You know how I’ve been going on for months about switching Garry’s Mod over to the Steam Pipe. Well, that is about to become a reality. This week I merged with Valve’s latest code. There’s still a few issues to overcome – but I’m hoping that we’ll make the switch in the next couple of weeks.

This is going to present some issues for dedicated server hosting. It’s my understanding that it uses a completely different system to download and install the dedicated server. This is something that you might want to look at now if you run a server, but we’ll try to get an in depth guide on the wiki before release.

GMod Linux is kind of working. I have been told by people that they have got it working with a bit of fudging around. One of the few things I like about the Linux community is that they will go ahead and figure out stuff like this for themselves (the downside being that a lot of the time you’re kind of expected to). I’m not going to release a version before the Steam Pipe update – because that will fix a lot of Linux issues. Plus I’ll be able to iterate more quickly when we’re on the pipe.

We haven’t really decided what we’re going to use the downstairs of the office for. But we know we want to use it for something. Whether that’s throwing desks down here. Or dividing it into offices. Or just leaving the pool table here for people to shoot the shit around.

We decided we didn’t want to go crazy with it. So didn’t have the walls plastered, or have fancy new radiators. But we built big green columns to hide the wires and pipes. Just to tidy it up.

Old and newz:

I made my first wordpress plugin today. It makes it so you can upload unity3d files to wordpress and and embed them in your posts!

It solves a lot of problems that seem to exist in current plugins. One of the issues was that they all kind of wanted you to upload your unity3d files via ftp to get them to work. That is terrible. So I made it so you can upload them via the media player, and insert them via the media player.. and it just works.

They play together nice too. So when you play one, it stops the others. I’ll probably make that optional though.. cuz there’s nothing stopping multiple unity players playing at the same time.

Another thing is a lot of web servers can’t serve unity3d files.. because they don’t have the mime type and permissions set. So when you upload a unity3d file it just adds .zip to the end. The unity player can still play it – and you don’t have to mess with your config. All good!

I’m gonna play around with it and clean it up then I’ll see about getting it in the searchable wordpress plugin install thing.

So I’ve been working on getting Linux Garry’s Mod working this week. And it’s gone well.

I’ve got it all compiling nicely, all packaged. But I haven’t been able to test it.

We built a Linux testing PC but it doesn’t want to cooperate. When I start Team Fortress up it just shows a black window. I’ve messed with the drivers – changing them popups up an OpenGL error about a lack of scissorgl or something. The PC is running Ubuntu (the latest one – 13?) and has a Geforce GTX 240 (I think).

So that’s what I’ll be doing next week. Trying different graphics cards. Trying to build a computer on which TF2 for Linux actually works. Then I’ll be able to test whether Garry’s Mod actually works.

For now, if you want to have a fiddle you can download the latest SVN from here.

We went to the beach on Monday. It was a bank holiday. It was sunny too. I’m sure a lot of you American guys are surprised to hear that we have beaches in the UK. And even more surprised to find out that it’s sometimes sunny.

The beach we went to was in Wales, in a little place called Rhyl. So it was a long drive for us. 100 miles, about 2 hours. It looks something like this.

But the beach was cool. And the sun was out. And I of course got sunburnt because I’m a huge nerd.

The sea was miles out. Like, scary miles out. We built a dam and redirected a stream that was going out to sea. It got pretty awesome.

Further out, some of the sand was more mud than sand. There’s probably a good explanation for that.

We had a week of sun last week. And now all the trees have booted up! The first image here is a week ago. The second is 10 seconds ago.

So yeah. Just to confirm. The sun and rain makes trees grow their leaves and stuff.

Open Broadcaster Software is an open source live streaming/recording program. This is going to sound like an advert – but it isn’t. I just really really like it and want it to succeed.

If anyone has tried streaming their desktop they probably know about xsplit. It’s about as good as it gets. It works, you can do stuff. But it’s far, far, far, far, far from perfect. It’s pretty slow. And as far as I know it doesn’t have any plugin support.

OBS is like black magic. It records and you don’t even notice. Maybe it is magic, or maybe it’s just coded really really well, or maybe it’s taking advantage of some Windows 8 desktop recording thing I’ve been hearing about.

But check this video out. This is me, recording 3 huge monitors (all 2560×1440) and 3 HD webcams, downscaling them to 720p and saving them to a mp4. This is all done on the fly. It isn’t saving to some huge format and then processing it afterwards. BLACK MAGIC.

The best thing is it’s open source. So you can go in there and see what’s making it work. Or mod it. One of the things I wanted in XSplit was to have it follow my cursor around. No plugins meant that wasn’t gonna happen unless the guy who makes it decided to add it. With this I don’t have to wait – I can just make it happen. Or maybe if it’s done right (to work with the licensing) I could add lagless twitch streaming/mp4 recording right in GMod using it.

Even though it is awesome it is still in early beta. Version 0.51 right now. So it has some way to come. But it’s a horse you should back.

We started a thing in the office. Everyone has to come up with a game idea every week. It has to fit on a single sheet of A4 paper.

As you would expect a lot of the best ideas don’t actually come from people that know much about game development. They come from people that are thinking without limitations. When I think of a game I’m breaking it down and walling it in, my brain is designing on a grid, with existing technology.

But Craig is on another level. Craig is the office manager. His day job involves things like accounting and payroll. He doesn’t know how to program. So his ideas were the most crazy.

The last one, Quick Draw, the drawing made me laugh that much in the meeting that I turned it into an actual game. There’s a 10-20 second delay, a bell rings, then the crosshair will appear and you have to shoot your opponent before they shoot you. Check it out (needs unity player).

We had a privacy film thing added to the windows in the office. We love it. Photos don’t really show it properly.

How ya’ll doing anyway?

Our toilets got finished this week. This makes me happy because the toilet we were using downstairs was totally horrible to use. And now we can get rid of it!

Weirdly, the upstairs toilets were the first thing we designed, back in September 2012. Here’s the sketchup.

We’ve made a few changes since then. We added a urinal.. (which is probably wrong for unisex toilets – but it’s done now!). And we added a bunch of lockers on the right to fill out that space. And lime green is our favourite colour.

Our kitchen is almost finished too. We just need skirting board and carpet.. and some tables.. and chairs.. and a TV.

There’s seven of us in the office now – and there’s two more people starting soon!

It’s getting exciting!