Life Update (Reunions thread?!)

General
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I was in the early years of college when I was active. Since then I transferred to a university, graduated as a mechanical and aerospace engineer, and now I’m playing the job hunting game. I have every intention of returning to school for a masters or Ph.D. after spending a few years in the field figuring out what I am interested in learning more about.

No development on the personal side of things. Been happily single for two years (almost to the date, actually). I stopped playing video games because I wasn’t getting much enjoyment out of them. Now I’m switching my attention to learning new things in my spare time and working with my hands…things like learning to fly, repairing my saxophone, playing in a community orchestra, getting down, dirty, and hands-on with my car…

That’s about it for now.

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Good to see the old faces on here @Steel @Japa & @Magellanic.

I left my role as community manager on the Infinity Forums about two years ago when the project started out in its new direction. That new focus for the project meant that there was less of a focus on the community and contributions whilst the team reconfigured itself as a more serious independent development studio. It was a good time for me to step down and focus on my own independent game development projects.

I released my first game (Cherry Chaser Slot Machine) to the Google Play store in January of 2012. The game was immediately far more successful than I had anticipated and I spent the next few months catching up and adding all the features it needed to give it more long term success. The first release didn’t even save your winnings between sessions.

Cherry Chaser now has 1.1 million downloads and its sequel, Super Snake Slot Machine, has 600K downloads on Google Play. Super Snake was developed to add some more interesting gameplay to the basic format of Cherry Chaser and was released in November of 2012. Both games were released under the name of Exobyte, which is the company I’ve created to encompass my game development work.

I’m now on the verge of releasing my third game, Plasma Duel, which is an arcade style air hockey game with an original twist. The best way to describe Plasma Duel is to show you an excerpt from a showreel we created for a recent game expo we attended:

Plasma Duel will be entering a private beta stage later this week, if you’re interested to try it out and have an Android device, send me a mail to rich@exobyte.net and I’ll add you as a beta participant on Google Play.

I’m not yet at the stage where it would be sensible to give up my day job and go full time on games development, but the work I’ve been doing over the past two years is definitely paying off. Once Plasma Duel is released my next task is to do iOS ports of all my games. I’m using a cross platform development environment (LibGDX) which has a solution for deploying to iOS so I’m hoping that will be fairly simple. It means I’ll be investing in an Apple Mac and also getting my first iPhone to develop on.

If you’re interested to know any more, I have a developer journal at http://www.exobyte.net/development-journal.html which has a few articles about my experiences as an independent games developer for mobile phones.

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Really glad to hear that everyone’s doing well!

I am, quite literally, days away from finishing my MSc in computational stellar astrophysics. My thesis was successfully defended about a month ago, and I’m just putting the finishing touches on my revisions. I failed to gain admittance into PhD programmes this term, but I only applied to two schools, and the funding situation for basic research here in Canada has gone from crappy to abysmal, so I’m not particularly surprised. At the moment, I’m actively seeking a full-time job, but I’ve managed to land some part-time sub-contracting work with a friend’s consulting agency to occupy my time.

The past 12 months have actually been really shitty on the personal side of things. A couple of deaths in my family, a deteriorating relationship with my parents, and the rigors of graduate school ultimately cost me my (common-law) “marriage”, with my girlfriend of the past 7 years breaking up with me back in July. I just moved out of our shared apartment yesterday, but did so with nowhere to actually go. I applied to rent another apartment in my building, but my building’s management company has been unusually slow in processing it, so as of last night I’m homeless and couch surfing until all of the paperwork is filed. I should be back to real life within the next 10 days or so, though, so it’s not so bad.

On the plus side, I’ve lost 3 inches off of my waistline since the breakup, and, on a good day, can run 2 miles straight in 19 minutes. It’s not much, but for me? It’s a minor miracle.

Once I submit the final version of my thesis, and I have full-time employment (I do have a strong line on a job - a friend’s boyfriend knows someone who needs someone with my skill set, and he’s handed off my CV along with a strong reference, but the guy hasn’t gotten back to either of us (he’s a doctor, and is likely out of town doing doctory things)), my spare time’s going to be focused on getting JENI back up and running in time for the Kickstarter campaign (I already have grand plans!), and re-launching TCL so that there’s a third party cross-corporation community forum running on traditional forum software.

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Wow! You guys are alive !:slight_smile: Thanks for all the updates – congratulations Crayfish on your success w/ your two games! I’ll definitely check out your blog (and… LibGDX is awesome). Steel, great to hear from you - I think I still have you on my Steam friends list - we should play a game or catch up or something!

Let’s see… I’ve been doing the whole Navy gig for the past 5 years, still flying in the E-2C out of Southern California. I’ll be moving on to my next tour here in about 6 months, which will be my last tour as an Active duty member. Hoping that means I’ll have some more time to write code and play games :smile:

Getting married to my girlfriend of several years. We haven’t set a date yet, but it’s going to be sometime next year I imagine. She’s working on her PhD at the moment, and we’re hoping to settle down in Colorado for starters.

You better believe I’m still writing simulations! It’s definitely my go-to ‘hobby’. Over the past few years, I’ve kinda spread my interests across a broad spectrum, from coding a procedural texturing application that used genetic algorithms to ‘evolve’ a certain look, to a Q-Learning-based neural network engine for complex pathfinding. I’m still fascinated by economies too - I think they can lend a lot of insight into how our human cost-vs-benefit analysis works.

All said, I’m definitely looking forward to the Battlescape KS. Going to throw as much money at it as I can reasonably afford. I can’t say I would have followed the same path as the INovae team did - but not being in their shoes, that’s an easy thing to say. Either way, I want to support them and will do everything I can to make the Dream we discussed all those years ago into a Reality.

That’s all the highlights for me… Wow, has been a blast from the past! Looking forward to more updates! Thanks for the reunion thread, Steel… it’s great to see you guys!

-Navy

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Nice to see everyone again!

Compared to you, not much happened to me. I graduated from the University last year, but took some sabbatical time instead of working right away. After all, I probably won’t be able to do that again later, and I had some savings. Particularly, I concentrated on writing (short stories, mostly SF and a bit of fantasy). And a bit of dabbing in comics/graphic novels, but I have no talent for it alas.

I would have tried to get myself published, but I felt that I wasn’t rigorous enough to do so (yet), so I recently searched for and found a job as a developer in IT consulting. Which is quite interesting so far and allows me to save for the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

Still single, though, as I didn’t feel like having (or searching for) stable relationships without a stable situation. But apart from that, yeah, doing well, that’s about it.

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Good to see all the familiar faces here :slight_smile: Long live the Infinity Die Hards!

Some of you might remember me from the old forums. I joined in 2008 and did a ton of medium quality concept art and some organizing work on all the scattered contributions all over the forums (all of this of course now gone with the old forums… at least temporarily? :wink: ).

The time spent in the infinity forums has seen a gradual climb in my standard of living. I started from being single and living with my brother while studying. Since then I’ve graduated as a graphic designer. As some of you might remember I did my thesis on Infinity (the work included a set of concept art as contributions). SpAce was actually my official 2nd thesis supervisor.

I’ve also found a girlfriend. Although we broke up for a few months in 2010 (which was one of the crappiest year in my life in many other ways too). After getting back together we’ve been living happily together in a small rented appartment in Helsinki. I’ve also found a job in a small-to-medium sized publishing house as a web graphic designer doing mostly web mockups.

Once I got all the basics of my life in order I started to get more ambitious. I started to read some economics as a side hobby after work in case I’ll want to start a business in the future. I also got busy on all kinds of other projects to a point of suffering a burnout recently. After that I had to downshift my life heavily. I let all my projects wait for a while and just played Minecraft after work instead of doing anything ‘useful’. Haven’t even been going out so much in weekends. I’ve just stayed home and rested. Now I’m finally starting to recover. Just in time to prepare myself mentally for the long, cold, hard and dark finnish winter. :snowflake:

Since Infinity hasn’t accepted any contributions for some time now my activity in the forums has been mostly centered around the Minecraft server Lomsor set up. If you like playing Minecraft, come and join us there.

Oh and congratulations for your business success @Crayfish and @Steel. :slight_smile: Always inspiring to see new entrepreneurs make it. Perhaps one day I will be employing myself too.

And hang in there @Kichae. Just keep pushing through the snow and eventually spring will arrive. :sunny:

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Wow, seeing all these dinosaurs here really makes me wish they released the old forums back as “read only” asap. :wink:
What was the name of that guy that had 10k posts again? Or that dude that was banned after breaking every single forum rule in a single post? lol, good times.

Anyway, some of you might remember me as the guy that managed the “concepts list” topic, which was a lot of work. I hope that when we get the old forums back most of the images won’t be down, which would make all that work useless. :confused:

Well, before I got into infinity I used to lurk in the forums from Taikodom, a brazilian game which was supposed to be similar to Infinity (but with no procedural planets). After they released a beta(more like a pre-alpha) they realized their game sucked, so they changed it to the current F2P generic crap you can play today. I think they spent almost 10 million bucks on that… Go figure.

In their forums I found out about Infinity and quickly fell in love with the idea of modelling the ships for a game, so I learned Blender and modeled a bunch of stuff(mostly concepts from @LucasFIN), and even got a couple things reviewed and accepted, like a SFC frigate and a drone.

Ever since the contribution system went cold I stopped modelling entirely, and I probably have forgotten most of what I had learned by now. When I registered on the old forums(2008 I guess) I had just begun my electric engineering degree here in Brazil, and after the silly idea of trying to also graduate on telecommunications engineering set me back a couple of years(I obviously failed), Im finally close to graduating on my original choice.

Since the forums closed I realized how useful they were. They not only kept me informed in a bunch of game related news, but also prevented me from forgetting how to write in english, since this was the only site I frequent where I can’t speak portuguese. Now the only thing protecting me from getting half the words wrong is chrome’s spellcheck. :sweat:
Having started to learn German a couple years ago also didn’t help in that matter.

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You’re thinking of Irashi? I’m sure he’ll make his return one day. I wasn’t all that far behind him either.

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Are you referring to the guy who idolized Himmler? Or the guy who wanted the game to give players the ability to build their own planets?

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Yep.

The second, I think. Did both of them make a post mentioning and then breaking every single rule?

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The Himmler guy was banned within hours of making his post. As for the planet-building guy, it took a few days I think. He made multiple posts and argued (horribly, I might add) on behalf of his idea. His terrible, terrible idea.

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Okay, I’m late to the party and not one of the “dinosaurs”, but so what…

I was – and still am – Xamino from the old forums. I joined the forum in the summer of 2009. At the time I was in 12th grade, one year away from graduation (I currently live in Germany, we had 13 school years up until two years ago). I had done a few small steps in 3D modeling before, but the contribution system finally got me started on trying some serious models. My first sucked, of course – but my next was already not so bad, considering that I had no previous skills. I’ve modeled 4 ships of varying sizes up until 2011 – the Taurus M1 by Space; the Ardennes, a Centaurus pickup, and the Entropy by @LucasFIN

However, since I graduated in 2010, I started my studies of media computer science in Ulm, Germany, and quickly lost the time to do more. Especially since it started becoming clear that the contribution system was being reworked and my work wasn’t on par anymore – I also lacked any time to upgrade my already done models.

By now I’ve almost finished my bachelor of science – I defended my bachelor thesis just 2 weeks ago – and have started with my master while I wait for the grade. I’m not really sure what exactly I’ll do once I’m done – either start working for a large corporation (Google would be cool, I think) or also start a business. There’s a few ideas I think that could really work out. Nothing game like, though… 3D graphical programming is still quite a hurdle for me to learn. Maybe I’ll even move back to the US, depending on if I get a good job.

So, what else? I’m now 22 (though my birthday is coming up in 2 months), have a nice one-room apartement in Ulm which I call home, love going to University, work there as a tutor to help with my expenses, have a large group of friends, and am single.

I’m also looking forward to when there’ll finally be the first Infinity real-life meetup – I’d love to meet many of you sometime. The old forums will always have a special place in my heart, as cheesy as that sounds, as they were a core aspect of my teen years too. In fact, without Infinity, I might never have started my CompSci studies…

EDIT: @LucasFIN: well, now I know why you were so active on the server… :smiley: Great that it’s looking better now though!

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Hey guys i’m Leinad from the old forums :stuck_out_tongue: I remember all you guys :smiley: and Irashi never did post again did he? What a bummer. Well since i started following Infinity in January 2007 i’ve joined and then left the Army Reserves (Australian) after 4 years, went to East Timor for 6 months at the end. I never contributed anything as i’m not really a creative type haha, but always enjoyed your contributions. Now i attend university (as a security guard :P) I have high hopes for this game and i can’t wait for the Kickstarter :smiley:

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Well… I’ve procrastinated enough, time for my two bits.

I’m not sure who remembers me, I’ve visited the forums almost daily (or at least every week) since I joined in June 2010, but I was never a big poster. When I first joined the forums I had just left high school and I was debating my future and I wasn’t too sure about where my life was going. I was spending far too much time playing video games and almost no time actually developing myself as a person.

That all changed in October 2011 when I marched off to Kapooka (hey there Gryphon) and began my life in the Australian Army. I’ll admit I struggled physically for a while, I was 192cm and 72kg, a stick compared to most people. I passed everything though and marched out without a hitch. Since then I’ve gotten bigger, stronger, fitter, yadda yadda… but most of all I actually learned to live. I’ve made some great mates, had some great times and I have many great stories for when I finally go home this Christmas.

I’ve learned so much and accomplished much more in my life in the last two years then I had in the 19 years previous. But I’ve also had my first major heartbreak when I was cheated on by my missus while I was away on training, who then broke up with me because she “wasn’t attracted to me anymore”. This is more common in the Army then it should be and I should have seen it coming when over the course of 3 months of training, out of 44 people, 16 had their girlfriends cheat or break up with them as well as one divorce. But like anything, it’s made me a better person in the end and it’s given me some life lessons about long-distance relationships.

I plan on either leaving the ARA to join the Dark Side of the Officers or discharge to attend University and (hopefully) study to become a Geologist. I’ve taken a STAT test (an aptitude test really) and, without trying to brag, I scored a perfect mark so hopefully that’s my ticket in the door. If all goes well, I’ll be at the University of Queensland by July 2014.

This is really the first time I’ve sat down and actually thought about these last couple of years and I have so very much I could write and much more that I really shouldn’t.

Oh and I can now play the Piano. That’s neat.

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Just wanted to drop by by and say that I’m still here lurking (for those of you who remember me). It is nice to see everyone again though. Maybe I will have time to contribute a new song or something in the future.

Cheers

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I was that dude with some serious utopian agendas who founded The Empyrean Collective. I believe I was Cottus Arci back then, but that is indeed another life ago. Wow, what a blast, especially seeing some other familiar faces here, so I too will share.
I didn’t stick around too long after that boom of all those initial corporations and factions, played eRepublik, Evony, Minecraft mostly. Personally I’ve been through way too much to mention, but between then and now, I ended a 9 year relationship, stood up for all that is good with humanity during the Occupy movement, really finding a better voice and exposure to such amazing people, all over the world. Through this experience I am living in the 5-college region, Massachusetts - sadly just recently the girl who brought me here from Melbourne, Australia ended our 1.5 or so year relationship, but i’m green carded and gonna stick around, minus a quick trip back Dec 31-Jan 22 to thaw out from this winter

Working as a part-time food service management at a College here, but also on an 8-part saga that’s kinda been a lifelong project, more realized 2 years ago and being worked on close to full-time for 3 months now. Beginning with parts I & III as a screenplay for a crowd-sourced semi-documentary, parts II & IV as novels (with view to screenplay for film). Kickstarter launched is planned for Feb 1st.

I’m also hoping to release an album within the next year too, indie, online, y’know, the way we do these days

Currently playing Civilization V, this is for business, not pleasure, I swear… no really… and also Space Engine, which is why I’m here, coz it’s kinda an out-of-the-box-ready-to-go-now-infinity-deal in being a playable explorer and it made me wonder whats going on over here. What else, played plenty of smaller indie games and tracking so many in progress.

Now to remember to check back here… until then it’s been great to check back.

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wow, so many familiar names :slight_smile: does anyone remember me? :confused:

Irashi was such a spammer… lol ^^

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Hi there, folks. Nice to hear how people are going. fat monkey - I remember you as one of the other Aussies. :smile: Sorry to hear that things suck for you right now, Kichae. :frowning:

I think I found Infinity in around 2009, and it was my inspiration to get into games programming, which I absolutely love.

Since then my wife and I have had a son, who had his first birthday today and decided to take the visit to Opa’s house as an opportunity to take his first steps. I could go on about him but what’s to say? He’s of small stature and predominantly human, and I think he’s amazing. Pretty standard parenting fare. When he was first born I used orbital docking terminology as a metaphor to help him understand the whole breastfeeding thing. I think it helped.

I also had a programming job for a while, but I discovered that I couldn’t do that work and my own projects at the same time. Task-switching between two large programming projects that have little to do with one another was a pain in the butt for me. So now I’m looking for a menial job to pay the bills while I work on my own project. Apparently having a simple job on the side works for a lot of creative types, like writers, so hopefully it’ll work for me.

I’ve also taken on board zefrank’s “brain-crack” idea, which basically means that when I have an idea I just do it. Just kick out a quick prototype so the idea doesn’t get stuck in my brain. Recently I wrote a tree generator that’s given me some ideas about how to approach some procedural stuff in my game, so that one paid off really fast.

The game itself is a stunt-racer with its own track editor, and a few twists on what I’ve seen in the genre up until now. I’ll make sure to post here when I’ve got a playable demo.

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So happy to see I-Novae team and community is still thriving. I doubt any of you remember me, but I remember at least names like Crayfish and others. Latest tech video was amazing.

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Holy shit dude I joined TEC years ago! I was trying to google the corp but couldn’t find it so registered with AXIS who are somehow still kicking haha. Sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure. Good to see you’ve made your way back :smiley: