My failures, games, and an offering of time

Dear internet, life continues to be strange.

A year ago or so, I started writing a custom game engine for a game idea I had.  I actually got as far as creating about 50% of that game engine before it languished.  Yet another uncompleted project.  Yet another example of how, when it comes to my own personal hobby projects, I enjoy of the process of learning and tinkering and abstractificating more than completion.

But I picked up the book Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory, and now I'm reinvigorated.  It is interesting to compare it to the much older book Game Coding Complete by Mike McShaffry.  They actually agree on many topics.  Looking at the two books, this idea of writing a game seems tractable, again.   It is interesting to see how game engines are converging into a discipline.

And thus with the idea of writing a game seeming possible again, I've been reading through the SDL2 library docs.  At the moment, it seems that SDL (or monogame and friends) is the best free-software-compatible way to write cross-platform games.  Unfortunately, the docs for SDL2 -- while excellent for a free software project -- are still lacking examples.  The API for SDL1 was modernized for SDL2, and the community is still catching up with the new API.

But, I think I hack this game in private until I have something to show.

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With the war in Afghanistan finally approaching the endgame, I'll have some free time for volunteering, so if anyone in GNU has a well-defined ~80 hour task for me, hit me up.  I've done embedded systems, global positioning systems, numerical analysis, some device drivers, some low-level audio and video, endless technical docs and a ton of extremely formal software engineering and testing.  Lots of C, a bit of C++. Or if you just need fresh eyes to try out your program. Lemme know. I'm mike at lonelycactus.com and I'm in Los Angeles.