Kyu n' Caffeine

back on track, let’s see for how long

So I finally broke out of my WoW addiction, so at last brought myself to get some work done.. And yeah, by work I mean wasting time on a whole new set of hobbies.

So I learned everything there is to know about C++ (and by everything I mean the absolute basics), got back to my beloved linux environment, made a pit stop to finish building this blog, and next on the list is learning more about OpenGL so hopefully next year I can present a full-fledged fps as my final course project.

Work, work, work.

I really miss being Kyuujin in Azeroth.. fighting for the Pantheon alongside with Seedjin, Charec, Turashal, Sulfur, Yakari, Rustoof.. ahh good times. Everything must come to an end though, Pantheon was no exception, and along with Pantheon came the end of my will to play, and the beginning of something else.

who woulda thunk

Turns out I really did it! No, I'm not talking about leaving WoW, I got back to WoW about five months after that post.. although I've been inactive again for a month now.. But that's not what this is about.

The fps! As final project! I did it! Huzzay!! After a few grueling months Adrenaline is finally ready for a beta version, and available at Google Hosting.

Here's also a little showcase of it in action for you svn-impaired folks. We were working on it till 7am today and the delivery is at 1pm so basically I'm just fighting to keep awake right now.... I made a game!

the end of grinding madness

World of Warcraft geek stuff ahead! Don't say I didn't warn you.

My first epic mount was a kodo, back in vanilla, even though my main character is a troll. Time went by, from when the server barely had any epic mounts at all, watching my friends get their epic mounts, telling me to just get a regular mount like everyone else, thinking I was crazy for grinding runecloth every waking hour, and finally, after months of slowly watching my friends fade in the distance in their faster mounts, I got my kodo.

I was so happy that grind was over... but that feeling didn't last.

During the runecloth grind, I got exalted with Thunder Bluff, revered with Timbermaw, Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle. And so, without me noticing, those pretty green bars in the reputation tab became a hobby.

Since that time, whenever I needed something to keep me entertained, I'd fire up the game and grind another rep, while watching a random movie or series on the second monitor. I've watched more series from start to finish during these grinds than I can remember.

Guildies asking me questions like "what are you doing in Diremaul?" during Burning Crusade, and even more boggled random folks staring at the crazy troll attacking the booty bay goblins with "why?" stamped on their confused faces, became an everyday event. I even had the answers macroed so I didn't have to keep repeating the same conversations over and over.

So, after all these years of grinding pointless green bars, with no reward whatsoever except the pretty bar itself, you can imagine I was really excited when this was announced:

The Insane. Finally, there was a reward for lifeless people like me. When this was first announced, I had done the goblins, I was a pirate, and the infamous Shen'dralar grind had been completed for a while. I was missing Darkmoon Faire and Ravenholdt. But, due to having something to aim for, this grind went from a casual hobby to my main focus in the game. Soon after, the intensive grind broke me, and I quit the game altogether.

But the thought of being so close to my endgame goal leered in my mind, and a few months later I came back to make a final effort. I levelled a rogue, my first high-level alt, for the lockboxes for Ravenholdt, and grinded cash for decks. I even got a death knight on the opposite faction, so I could access both auction houses and clean out the server's deck supply.

A lot of friends helped me with this effort, some by helping me transfer the decks from alliance to horde, others by sending me stuff they didn't need, and others by simply chatting with me to keep me distracted from the grind. Every bit helped.

And finally, today, I delivered the last deck, fulfilling my goal as a player, thus completing the endless game.

Thank you to everyone from Forgotten, Pantheon and later Bloodline, for all the help and support along all these years. I had a lot of fun playing with you guys, and I hope we'll cross paths again in other adventures (maybe Old Republic? *wink wink*).

Kyuu'jin, the Insane
Bloodline
EU-The Venture Co.

Sartok, on guild forum:
Congratulations on reaching the "endgame" few will know.

There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
~John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, 1681

I’m on tv! without setting fire to anything!

So a lot has happened since I finished Adrenaline. In short, I finished college, and got a job in Spain working as a videogame developer for Universidad de Extremadura (a spanish college), and Glow, which is an entertainment offshoot from Claroscuro, a design company. I lived next to my office, in Almendralejo, Spain, for a bit over six months, and was then offered the choice to work from my home in Portugal, and since then I've been back to my cozy abode, in Leiria.

So we've been working on an opensource game for the past year or so, Chapas (which means bottlecaps in spanish). It's essencially a turn-based bottlecap racing game, in which the bottlecaps are controlled by cards. The concept turned out to be a bit more complex to grasp than I hoped, but it's a work in progress, so who knows how it will end up. The terrains use a new genetic terrain generation technique, provided by Miguel Frade from ESTG Leiria, so the playfield is different on every round.

Here is a showcase used on a summer course where the videogame was shown:

And here is me, and my colleagues, presenting the game on television! I was caught a bit offguard by this interview, I went to the summer course with the sole purpose of watching the presentations, but the tv crew heard I was the programmer and suddenly I was on camera, rambling my way through their questions with my poor spanish skills. Luckily, after editing, it didn't end up that bad:

Wooo! Quality television right there, where's my emmy?