs are swimming in my head telling me to eat something and rest somewhere. I have achieved what I wanted to do which was to get the terrain editor part of the main software, and as a bonus I have cleaned up great swathes of code in the process too.  Let's hope I remember it all on my return!  

Thursday Big Bag O' Progress

Up Again

For the forth day in a row I have woken before 7AM which is something of a record for me, only achieved through going to bed ridiculously early and falling asleep right away.  The bad part about this is that I cannot work past 9PM as I am probably sleeping, but the good news is that the early morning cycle provides one with incredible clarity of purpose, before the confusions of the day begin.

Even a commute to work might upset this wonderful span of hours, where nothing is too ambitious and everything can be conceived and created.  It only lasts a few hours though, and then the marathon of the day begins as the brain floods with mental abstractions.

Progress Notes

Remove Segment Code - finished off removing the last of the segment code from the system, and also removed the blueprint mesh code that was associated with it.  Used this process to learn the entire map editor code again, which took a few hours but was WELL worth it.

Restore Entity Textures - got the map editor to load and place entities with their textures in tact. I hacked out shaders for the time being to achieve this, but shaders is another day and another challenge so I am happy with the solution for today.

Split entity code M and G - figured out which entity source code is required for editing, and which is purely for game running, and separated them from each other so my map editor compiling could be faster.

Center at 25Kx25K - new default starting position for level creation is the dead center of the 50,000 x 50,000 level.  This allows the author to build their levels out in any direction they wish. Thanks to the removal of segment mapping, there is now no real limit to the height of buildings, nor their depth.

Save & Load - added both saving and loading of entities and general map settings back into the IDE, having removed the segment and other data from the process. This clears the way to introduce terrain, AI, physics and other elements without wading through too much legacy code.

IDE Overhaul - as part of the process of getting a single piece of software ready for October, reduced the map editor source code down so that it remained fully functional through the IDE but compiled in a mere 16 seconds. This is an improvement from 90 seconds which is what the engine required a few days ago.  The IDE went through some reductions, replacing segment menu items with terrain items and cutting back anything that was not of immediate importance. I also included some new Reloaded art to give the IDE a newer feel about the place, and apart from some nagging BCG issues the IDE is well underway.   Once terrain module is integrated, I can connect up the menu and toolbar features to allow editing of terrains from the IDE and hopefully the subject of Fridays blog.

Signing Off

A good day, with about 10 hours of graft invested. Also heard that my little driving apps are doing even better these days in the iOS and Android charts, really knocking other educational apps out the park with it's awesomeness, and a real testimony to AGK.  When AGK V2 comes along, it will so even greater things I am sure!  Rather than push past the 'tire barrier', I will eat something then get some sleep and resume Friday where I hope to be able to add the first of the big modules, terrain, to the IDE integration and thus begin the slippery slope to a finished single piece of software which might affectionately be called the makings of a beta.  For all your pledgers out there, the chance to try out all this crazy code moves one significant step closer and I can't wait to share this with you.

Also, a special thank you to everyone who is supporting the shift from segments to room blobs. It's a critical upgrade, and one I feel will put Reloaded on a fast track to great things.  We live and learn, and when we see a limitation, we should actively seek it's elimination.  Constant and Never Ending Improvements is the name of the game, and we're just getting started!