Posts by Corwin

The exterior of the roof is almost done, only have to finish the wall opposite the one visible in the pics at the back of the roof with the wood cover and the big window/door. Most houses in the area have that sort of wooden panels on the ends, they look bright right now but within 2 or 3 years they will look like old wood thanks to the rain. The house could sure use a bit of facade work but that'll have to wait.

We also broke the wall open into the bathroom to change the vertical beam that was all moldy from a water infiltration in that corner and found another beam under it that should be changed but it's no big deal since it has been cut in the past and is only about 2m long. We'll use the opportunity to open a new door in that corner so that you don't have to enter the room next to the bathroom to get into the bathroom itself, which means that room can become a proper bedroom now, not just a playground for kids or something.

I'll soon run out of money though so after finishing the roof, isolating it, and preparing the walls on the 1st floor for their renovation, I'll focus on the living room (I already bought all I need for that a few months ago) and kitchen for a while.

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As mentioned by others, I believe such a project has a chance to happen only if it is made to support free contributions to it. We mostly have LDs and Env. artists in here plus a few coders, so it would make sense start from a simple base concept (e.g. it's HL2 deathmatch with no gravity in space environments; abstract shooter with only one weapon and levels made of primitives, etc.) and let people collaborate on creating maps when and how they want. I think it's fair to say that many of us no longer have the free time we used to when we lived at our parents or boarding schools and all, so it'd be madness IMO to expect a fully dedicated team contributing to the project in an organised manner. Better go with a simple core gameplay idea that doesn't rely on new characters or weapons etc. and let people then contribute content to it (which could be game design additions too, not just maps). Then you mainly need a few managers (e.g. staff members) who can sync it all (share updates, run votes about stuff, organise playtests, etc.) and a small core team who can create the base gameplay (some coders, some technical designers with the engine of choice).

Trying to do a SP map is going to be like too many chefs cooking the soup, better go on doing it the way some of us are already doing it, such as with RickD or FMPONE working with other designers on maps. We don't need a team for that sort of stuff, and trying to build a full one for a single level makes no sense. That's my view on it anyway.

I have a roof now! We still have to put tiles on it on Monday, and finish the edges, gutters, etc but the bulk of the work is done. We also broke a whole lot more stuff with my brother to prepare for isolation/renovation of the walls and beams in the bedrooms (carving out some of the old dirt to make space to refill with plaster and such).

My brother left today, and we can't work on the house as it's a public holiday here, so I'll enjoy a long weekend to rest a bit from the work. Feels good to have made decent progress on the house in such a short time though, my brother was here only 2 weeks and we've removed the roof, changed all the horizontal beams under it, built a new one, opened a few walls, removed all the remaining wood panels in the house, and evacuated 6 waste containers of around 5+ tons each.

There will be some weeks before I get the windows to go in the attic, so after we're done covering the roof with the tiles and such, I'll focus on isolating it and the walls in the bedrooms for a bit. I can keep the scaffoldings for another 4 weeks if I want to so that's nice, I'll have time to do the shutters and install them.

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Been at it for 1 week and a day, and all the beams supporting the roof itself (top ceiling/floor) are replaced and the roof is gone! We covered it for the rain, and now I pray that it doesn't rain too much this week so we can proceed. We do have a few things we can do around the house if it rains outside, but not more than a day's worth. Part of the new beams for the roof have been delivered too, a crane-truck will come soon to bring the main one up to the top.

I also decided to open up the space a bit more in the house now that I've seen the ceiling off, so while I was breaking the chimney conduct on the second floor I also broke the wall around it, so we turn a tiny room + a decent one into a massive one that has an open ceiling and an office above. Kind of a loft in the end. That allows us to get rid of the shitty doorway that was entering the tiny room, which was at the top of the stairs, and had an extra step, which made it dangerous for a kid (hit your foot on the step, and you fall into the stairs). We'll also move the existing doorway into the main room a bit back into the corridor so the stairs up to the office space under the roof is part of the room and not out of it, so we don't need a door for it either.

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Here's a photo dump of the progress of the first 2 days of work. We had one more bad news: one of the vertical beams in the corner is rotten to the core so we have to replace it and that means breaking part of the wall of the bathroom (basically the only room that we didn't want to touch too much) and since my wife and kids were holed up in that room and the one next to it, they have to move out. That doesn't raise the price much though, got a new estimation by the carpenter and we should be able to handle it. To make sure we don't get more bad news I spent part of the afternoon exposing all of the beams on the 1st floor so we could check them out, and it's all ok for the rest.

The carpenter got in touch with his old landlord and we get a small flat just across the road for 130 euro a month so that's ok. It's super old and crap and smells like the old caravan abandoned in the forest behind my grandparents' place when I was a kid, but that'll do for a week or two, and we are literally 100m away from our place if we need anything. We'll probably move there tomorrow and put the stuff in those rooms under blankets and such. It sucks to move out just when we just got the kitchen working, but we have to bite the bullet.

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You can see in that one how eaten the beams were. It's actually pretty scary to think they were holding the ceiling above us. Some break in half with just a hit from a mace.

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Definitely planning on isolating the whole thing before the winter (before the end of october is the plan), both the roof itself and the floor below it that we have to redo, or we'll freeze our asses off. When I mentioned "biggest bill so far" I was talking about other places we lived at since we are in Germany, we always got money back for heating and water but always paid extra for eletricity.

The heating system uses gas, and was installed brand new in 2007 so that's cool. I don't think I would have bought if either the windows or the heating were bad, but both are ok.The old isolation works suprisingly not too bad as far as I could see, it seems to not loose too much heat at least in the rooms we did heat when it got down to 8 degrees and below outside for a couple weeks in August. Sort your weather out Germany...

We broke all of the space between the beams under the attic floor today and removed all the dust. We start replacing the beams tomorrow and breaking the two walls at both ends of the roof. Photos coming soon

So it was a bit trickier than expected because I had to raise the kitchen counters so the washing machine would fit underneath higher than the original kitchen setup allowed, but we finally started using the kitchen today. About time too, because tomorrow we're starting the destruction and rebuilding of the roof.

It's far from perfect, a few things aren't straight, a few things are already damaged because we bought the furniture used and cheap, and I had to do what I could to adjust it to fit. I still have to finish the doorways, the shelves under the stairs (left of the doorway on the first shot), and put the planks at the feet of the furniture to hide the supports and pipes below. My wife likes it though so mission accomplished! The two extra appliances we had to buy (fridge and dishwasher) we chose to go for extra energy saving stuff (A+++) because electricity is expensive in Germany (biggest of our bills so far).

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About the roof, I had a bad surprise last week after removing the layer of concrete from the floor of the attic, that all of the beams going across the house and forming the ceilings and hold the walls together (except the main center one that holds all of those) are completely wasted. Basically, anything that was oak survived the years, anything that was pine was eaten by insects or rotted away under the concrete/plaster. So on top of redoing the roof itself, we now have to redo the floor underneath it to replace all of those transversal beams, and so that means we are also breaking all of the ceilings in the 1st floor rooms. Luckily that only affects the main house, not the extension that was built on top of it (got its own roof) so we can keep on living there while the rest of the house is carved open and rebuilt. The house is now surrounded by scaffoldings, my brother arrives this afternoon and we're starting the work tomorrow with the carpenter and his apprentice. Was supposed to last 2 weeks but with those additional beams, it'll probably be more around 3. Was supposed to cost around 20000 euros and will probably be more like 25000.

Here's the attic before and after removing the concrete:

(You can see the spot where I had to remove the chimney to pass the electrical cables down to the living room in the first shot there).

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So I'm wrapping up the kitchen, hopefully will be usable on Sunday evening or Monday morning. I need to hurry because the rebuilding of the roof is going to happen from the 24th on, and I need to break a whole lot of things (including a whole floor to do a mezzanine) way before we start so the carpenter can know what beams he needs and how to cut them.

So I've redone the floor correctly this time so it wasn't too high and was fairly flat, done the floor tiles and borders on that, put a new coat of special plaster over the whole room to cover small defects and isolate it a bit, and painted it yesterday. Still needs a few touch-ups on the paint job, and to lazure the wood boards on the side to be a color that matches our kitchen furniture better, and to do the joints between the floor tiles. Then I can cut up the furniture to fit, finish the water connexions and exposed plugs, and we can start using it.

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Move to a foreign country where you don't speak the language and just nod when people talk to you.

Seriously though, having a kid makes you hate the world. One woman once grabbed my kid's leg sticking out of the baby carrier to check if he wasn't cold with a look of "you don't know what you're doing'. Family is the worst though especially those that think that putting a kid in the car outside when he screams is a valid way of letting him "exercise" his lungs

I now tend to avoid all parenting topics except with my wife, as even other parents will either judge you or feel judged when you mention your way of doing things.

Actually the best way we found to fight this is to educate our kid to not let other people give him shit just cause they are adults. Now when we have visitors and they want him to do something or behave this or that way because they thuink that's how children should, he politely shuts them off and we internally smile. "No grandma, if that's how you want to play, you can take these toys and play, and I will play like I want to with those".

But yeah, fuck those people, hold strong against them and do not back down and eventually family members (at least from my experience) give up on trying to be know-it-alls. Remember too that they often see you do something and feel awkward for not having done that themselves, it's like a constant challenge to the way they did it, and it's even worse if it's a topic with a right and wrong (not just preferences and opinions) as it questions their old methods and few people can handle that elegantly.

Good points, no she basically does nothing on the side except play some casual games on her tablet and some light gardening.

She joined a badminton club in the past but got pregnant soon after and she didn't feel like driving during the pregnancy and has yet to get back to it now that the baby's out. I don't know about getting her to do the renovations, she was motivated to help out but not take care of big stuff like breaking things or doing plaster or tiles or stuff like that, more just painting and other polish tasks. She also has some pains in her back due to giving birth and sees a specialist to fix it, so I doubt now's the best time to let her do some manual work, but I'll mention it.

I do know the feeling of taking care of the kids alone, and I agree that when the full responsibility is on you you just do it without considering options, whereas when your partner is there, you both count on the other one to do everything and it ends up sucking for everyone. Maybe the key would be to spend less time all together and split it all out, me + her, me + kids, her + kids, as much as possible.

I'll see if I can get her back into driving (we're a bit in the middle of nowhere so she can't do much on foot). She also met another mother recently who speaks french and has a baby roughly the same age as my son and they're supposed to meet regularly to let the kids play together so that'd be nice, but we'll see.

Thanks!

Quote from Vilham

I can't provide any advice on kids/marriage/owning a house. But if you want to grab a beer/play some games sometime you can always give me a shout mate.

Thanks Will, very much appreciated

Well there's no chance she'll take on a job, even if I managed to convince her to give her children to some random nanny/kindergarten, as she's a nurse and the equivalency between France and Germany are weird (her diploma would mean she can only wipe people's asses pretty much instead of saving lives) and she has to pass a german test to make sure she speaks perfect german, which is far from the case.

This is actually something we pondered when we were looking for a house to buy, we could have bought closer to our hometowns and within reach of our families, and the presence of those people is actually what encouraged us to stay here (besides the fact that there's no game companies there at all). Like I said, some of our life choices and principles don't get along well with certain members of our families, in particular hers. I like my family, but living next to hers sounded like a bit of a nightmare, now that we have kids (and she's the first in her family to have any).

Anyway, no point discussing how I ended up in this situation in the first place, there were a few bad decisions, or rather good decisions for some reasons but that create conflicts for other reasons. I did talk to her again today about it all, because I absolutely hate leaving problems 'unsolved' or at least undiscussed to the extent you can discuss them, and she explained her point better this time. It fucking sucks how in the heat of arguments people just lose track of what actually is bothering them and jump subjects and point fingers all the time, leaving two angry people and no solution in sight.

I'm not saying it'll be all fine, there will be more conflicts and more challenges before we're out of the woods, but we'll see, not much I feel I can do about that right now, better focus on the renovations while I can. Thanks for the support dudes, felt good to share, even if that doesn't solve anything in and of itself, it's good to get opinions and suggestions and to not feel too alone sometimes. Thanks! Someone else's turn now

Cheers guys, thanks for the thoughts! My wife doesn't work no, she's dedicated to the kids, but confesses too that she can't handle it on her own. She basically expects me to be another her, on who she can count to take over when she just doesn't feel like applying all the awesome principles she's trying to follow. And I try, but half the time in the back of my head I'm just thinking how I'd like to be programming this, designing that, and I can never really be in the moment. I take her to the farmer's market, or to the swimming pool, and when we come back she says she felt urged to go home because she felt as if that's what I wanted to do badly, even though I thought I acted as if I had all the time in the world.

Recently I suggested that she take the kids and go to my mother's place back in france for the end of the summer so I could focus on the house in the meantime and be done with most of it when she comes back, but she couldn't fathom doing that, both for not wanting to be away from me and for knowing she'd go crazy trying to handle the kids on her own. I don't really have proper friends in Germany to do the nights out sadly (I'm guessing having a kid only months after I arrived didn't help socialize outside of work), and even if I could join on some of the Crytekers' events, I'm currently quite far from Frankfurt to warrant the travel time and train fees.

The thing is, I tend to put all of it on the current situation and stress associated with it, but then she points out that it was like that before it all started, and I've been like that to some extent ever since I went back to work after my son was born, almost 3 years ago. If that's the case, I doubt that even being done with the renovations will solve my troubles. At some point I'll go back to work and have even less time to do anything besides in the train to work, and at the end of the day she'll be exhausted from handling 2 kids all day, and things will get complicated again.

Anyway, we'll see, I do hope it gets better towards December when we're done with the roof and bedrooms

I'm slowly getting back into renovating my house and making progress on the kitchen so that's good. Had a serious argument with my wife today though, as she blames me for not managing to balance all of it properly and being mean/distant to my older son now that we have a new baby. So many things about this situation remind me of my parents (that didn't end well) that it makes me want to go back in time and punch my past self in the balls so hard.

I try to be a good dad in spirit, but in heart, sadly, I'm more passionate about making games than raising my kids and that fucking sucks on so many levels that I fear it'll be the end of my family at one point or another. It's making me distant from my kids and wife in general, and not really happy on a day to day basis, which is a fact that's probably clearer to them than it is to me (I don't often even consider whether I'm happy or not, there's just stuff that needs doing and I don't like being inactive and feeling like my life goes on without doing something with it, so as long as I'm busy I don't care so much). There are times I really wish I didn't have kids, times I wish I never met my wife, and times I feel like a monster for not being able to enjoy the amazing family I have.

I've tried to distance myself from it all, but I can never wander too far before I feel even more trapped and useless without a creative outlet. I've got dozens of notebooks filled with notes about the games and levels I want to make and it's been a while since I read a parenting book.

My wife's deep into alternate ways of living, such as veganism, attachment parenting, etc. and I admire her for it and that makes her much more interesting a person to be with, but it adds so many difficulties to being a parent too that it's hard to enjoy it for me. It has cut us off from friends and family in subtle but definite ways, and it makes it hard to find replacements for them. My wife is like on this journey to becoming a healthy positive human being and makes me feel like I'm just a grumpy obstacle to that. I work my ass off to get us anywhere financially and do most of the chores around, I renovate a house so we have a place to live and more cash at the end of the month to do stuff with, and I try to work on a game project in the hope that it fills this urge in me while potentially bringing in some money eventually, and yet that doesn't amount to anything because at the end of the day I'm tired and impatient with my son sometimes when he cries because he doesn't want to go to sleep for the 100th time this month.

I'm fucking exhausted, more psychologically than physically. I feel trapped, claustrophobic almost, and that every single thing I've done since I've been in Germany has been digging a hole while standing in it. I want out, but I have too much love for my kids to want to ever impose them to grow up without a dad, and I think I'd go a bit insane like my dad did to think of them from a distance, and I don't know how I could live with myself when I have to admit to them one day that I gave up on them because I really wanted to work on a game.

There's something I'm so dependent on in the act of thinking about and building a game/level that I have a hard time really identifying in myself. It's nothing like a job or a hobby anymore. It goes against logic and even my best interest, but it's just there. I've been doing mods/levels/games since I was 13 and it has given me a goal and a sense in life and I feel like it's an addiction that will bring me the best and the worst things in my life at the same time. I guess that sort of dedication was a bit incompatible with raising a family and that I was stupid to even think that it'd work out. I often ponder whether it'd be best for everyone to just quit now and let my wife raise the family she wants to have, but I don't have the balls to take that step, and it may me something I'll again regret not to have done later if it all goes pear shaped.

I do feel like there's a way out on the other side of the tunnel, but it's sometimes hard to hold on until I find it, especially when you feel that despite your best efforts, you are not answering to your wife and kids' needs and expectations.

Anyway, you know you are desperate as fuck when the only place you can think of sharing stuff like that is on an online forum... Sorry for ruining the mood hey, but since the topic was friends who commit suicide I figured it wouldn't be worse

You should be a lighting artist or something

I'm curious by the way: as far as I understood you need to register the campaign on kickstarter by someone who is paying taxes either in the UK or the US. Have they updated the rules, was I mistaken, or is that correct and how do you intend to circumvent that issue, being based in Sweden?

The 2 Vampire the Masquerade games were not nice places to visit but I quite enjoyed their universes when I was younger.

Wind Waker for the scale and cute graphics and loads of mechanics to rediscover the world, although it dragged on a bit too long to really want any more.

Jade Empire and Beyond Good and Evil were awesome in that respect too

Final Fantasy 9, and 10 to some extent, loved the diversity of places and enemies, and the feeling that there's so many things to do, visit and get. It's better when the world opens up a bit more too, the beginning is usually very linear. Their worlds are also quite fleshed out and coherent.

,

Red Dead Redemption was good too, but sort of lacked in incentives for exploring random places, which would have worked better for me.

Sorry about the dump, but all of these would be good material. If you have access to the whole of GDC Vault, I believe there are a few premium-only lectures on the subject too.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1018050/K…-for-Indie-Game

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020613/SCALE-and-the-Ethics-of

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015671/A-Strategic-Approach-to

http://robotloveskitty.tumblr.com/post/403181174…r-on-a-0-budget

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/StephenD…_Developers.php

http://www.indiegamegirl.com/no-budget-marketing/

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KeeWonHo…lty_Matters.php

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/SamFarme…_Postmortem.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ZacharyS…Kickstarter.php

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/WilliamD…Kickstarter.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAn…g_and_Sales.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Benjamin…_Your_Video.php

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BenTrist…t_the_money.php

http://crowdfundinghelp.com/

Sorry guys, been rather busy with the baby this last month, barely had any time to work on the house. I did make the decision to remove most of the wood panels on the walls, to gain some space/light and because they're a bit crap. To enlarge the entrance to the kitchen (was too low now that I flattened the room) I removed those first and cleared the side of the staircase too, which is way better than it was. I sometimes feel all I have to do is bring back the house to its original state, removing all the layers of crap that each owner seems to have added over the years

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Also I started doing the floor tiles in the kitchen but I had messed up the floor screed a bit and I started at the high point but soon realized it was going to be higher than the intended level of the living room, so I'm not breaking the tiles I just put in to redo it all properly. Oh well, I'll learn to not skip steps next time, it happened because I didn't bother adding wood boards as guides when I was doing the floor so there was one spot that was higher than the rest.

I also should hear back from the carpenter to know his final price for redoing the roof, and I got some new electrical switches installed so the electrical system can handle multiple demanding appliances running together without breaking.

My family is visiting next week, hopefully while my older kid is busy playing with them I can focus on doing some work on the kitchen to finish the damn thing. Got my brand new dishwasher and fridge waiting to be installed and I'm still forced to wash the dishes in the bathroom sink...

Aaaaaand I'm a dad again... my second child was born this morning: a girl named Zoey. And dealing with a newborn while having a 2.5 years old kid running around all excited and tired is no more fun than what it sounds like.