Where Have I Been?

For the past few months I have been hidden under a rock, not posting anything. Why? Well, life moves fast and I was keeping up with it. I have taken on one independent project (near completion), two after hours projects, and a full time job. I found myself wanting for time but also enjoying what I am doing.

First is my current independent project. I have recently finished the core features of a web based text adventure game. Why? As any programmer/engineer/mad-scientist will inform you: "Because I can." And I certainly can, did, and will continue with. Quite frankly, the project just needs some added game-play features and a hosting platform. The technologies used in this project were:

• .NET 4.x Framework
• ASP.NET
• Entity Framework
• AngularJS
• Identity Framework
• Twitter Bootstrap

What was the biggest motivation behind this project? I could say it was a yearning for the classic games, or a drive to make a deep story driven adventure. Quite frankly though, it was to learn various web technologies. It has always been my weakest skill in the world of programming. However, in this world, that would leave me without a job (games or not, the web is growing and so are the demands for positions to create it).

The other two projects that I am working on are all done in Unreal Engine 4, the engine I raved about so few months ago. I have pretty much stopped all production in Unity as I just didn't want to use it. I prefer C++ when I want to, and uber-fast prototyping in Blueprints when I need to. Plus I find the tool sets in UE4 significantly more robust and user-friendly. It feels wrong saying user-friendly, but it is true and it makes the projects move along smoother and at a more rapid pace than I have ever seen.

I am not sure as to whether I can talk in detail about these final two projects, but I will definitely give many updates if they turn out to go farther and allow me to share screenshots/videos with everyone.

Until next time! Keep an eye out on this blog as I will be posting a link to my web based game very soon once I get a hosting platform up and running.