So what are you guys doing these days?

[gamenovice]

i decided to follow in the steps of marcel and learn qt. it sounds like an interesting sdk. I already have ideas about programming a software documentation suite, so maybe ill post a few videos to the forums when i get the chance

In the steps of Marcel? I'm the only Toolkit developer.

And yeah, it is a great framework to work with.

Then I guess I'm following your steps then

[TheBuzzSaw]

Work. Work. Work.

I love my job, but I've been setting aside less and less time for my game development endeavors. It's disappointing. I need to finish out at least one of my projects.

[Falco Girgis]

Work. Work. Work.

I love my job, but I've been setting aside less and less time for my game development endeavors. It's disappointing. I need to finish out at least one of my projects.

Unacceptable. Work should not be one of your priorities!

[TheBuzzSaw]

Unacceptable. Work should not be one of your priorities!

Agreed.

The problem is that I feel like I aged a lot in a really short time. I used to come home, open up my IDE, and crank out several hours worth of high quality C++. Now, I come home, fall asleep on my couch, wake up, watch some TV, take some headache medicine, etc. I just cannot sit at my computer desk. It has nothing to do with desire. I honestly just suddenly started lacking energy.

I probably need to work out.

[Falco Girgis]

Yeah, my rigorous weight training routine has worked wonders for my energy levels and insomnia...

Take a few weeks away from recreational coding while you workout too. Don't feel guilty for coming home and not doing it, because that just associates stress with something that should be pleasurable...

I had to take a few weeks respite to regain my physical and emotional health not too long ago, and in a matter of weeks of not thinking about the code, I was jonesing to get back to ES like a coke addict...

[dandymcgee]

Unacceptable. Work should not be one of your priorities!

Agreed.

The problem is that I feel like I aged a lot in a really short time. I used to come home, open up my IDE, and crank out several hours worth of high quality C++. Now, I come home, fall asleep on my couch, wake up, watch some TV, take some headache medicine, etc. I just cannot sit at my computer desk. It has nothing to do with desire. I honestly just suddenly started lacking energy.

I probably need to work out.

I know exactly how you feel man. It seems, somewhat ironically, that sitting at a desk all day makes me have way less energy and feel tired all the time even though I'm getting more than enough sleep. I need to find more physical activities to take part in.

[Falco Girgis]

Why do you guys think I'm all about sex and weight lifting?

[Nokurn]

Filling out my general ed to transfer to university (likely MIT or Stanford), going to grab a few associate's degrees for the hell of it on my way out. Working on my computer science/physics research project, which I'll be presenting to the board of trustees of my school next month. Hoping to coauthor a paper about it with the physics professor I'm collaborating with on the project.

It's a motion and gravity simulator that is used much like Premiere Pro or other video editing suites. It started out as an extremely simple simulator for looking at angular momentum in a physics lab. Then he realized that I could do much better, so it was extended to multiple bodies. Then gravity followed. I will probably post some screenshots of the demo I make for the board presentation if people are interested. Maybe start writing about it on my currently-empty blog.

It's written in C++ with Qt and uses Eigen for linear algebra.

Edit: And OpenGL for rendering the space.

Follow-up on this:

I gave my presentation. It was well-received; faculty that were present still comment on it when they see me around campus, two months later.

Here's a screenshot of the simulator:

Mags.png (229.79 KiB) Viewed 6005 times

Here's the presentation itself (pardon my jitteriness):


The software I presented was fairly rushed. It lacked editing features but could import and export models; the model in the presentation was written by hand (in a hackish, XML format), embedded in the app bundle, and set to automatically load so I could save time at the start of the presentation. Much of the code for that version of the simulator was written between Monday and Tuesday, the presentation was on Thursday. My school is a shithole and doesn't have online registration, and registration for continuing students opened on Tuesday morning. I camped out in line and write all of the notable functionality between 8 pm Monday and 1 pm Tuesday. I have serious doubts about its stability, lol.

I'm currently in the process of a complete rewrite. I am decoupling the bulk of the code from Qt, leaving open possibilites for headless simulations, platform specific frontends, even a web-based interface. My core design hasn't changed much but I've had a few ideas for improved usability, which may require architectural changes in order to implement. I am hoping to have a beta version prepared for use in my school's introductory physics labs by the end of this year.

[dandymcgee]

Great job on this Nokurn. With a bit more time this could easily become an invaluable visualization tool for introductory physics / astronomy courses.

[XianForce]

That model was great, Nokurn! Wish you the best of luck with MIT and Stanford!

As for myself, I just finished community college and I'm attending UC Irvine in the Fall (majoring in CSE). I'm quite excited for that. I haven't spent much time coding, I've been working, working out, and working some more to save money for university.

But it's nice to hear what you guys have all been up to

[Cristian Ion]

Today I sold my soul to Computer Science at local University Nothing can stay in my path now!!
You guys were great inspiration in what I've accomplished so far

[dandymcgee]

Today I sold my soul to Computer Science at local University Nothing can stay in my path now!!
You guys were great inspiration in what I've accomplished so far

Take advantage of every opportunity while you can man, it will be worth it!