Phew! Two-plus weeks without a post. I must have been busy! I suppose I was, since I can't remember much about what's happened recently. I know it has something to do with Flight Simulator, a code editor, a compiler, and a debugger. Oh, yeah! That's right. I've been filming the action packed sequel to "When Program Managers Code!" Depending on who you talk to the original was either an uplifting story of trimuph and redemption or a B-grade horror flick.

 

Either way I've been pitching in, trying to help the dev team make our Feature Complete milestone. Don't worry, though, I'm just tackling UI tasks--nothing serious. My big accomplishments have been to get our maps to show wind direction and local weather condtions as well as custom flight plan waypoint descriptions. And for the past couple of days I've truly taken one for the team by updating and reorganizing our Settings dialogs. Woo, hoo! There's nothing like pushing UI bits around. A little event handler here, a little string buffer gymnastics there...good times!

 

A couple people on the team are having good times, though. Adam Szofran and Adrian Woods are attending the Game Developer Conference this week and both are presenting papers (or have already). Adam is talking about our terrain system in FSX and Adrian has a session titled "The 'Make Art' Button" about automating the content production process.

 

Of course, they did have to give up the catered meals we brought in this week to encourage folks to stay late and push to make our deadline, but I'm sure they're surviving. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. And if that weren't enough, after almost 5 years working on Flight Simulator I've been asked to head up another project in the studio. That means finding my replacement and getting them up to speed on FSX. (Did I mention we're hiring?) Busy, indeed.