Absentia

As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s video, I’m putting this blog (and the video series, and my Patreon) on hold temporarily while I pursue console port work. Given the confidential nature of that work, trying to fill two weekly slots with what would effectively be vague filler information for the foreseeable future sounded exhausting.

That being said, the port is coming along well; I have audio functioning fully (for my relatively simple use cases) and have moved on to rendering. I expect that will take me a while longer, as I’m having to learn an unfamiliar API and retrofit my existing engine code and shader code to work with it, but fortunately, I’ve been able to leverage some of the work I did a few years back to automatically generate custom, portable effects-like data from my Direct3D 9 Effect (.fx) code. I think if I were to start from scratch and write an all-new engine from the ground up today, I’d probably start by defining my own effect system, writing my shader code in pure HLSL, and making it more portable to any number of platforms and APIs. But this engine having grown the way it has, I’m tied to D3D9 and D3DX, and, you know, that’s probably fine. I don’t expect those to be made totally obsolete any time soon, but if they are…well, I have options.


Once more, in case I don’t post another update before then, here’s where I’ll be in the coming weeks:

Let’s Play Gaming Expo
June 18-19, 2016
Plano Centre
Plano, TX

RTX 2016
July 1-3, 2016
Austin Convention Center
Austin, TX

Retropalooza IV
October 1-2, 2016
Arlington Convention Center
Arlington, TX