Temporary work stoppage

[RonHiler]

Somewhat bad news guys.

I have an "Emergency" project I have to do. It's fairly involved, and it needs to be done yesterday. Such is the nature of my work sometimes.

For the purposes of Enzyme (and also the DDO character planner), it means I'm not really going to be able to do much for a little while. I have a hard deadline of 4 weeks from now (though I actually hope it will take somewhat less than that). I hope maybe to pop in on Enzyme a little, but I really do have to focus on this project to get it done on time. This is not coming at a great time, as I'm in the middle of a debugging session for Enzyme (stopping a debugging session and then coming back into it later is a fairly hard thing to do). But then, there never is going to be a good time to interrupt, is there?

Someday in the not too far future I hope to cut down on the client work to focus on the engine, but until that can pay the bills, I have to take jobs. Usually, I can mix the two demands on my time just fine (I do it all the time), but in some cases, like this one, those jobs have to take priority due to the needs of the client.

So things may be slow for a bit.

[RonHiler]

Hey guys,

I'm close to being back. I've got the major functionality done in that client project, I just have to finish up the printout (which I'm about halfway through, there are a LOT of moving parts in this particular project's printout) and the save functions (which is trivial). And then do a little bit of cleanup/tweaking here and there. Realistically, I figure on about a week to get it finished up and turned in for review. Which puts me right on schedule.

Of course, I'll have to go back in and fix whatever bugs they find, and tweak stuff (there is always a bit of that during the final review stage, heh). But that's trivial, and won't affect my ability to get back to engine work.

Once I do finish up the client project, I do want to spend at least a little time in the DDO planner. DDO is gearing up for a new release (with a new class). And while the team has worked hard to get everything put in for the new class (especially Boggs!) I have two or three things I have to look at there. But I don't expect to spend a whole lot of time there, it's pretty well done and ready for it's next release.

I am itching to get back to the engine work, as that is where my passion lies I'll be back soon now.

[RonHiler]

Hey guys,

I'm in the final stages of my client project. I hope to finish today, although perhaps that may not be realistic. My todo list is now in the single digits. And I'll be glad to see the back end of this one (16 hour days for four weeks straight is not a lot of fun, heh).

One more day. Maybe two....

[RonHiler]

I'm done. Finished up this morning. It goes in tomorrow for beta testing. And while I'm sure I'll still have to open up the code and tweak things for the next week, the long days should be over.

So I'm back.

[RonHiler]

Sorry again guys. I know I said I was back, but sometimes, stuff happens

The day I turned in the client project for beta testing, the DDO guys decided they were going to release a new game build the next day, which happened to include a whole new class. So we got the DDO planner together and released as fast as we could (because especially when a new class comes out, people need the planner to be up to date). Sadly, with the addition of a new class to the build, we had a lot of bugs to fix (that just comes from having so much new data input), some of them pretty critical, so that required my full attention for about a week.

Added on top of that, I had started some routines to resize the UI in the planner, and it turns out that once I had started it, I had to get it finished. Otherwise it messes with the UI and people were having a hard time with it (I got more than a few bug reports that things were all over the screen).

So, as far as bugs go, I think the planner is pretty stable at this point. I'm almost done with the resizing thing (just have to do the graphics). Once that's done, I should be free and clear for a while to work on the engine. I have a business trip I have to go on pretty soon, but I'll be taking my laptop, and I expect to be able to work on the engine quite a bit during that time.