Red Brick Games

I finished the DTS billboard resource that I mentioned earlier. This resource is a patch to Torque that allows a Torque developer to, in-game via TorqueScript, turn on billboards for any DTS shape. So if you purchase a 3rd-party art pack with DTS shapes that don’t have billboards turned on, now you can turn them on yourself.

Link is here (this is on the GarageGames website and requires a license to the Torque Game Engine).

Whew - this past week I did some volunteer work with pre-schoolers at my church. It was both more challenging, and more rewarding, than I anticipated. As another volunteer put it, dealing with pre-schoolers can be like trying to herd grasshoppers.

I’m relatively inexperienced in kid-care, and one of the things I feared was that the kids would become physically unruly. Stuff like running off where they’re not supposed to go, hitting each other (or me), or whatnot. Fortunately, that didn’t really happen. My kids required repeated instructions over and over about what to do and what not to do, but eventually they’d get it.

Kids really do need boundaries and adults who care about them. I think it builds them up to have a grown-up repeatedly instruct them on what behavior’s acceptable and what behavior’s not. It’s a life skill that they need, and it shows the adult cares. Although it was definitely weary-ing for me at times. Fortunately, the kids I had were relatively good-mannered, so other than the occasional necessary dialog that went something like “Johnny, stop. Look at me, Johnny. No Johnny, we’re not going to talk about XYZ right now. Look at my eyes. Where did I tell you you need to sit? … Well, are you sitting there? Well, please sit there, then” there weren’t any experiences more difficult than that.

In our spare time we discussed together such weighty topics as swimming pools, snakes, spiders, rolly-pollys, roaches, Spider-Man, velcro, shoes, bicycles, stickers, hay, ice cream, pizza, hot dogs, oranges, apples, brown sugar, brothers, sisters, etc. lol. It’s tough sometimes to think of conversation topics when there’s such an age difference, but I find that once the conversation gets going, it’s fun.

And the cool thing about being a guy is, you’re usually Mr. Popular with kids. I suppose that’s because most kids see less of Dad than Mom, either due to work or due to being in a single-parent family.

It was a lot of fun, but I’m exhausted and glad the week is done. I really admire people who are parents — how do they do it 24/7.

I have some new game development news, but I think I’ll save it for the next blog post (I really am tired!).