Just a shoutout, I'm not dead, just trying to figure out things in my life! I'm working on a blogpost concerning a multi-threaded load balancing server, am re-organizing and working more on my Warp engine, though with starting anew I may rename the engine and lead it in a slightly different direction.

Concerning what I'm trying to figure out: I had lost hope in going to gradschool given that I would be in debt for a ridiculous amount of money with my combined debt from undergrad and the cost of the program as well as the cost of living. However, financial aid may save me, maybe. I was planning on applying to various game development companies, but I'm not going to say as to not hurt my chances. ;P Even with the possibility of financial aid saving me, I've grown a bit fond of the idea of getting a job now, as there's going to be a lot more competition in 2 years from all the new game development programs that have popped up. So, maybe I will just try getting a job in the industry, as it'll be harder down the line.

I just bought Masters of Doom, and I must say it's quite good thus far. The book concerns the two Johns, John Carmack, and John Romero, the founders of Id Software, the creator's of Doom, and pioneers of the First Person Shooter (otherwise known as the FPS, for those of you who don't know). So, important guys. I've found it interesting and comforting to know that both of them at my age hadn't quite settled down yet, so I still have some time. ;p Just graduating, and the condition of the job market, I can't help but feel a little anxious. I would also like to point out that this book is so far quite inspiring, and as the fire of my passion has been a bit lacking in fuel, this is re-ignited it a bit. So I must say I'm glad I picked up this book! :)

I'm possibly starting a new project, though thinking about the undertakings I'm planning on scaling it back a bit. Essentially I'm looking into creating a Farscape fan-game, mainly for educational purposes, at this point anyway. The Farscape game that was made, was a let down to fans, it seems. As such, I wanted to take a stap at it, modeling the game after Mass Effect and the Star Wars role-playing games, possibly bringing the game into an MMO form. I've been doing networking lately, and would love to setup the possibility of players running dedicated servers and having a Farscape universe that they could sculpt and explore. Of course, the reason I want to scale back, is that I realize there is a lot of content creation that would be needed; and right now the art assets needed for the game, are too great in magnitude to make this feasible with the small number of people that would originally be involved. If anything, I'm going to start by making a tech-demo of sorts and using it to attract people who want to devote time and effort to the project. You can find a thread concerning project ideas here: Farscape video game? We're trying to gather ideas, so please feel free to post there or on this page! :D

Anyway, I'm working on designing an interface for my networking solution, then reprogramming the backend so a server can support more users, and use the appropriate Windows functions to calculate how many connections can be supported on a port. So, I'll be messing around with lots of C++ networking, and doing research and coming up with ideas for how to deal with security issues that may arise. Look forward to more details!