The contract work is over for now. I may have more work ahead, but nothing has been finalized. Either way, it’s nice to have the breathing space again (when it comes to cash). It’s also nice to be back full-time on the project, both mentally and physically.
Sunday night, while I was happily working away, my laptop crapped out. Like, completely crapped out. The graphics card just went berserk, the display become corrupt, then the whole thing locked up. It’s a one year old laptop, so such failure this early in its life should come as a surprise. Unfortunately it does not.
Last year, 2 days after I received my laptop, I came across this distressing post on Dell’s blog. My laptop (the M1330) was one of the affected systems. I spent a few days fretting over this issue, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. It had already been 21 days since my laptop had been ordered (so I couldn’t return it), and there was a chance it wouldn’t fail after all. And frankly, it’s a lovely piece of machinery (epic nVidia failure aside). I decided to not worry about the problem until it affected me.
Well, it’s here now, and it couldn’t have come at the worse time. I had a business meeting today, and I needed my laptop to demo some work. Luckily, the people I met with were cool; they let me setup on their machines, and everything went well. Still, the epic failure in quality control by nVidia is ridiculous. The entire production line for that generation of laptop chips suffers from the same flaw. I’ve seen class action suits happen for a less.
I will withhold judgment on Dell until I see how they handle my laptop.
Work Done Last Week
The checkpoint system is now working, which is kinda cool. All dynamic objects are saved out and reset correctly, with no trace of any memory leaks. Some of the more complex logic (like cycling through multiple checkpoints) is not yet complete, but the core system is in place, and we will continue to improve on it.
I tracked down a few bugs in the camera system and the editor which had been adversely affecting the artist’s work.
I also wrapped up my 4-week contract on Friday, so my focus is now fully back on the game
Work Planned This Week
Gameplay improvements and more test levels.
I’m traveling to the UK on Wednesday for a wedding, to see old friends and to work my connections. I was gonna take my laptop with me, but, well, it’s as useful as a brick right now.
