My exams went pretty smoothly, as far as I can tell. They're not all graded yet. How much I learned for them varied quite a bit, but in total it was probably above average for me. It helps that I'm good at making out high value targets: What's easily learned that will score me many points?

Still, I did not learn as much as I had originally planned. I did keep up the Cello practice and learning Russian though. I can find roughly a quarter of the Cyrillic keys on the keyboard now. And my sleep patterns are mostly as planned as well.

Now I have almost 6 weeks until the next semester's lectures start. I'll miss the first 3 days of those due to A MAZE Berlin, which I'm going to visit once again. Maybe I should program a small game to show there? Which brings me to how I'm going to spend the coming weeks.

First and foremost I have 3 university projects I need to do: A Delphi port of a board game (which looks interesting algorithmically), a database web interface with GWT (which I don't think I'll find particularly enjoyable or satisfactory) and preparing a talk on Reverse Engineering (which is something I'm interested in, that's why I chose that topic for my talk). They pretty much all need to be done by April.

The talk is  related to an old project: Over a year ago I started reverse engineering FlatOut 2's level format. I didn't finish that, but that's something I'm still very interested in. I'd love to have a level editor for FlatOut 2, so I may try creating one. I probably legally have to, actually, since to my knowledge Reverse Engineering is illegal in Germany unless it's for interoperability that can't be achieved otherwise.

Another project I'd like to do is related to my admiration for the Millennium Falcon. And spaceships in general. I'd love a multiplayer space ship game where you and your friends walk around a small spaceship (like the Falcon, but Disney wouldn't like that), pilot it and man the turrets, possibly do repairs etc. Originally I had thought of the ships in The Matrix when I conceived this project (inspired by Enter The Matrix), but then I remembered I love Star Wars. But I actually can't use either of those franchises without fear of legal trouble.

I find that interesting in terms of gameplay, but also and especially graphically. I've been thinking about a lot of graphics effects lately. I want to write a deferred renderer, I want to implement light rays and normal maps and so on. And I wonder just how detailed a spaceship today's computers could render.

Well, that's a mighty big project. The upside is that if I keep practicing modelling throughout the whole project I might actually be able to create as cool a space ship as I want by the end. But that's just me dreaming. Shouldn't I finish Spirits of the Sith, that Jedi Academy SP mod, first? Probably.

Well, let's get back to the near term. In the coming 2 weeks I want to work on the uni projects - I should be able to finish that web interface and probably the board game as well. If I actually work on them. Here's hoping.

So long,

Willi

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