Coder Corner

- woah, is that a shark? It’s so small!

- yeah it is. A small shark… it’s a sharkozy !!!

(only funny for french readers I suppose)

http://www.codercorner.com/Pictures/FractalWrongness.jpg

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/rebecca-mayes-muses/821-Bionic-Commando

Didn’t see that before. Catchy tune

My girlfriend broke her foot a few days after moving back to Zürich, just when we didn’t have a Krankenkasse. Thank you Murphy.

My Xbox died halfway through Wet. I suppose that game was too hot, since I got 2 red lights in the Red Ring Of Death. Overheating. I guess that is a noble death for a console. At least its life was useful. Maybe it will cool down enough to start again, after a while. In the meantime I used this as an excuse to buy one of the new slim PS3’s. Finished Uncharted 2, went halfway through MGS4, just started Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Now you know why there’s no time for updating that blog

Worked on a serialization framework for the PhysX SDK, something similar to this.

Started investigating “CSG debris” in my spare time. So you carve bullet holes in meshes via a CSG operation, generating debris pieces at the same time. Debris are then rigid bodies, etc. Currently playing with t-junction removals, retriangulations, all that fun stuff. The even funnier stuff will be to update all the PhysX mesh data structures after a CSG operation. Stan Melax has a brilliant demo with runtime CSG a while back, I guess that’s the inspiration for this small side project. I hope I’ll be able to include that in Konoko Payne if it all works as planned.

…and there’s probably a million things more to post, but I don’t have time…

The boss at the end of the Spain level was long and tedious, but I finished him. It’s a bit disappointing to see that the game re-uses the Switzerland level a second time, it feels a bit cheap. Lazy artists! But hey, this time I collected enough money to buy new weapons so it will probably be easier. I wonder if they unlocked some items like their garbage bins nearby the Technopark (*).

I am packing my PC tomorrow, and the relocation people pick the boxes up the next day. After that, I will be without a PC until I find a new flat in Zürich. It might take a while, so don’t expect a lot of updates for a month or so.

brb!

(*) completely private joke here

That’s what happens when you try to make ice cubes with sparkling water…

EDIT: wonder what happens if I try sparkling water in the coffee machine… too bad it’s already packed

I guess I should make it official now that I signed the contract. I am now a proud NVIDIA employee, and I will be working with my old NovodeX mates in Zürich - yep, good old Technopark. In a way it feels like moving backwards, going back to my past rather than exploring new cities, new countries, and trying new things. On the other hand, it feels curiously good to “go home”. Granted, it’s not really my home. But it feels familiar. Friendly. Safe. Secure. Just like a home should be. After 2 years in Spain it may also just feel good to go back to a place where things Just Work. No “caldera” exploding in the middle of the night, no brainless Internet provider forgetting my files on a desk for 2 months, no bad surprise when going for shopping. Of course the weather will not exactly be as gorgeous as Barcelona’s, but hey, that’s a bonus: no more sunburns.

This has been a crazy month of July. Packed with interviews, trips, phone calls. I got so many job offers it’s not even funny. While most people suffer from the financial crisis, lose their job, struggle, I got some 19 offers in the two first weeks, and they kept coming. Some of those were insanely appealing. You have no idea how hard it has been to decline all of them but one. For a while I felt like Paul Atreides, having visions of all the possible futures in all those cool places and cool countries. They really all felt good. It was an impossible task to select just one. I wish I could have worked for all of them. I wish I will, some day.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a scrolltext but I feel like writing greetings again. In no particular order : Kenneth, Cortney, Simon, Greg, Andrew, David, Oliver, Paco, Martin, Sys, Tatiana, Christer, Christophe, Candace, Jay, Vik, Robert, Francesco, Marie-Therese, Sandra, Alexis, Joachim, Pascal, Vangelis, David. You know who you are. Thank you!!

Fecking hell, I’ll miss the craic !

Typical spanish rip off. I buy “pains au chocolat” in the Caprabo, here’s what I get. Notice how one of them, still sealed, is like 25% shorter than usual. It looks like a piece has been cut with a knife, probably a hungry employee in the pains-au-chocolat factory or something.

This is the 3rd time it happens to me, after buying yogurts already open and empty Nescafé packs (1 pack in a box of 10 containing no powder at all).

Fucking BS place.

It’s now official.

Afro Samurai is a really frustrating game. But it has one interesting feature that makes it worth checking: you can cut enemies in half with your sword. It’s intriguing, you can move a cut-line over the character when you’re in “focus mode”, and it looks a lot like my previous character-cut demo. I wonder if they also do the cut at runtime, or if it’s all pre-cut ?? Drop me a line if you’re one of the devs!

Assassin’s Creed is also frustrating. I finally took the time to play it, and now it looks like I hit a fucking bug that prevents me from progressing further. I’m in Damascus, 4th mission, I went to the Bureau leader, I climbed all the watchpoints, but my objectives (pickpocket, etc) never appeared on the map. I’m stuck and it seems I will have to start again from scratch. Or better: forget that game altogether.

Frustrating, yes, but not as much as Nightshade ever was. Fun fact: there’s a “retry counter” in Nightshade, that lets you know the number of times you restarted a mission (in one sitting, it gets reset each time you go back to the main menu). Well I can tell you from painful experience that this counter does not go above 99 Yes, that’s right, I restarted some of those insane levels more than a hundred times. In one sitting. Oh yeah I can be pretty stubborn. But I finished the damn game, at least.