If you want to, why aren't you doing a startup now?

I had an email (of all things ! Not a comment here or on HN where I submitted the last post) asking me if I wanted to build a company so much why aren't I doing that instead of working for a consultancy doing staff augmentation at an investment bank.

It's something I ask myself a lot too.

Firstly, I gots bills to pay! Rent in London isn't cheap! If my parents were well off or my spouse was earning tons then it'd be a different story, but right now I just finished Uni and after having to pay the 3 month security deposit + a months rent + a ton of other things I didn't have much left. I want to get a cushion before I so anything too hasty.

Secondly, when I was here for my work experience year, I learned a ton, technical know-how aside I had no idea how a business really worked, I hadn't seen any of the dance everybody in business here does, how to execute a project and how to deal with things (and people) that are throwing it off course. How to build a proper relationship with someone through all the barriers some put up by default (hint, it often begins with alcohol, "I'll lose some control if you do, and we'll see what we're about").

The rules are different in the startup world, but not totally different, profit still needs to be made, people still need to get along, I began to see the sheer number of mistakes or long routes I would have taken, and I didn't even get to see that much of all this, it was only the extra projects I did after the 9-6 that I got some exposure.

I haven't got that so much at the moment as I've been working a project that's a bit 'meh', but I've learned a lot about people. Sometimes it's hard to imagine why someone would do something that seems so obviously detrimental to themselves and the team, I was surprised how much those same closed book types opened up when you ask them if they fancy going to lunch. People are complicated, as obvious as that is I need to never forget it. I'm off that project in a few days so hopefully that comes next will give me an opportunity to discover more.

So I'm still learning, I'm learning and I'm saving money, and a friend and I are trying to come up with ideas that would be worth working on, and I'm building things in my non-work time that might give me some more financial independence.

Any idea what else could I do? One thing I can think of is going to more startup-y events, the only problem I've had with that is when I go after work I can see the stares when I'm wearing a suit, like the "not one of us" vibe and I have to work extra to show that I'm a person not a suit !

The Starcraft2 wallet helps :p

Figuring out what I want, and where I'm at

Younger college me was at a Weatherspoons (cheap reasturant/bar) with two friends, Matt and Rich, Rich was just as nerdy as us but hid it well, he played a ton of games like Rome: Total War and read the books for Warhammer etc.

Here's a "great" picture of em:

 Matt's on the far left, Rich is on the far right.

  I wasn't much better:

Tonight he couldn't decide if he wanted ice cream or chocolate fudge cake, he closed his eyes and scrunched his face up.

Matt asked him what the hell we was doing.

"Shhh ! I'm consulting the council !"

After I stopped laughing I wondered who'd be on my council. To this day whenever I have something I really don't know how to handle or can't decide, one of the things I'll do is "consult the council".

"Why don't you ask your friends/family, you massive saddo !"

Shut up. I do, but sometimes that doesn't really help, they have their own motivations etc.

My council consists of: Me, me at 14 years old, the me that I want to be at 40, stupid awesome hero me and my three best friends. My biological father (who I haven't seen since I was ~5 and is a complete a hole) has made an appearance only once, when I was really lost.

Recently I've been trying to figure out what I want, and why, usually in the shower or walking to work.

UDK Multiplayer Issue: Can't connect to server on own computer

This was an annoying issue that I couldn't solve last time, I was trying to run 2 instances of UDK on my own machine for easier multiplayer testing, and I couldn't connect. I was following this:

http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/875692-Lan-Multiplayer-in-One-PC-For-Getting-Started.

and getting this when I tried to join using "connect 127.0.0.1"

Log: Pending connect to '127.0.0.1/UDKFrontEndMap?Name=Player?Team=255' failed; Duplicate UID

I'm running with steam subsystem enabled (which is currently the default) and as a result I wondered if this had anything to do with it, after a google around I found that steam does indeed do an authentication check, which fails when I'm connecting to myself (hence the duplicate UID message).

To fix this find the UDKGame.ini and change the following values to false:

[Engine.AccessControl]
bAuthenticateClients=True
bAuthenticateServer=True
bAuthenticateListenHost=True

This should clear it right up ^_^

One foot in the wagon 2 : Back in the habit

In the last few months I started working for reals ! I'm not a proper ickle software developer ^_^ Shame the project I'm currently working on is soul sucking >.<

To keep my loss-of-soul to a minimum I've been writing a Windows / WinPhone 7 game all about Math !



This has kept me busy but I've started to get an itch for the UDK again. I've decided to split my time 80/20 between my Math game and continuing to learn the UDK. Yesterday I downloaded the latest UDK and started having a tinker again. I remembered more than I expected and still have my old projects incase I've forgotten anything.

First step will be to go over all the stuff I could do before, here's to something resembling progress !

Some Quick WIP stuff

Haven't worked a ton on the UDK with Ren comming up etc, so I thought I'd share what I did do.

First off I learned what kismet and matinee are and a little of how to use them, that combined with the vocal powers of Mike and Ren produced this:



Another thing to note is that is that I found the CustomTimeDilation actor property ^_^ so I made a gun that puts up forcefields which slow the projectiles to a crawl, then when you alt fire they all go back to normal.

Secondly I've been idly creating some weapons, I was going to have a kunai and a fireball, but the fireball ended up getting a little out of hand ^_^



This shows off some other stuff, like getting character animations working (albeit a bit crap) and a weapon that correctly uses the arms meshes in tandem with the weapon. This was something that I wanted to get working entirely before I did a tutorial to make sure that I knew the ins and outs.

Also thanks to the kunai's melee attack I'm using traces etc for collision.

So that's one thing checked off the list, and two halfs of things ^_^

Next up is to finish (and slightly balance) the weapons a bit more so we can have another multiplayer session, then do the arms tutorial, then start working on a little self contained project, nothing too big, something doable within a week methinks. When I start that I'll create that new enemy and tick that off my list too ^_^

I have things, soon to share !

Progress ! Sweet progress ^_^ Also I've got Mike and Matt into the UDK which means that we're all gonna become fucking pimp-wizards together.

So what have I learnt? After a good amount of rubbing my face all over the UDK source code and internet I've got a number of the things that I wanted to understand understood. I now "get" pawn animations along with a decent understanding of AnimationTrees, plus how to get the first person character specific hands that come along with the UDK Liam model ingame and working. I'm gonna record a tutorial soon as it's something that I had to dig for.

That's a hand ! A Robot hand of my robot character ^_^ It might not look it but this pic represents a lot of win for me especially considering that I was trying to tackle things at an odd angle. For some reason I'm determined to learn the tools to make a fully functioning custom main character, so that includes things like importing custom 3d models, custom 3rd person and 1st person animations.

For the most part I have all those pieces working, now I need to put them together and hope they don't break ^_^

I've also been playing around with APEX destructables which are fun if not a very unfinished feature, not being able to set mass is a good example of something huge missing.

When I got too frustrated with figuring out that stuff I took a break and learnt a few other things + did some light 3d modelling/rigging. I've been trying to rig a frickin' awesome model of Fei Long that was ripped from SSFV but I've never done any proper rigging so it's hard ^_^ For the most part I have it working but his hand's skin weight is a mess. The good news is that the udk imported the skeletal mesh + materials no problem (including bump map) so he looked awesome ingame ! He's rigged to the default UDK skele too so he can use all the default animations, but the skinning isn't finished so it spazzes out every now and then :(

I modeled a crap flat in half an hour ! Here it is in all it's basic semi textured glory. The next thing that I model I'm going to put everything I have into it and stop hiding behind how little time I spend on it ^_^ I used to be "not totally newbie" at modelling stuff and I'd like to get better than I was. I think I'll put aside a whole day soon and model something.

Also I'm noticing the lighting seems a little off on some of the triangles underneath the windows, any idea how to prevent that?

What else... Oh I watched the tuts on soft body and cloth simulation so that's added to my bag o tricks ^_^ Plus I spent an hour today getting the hoverboard ingame and I'd like to release a tutorial on that too (the old ones no longer work) plus explain why you have to do certain things to get it ingame.

Also I've started to take a proper look at how the pawns plus controllers work, starting out with writing my own basic enemy, which lead to this:




At the moment it's very simple stuff, making them move toward me a little then making them go into ragdoll mode briefly.

One thing I am noticing is that in UTDeathmatch the bots are accessing the SQUAD variable lots and comming up with an exception:

ScriptWarning: Accessed None 'Squad'
SSEnemyController DM-Test.TheWorld:PersistentLevel.SSEnemyController_1
Function UTGame.UTBot:HearNoise:020E

This isn't just in HearNoise either. I need to figure out if assigning a default squad is the right solution or simply overriding the functions is a better bet as I bet the exceptions are eating into the performance and I'd like to know how many of these I can get running around the game.

So what's next?

• Release a firstperson arms tutorial
• Learn more about the pawns/controllers + make something cool
• Learn another random part of the UDK
• Create a new enemy including : New model, new skeleton, new animations, new animtree, new AI

This post marks the start of me getting closer to obtaining the rank of "Not totally crap" at the UDK.

*Raises glass*

TO PROGRESS!

Hey ! What's goin' on ?

So it's been over a month and lots has happened, in terms of my goals I've been going to the gym almost every other day and feel a lot fitter so that's nice, I haven't played much tennis because of the bad weather which sucks, but the really good news is I found someone who's helping me learn the UDK ^_^

I managed to cook and distribute what I've worked on to Mike and Ren, I knew that in theory you can just press a button and out pops an installer for your game, but actually knowing that it works is reassuring, to be able to send it to some friends and have my changes working in multiplayer was hot sex too, things like that really bump up the enjoyment when learning.

At the moment I've got a better understanding of the pawn/inventory/weapon systems and I've been doing stuff like creating new weapons (like one that forces the victim into ragdoll mode etc) along with modifying the vehicles to get a handle on how they work. In a few hours I'm gonna be taught how to get proper custom animations playing nicely with the AnimationTrees, I think after I learn that along with a good approach to making an infestation-style enemy I'd like to make a small survival style mod, I think that'd be a good excuse to see how many actors I can throw at the engine and see how it handles in multiplayer etc as I'd like to make a small game that pits a load of almost over-powered players against hordes of really tough enemies, like Crackdown meets EDF.

Here's hoping that the next time I post something it'll have sexy screenshots of what I've worked on, in the meantime I'll leave you with a cool screenshot I managed to snap while we were testing, just before my face got blown off ^_^


Ninja-Edit

So a little bit of an update as I'm working on animation at the moment, I seem to be having issues when playing my animation in the AnimationTree. I've uploaded a video showing what's wrong so if anyone can figure out what I'm messing up I'd really appreciate it ^_^

Ninja Edit number the second

When I disable the "SkelControlLimb: LeftHandIK" the animation plays unhindered, but disabling something that's on by default seems silly and I haven't checked the ramifications... Time to read up on SkelControlLimb nodes and figure out what the hell that thing about my characters head does.