Corwin

RANDOM: We try to keep on preparing the upper floor (there's a couple rooms that are clean and done recently, even though they suck and I'll redo most of them) for the arrival of the new baby next week or the one after that. My son's world now revolves around tools and such, he knows the names of every one etc. Also the family seems to enjoy the garden, so it probably counts as a good purchase then

LIVING ROOM: The living room was actually fairly small in the past, and at some point one of the owners made an extension to it into the garden so it's sticking out of the house itself, so now it's quite a decent size and fairly light too. At first we figured that room wasn't so bad, and that with a few touch ups we could start using it, and we even set up some of the furniture in it at the start to have a place to be (we moved all that upstairs now to avoid it taking up too much dust). There was one wall that wasn't straight, all bloated in the center between the entrance and the kitchen (where a standing beam was) which I wanted to look into straightening up, and we also discovered that one wall at the back (in the extension) was taking water from outside on the terrace, since the retards who made it seemed to think that using a tar sheet to stop water infiltrations was good, but only on the first brick and onwards, so water can just go through that first row of bricks... So after removing the shitty old wallpaper and furniture, I started chiseling at the wall to find out what was causing it to be so semi-oval in shape. Found that beam, which looked quite damaged and not really the sort you'd want to made apparent. So I wanted to just remove the surface of it until I could cover it up with plaster again, having straightened the wall somewhat. At some point though, breaking through the old plaster and revealing layers of all wallpapers under it, and finally reaching the layer of dirt/shit/straw below, I went Fuck it! and decided to expose the whole wall and also the horizontal beam since I always liked exposed wooden beams and wanted to see if it was usable, and also because the vertical beam had some damage by woodworms so I wanted to make sure the horizontal one wasn't being slowly eaten under my nose. I found another beam in the wall, and the standing beam was still pretty shit, with half of its side eaten up by worms and the other having a big hole in it. Also the previous owners just cut part of the bottom of the beam probably to fit some furniture or something like that, and so it was a mess. So after checking with the carpenter that came to check up on the roof, I moved a good few centimeters of both vertical beams, and when that was taking too long I invested in an electrical planer to finish it off. Also had to do the same with the walls themselves, as some of the bricks were sticking out too much and I had to cut them and remove some of the old wall on the other side to gain a few centimeters. Was pretty happy about the horizontal beam though, it's old but solid and not too damaged so I can use it and keep it exposed. I wanted to expose the smaller beams that hold the ceiling/upper floor too, but since the extension was not done in the same way as the rest of the room, I can't, so I'll have to settle for the two beams only. Then we passed the cables through the chimney conduct and out the top opening, and redid all lights and added some plugs. It's now in a good shape to be covered up with plaster again then with a smooth cover (I placed those wooden pieces to be able to make the wall straight when I put the plaster. I polished all beams, treated them against worms and termites, and yesterday I covered them with a dark lasure. Should go just well with the laminated floor we bought a while ago. I also treated the wall that was getting water from the terrace by injecting insulation into all the bricks and I'm waiting a few more days for it to solidify before I cover the plaster that I removed with sanitized plaster and isolation to make sure water can't pass through (hopefully). I also have plans to put a drain along the outside wall when I redo the terrace outside, and I covered the outside wall with water-proof veneer to limit the infiltrations. I'm just waiting for the plumber to cut an old water pipe in the wall that I don't want to take the risk of having leak into the wall, then I can cover up the walls, redo the ceiling wallpaper, and do the floor insulation and laminated boards. Here's a picture of the beams now with the lasure on (still a bit glossy because it's not dry yet)

ENTRANCE HALLWAY: Not too much happened with that one, we just broke part of the wall to bring in new electrical cables for the lights and ring bell and exterior light, and had to open up the wooden covers on the wall to find that cable that was leaking current into the walls. The door in the center is a toilet, on the left leads to the entrance terrace and garage, and on the right is the kitchen (you can see the step/height difference). I decided to remove the wooden boards on the ceiling though, was too much wood, darkened the room too much and also was in the way of putting a new cable/lamp in the center of the ceiling (the electricians wanted to leave the light on the wall but no way). I'm currently in the process of covering the hole in the ceiling back up with compressed wood (those thick cardboard planks that can be found at the back of IKEA wardrobes and such) and then will wallpaper over it in white. The plans for this room include filling up the holes in the wall, redoing the wallpaper on the left wall, correcting the scratches and such on the wooden boards as much as possible, to add a cool wooden bench on the right there to store shoes and sit to take them off, and to slightly polish the entrance door to remove some height so it doesn't scratch against the floor when you close it. The stairs on the right is another issue which I'll talk more about when I get to workin on it.

KITCHEN: So I don't have a shot of the kitchen untouched, but here is how it looks about a week after we moved. The kitchen furniture is ours, we bought the whole thing for 500 bucks to some family that was moving out of a flat because we thought its rustic look would fit an old house like that. I since bought a new counter to go on top and to add the extra length to add a dishwasher, and we decided to buy a new, bigger and super efficient/eco friendly fridge to replace that small one. If you pay attention you will notice that the floor is not straight: the entrance hallway is about 25cm lower than the living room, and the kitchen connects both, so it was sloped with a small 5cm high step to the living room. That sucked. So I decided to flatten it all out to the level of the living room and to add a step at the transition with the hallway. Maybe eventually I'll also raise the level of the hallway floor but not right now. I started removing the tiles on the ground but figured that the glue under them might contain asbestos so to be safe I just covered the tiles after verifying that they were installed on solid concrete. I used extra-light concrete for the floor because of how much there was to fill and I didn't want to overcharge the house, so it's concrete mixed with polystyrene foam, with a layer of liquid concrete on top of flatten it properly. Messed it up a bit in some places so I'll have to adjust the height slightly (~1cm) with the glue I'll use for the floor tiles. I redid the wall tiles, and then realized we had to redo the electrical cables and plugs, but thankfully I didn't have to break the tiles again, just the kitchen-special plaster that I had put on the walls to flatten them out and correct the small defects. That's how much we had to break to pull the new cables in (to make them come all the way there, I had to break the remnants of an old chimney in the attic so we could drop the cables down the conduct and into the living room, then through the wall we reached the kitchen, and followed that beam to cross the room (even though I also wanted to expose that beam, that didn't leave me a choice. Broke quite a bit of the old plaster in the process, so had to fill it back up, which is tricky on the ceiling... Actually one of the reasons we had to redo the electrical system was that I kept getting slight electrical shocks while applying plaster on one part of the wall. After measuring with a multimeter, there was definitely some current going through where the plaster was still wet. We found a cable deep in the walls going to the toilet on the other side, that was leaking into the wall. Since the electrical installation didn't have any connexion to the ground either (that green/yellow cable in plugs) that meant that in case you got shocked you'd take all since you were more conductive, so really unsafe. The room is now on pause a bit, as I need to get a plumber to raise the heater's pipes by about 10cm so I can safely add my floor tiles and the edges around the walls. I need to put some basic wallpaper on the ceiling, do the floor tiles, and put some cover on the walls. I also need to cut my kitchen counter up to the proper sizes and to carve holes to insert the appliances etc, but that should be pretty straightforward. I still hope to finish before the baby arrives so we can cook properly (right now we're camping in one of the bedrooms with electrical plates etc.)

So as mentioned in the Buying a house and the games industry thread, I bought an old house and am currently renovating it. I took a year off for parental leave for when my second kid arrives, and some extra unpaid holidays before to try and get the house in a decent state before the birth. Since I just got me an internet, I figured I'd post some updates as I go along, for the sake of it and because I won't have much game-related to show for a while. With all the moving, I forgot to take some early shots of the empty, untouched state of the house, so in some cases we already removed wallpaper and old furniture, but oh well... Renovating is pretty fun in general, although sometimes you wish there wasn't so much to do, and I also had to call upon professionals for certain things like electricity and part of the water pipes work. There's been a few bad surprises (e.g. I thought I could live with the current electrical installation but after exposing part of it it became clear that it needed to be fully redone, or beams in the attic eaten by woodworms and thus having to redo the roof this summer) and a few good ones (e.g. finding massive wooden beams in a decent state under plaster). There's so many things I would look for now if I were to buy another house, it's crazy. I really had no idea how a house was made before, especially an old wooden traditional house like that with walls made of dirt + shit + straw and lots of small beams everywhere. Just an overview: the house is in a small village in the middle of the german countryside, between Friedberg and Giessen. It's surrounded by fields, rolling hills and forest, which is pretty nice especially in the summer. Bit far from work, but you don't get bargains like that any closer to Frankfurt, and the train takes me to a station about 10min away from home so it's fine. The idea of buying was to stop wasting money on the rent, and if possible to make some profit by renovating and selling the house in the mid-term (like 5-6 years if all goes well, sooner if not). The purchase price was 59000 euro and with the notary/agency fees and such it was about 64000 total. Also even though I did some handywork before with my uncles and my mom, I ain't no expert and am learning most of it on the fly, from websites, a couple books, and asking my family for advice. Being so far away from them means they can't come and help out much sadly, but at the same time I like going at my own pace and doing things my way, taking time to consider what to do with a room etc. so it's ok. Anyways, here come a few posts of what I've done so far...

Cheers bro!

Hehe, yeah I believe Frieder is right, it's just a lot of stress from many different sources at the moment, I'm sure it'll be better later. I'm not depressed or anything, it's just tough to go through trying to do everything and do it right.

I've moved into my new house, the commute times are even longer than before but I found a train station not too far from my place so I rely on my car for only a little bit each day, which is better. I'm always stressed on relying on an old cheap car for my daily commute because I just never know when it's going to break down and prevent me from going to work. I booked a 1-year parental leave because that's a thing in Germany, looking forward to that, as my wife got pregnant just as my last crunch was finishing and I feel like I never had a chance to recover due to her moods and my child and commute and exhausting holidays back to France to see family. There's quite a few things to do around the house to make it good, and the incoming birth of my second child puts a lot of pressure on getting at least the kitchen, living room and one bedroom done as soon as possible to greet the baby in a clean/safe environment, so I'm rushing through those tasks as fast as I can. Had to put my indie project aside for a few weeks because of that, I hope to get back to it for good during my parental leave. Also the train I take in the morning and evenings now is long but nice and has electrical plugs in it so I'll probably be able to use my commute time to do some coding, so that's a positive thing I guess. I find being in charge of my own project creatively reminds me why I wanted to make games in the first place. After 10 years of modding, going back to an independent project feels just right, even with the limited time and energy I have to pour into it. Not sure yet if buying a house right now (that house in particular) is a good thing or just not a bad one. I don't expect to stay in it for too many years because of its distance to some of the schools we want to put our children in, as I don't want to spend hundreds of euros a month in gas for driving them to and from school. Hopefully I can sell it back quickly and for a added value after I repaired the shit out of it, but I'm avoiding major structural changes to it because the prices can go up real fast if you have to call on a professional to do it. Only the future will tell, at least I'll have learned a lot of very valuable lessons I'll be able to apply to my next purchase and renovations. I'm still always surprised how life can go so fast and so slow at the same time, especially after having kids. I sometimes, for instance after reading Furyo's interview, regret having had a kid so early and thus not being flexible and free to move/travel to seek better opportunities, not being able to save up money, etc. It doesn't really help to think like that, but when I see other people moving around the world and having fun joining cool projects and companies, able to have hobbies that are time-consuming and expensive, or able to do side projects properly while having a full-time job, I can't help but question my past actions that led me to this situation. Not sure I was made to be a family guy, I just happened to fall into it and now I feel a bit trapped. That'll pass I guess. That's me!

The combat system will be real time, turn based, kind of like final fantasy, except without the stupid timer. Seriously though, no-one makes a AAA on his own, or even with free contributors. Keep those ideas of yours in store for when you have stuff to convince people you can build games. Make something small, and when I mean small, I really mean small. Like that you know for sure you can finish under a year. And then don't be surprised when it ends up taking up to 3 or 4 years, because that's what happens. You sort of ask for all the abuse you get with a post like that, a kickstarter page like that, and expectations/dreams like those. It's just so far from reality that we can't help but not take you seriously.

Liveable, if you don't mind it being a bit unusable. It's got a recent heating system, up-to-date electrical setup, and brand new bath room. The rest is a bit weirdly setup (extra building added onto a small house with not-ideal connections between the two) and there's only one toilet at the moment, and some of the floors have bent a bit with the years so two rooms need their floors redone. The staircase is a bit old-school (narrow steps) but it's a low priority. But it's got a decent garden, 2 terraces, a seperate garage, and is located in a small dead-end street 100 meters away from a kid's playground. So all in all I think it's a good deal. It's a bit remote of course, I'll have to drive to the train station, but my current transit time is almost an hour so that shouldn't be better or worse. The highway is 3 minutes away too, so I can be in Frankfurt in 30 minutes (if I wanted to deal with heavy traffic and congestions each day which I don't) We can definitely move in as soon as I have fixed up the kitchen's floor and kitchen itself though, which is nice. Then we can approach each renovation as we see fit, nothing is ultra urgent, especially since we don't need to worry about isolating the attic or anything like that for a least a few months. I don't think it's Germany only, I looked in France too and in some areas (like the backwards isolated region I'm from) you can get houses for those prices too. They're almost all old-people's houses though, usually a relative dies and leaves a meh house on 2 or 3 heirs, who don't want to be bothered with it and sell it cheap and quick. Obviously they're not super great, but with a little love and low expectations, it can be a sweet deal.

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of buying something a bit like Koko described. Most of my family have a history of building their own houses so I know if something big comes up I can count on them for major renovations. The rest I can do myself, and if I gotta do a few fuckups along the way, no big deal. My uncle has been very successful at doing that over the years. Creating value like that is a lot of work but can really pay off. His best investment was to buy an old farm which comprised of 3 buildings: a house which was good enough to live in, and two derelict stone barns. He turned the barns into two houses while he lived in the house, then rented that house to tourists while he and his family lived in the refreshed barns and finished those off. Then after a few years he sold the whole thing for many times the price he bought it and moved on to invest in a campsite and another house. In my case though I've got a big thing going for me, which is that I've asked my dad for an advance on my inheritance, so I don't have to make a loan to the bank to buy a cheap-ass house (60000 euros) which is a bit old but has great potential after you break a wall or two and redo the floorings. My wife and I like Germany, and we think it's a great place to raise our kids. It used to scare the shit out of me to buy a house, especially in a country where I barely understand the language and you can count game companies on the fingers of one hand, but now I see it more as a sort of safety net rather than an anchor, as we know even if I lose my job out of nowhere we have a place to stay, enough savings to last a few months, and we can always go back to my parents while we sell this house as a last resort. I find that having a family means I want to have such safeties, rather then feeling like I can take off on a month's notice. I'm also seriously considering giving the indie developer route a go at some point so not having to pay the rent is always a plus for that situation.

I used to date a girl who once complained that some guy didn't want to have an argument about politics with her at the cafeteria at lunch, and that made her mad. I died inside a little for thinking I had been with her for a month and only then did I realize what a freak she was, then I dumped her.

I'm totally behind Stepp on this. My wife is a big dreamer, she enjoys getting excited over things even if deep down she knows it won't happen or there's only a very slim chance it does. That makes her an emotional rollercoaster to be around, as in a single week she will raise her excitement levels high and then crash down. The main problem actually is that I'm very realistic, borderline pessimistic, never counting on things I cannot fully control etc. so each time she gets her hopes up I'm instantly tempted to bring her down to Earth and she won't understand that and be pissed at me for not having "dreams". I have dreams of course, they just rely on me working hard at what I love doing, not crossing my fingers to get what I want. I also realized over the years that things I want now, I may not care for in a few months, or that it may not be actually what I need, so that helped take a step back and consider where I put my emotional investment. I seriously advocate distantiating yourself from stuff you have no control over and putting the bar for your interest/involvement in things high enough that you don't get affected by the stupidest things. I'm still learning how to do that every day, as I used to be very very affected by injustice in particular, but my life is way better for it already.

- Buy a flat to stop wasting money in rent - Take a few months off when my second kid is born to change some more diapers - Try to finish an indie game I'm working on before the end of the year, or for early 2015 - Play all the games I bought during the last Steam sale(s)

That guy really needs to stop being in movies

Yeah he is, although he's on holidays atm I believe. Barnaby too, who you may know

I don't get why we have to show the whole game before we release it. I guess that's part of being a launch title for a new generation of consoles...

I'm puzzled by why you have a homepage that just shows an unclickable picture, then let me find my way to the gallery. I'd suggest making that the default page and killing the homepage altogether. Basically, I'd advise the following: Send visitors directly to your gallery, show pretty/amazing/well-thought things in there then make it easy for people you've just impressed to find your contact/resume information within a click of their current location on your website. I'm also not a fan of the horizontal scrolling thumbnails you have there, because if nothing catches my eye in the first batch, chances are I won't bother clicking to see what's in the second. Seeing how little pictures you have in there at the moment, I'd just stick all of them on the page right away and let people scroll through them all. I wouldn't categorize as you're saying, I'd do the opposite. Don't make me think, don't make me click, don't make me look for the cool stuff. Show it straight at my face the moment I step into your portfolio. This is especially true for artists. If you're looking for an envionment art position, I'm afraid you've got way too few screenshots of environment art assets/scenes though, you should focus on increasing that, even if it means getting shots from different angles, or showing a scene + some of the assets isolated under it, etc. EDIT: Also, about your last point, as far as I could see the important thing for env. artists is showing that you are familiar with the whole panel of tools/techniques that you may have to use on the job, and also that you can combine all that to create a few well-crafted scenes (and show your composition skill). So you show some texturing work, some Zbrush work, some high-poly asset, some low-poly/optimized asset, a beautiful scenery you've made entirely on your own, and that should be enough, provided the quality of those all put together is high enough. In art teams there'll be some guy that's the master of Zbrush, some guy that's the master of texturing, you're not expected to be the best at everything, but you have to show you know what you're doing.

Is that actually based on the Fables comicbook series or just very closely related? The hero looks straight out of that, but that's the only thing I recognize from the trailer. EDIT: My bad, just noticed they explicitely say that it is based off of it in the trailer. I need more sleep

Clicking on a preview shot to just see the same sized image makes me sad. If I'm going to click on a preview, it's cause I want to see it in higher res!

My brain can't figure out what direction the central and right characters are facing. Are they looking at me or away?

My advice: spend less time showing and more time doing! This looks like very early stages still (or am I confused and you actually have it all playable and stuff?) and you should be using the time to develop and iterate, not to update a webpage with WIP comparison shots. Tweaking colors can come later, when it's all working. Don't run before you walk, at least that's what I'd tell you if you asked

By the way, I'm curious about the amount of crap you had to go through to get it released: do you need to go through certification processes, getting it rated, etc. before you can get it on Steam or does Greenlight basically let you bypass all that? Do you need to set up an official company? I am very much in the mindset of working on an indie game in the near future, but those are questions I've never managed to get answers to. Basically, how much of a pain is it to get it out there once you're confident it's good enough? Thanks, and congrats on the moneys and fame and all that!

Not sure if the cloth entities are part of the SDK yet, but if so, they should be fairly easy to setup: - Subdivide the mesh enough that it can move naturally - Vertex painting (black = no movement, white = full movement) on the object before export - Set wind/random wind values on the object and other air resistances, etc. Check under Physics/Cloth in entities I think. If it's not there, well good luck doing it with constraints/joints :/

The year I started mapping, the game I started mapping on. Haaa, those test chambers just to torture and blow up scientists and feed them to headcrabs, those were the days!