AnthonyD

I am not the Lead Programmer.

http://www.twitch.tv/theroguezombie

Yeah man, screw that guy.

....Mitch?

Pacific time, right? Yeah

I was setting up twitch to work with PoE. The stream doesn't start till one minute after midnight.

@badler does this mean my 250$ backed edition is now a royal edition? bah, I'll come by tomorrow and ask you in person.

Woot! Very cool video!

I tried to mix it here at work with the Guile theme, but unfortunately, the youtube mixer site is blocked here at work. Can anyone mix it with the Guile theme for me and link it here?

Yeah, I don't know where my developer tag is. Thank you sooooo much for the youtube clip, I have sent it around!

Our very own JT winning a "tank themed" dance contest at E3 at the Wargaming Booth. Watch, but please be sitting down. I almost passed out from laughing too hard. I might have actually had a stroke. http://www.twitch.tv/wargaming/b/537808828 at 03:25:00 See if you can guess which one is JT. I love you, JT. You are fearless.

Hey Everyone, I left Obsidian because I was offered an opportunity to move back to Texas to be near my family and to hopefully start a family of my own. There is no drama involved, unless you count the sadness of leaving a wonderful place to work after 7.5 years and missing all of my friends terribly. Obsidian is and will continue to be awesome. I think the world of everyone who works there and the projects they are working on are great.

I currently have the high score - playing as Feargus the Paladin.

Whoa. The intarwebs knows all! Yeah I don't post at the Codex anymore. I am very happy everyone who has seen DS3 so far has been digging it!

Tony Evans worked on KOTOR2, NWN2, NX1, and NX2. He's a great guy and obviously we miss him and wish him the best!

I read that too. The issue is actually more to do with the obsession Universities have with teaching Java (A shower of ****e if I ever saw one), and the general "shying" away from low level control. Making a degree hard by having an emphisis on low level control, hence alienating students. It's not just the games degree's it's CS degree's in general. Universities are interested in "getting students", and "passing students", this ironically ==

I really, really want to know how that guy pulled of Lute Hero. That is really amazing. I mean it, I want to know how he did it! Good stuff.

I don't even know if I should tell my story, because I'll be honest, it can make people uncomfortable. I'll tell the story because I am not ashamed of where I came from, and most importantly, if there is someone out there who it might help or encourage then it will be worth it. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. My Mother, bless her heart, had several substance and emotional problems. Life at home frequently involved physical and emotional abuse. In addition, we lived in a very rough part of town and youth violence was very frequent, and I was frequently a target of it. We were very, very poor growing up. Still, my Mom found ways to provide for us. I had to have surgery on my legs at one point in my life and was subsequently bedridden for a length of time. My Mom bought my a c64 and a 1541 floppy drive to help me get through that period. Thanks to my Mom, I was able to mentally escape into the worlds of Archon, Telengard, and M.U.L.E.. My Mom also got me a BASIC language programming book which I used to make my own games. That was when I first dreamed of making video games and I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. That dream would fade away though for a very, very long time. Life, as it is want to do, has a way of taking you down paths you least expect or want to take. I could go into the sordid details about the abuse I lived with, both at home and at school. I could go into the details explaining what I'm sure some of you have already experienced - hiding from the gangs during the day, and locking yourself in your room at night. Dreading every single day - going to school and the bullies and desensitized teachers. Dreading the moments at home where you might set off the domestic volcano. With the exception of only a very few individuals, even my 'friends' would tear me down and abuse me. I could go into details about the constant fights to defend myself, or the running away, but the sad truth is, as bad as my childhood was, someone out there has or had a worse one. Despite being rated as 'Gifted and Talented', school was a battleground. I cared for it not one iota. The only class where I came out of my shell was the Computer Programming courses my high school offered. I barely graduated high school...and I do mean barely. I couldn't get into a 4 year college, despite my ACT and SAT scores, not that college would have been a good place for me at that juncture in my life. Whatever the cause or the reason, the bottom line was that at that point in my life, I was a loser. I had no drive, desires, or goals in life at all. Once again, with the exception of a few true friends, I had no support. The year was 1989, and bereft of any real choices and facing being kicked out of the house, I decided to join the Army. Some people talk about why the enlist and they list reasons like patriotism, or college money, or many other valid reasons why they join. For me, I simply had no place else to go. I was so goalless with my life, I couldn't even chose a MOS (Military Occupation) when I went to enlist. At the guidance of my recruiter I picked 19K, which was M1A1 Armor Crewman. It was what he did and he loved it, and he pointed out that going Combat Arms offers the most money for college if I decided later that I wanted to do that. I know that in today's politically charged environment, there are some who would berate the military, or try to paint it with some broad political stroke as being a tool for politicians. The bottom line for me is, the military saved my life. The Army took the sad, pathetic loser I had become and broke me down even more - then they proceeded to build me back up in ways that really mattered, self-reliance, teamwork, pride, honor, duty, all of it. After graduating training, I was sent to Kitzingen, Germany for 2 years. During that time, me and my unit pulled one of the last border patrols on the Fulda Gap, witnessed the re-unification of Germany, saw the Berlin Wall come down - of which I knocked a piece out of with my own two hands, served in Desert Storm, learned to snow ski, learned to foxtrot, and even got to take some correspondence college courses. Upon returning to the States, I used some of my savings to buy a new PC computer and started to learn all over again. With some encouragement from my friends, I through myself into learning everything I could. I was even working two jobs at the same time. During the day I worked for VERY little money as a junior software consultant for Enron, yes, THAT Enron. During the nights, I worked as a waiter for TGIFridays and I also started to take night school courses at my local community college. Eventually I left Enron and joined BDM Systems as a senior software consultant. I traveled across the country writing software and advising other companies. Companies like Xerox, Dow Chemical, Generon, and many more. I was also one of the first Microsoft Certified Engineers in the Houston area, and I was making a LOT of money. Right when everything seemed to be looking up, I decided to quit the consulting business and try to get into Texas A&M at College Station, the college I had always dreamed of going to now that I allowed myself to dare to dream. I know that for some people who have gone to more prestigious universities that dreaming of going to TAMU might seem pretty paltry, but not to me. The TAMU College of Engineering is legendary. I applied, but this time not as a loser high school student with a terrible GPA, but rather as a community college transfer student with a 3.9 GPA. I got in. I naturally chose to major in Computer Science. I spent my summers interning at software jobs in other parts of the country like Boston or San Francisco. To be fair, I had and advantage over other students applying when they are busy submitting a mostly empty resume and mine has names like Xerox and Dow Chemical on it. During my 3rd year at TAMU, I was interning for a young internet web browser company by the name of Netscape Communications, you may have heard of it. I was also long distance dating a beautiful California girl by the name of Sonja. Life was good, but things have a way of sneaking up on you. You see my Mother who had long since conquered her demons, had married a great guy who had helped her get past those demons and find peace. During what would end up being my last semester at TAMU, he died of pancreatic cancer. I was crushed, utterly. Three years after getting accepted to TAMU and about to start my senior year, believe it or not, I quit. Netscape had been actively trying to recruit me out of college, and suddenly I felt the most important thing in my life was to be with the woman who loved me and moving forward with my life. I spent the next 7 years of my life working to win the Browser Wars and to stay happily married. I would eventually fail on both accounts. My best friend, Mike judge (not the cartoonist) and I both sensed the end was near for Netscape and we found ways to fill our time as the beast died. Don't be too sad, my code still lives on in Firefox. Rediscovering my forgotten dream of being a game developer, Mike and I made and released a video game for the palm pilot called Aldon's Crossing (you can Google for it if you want). Convinced now, more than ever that this was what I wanted to do, I quit Netscape. Mike also jumped ship and went to what would eventually become XFire where he would design and write the actual XFire client. I would end up applying to only one game developer, because there was only one place I wanted to work, Black Isle. Once again, and this is what I honestly love about life, life would throw me a curve ball as during the interview process, Black Isle closed its doors. Well, at this point I was ready to pack up my things and move my newly divorced self back to Texas and begin life anew as a construction worker when my ex-wife sent me an email. Somehow my ex-wife had found out that the big 5 from Black Isle had started a NEW company called Obsidian Entertainment. Armed with this new knowledge, I sent off my resume and examples of my palm pilot game, Aldon's Crossing. I still remember the phone call from Chris Jones like it was yesterday, I remember him saying that he was impressed by the fact that I had actually FINISHED a game on my own (albeit with my best friend) and that we actually were able to sell several thousand copies. I remember flying down to SoCal and being interviewed by Chris Avellone, who was gracious enough to overlook my fanboy transgressions. Well, at this point you can probably guess where the story is going. I got hired. Since then I have worked on every single game that has exited Obsidian's doors, KOTOR2, NWN2, NX1, Alpha Protocol, Aliens RPG, and now NX2. I am not the best engineer here by a long shot, and you know what, that is okay, only one person can be the best, and as cheesy as it may sound, it takes a team to make a game. There have been some rough times too, it's not all hookers and blow I'll have you know (that's a joke). We work hard here, and sometimes things don't work out the way you want, or as well as you want. Learning how and when to make sacrifices is part of the job. Unlike Netscape and Enron before it, we LEARN here and we move forward and apply what we LEARN.

JoinZored.

I think this was already stated, Obsidian Entertainment has 3 teams. Two are full sized development teams, one is a smaller team used for getting projects going or supporting an existing project. As I understand it, we are currently at the size the owners want the company to be at. The team members are NOT fixed, they float from team to team depending on what is needed and what an individual person wants to work on. The owners and leads are very accommodating within real world limits. For example, I worked on NX1, Alpha Protocol, and am now on Aliens. Josh contributed design work to Alpha Protocol, but he is also the Lead Designer on Aliens. Chris Avellone works on everything. Justin Cherry works on everything. Those are just some examples.

I will tell you from my own experience... My favorite care packages are the ones that had chocolate chip cookies in them. They keep pretty good. Now if this person in deployed out in the field, combat, combat support, whatever, then here is a list of things they would probably REALLY like: Baby wipes Batteries for portable electronics (Gameboys, whatever) Powdered supplements for water (healthy ones, not necessarily kool-aid) If they are in a wet environment, baby powder can be nice too. toothpaste deodorant The baby wipes and baby powder sound weird I know, but believe me, it really helps out in the hygiene. You can probably also search on Google and find some good care package ideas too. One time, my friend in Texas sent me PRESERVED fajitas, which was pretty awesome.

I heard that you broke some hearts this weekend. What have I told you about being prepared, Anthony? Did the army teach you nothing? Army, not army. Who has been spreading...truths...about me?

No lie about JR. I almost threw down on some dude that was coming after JR because, hey you gotta watch out for each other, right? Turns out JR *DID* try and trip the dude...plus that dude was HUGE and would have killed me. I've been out of the games for a while now because of a lung infection and because I am in a community theater show. However, in about 2 weeks the A-Train will be leaving the station, destination...PAIN*! *probably my pain, but hey, I'm an old man now.

I break things.

C++ for me, though I am really starting to come around to C# for either tools or rapid prototyping.