Okay, first of all, I'm gonna tell you guys something cool. As of not that long ago, I've become a programmer in 3d graphics on a commercial project, with a games company called Crytek. I really like the guys, the work situation and whats happening. Sorry to all the other people who offered me jobs, but Crytek made me an offer they can't refuse. Mainly since I could start right away, on my terms, and only start fulltime when school finished. I must admit, if I told people of the job offers I have got, after being contacted directly by so many cool companies, you guys would probably wonder how I managed to get noticed by so many people in the "biz." I don't know, something about speaking like no one can understand is probably the reason. Carmack does it, so it follows that other people who also do it must be as cool as him. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm anywhere near as cool as him, but I can't help it if ramblings like mine put this into peoples heads. The people I would most like to thank though, for their patience, coolness, skills and dedication are a group, which I wont name, but all the same thanks Mark and Rob (you guys know it, and don't think I don't know about your Matrox love). Sorry I would've loved to work with you guys, but relocation became "un-possible" (as Ralph Wiggum would say), due to personal commitments. Maybe in a few years. What does this mean for my CI project? Is it dead? In a few words, no. Although I am not actively coding on it, or even releasing the source, the engine will live on as my research base (and I'm not gonna let that texture optimiser go). The code base I'm working with now is large, and not designed for doing research, and is no where near as flexible as the code of CI, being that its actually got a lot of other people working on it, and a lot of infrastructure already associated with it... Its great code though, and I'm enjoying getting into it. I must say the guys on the team at Crytek are absolute legends. We are talking an all-star team of people who would be working at a big name company in Dallas, if only they could relocate. Speaking of which, I can say that a new doc of mine, talking about issues affronting the modern 3d engine, especially Scalability and memory Consumption are going to be very serious engine design issues, and talking about what I see happening. Not a tutorial, more of a comment to help you guys get into the new frame of mind. Anyway, one of the things I will be doing is writing a lot of research code to see what is best for the project I'm on at Crytek. I'm going to be delving seriously into compression and related LOD techniques, visibility etc. This research engine (previously CI) may go on to become a commercial engine later, but now it is just going to get some stuff in code, and really produce the highest tech engine I can, with a totally different super modern way of approaching things. While this may seem like big PR Gimp talk, it really is beyond what most, even the best are doing at the moment (I don't claim to be near the best, but then again, the best aren't writing these research engines). We are talking some SERIOUS algorithms, and a geometry complexity in each scene unheard of in any engine to date, withless memory requirements, and the greatest scalability possible. I'm talking way beyond a couple of bezier curves. And, in the least processor time possible. Quite a challenge? Well, yes and no. I think it is personally doable for the current CI code base, but a little of the stuff will probably not make it into the Crytek code, given some of the changes needed. The biggest part of the challenge will be the fact that I will be spending much more time with the Crytek code, and will try and do the research in the little spare time I have. Conor "DirtyPunk" Stokes
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